These are my links for July 2nd through July 8th:
- Woobius Scribbles — Bottom-up collaboration in the construction industry – Excellent post on collaborative working by Woobius and the curse of email:"You know that feeling. You’ve just set up the best collaboration system ever. You have all the processes documented and approved. Everyone’s agreed to use the system. Things couldn’t be better. Then, the project kicks off and there comes that sinking feeling when you realise that everyone is bypassing your carefully tuned system.
Everyone is sending emails instead."
- If zero carbon is the answer then just what was the question? « isite – Martin has an excellent rant and takes on Passivhaus amongst other issues pertaining to zero carbon: "Passivhaus is emerging as the aspirational darling or solution. But what is the true embodied energy of passivhaus, in particular the massive amounts of insulation, sheeting and duct tape? Passivhaus will reduce energy requirements and costs. Excellent. But I would love to see the payback time on the total and higher than normal embodied energies and waste."
- Tellytubby land: BedZed revisited – Building – Fantastic review of BedZed 7 years on. I was fully aware of the situation with the CHP, but less so with the allotments and car use issues. A long article, but very worthwhile reading.
- Climate change odds much worse than thought – MIT News Office – More doom, but presented in pretty roulette wheels. I ought to stop reading all this doom, but am strangely compelled to keep checking for confirming evidence. Behavioural economists, make of this what you will.: "The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well – such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries."
- The orders figures and public spending fears point to industry chaos ahead – need it be so? (Brickonomics) – I'm in broad agreement with Brian on this:"What firms should be doing now is assessing what they are good at and what they are not good at, what makes them profit, what costs them time and resources unprofitably.
They should focus on quality of earnings not volume of earnings.
They should focus effort on what they are good at and judiciously shed the operations that are weak….
That however does not alter the reality that this recession will be cruel and that the industry has no choice but to retreat. Turnover overall must fall. Competition does need to be taken out of the market.
It is better that firms recognise their weaknesses and retreat from them than seek to bid unrealistically against those better placed.
The worst of all outcomes would be to lose good firms because of the woeful bidding by weak operations desperate to win work at any price."
- We don’t know what is coming next – so get ready – The Regeneration Blog – Jackie's advice on getting ready for a potential change in administration: "But in the meantime, my current advice is this: you know not what is coming next, so get as ready as you can. Have a total clear out (in every sense), trim down, strip back everything and establish your priorities.
Swot up on localism and reconnect with your bottom-up roots. If you are able to deliver decent outputs (notably jobs or homes) you will be safe even if – or perhaps especially if – as we suspect, the RDA's get wiped away and their responsibilities are given to County Councils and the like. "
- Sustainable Design Tools Exhibited at AIA 2009: AECbytes Feature Article – Excellent review of the latest 'sustainable design' software tools available on the market, including Ecotect (aligned with Autodesk and therefore AutoCAD – very popular with architects), IES (my favourite) and TAS and Hevacomp (which are now both owned by Bentley (the home of AutoCAD rival Microstation). Whatever happened to Cymap? Seem to have been left behind…
- PlanningBlog: When did everyone get so cynical? « – "Regeneration is quite often seen as big business riding roughshod over local people’s wishes. It’s eyed with suspicion and written off as ‘ a waste of taxpayers money’ before it’s even come out of the ground.
This all ties in with the wider anti-politician backlash currently sweeping the country. Politicians and anyone in authority are seen as ‘out to line their own pockets’ and anything they propose or champion is therefore, by association, a bad thing.
Of course we should question authority and challenge things we don’t agree with but whatever happened to taking something at face value? A much needed regeneration of an area might actually be just that, not a conspiracy or an attempt to get one over on the general public.
I’m not sure what the answer is to this. … Perhaps the problem is with the politicians themselves and only political reform can ‘reconnect’ and re-build trust between the people and those in authority."
- Government ends energy bulbs scheme – The IET – Some sensible news: "Power companies will no longer be able to mail out millions of energy-saving light bulbs to meet their targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions from homes.
The Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) has announced changes to the Government scheme requiring energy suppliers to cut emissions from homes, including an end to the direct mail out of low-energy light bulbs by January 1, 2010."
admin News bedzed, business_models, case_study, CERT, climatechange, collaboration, ecotect, email, globalwarming, hevacomp, ies, localism, MIT, modelling, passivhaus, RDA, recession, regeneration, Software, system, tools, woobius, zero_carbon
What I’ve been reading about:
- Reader’s Rant – Building Services Journal – "BREEAM is about environmental damage reduction and not about sustainable development. Yet BREEAM is increasingly interpreted within the construction sector as being a metric for sustainable development. Use of the terms ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’ have become misleading because they are hijacked to mean ‘more sustainable’ to one degree or another. In fact, it would be more accurate to call buildings achieving these ratings as BREEAM ‘not as bad as most’ or BREEAM ‘a bit less harmful’."
- IES enters free DEC software market – Building – Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) has developed a free alternative to the Government’s ORCalc Display Energy Certifiacte (DEC) software. The Glaswegian firm is planning on a late-August launch.
The company said the software allowed users to produce DECs and the attached advisory reports as well as facilitate lodgements.
Benefits over ORCalc listed by the company include: no restriction on the number of building zones (benchmark categories); user-friendly input Web based access; personal user area to store and manage DEC submissions; and ability to save and move between the different sections of the submission
- Hobbits in a hole – Building Design – My favourite tacky hobbit houses in Oregon are in trouble. I could go and snap one up at a bargain auction price…
- Kevin McCloud’s own ‘grand design’ in chaos – Building Design – Read this article, and especially the comments. As usual when a 'design guru' such as Kevin McHeadintheClouds (or Wayne Hemingway to name another, or indeed Germaine Greer, who isn't even a designer) gets involved in 'real' projects, they get hauled over the coals by those who have considerable more experience and a much more realistic view. Poor Kev.
- Small Scale Wind Energy | Carbon Trust – A new Carbon Trust study into the potential of small-scale wind energy has found that small wind turbines could provide up to 1.5 Terawatt Hours (TWh) per year of electricity (0.4% of total UK electricity consumption) and 0.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) emission savings. This is based on 10% of households installing turbines at costs competitive with grid electricity, which is currently around 12p per kWh.
The study also indicates that for the UK as a whole, the majority of electricity and carbon savings are available from small turbines in rural areas – four times as much as urban areas irrespective of costs, and considerably more given economic drivers. This is mainly due to wind speeds generally being higher in rural areas. Turbines in some rural locations could provide cheaper electricity than the grid, but it appears that in many urban situations, roof-mounted turbines may not pay back their embedded carbon emissions.
- Expert tells legislators in city the price of oil will drop | NewsOK.com – Todd Buchholz (author of "new ideas from dead economists", former advisor to Bush and technophile predicts:"Oil will peg out two years from now being closer to $50 a barrel, which is still high enough to make those alternative fuels worth pursuing.” He said he wouldn't be surprised if discussions took place two years from now about keeping the price of oil from getting too low so it "doesn't pull the rug out from solar, wind and clean coal technology.”
mel starrs News architects, BREEAM, carbon_trust, DEC, Economics, EPC, hobbit, house, Housing, ies, learned, lessons, oil, Oregon, report, Software, Sustainable_development, wind
These are my links for June 3rd through June 4th:
mel starrs News BIM, branding, carbon, Economics, environmental, Events, externalities, free, green, guide, ies, Software, specification, tax, Tim_Worstall, Tony_Jupiter
These are my links for May 26th through May 27th:
- IES Launches Free Tool : VE- Ware – IES’s VE-Ware, which is available to download for free online, gives limited but incredibly valuable access to its world leading <Virtual Environment> Apache thermal analysis software. New and existing buildings can now have their energy and carbon emis
- C-Plan – Carbon Impact Assessment – C-Plan is a revolutionary web-based service, developed by ECSC, that allows planning authorities and developers to demonstrate and verify compliance with climate change policy.
- Brickonomics – Newish blog from Construction Journal by Brian Green, combining an economics view with construction.
- Experts warn of looming climate change migration crisis – Countries that have the greatest responsibility for creating climate change also have a responsibility to deal with the casualties
- Stumbling and Mumbling: Public intellectual – an oxymoron? – To be very prominent in public affairs requires a dogmatism and capacity for soundbites that sits uneasily with the doubts and humble pursuit of “truth” that mark a true intellectual.
mel starrs News BIM, blog, climatechange, construction_industry, crisis, culture, Economics, environmental, freeware, ies, planning, policy, responsibility, Software
These are my links for April 1st through April 5th:
mel starrs News BEAM, Blogging, BREEAM, business_case, calculator, carbon, certification, China, commitments, dsm, ebook, Economics, free, government, green, Green Building Council, gtd, ies, Kevin Hydes, LEED, lifehacks, Productivity, SBEM, Simon Dickson, Software, United Kingdom, United States, web2.0, www.flylady.net, Yale University
Additional guidance has been published on the NCM FAQ’s page regarding how to deal with shared spaces within blocks of flats using iSBEM:
Each flat is a separate dwelling and must be assessed using SAP (the relevant guidance is in ADL1A). However, the common areas in the flats are not classified as dwellings. As stated in ADL1A paragraph 14, the appropriate approach to compliance depends on whether the common areas are heated or unheated. If they are heated, the guidance in ADL2 should be applied using SBEM. If they are unheated, reasonable provision would be to provide fabric elements that meet the fabric standards set out in paragraphs 33 to 36 of ADL1A.
A new activity will be added to the activity database in a future version of iSBEM for these areas. For now, please select Building type ‘Hotel’ and activity ‘Circulation area (corridors and stairways)’. This activity has no DHW demand associated with it. It is still necessary to assign a DHW generator to these areas, this will not cause any problems in the project because the generator will not be used where there is no DHW demand. The default DHW generator should be used in this case, if gas is not available in the building, the DHW fuel should be changed to any fuel other than natural gas.
In related new, IES have announced that their SAP 2005 and SBEM packages have been approved by DCLG. Version 5.6.1 was released yesterday:
IES are the only provider that can now offer approved software for all of the possible CO2 calculation methods allowed under Part L:
· SAP 2005 (L1A)
· Dynamic Thermal Simulation (L2A)
· SBEM (L2A)
admin Regulation calculation, dsm, ies, isbem, ncm, Part L, SAP, SBEM, simulation, Software
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