Tag: Cooling

LEED Building Green Roof

HoustonUnited States

The Houston Permitting and Green Building Resource Centers are housed within a certified LEED Gold building, which incorporates a large variety of sustainable and low-impact features.

This is a vegetated green roof that spans an area of around 1,720 square feet, and can be enjoyed through the windows of a large meeting room and other spaces. The roof system also serves to collect condensate in its troughs, which is practical in a location such as Houston, where a typically hot and humid climate can produce a great deal of moisture.

Overall, green roofs such as this are considered in credits toward LEED certification, due to their added benefit of minimizing possible building contribution to the heat island effect in urban areas. This involves the concept that dense cities tend to show a localized temperature increase, due to the heavy amount of human and industry activity over a small area.

While rooftop cooling efforts such as this are helping to decrease this effect, they may also serve to better insulate buildings, aid with stormwater runoff, and provide help in other aspects that make them a beneficial addition to many buildings.

Hotel Smart Blinds for...

PragueCzech Republic

The blinds in our rooms at Mosaic House have sensors and settings that allow them to automatically adjust themselves in response to changing parameters. There are four primary settings which help us to save energy:

1. Active – Occupied (guest is in the room)

   Electricity: ON

   Temperature of Heating : 21 °C

   Temperature of Cooling: 6 °C higher than outside temperature (default)

– The blinds are in down position and shut. If the guest comes in the room, the blinds open and stay in  the down position

– In case of strong winds, the blinds adjust to the up position

– In the winter season, the blinds also adjust to the up position on sunny days in order to heat up the room

2. Active – Empty (when guest is leaving the room, from 5 min – 4 hrs)

   Electricity: OFF

   Temperature of Heating : 19 °C

   Temperature of Cooling: 2 °C higher than default setting

– The blinds are shut in the down position. If the guest comes in the room, the blinds are opened and stay in the down position.

3. Low Energy (when guest is not in the room, from 4 – 15 hrs)

   Electricity: OFF

   Temperature of Heating : 17 °C

   Temperature of Cooling: 2 °C higher than default setting

– The blinds are in the Active – Empty setting

4. Checked Out / Hibernation (the guest will not be in the room for longer than 15 hrs, or is checked out)

   Electricity: OFF

   Temperature of Heating : 16 °C

   Temperature of Cooling: OFF

– The blinds are in the Active – Empty setting

Restaurant Heating/Cooling and Grease...

Ville de QuebecCanada

Here, several of our 14 heat pumps (one per heating / cooling zone) are housed. Connected in a loop by a circuit with water and glycol, each heat pump takes or adds heat according to its needs. Several rooms are air-conditioned throughout the year, while others are according to the season or need. The system uses heat or cold where it is surplus to send it where it is needed. “Moving” the heat is 3.5 times more economical than producing it.

As well, the access door in the floor overlooks the grease trap of the restaurant, which prevents grease from going into municipal sewers. A system checks the level of grease and then, when filled, it is pumped by a truck via a connection outside the building. In 6 years of operation, it is not even one-tenth full.

Geothermal System Piping Design

MeridenUSA

Earth Energy USA has a patented pipe that makes geothermal heating, cooling, and hot water affordable. Our pipe is a flexible 4.5″-wide round bundle, utilizing a 2″-wide round plastic HDPE center pipe as the core pipe of the system. This pipe has small 1/2″ holes evenly drilled throughout its length, which allow for a cement grout to seep through and fill any voids in a system borehole wall. This creates a solid, filled borehole. Around the center pipe are eight smaller plastic pipes wrapped in a spiral fashion to allow for maximum surface heat transfer to your water. Four of the pipes carry the closed water loop down the borehole to a U-turn fitting at the bottom, while the remaining four pipes bring the water loop back up, completing the system.
With this design, whereas other geothermal companies use three to four boreholes, Earth Energy USA only requires two. This makes for significant savings and also allows us to install geothermal systems in more urban areas. The boreholes we drill bring up the natural temperature of the earth, which is a constant 55 degrees Fahrenheit regardless of the season, to heat and cool your home or facility.
This type of system can be utilized in new and existing construction, toward both residential and commercial building applications. As described above, the piping provides for a closed-loop system that is leak-free and non-polluting, while additionally allowing the cost of clean geothermal energy to become more comparable to that of gas or oil.

Earthship Highly Sustainable Housing

New MexicoUnited States

We noticed these earthships while driving through the state of New Mexico. Earthships are incredibly well designed, innovative, low-impact homes. They generally offer a multitude of sustainable features, are built with sustainable materials, designed for efficient heating and cooling, harvest both energy and water, and utilize a great variety of other friendly practices.

Energy Intelligent Building Controls

Ville de QuebecCanada

Our restaurant has an extremely well integrated and efficient mechanical and electrical system design, allowing us to better control and minimize high peaks of electricity consumption. These are the control panels of different pumps, circuits, and hoods. In the foreground, the variable-frequency controllers and drivers of the restaurant’s air supply unit are used to modulate the fans for supplying fresh air, and the air for exhaust. This also maintains a comfortable ambient pressure, even if the door opens quickly or a kitchen hood starts.

 

Unique in Quebec’s catering industry, the air extracted from the building passes through a heat exchanger in order to preheat the fresh air, greatly reducing the heating requirements of the building. Each of the four hoods in our facility easily draws more than 1,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM) outside the building.

 

Since all of this air must be replaced by fresh air from the outside, a lot of heat is created, especially when the weather brings extremely low temperatures. Our heat recuperator therefore avoids one of the main energy expenditures of restaurants.