BUFFALO TALES
Newsletter of the Manitoba Chapter The Manitoba Chapter of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers was chartered in September 1935. It is the second oldest ASHRAE Chapter in Canada. ASHRAE Manitoba is part of ASHRAE Region XI and covers ASHRAE members in Manitoba and Northwest Ontario.
December 11, 2008 ASHRAE Manitoba Cribbage Tournament Victoria Inn 1808 Wellington Avenue
Russell Lavitt Presents A Quick Course in Fire Dampers
5:00 pm – Social Hour 6:00 pm – Dinner 7:00 pm – Presentation
As part of a building's life safety systems, fire dampers play a critical role in the control of fire incidents, yet are often misunderstood. This presentation will review the fundamentals of fire damper application, Code perspectives, and installation requirements. Examples of misapplication will presented to assist in better understanding the specific and detailed requirements for a proper fire damper application.
Russell Lavitt, P.Eng., is a Senior Mechanical Engineer with SMS Engineering Ltd. He served as Prime Consultant on a three-year series of fire upgrade projects for MTS Allstream Inc. where fire compartmentalization upgrades were performed in some 300,000 sq. ft of space in three of their major telecommunications facilities.
Doug LeCren Regional Vice Chair of Student Activities will be visiting Manitoba for the Chapter’s December Dinner Meeting. When he is not volunteering for ASHRAE, Doug works for Colt Engineering in Anchorage, Alaska. President’s Message – Sergio Almeida, P. Eng.
Every day of our lives, both personal and professional, we all get caught up in routine. It might be driving to work and picking up a large double-double every morning, or maybe it's watching Jeopardy every night when you get home, we all have our routines.
From a professional standpoint, having a routine - or a standard if you will - can be very important to ensuring consistency in your work. Unfortunately it can also limit your perspective on projects as you take the same approach time after time. As workloads increase, and the papers on our desk continue to pile up, you fall back to these routines to help cope and get you through.
Today I would like to challenge each of you to take a moment to look at your own routines and decide how – in just one simple way – you can get out of a routine and do a little bit better. With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season it's easy to focus on the short term, but don't wait for January 1 to make a resolution. Maybe take some time to update that old spec that no one has touched in years, or take a minute to follow up with a customer that no one wants to call on. Spending a few extra minutes, or more if needed, breaking that routine may make a big difference in the long run. Your reputation and future business might see an exponential boost somewhere down the road.
I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. For those of you who do not celebrate Christmas, may you enjoy the holiday of your chosen faith.
To each of you, enjoy the time off and spend it with those you love.
Cheers, Sergio
Coming Events ASHRAE Manitoba Meeting Schedule
January 15, 2009 ***Student Night*** Ryan Geister, Trane Chiller Plants
February 12, 2009 Joel Primeau, Genivar Sustainability & Integrated Building Design
March 12, 2009 ***Refrigeration Night*** Will Stoecker, ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer Industrial Refrigeration
April 16, 2009 Stan Mumma, ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer Chilled Beams & Dedicated Outdoor Air Systems
January 24 to 28 ASHRAE Winter Meeting and ARI Trade Show – Chicago . In addition to everything else it has to offer, eleven three-hour courses and four six-hour courses will be presented at the 2009 Winter Conference and AHR Expo. Topics include Complying with Standard 62.1-2007; Exceeding Standard 90.1-2007; Testing, Adjusting, & Balancing and The Commissioning Process in New & Existing Buildings; two Humidity Control courses, i) Basic Principles and ii) Applications and Mold Avoidance; The Basics of a Proposed Standard on High Performance Green Buildings (Standard 189.1P); Introduction to Green Buildings & Sustainable Construction; Energy Management in New & Existing Buildings; Chilled Beam Technology; Low-Temperature Radiant Heating & High Temperature Radiant Cooling Systems; Residential Ventilation Systems (Standard 62.2); Healthcare Facilities: Best Practice HVAC Design Considerations & Criteria; Healthcare Facilities: Best Practice Applications of HVAC Systems; and Introduction to Thermal Energy Storage Systems for A/C. There will be more at the ARI trade show at McCormick Place on Wed., Jan. 28. 18 hands-on, applications-type programs, held from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., centering around the Technical Program theme of Sustainable Urban Design feature back to basics sessions on load calculations and liquid chiller operations, BIM, Standard 62.1’s demand controlled ventilation and IAQ procedure, VFDs, commissioning for sustainability programs, building automation systems and sessions entitled Liability and Litigation Issues in Green Design, Part 1 and 2 and Case Studies in Sustainable Retrofit to Reduce Energy of Existing Buildings. Overall, the technical program offers more than 100 sessions, with more than 140 Professional Development Hour credits available. For complete course and meeting registration, visit www.ashrae.org/chicago .
April 15 and 16, 2009 BEMM Conference -
April 22, 2009 – ASHRAE/US EPA Satellite Broadcast “Clean, Lean, and Green - IAQ for Sustainable Buildings”. The program will highlight the “ Indoor Air Quality Design Guide: Best Practices for Design, Construction, and Commissioning ” currently being developed through the collaboration of ASHRAE, AIA, BOMA, EPA, SMACNA and the USGBC. Program topics are: Build Good IAQ into Design & Construction Process; Avoid Costly IAQ Problems in Your Buildings; Enhance IAQ with Common Sense and Proven Technologies; Improve ROI with better IAQ, and; What We Already Know and Don't Do. Watch for details in ASHRAE Insights and http://www.ashrae.org .
May 6-9, 2009 – CRC (ASHRAE Chapters Regional Conference) in Spokane, Washington. Events schedule, registration and accommodation details will be presented as they become available.
ASHRAE Publishes New Guidance on Commissioning Process Specific tasks to successfully implement the commissioning process for HVAC&R systems and assemblies are featured in a new guideline from ASHRAE. Guideline 1.1, HVAC&R Technical Requirements for the Commissioning Process, describes the technical requirements for the application of the commissioning process described in ASHRAE Guideline 0-2005 that will verify that the HVAC&R systems achieve the owner’s project requirements.
“The quality-oriented process outlined in the guideline provides improved quality and greater cost effectiveness compared to commissioning as currently practiced by many commissioning providers,” Walter Grondzik, secretary of the committee that wrote the guideline, said. “One problem with the current practice is that 100 percent checking is performed during the construction phase of the project delivery process, and this checking usually focuses on limited or targeted systems. Quality-based sampling is not used, and so the current approach has limited quality-based random inspection procedures.”
Commissioning a building (and systems within a building) helps ensure that: · The owner’s project requirements are complete, feasible and well-documented; · The design team’s solutions adequately address the owner’s requirements; · Construction is complete and of appropriate quality; · The owner receives the training and project documentation to successfully operate the project; · The many players in the project acquisition process can cooperate for the common good.
The guideline contains more than 100 pages of annexes, providing concrete examples of forms and documents to assist the commissioning team and owners in their efforts to deliver quality buildings that meet the owner's project requirements. Twenty-five sample checklists, covering pre-design, design and construction, are included along with a sample owner’s project requirements verification test procedure. To order ASHRAE Guideline 1.1 (US$69, $55 for ASHRAE members), call 1-800-527-4723 or visit www.ashrae.org/bookstore.
Dieter Bartel Appointed to Ad Hoc Committee on Building Energy Labeling ASHRAE President William Harrison appointed Manitoba Chapter member Dieter Bartel to the ASHRAE Building Energy Labeling Implementation Ad Hoc Committee. The purpose of this committee is to build upon earlier work and develop an implementation plan for ASHRAE to establish a building energy labeling program. The Ad Hoc committee is to present its plan at the ASHRAE Annual Meeting in June 2009.
Maintain to Sustain Bill Harrison’s theme for his year as ASHRAE President is “Maintain to Sustain”. A new standard ANSI/ASHRAE/ACCA Standard 180-2008, Standard Practice for Inspection and Maintenance of Commercial Building HVAC Systems will help ensure a consistent minimal level of HVAC&R maintenance and inspection to preserve a system’s ability to achieve acceptable thermal comfort, energy efficiency, and indoor air quality in commercial buildings.
Inconsistencies exist within the building industry when it comes to inspection and maintenance of HVAC systems. Some facilities follow rigorous policies while others have adopted a run-to- failure approach. Consistent maintenance ensures that energy efficiency remains at or near design levels. Where maintenance is neglected, energy costs rise significantly and equipment life drops dramatically. With HVAC&R systems responsible for about 60 percent of site electrical energy use, it’s imperative that we provide consistent maintenance and inspection to improve energy efficiency along with thermal comfort and indoor air quality. When systems are not maintained, indoor air quality, occupant comfort and energy efficiency all suffer. Much of the information that will be required to prepare the maintenance program can be obtained from building commissioning documents, which provides a basis for identifying failures.
The cost of ANSI/ASHRAE/ACCA Standard 180-2008 is US$31 ($25, ASHRAE members). To order, call 1-800-527-4723 or visit www.ashrae.org/bookstore.
Notes from the 2008 ASHRAE Annual Meeting in Salt Lake City - Bert Phillips I rode a motorcycle through the Beartooth Pass and through Yellowstone on my way to the Summer meeting in Salt Lake City. There was about five minutes of fierce rain late in the afternoon as I approached the Beartooth, after which the sky was clear and cloudless. My feet got soaked in the rain, and as you may expect from the amount of snow in the photo of my bike at the top of the Beartooth, my feet were cool by the time I stopped for the night in West Yellowstone. It was late and the best I could do for supper was to pay the price of a steak supper for a day old mystery-meat sandwich at bar that was about to close for the evening.
West and south of West Yellowstone, the fields were in full blossom. I arrived in Salt Lake mid afternoon, after a leisurely ride in ever increasing temperatures. I spent time wandering
around Mormon Temple Square area with its many steeples and spires before going back to my hotel and finding some ASHRAE boys to have supper with. It was late and very few places were open. We ended up at a piano bar where we had to buy a membership to enter (a Utah rule) and I got a sandwich, fresher this time, and with real meat. Although the bar was not crowded it was fairly lively and the entertainment was good. The next morning, the business part of my trip to Salt Lake City began.
Seminar 3, GSHP for Schools John Shonder spoke about GSHP in Northern Climates (upstate New York). A 373 ton system had an incremental cost of $179,000 compared to a conventional system (whatever that would have been) and resulted in energy cost savings of $11,300/year, yielding a 12.5 year SPB. The ground loop consisted of 104 wells @ 250 feet with 2 - 30 HP VSD pumps. Indoor systems added up to 203 tons of water to air terminal units and 170 Tons of water to water ventilation load units scattered around the building. Loop temperature was 45oF and rated COPs were 3.5. While site energy is low, source energy is not so good. He based source energy on the national average because one may argue that power supply is taken from a national power grid.
Kirk Mescher spoke about school EE vs Age. New buildings are more complex than old ones and complexity is a problem outside of major cities. When controls go out of whack, so does energy use. Kirk thinks this explains, in part, why 30 year old schools use more energy than 50 year old schools. Lights, plugs and ventilation account for 60% of school energy load in his area. Summer recharge of the ground loop (i.e., dumping heat into the ground) improves winter heat pump performance. Pump power matters and he recommends not using more than 5 HP per 100 tons, because the ground loop is pumped 24/7. He oversizes loops, with a target pressure drop of 40 feet, 50 feet head, maximum. VS pumping, motorized dampers, DDC controls with lots of points, VAV boxes with HW heat are all very complex so their use should be minimized in schools. VFD inverters have very poor efficiency as load falls. Ventilation control is crucial to energy efficiency. When designing for EE, it is important to look at the whole system, not just the components in the system. Steve Kavenaugh has some preliminary evaluation software that Kirk likes to use. It is free at Kavenaugh’s website at U Alabama. Kirk designs single pipe heat pumps system loops. Local/zone heat pumps have their own circulation pumps which draw off and pump back into the loop. A typical loop is four inch pipe with two single speed pumps. One pump runs full time, the other runs on a thermostat…. when the loop return temperature goes out of range, the second pump is activated. This configuration allows local diversification, does not require balancing or valves, no heat pump will ever have a water shortage (unless its own circ pump fails). Low head loops are simple to design.
Carey Smith said “You can’t manage what you can’t track.” The school in his study had a heat pump in the ceiling of each classroom. The mechanical rooms were small and uncrowded. After the school division began monitoring energy use they could follow up and correct anomalies. Failures picked up through monitoring included failure of 3 way valves, CO2 sensors with the wrong millivolt ranges, unshielded controls wiring gave erratic control, circ pumps not staged as designed, daylighting controls not properly coordinated/staged, HVAC systems operating during unoccupied hours.
ASHRAE Manitoba Research Report – David Stones, Chapter RP Chair
Individuals and organizations that have made contributions to ASHRAE Research over the past year were recognized at the November 13 dinner meeting. Our Regional Vice-Chair for Resource Promotion, Norm Grusnick presented coins or certificates to those contributors that were present or to their representatives. Norm also spoke about the importance of this work. In coming meetings we will recognize the contributors in the current year.
Contributions submitted for ASHRAE Research Canada will be used for research in Canada. This work is ongoing and we will be approaching Chapter members and organizations to continue supporting this work. A complete report on ASHRAE Research can be seen in the on-line and printed versions of the ASHRAE Journal, starting on page 69.
Each year Society awards Presidential Award of Excellence (PAOE) points to chapters that have full (Full-Circle) participation in contributions by the Board of Governors. Once again we have achieved this.
Please contact me at [email protected] or [email protected] to find out how you can contribute. ASHRAE Manitoba Chapter Officers President Sergio Almeida The Trane Company 632-1543 [email protected] President-Elect Daryl Friesen Midwest Engineering 989-3636 [email protected] Vice-President Jesse Sandhu SMS Engineering 775-0291 [email protected] Secretary Stirling Walkes SMS Engineering 775-0291 [email protected] Treasurer Corey Nation E.H. Price Ltd. 982-2222 [email protected] Governor Dieter Bartel Manitoba Hydro 477-7717 [email protected] Governor Robert Bisson Public School Finance Board 945-8452 [email protected] Governor George Marchildon PSFB 945-0207 [email protected] Committee Chairs Chapter History Robert McDowall 284-6678 [email protected] CTT Russell Lavitt SMS Engineering 775-0291 [email protected] Honours & Awards Dieter Bartel Manitoba Hydro 477-7717 [email protected] Membership Jesse Sandhu SMS Engineering 775-0291 [email protected] Programs Johann Baetsen E.H. Price Ltd. 661-7829 [email protected] Refrigeration Research & Promo David Stones Wardrop Engineering 272-1331 [email protected] Student Activities Peter Gryc SMS Engineering 775-0291 [email protected] Other Accommodations Jesse Sandhu SMS Engineering 775-0291 [email protected] Homepage Editor Devin Evenson Manitoba Hydro 474-3971 [email protected] Newsletter Editor Bert Phillips UNIES Ltd. 633-6363 [email protected] Roster David Stones Wardrop Engineering 272-1331 [email protected] Special Events Tom Beggs Tom Beggs Agencies 953-1900 [email protected]
ASHRAE Region XI Officers Director & Regional Chair Traci Hanegan Coffman Engineers, Spokane [email protected] Assistant Regional Chair Erich Binder Colt Engineering, Calgary [email protected] Technology Transfer Bert Phillips UNIES Ltd. [email protected] Membership Promotion Russell Lavitt SMS Engineering [email protected] Student Activities Doug LeCren Colt Engineering, Anchorage [email protected] Resource Promotion Norm Grusnick ECCO, Vancouver [email protected] Nominating Committee Dale Carter Dec Design, New Westminster [email protected] Nominating Committee Doug Dunford Portland [email protected] Regional Historian Ivan Hall ESC Automation, Edmonton [email protected] Treasurer Rob Craddock Inland Metal Manufacturing, Regina [email protected] Web Page Editor Joseph Korus Coffman Engineers [email protected] CRC Chair, 2009 David Reames [email protected]
ASHRAE, founded in 1894, is an international organization of 55,000 persons. Its sole objective is to advance through research, standards writing, publishing and continuing education the arts and sciences of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration to serve the evolving needs of the public.
Statements in this publication are not expressions of the Society or of the Chapter. Articles may be reproduced without permission. Please credit the source.
Visit ASHRAE Manitoba at www.ashraemanitoba.ca . Visit ASHRAE at www.ashrae.org .
Advancing HVAC&R to serve humanity and promote a sustainable world 1791 Tullie Circle, NE • Atlanta, Georgia • 30329 • www.ashrae.org
• Heat transfer • Thermodynamic states • Psychrometrics • Multi-stage and cascade refrigeration cycles • Refrigeration systems • Refrigerants
The SI (metric) version of the course will be available soon.
• 6 short courses • Online course reader • Online assessment • Completion certificate for 9 PDHs or 0.9 CEUs
• Heat transfer • Thermodynamic states • Psychrometrics • Multi-stage and cascade refrigeration cycles • Refrigeration systems • Refrigerants
• Recent engineering graduates working in the HVAC&R industry • Experienced engineers who need an introduction to refrigeration • Architects, technicians, construction, or building management professionals who need to improve their knowledge of refrigeration systems
• Full course (9.0 PDH): $250, discounted to $195 for ASHRAE members • Short course (0.5-2 PDH): $90, discounted to $75 for ASHRAE members
ASHRAE eLearning courses allow you to earn PDH and CEU credits to help you maintain your engineering license. But ASHRAE eLearning does not just offer quick credits; ASHRAE eLearning offers quality training that truly develops your skills – or of your employees or clients. Start building your success today with ASHRAE eLearning.