Every few years the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) certification program goes through a review process and is updated to reflect the constantly changing technologies of today’s world and ways in which to leverage them to improve building performance. When the LEED program was updated to Version 4, a new option was [...]
Seeing the Invisible There are few instruments that can provide as much information in a short amount of time as the infrared camera. The IR camera offers a look at how heat energy is moving within a system by showing infrared radiation not visible to the human eye. Infrared thermography (conducted using an IR [...]
Since the beginning of the modern HVAC industry, the design, installation and testing of a building automation system (BAS) has remained relatively untouched. The process is as follows: First, an engineer will develop control drawings and desired sequence of operations for the various pieces of HVAC equipment in their design documents. From there, an [...]
The building envelope can be thought of as a bubble that creates a physical barrier between the interior and exterior. This bubble is comprised of the walls, windows, roof, and foundation all coming together as one system. A poorly constructed envelope allows unwanted air or moisture movement (in or out of the building) that [...]
Staying Warm in the Land of Lumber (and Moose) SES was hired by a school district in northern Maine to provide commissioning services for their new 213,000-square-foot middle/high school. One unique aspect of this project was the use of a hybrid central heating plant that combined liquid propane fired [...]
Getting the Last 10% Anyone involved in construction projects has at least one war story about completing the last 10 percent of a challenging project. The last 10 percent I’m referring to here is the range of tasks or deliverables that can include: punch list work, commissioning issues close-out, as-built documentation, O&M manuals delivery, [...]
Canned Routines: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly I recently found myself sitting in a mechanical penthouse being told by the automated temperature controls (ATC) contractor, through the hum of rotating equipment and the incessant whine of variable frequency drives, that yet another sequence was not provided as specified. Instead, we got a [...]
