Nov

14

Energy Efficient Buildings

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Passive Solar HouseI was really inspired by these two lectures given by Amory Lovins at Stanford this past March. Amroy talks about how we can build and renovate buildings to be more energy efficient, and environmentally friendly buy looking beyond a simple cost benefit analysis on a single part of a renovation. For example you might spend more on insulation and energy saving windows and in a building, but be able to more than offset the cost of the insulation and more expensive windows by needing a smaller furnace because the building looses less heat now. That is just one small example of many from the podcasts.

Rather than entailing higher construction costs, smartly designed and renovated buildings can often actually cost less, a phenomenon Lovins refers to as “tunneling through the cost barrier”. Amory talks about potential gains through air conditioning, lighting and heating, and through innovative design of lamps, windows, and ducts. “Imaginative design is not rocket science, and requires most of all that we decide to do things in ways that we are not used to.”

http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/siconversations-3265.mp3

http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/siconversations-3266.mp3

May

30

Bike To Work Week - Down the Loading Dock…

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In Honor of Bike To Work Week at the University of Victoria, I created this little video with the help of Elizabeth (thanks for your wonderful video work Elizabeth!).

It has been a running joke here at the Law Library that I’m so anxious to go home after work I just ride down the loading dock stairs so I can make a faster get-a-way. Have a great Bike To Work Week Everyone! Enjoy!

May

17

Home much is your PC costing you?

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Ever wondered how much it costs to run your computer? That depends on how energy efficient your computer is, and how much electricity costs in your city. I can at least tell you how much it cost me to run my Dell Dimension 4600 in Victoria, BC, Canada.

To start with, I had to get something that would allow me to measure the amount of electricity that my PC was using. The best gadget I found for the job (maybe I should say the least expensive gadget I found) was the kill-a-watt. It is a great little tool that you plug into an electrical outlet, then plug in the appliance that you want to measure, and within a couple of minutes, you’re done… you know how much electricity the appliance, or in our case computer, uses.

So how much does it cost to run our home computer all day and all night? The total cost is $60 per year. Electricity in Victoria, BC costs $0.0633 Canadian per Kilowatt Hour (kWh). In California the average cost is about $0.12 US per kWh. So to run my computer in California would cost $114 per year, or $9.50 per month. If we only ran the computer during the day for 12 hours a day, we could cut the cost of running it in half to $57 per year (in California).

This made me think about where I work, and how much we could save if we turned off our computers at night. In my building at the University of Victoria, Faculty of Law, we have about 120 computers in the building. Most run 24×7 so that they can get windows updates at night. The total cost of running those computers per year is about $7,200. That’s a lot of money!

If we were able to only run the computers during business hours (say 10 hours a day) we save $4,200 per year! Something I’ll look into. I just need to get the computer updates happening during the day… I wonder if my boss will split the savings with me?

Nov

1

Disaster Seminar Videos

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The disaster seminar was a great success with about 350 people attending from Victoria, BC and surrounding area. We were fortunate enough to video tape all the sessions, and have posted those videos on Google Video. Handouts from the sessions are also posted on the same page.

May

11

Designing the Future

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Newsweek May 16 issue - Imagine buildings that generate more energy than they consume and factories whose waste water is clean enough to drink. William McDonough has accomplished these tasks and more. Architect, industrial designer and founder of McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in Charlottesville, Va., he’s not your traditional environmentalist. Others may expend their energy fighting for stricter environmental regulations and repeating the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle.” McDonough’s vision for the future includes factories so safe they need no regulation, and novel, safe materials that can be totally reprocessed into new goods, so there’s no reason to scale back consumption (or lose jobs). In short, he wants to overhaul the Industrial Revolution—which would sound crazy if he weren’t working with Fortune 500 companies and the government of China to make it happen. The recipient of two U.S. presidential honors and the National Design Award, McDonough is the former dean of architecture at the University of Virginia and co-chair of the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development. He spoke in New York recently with NEWSWEEK’s Anne Underwood.
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Sep

7

The Dilbert House….

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Here are some things that Scott Adams is considering including in his “Dilbert House”, I’m editing and adding things that I would like to see in our renovated dream house…
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