(Joel Todd Speaks)
Happy to comply with the ADA accessibility guideline. Our guest speaker today is Garrett Rosser.
Garrett is a certify energy manager and former energy management consultant. In areas of expertise
include programming and reprogramming, building automation and energy management system to
increase energy efficiency. Commissioning, retro commissioning of HVAC hardware and software.
analysis of interval data and energy provider billing, trend analysis and utilizing knowledge of
mechanical systems to achieve energy saving and improving occupant comfort. Our co-presenter is
Gary Olp. and I'm going to transition the mike over to Gary to do an introduction.
(Gary Rosser Speaks)
Great. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for joining us. Dallas Collins has been very pleased to
collaborate with Gary Olp of GPIO architects, joining us today to discuss a topic that's moved from the
realm of more possibility to that of very real and tangible goal. And that is the goal of reaching that Zero
operations for our buildings. And like many of you all we have seen examples of Net Zero projects from
across the nation. And we'd begun to ask ourselves very serious questions on what it would take to move
our existing building stock to net Zero, as well as work to incorporate net Zero operations as a goal for
new construction projects. Discussions we've been having with Gary have led to the identification of
some very high-yield strategies that he is employed at projects across the nation and, and things, items
that Dallas Colleges is going to work toward in the coming years. We understand it's a process and
there's a lot of these things are, and we believe we can find a responsible and effective way to work
toward the goal of net Zero. So with that, I just want to introduce formally again Gary Olp of GGO
architects. Gary, we appreciate you being here and the time that you've spent with us so far, and the time
in this session, I'll go ahead and turn it over to you to get into the meat of the material here.
(Gary Olp Speaks)
Alright Garrett, can you see the screen? The slideshow?
(Garrett Speaks)
I can see you.
(Gary Speaks)
Okay. Can you see the presentation?
(Garrett Speaks)
I cannot.
(Gary Speaks)
Why can't we not see the presentation? So what do we need to do to do that? Last, last time we just
opened a presentation.
(Georgeann Speaks)
Yeah, go, go ahead and close the share content button and then open it again and try. When you hit
share, it should come up. And as long as you already have your, your presentation up on, there goes here
it comes outcomes.
We can still your screen.
(Gary Speaks)
Okay. There. Yeah. Okay. We there are we can see when it opened up, apparently it had a lot of a lot of
other things. So I'd like to thank the sponsors that are not only sponsoring the summit, but also to thank
them for sponsoring this presentation. Without these sponsors who are also committed to energy
efficiency and environmental responsibility, we can to make this happen. So thanks to all of them. So
this is, this is our firm with GGO Architects. And we are here today to talk about the 10 steps to net Zero
energy. Let me move something out of the way. For new and existing buildings. My information is there
as well as Garretts. You can start to look at that and follow up with us after the presentation. But I think
you also heard the moderator share with everyone that it will be available online. And I think that
information will be provided by the university. Okay. So let's, let's get the show rolling. So I want to
start with just a couple of things. Where why slide go? Tell my why slide's gone. There it is.
So the reason this is important, this is an older chart. This chart was this from 2009, carries out 2035. On
the chart. You can see graphically sort of what it gives you a good sense of what the proportional
representation is of each of these fuel sources. Now, this was done in 2009. You could look up objection
20-30 and they were really only saying that that renewables would account for about 10% coal, 21,
natural gas. And you can go right on down the list. Well, what's really true with a new snapshot? This is
snapshot and 2019 renewables have actually outperform that. We're now at 17%. New killers. 20 coal
has dropped substantially. Natural gas has actually climbed of it. So this is another chart that also takes
you. This is 2019 right here. And again, it still shows you that the, the contribution from fossil fuels is
still very substantial. And this isn't something, although we're seeing, we're seeing some pretty
incredible movement with the renewables and an increased dependency on nuclear. You can still see that
it's a small sliver, 17%, and we've got a long way to go. So what that says is least at least for the
foreseeable future, probably the rest of my lifetime. We're going to be dependent on fossil fuels. Unless
we have some real breakthroughs with a lot of things. And wind is wonderful. But were you generate the
wind, you can't get it to where you need it because it's just physics. You lose it through entropy. Batteries
that, or change that solar power, same thing, generate power during the day. Battery technology is pretty
expensive. There's just not a path currently without some real innovation and transformation and
batteries before renewables can play a larger and larger role. So the reason that we're talking about the
step ten steps and that 0 is, we have to really acknowledge the fact that fossil fuels are gonna play a
significant role in generating electricity well into the future. This is another interesting chart that's just
graphic, gives you a graphic representation of CO2 being generated by the industrializations. And you
can certainly see how large the United States contribution is. You can see China. Indian is growing at a
pretty rapid rate. But it just shows you that the, the most, the most industrialized nations are generating
tremendous amount of CO2. So to that end, the purpose of our Net Zero meets your game is to reduce
the amount of energy of building needs to consume on a baseline basis. We call it passive survivability.
Drive down that load that load that you need to heat and cool a building, light it provide for plug loads
to the lowest level possible. Where you begin is, as I said, passive sustainability. And it really starts with
orientation. Most designers, most architects, the vast majority of architects, pay no attention to this. And
if you really begin to understand how you can use the path of the sun, summer and winter. Natural
ventilation. Where does the wind come from? Landscapes and so on. You can dramatically reduce the
amount of energy required to heat and cool a building, light it, and plug loads to the tune of almost 95%.
Typically commercially, we haven't been able to budget much past forty-seven percent, but that's a big
start. So in other words,, say roughly, we've been able to cut the energy demand of the buildings that we
designed by almost half. And I think we can, we can continue to improve that with a number of things
that you'll see as we go through the presentation. So passive solar design really addresses what direction
is the building face. Talks about shading, natural ventilation, daylighting. We can implement good day
lighting into our building. So the artificial lighting doesn't have to come on as much. That's tremendous
savings, and I'll say it here, but you'll see further numbers. Artificial lighting can consume somewhere
around 15% of your total energy demand at a building. So if you can shave a good deal of that off the
load, you're making good inroads. When I talk about shading and day lighting. That has to do with
understanding how to design proper fix shading devices, green screens, living walls, trees, trees are
wonderful to cool, cool exposures of the facade that are, that are exposed to a tremendous amount of of
heat gain. Landscapes to shade spaces and films as another option, and then motor operated control
cheating devices on the windows. So that but what I'm saying there is you can put, you can put a sensor
control shading device on a window. And as the sun hits at that shading device can actually move with
the introduction of direct sunlight.
So passive solar really revolves around this. We all know what, we all know what the greenhouse effect
and this is enhanced to all of us in our cars and buildings are not much different than an automobile.
Automobiles aren't that much different than building. This gives you a representation of how the Sun
really affects us here on the planet. What's direct, what's absorbed, what's to defused and what's
reflected. This, this show something that most people really don't understand. We have an axis, the
planet has an access, we spin on that axis, and then we move around the sun. So that what we get here as
we get, we get. Longer day lighting, we get a different Sun angle in the summer than we do in the
winter. And here you can see in summer sun and winter sun. And that simple little formula is how we
control heat gain in buildings. Again, very simple chart. But what it does show you is that this is a south.
You can see that the perimeter introduction direct sunlight is from the south. And the north is typically
shaded. In the east and west also have an influence here in the southern part of the United States that
western sun as a real killer. It's just an energy killer and interesting, intense heat, a late afternoon. This is
really rough. Excuse me, just 1 second. Okay. So this, again, this is very simple. It's surprisingly
rudimentary, but it's, it is the most profound chart or graph or, or approach that you can use to design a
building. Small glass area in the north, moderate glass area and on the east, major glass area in the west.
And this, this indicates moderate glass area. My design philosophies, I tried to eliminate glass on the
west to the greatest extent possible. And again, paying attention to the influences that affect your
building. Heat gain, wind load, summer breeze, winter brings all those things can affect how you design
a building. These are building envelope considerations that many designers don't consider. And you can
see that there are these mean heat load and it's it's different indications for different things through the
foundation, through a window, a low window through upper windows, clear stories through the roof and
through the walls. Proper modelling and we'll talk more about that, but that's really what factors into
building envelope considerations. We need to think about designing buildings and the envelope, almost
scientifically. We can't just throw walls up in windows up and then just try it. Pump a lot of air
conditioning in there and muscle through it. That there was an NFL announcer Summerall. Pat
Summerall and it used to drive me crazy, exceeded say. And it was Trane but I support Trane, of course.
But I was a Trane commercial and they used to say if 72 degrees all across America. And because of
Trane, well that's true. And you can do that. You can muscle through it with a great deal of air
conditioning or heating. But if you can reduce those loads with your just fundamental building design,
you can then begin to reduce size that mechanical equipment. Again, here's a solar fundamental. So I
showed you the charter of the sun when it's high in the sky and the summer low in the sky in the winter.
And you can take advantage of that. So here's her summer. You shade that window, wintertime, you let
that sun in. And this works in all latitudes across the United States. Here in Texas. What doesn't work
very well for us is or across the Sunbelt really are clear or skylights because the sun isn't controlled. It's
just driving itself in all the time. You would move up north Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana,
those states across the north or the part of our country. Pretty much north of the Mason-Dixon line. And
skylights can be very beneficial. But this is the graph that we really need to use for primarily designing
buildings here in the southwest. And that's shading out summer sun, allowing the winter sun to enter the
building. So I put this up and I'm not going to touch on this much. However, this is a great example of
passive sustainability. This is Mesa Verde. The native peoples that built this used all natural materials.
The facade that you see faced due south, the overhang above shaded those, shaded all those facades in
the summertime. So that all of that masonry would cool off, say cool during the day and then cooler at
night, kept the inhabitants very, very comfortable. In the wintertime. The sun angle is such that it would,
it would provide direct sunlight to all of these facades. And then you get that intense sun energy that
would warm all that, all those masonry facades and keep the residents cool at light, at night when the
temperature in the desert dropped. So without mechanical systems, Native peoples understood very
intimately the path of the sun. That difference, the difference in the seasons, the sun angle capture heat,
how to, how to defuse heat or eliminate heat and create very comfortable environment without air
conditioning systems. So to pull this off, we really need to start with baseline modelling.
And I'm going to ask Garrett, jumping with me here and talk about this a bit. But what this is about is,
up until recently, we've never looked at, as I served those opening slides, we've never looked at a
building as a holistic, functional ecosystem. We've never really evaluated the impact of direct, direct
heat gain on the south or the shading. The shading that happens on the north, what happens on the east?
What happens on the west? We'd never look at that. We've never looked at insulation. We never looked
at the energy performance of windows or insulation or vented roofs or those kind of things. So to get a
handle on this, we have to start doing baseline modeling and all new buildings. And it applies to old
building too. You can look at buildings and and see what the difference is. I was talking with a client
yesterday. They they they bought an old building and Texarkana, the building at eight thousand eight
thousand dollars of energy bills on a monthly basis. They, they started to look at everything and they
found out that the elevators were ancient. The light fixtures were ancient. The building was an insulated
the windows were simple, pain unshaded, awful. They made some simple improvements on that building
and they've caught the energy use of that building down to $600 a month. So think about that. So for $8
thousand versus $600, that's a monetary description. However, the real issue here is, where does that
electricity come from? You go back to that first slide, I showed you that primarily our energy is being
derived from burning fossil fuels. If we could take a building and reduce it from $8 thousand and
utilities to $6 thousand and utilities. And I won't get admitting engineering of BTUs and all that. But
what that says is that's a significant amount of fossil fuel that has to be burned to heat and cool a
building. And that's the way we need to look at it. Garrett, you want to come in and talk a little bit about
the kind of things that you're looking at there on campus, on the campus?
(Garrett Speaks)
For sure. I think baseline modelling for existing buildings and and for future construction. I think it
helps to prevent the tendency or the potential for random acts of efficiency where people are, you know,
get hot and a certain idea and say, Okay, yeah, we need that. Well, it ends up individual strategies don't
end up being evaluated. Gary, as you mentioned, as part of a system, they tend to be more and just
looked at slated fashion. So yeah, so I think for us, Dallas College, we started with some more
comprehensive benchmarking. Both lists, some internal portfolio with time management in terms of
looking at our buildings on how they perform one versus the other and on a meter by meter and building
by building basis. And then we're looking at that in the past and then trying to use that for projections
into the future for budget purposes. But certainly just from an energy use standpoint, you have to have a
great understanding of what your existing buildings are doing and start to dig into the why are they
doing those things and where do you identify discrepancies? And then we have analyzed and cost
effectiveness of different measures. We're looking initially to try and implement strategies that maybe
have a single-digit ROI. These very high yield projects. We're going to see that on the metres pretty
directly. We're going to see that in the billing and we need to be able to monitor and track that. And then
as we start looking at some more sophisticated projects or, you know, trying to identify a strategy that
we might want to start on a small scale, but then evaluate to roll out on a larger scale. I think you've got
the tools like dough to train trace, some more sophisticated modelling. You know, we're, we're entering
some baseline data on the building construction and energy usage. And using that to really say, OK,
what is going to be the costing impact of the entire lifecycle of a change to a building. And use that to
make some really well informed decisions. And down below here we've got some kinda some goals
here. This was based on 25 thousand BTU per square foot goal on an all electric car building where
things might come out, you know, in your buildings will be different. But for Dallas College, we're
looking in the 1.6 to 1.9 watts per square foot and as an average monthly demand. And so your
distribution of h back lighting and plug load will be different on different buildings, but that's some kind
of generic guidelines that would be, you know, aggressive to try and shoot for to set up a building for
on-site renewables.
(Gary Speaks)
And Garrett it wasn't that long ago that we were looking at building consuming 8/10 watts per square
foot. Oh, come it come some way. So let's talk about individual building components and aspects of, of a
net Zero building. As you saw on one of those slides I showed you at the very beginning. The direct
impact of heat gain from the sun. The largest surface, this is in the southwest. It's also true of the north is
from direct solar gain from the sun on a roof. And what's really been proven out is that 75% of the direct
heat gain can be rewrite radiated through proper group design. So if you start out by getting rid of 75%
of that heat gain, then you only have to deal with the last 25% to cool the building. You can get up to as
high as 95% if you go beyond installation where it talks about increased insulation here, minimum R42.
Code is not quite at our 42 yet. But there's also the thing about insulation. There's a sweet spot. You can
over insualte and it isn't gonna do anymore for you. You can overinflate walls. And it really is gonna do
much for you. We've sort of found that looking at it today, the way we're working, R42 is about the
sweet spot in terms of affordability and offsetting direct heat gain for the roof. And you don't need much
more than an R 13 wall. You can go up to R30 R 26. And that with some of the open cell spray foam and
closed cell foams. And that's really all that you need to do. The other thing that we've been doing that
now has been adopted by code is for 30 years we've been wrapping our envelopes with one inch for
incident engine installation outside of the cheating because you still get thermal conductivity where all
the framing is. And by adding that extra one inch outboard, wrapping the envelope in that, that also
seems to make a tremendous difference in terms of having a high performance envelope. The installation
can be under the roof deck or above the roof deck. They're different strategies there and I won't get into
the specifics of how you do that. That's more of a design, a design situation. Then, then under
reflectivity, you're gonna talk about the solar reflectivity index of the roof itself, which means they
ability of the roof through emissivity to reradiate or reflect that heat gain. And when you start to move to
a 0.95. solar reflectivity index. And it's telling you that generally the vast majority of that solar, that
solar heat gain is being re-radiated. Cool roof design where you ventilate the roof, imagine them an
umbrella, if you can put an umbrella over your building. Or as you see a lot of folks do, and in the South
carried a barrel out and sun that umbrella, if you will, really cool, can cool down your roof. Trees are a
good source of that. But the problem with trees when you get them too close to the building, you can
have issues was roofs, the other problem is trees dropped their leaves. And unless you have regular
maintenance, it can be problematic. So there's trade-offs to all of this, but a simple thing to do is you
raise the roof membrane, the roof, roof itself about an inch off the deck, and then you ventilate that so
that air can move under that. You create a thermal siphon. And air moves, lives under that roof and it's
pulling it's pulling that heat out and away from the interior, and that's how you can get to 95%. Another
strategy, we've used our living roofs and we use living roofs to, to good effect if they're designed well
and installed properly, it can virtually eliminate all of that, that heat gain from the sun. Here's an
example of a, of a fully integrated roof that it's designed with. Optimized roof insulation. This has our 42
roof. It was a lightweight concrete insulated system and this is an old building, heavy masonry building.
We were able to do that. You can see we've introduced day-lighting through skylights and we've
integrated solar panels on this route for renewables. And I can talk more about this building later. And in
the distance you see the mechanical systems that were also integrated into this building. And this is very
high-performance equipment. Garrett will talk about this a little later.
So what's fun about living roofs is a friend of mine. There's still the distinctly and said, you know, birds
don't like to land on hot shingles are hot roofs or even, even the roof I just showed you. Because they
like to, they like to land and insects like the Hangout On a living mammal, the earth. So imagine what a
living roof does is you're building a building, so you're cutting out the living mammals. Are you putting
a building there? That's a heat sake that has heat gain and it just warms up and heats up. If you consider
the possibility of just cutting out that mantle and lifting it to the roof. Well now what you've done is
you've replicated the living mantle of the planet and you put it on top of your building. And it works to
mitigate heat gain incredibly. These are bus stops that had been done and so they create a very cool
environment below the below the roof. And they have it as a living room. They did that utilizing a living
roof. And so it has multiple benefits. This isn't San Francisco beautiful building. And again, it's building
is roofed entirely with living roof. Here. I just wanted to hop in and add some Dallas College
perspective. During last fiscal year and through the end of this fiscal year, Dallas College will have
added 615 thousand square feet, high reflectivity, high emissivity roofs. And bringing all the installation
up to code, which currently is R 25. But some of our original roofs and across some of our campuses
were just OSB with, with copper on top. And so that probably had an r value of about two or four. So
there's some significant opportunities there. And again, we had made a commitment to replacing those
roofs with which just really high-performing materials and Garrett that's a good point because that's a
significant investment and it's also a significant response. You have a rule of thumb that you can share
terms. You've replaced those roofs, what have you seen? And just just energy consumption. As as as as
as a product or I guess a portion of the total. Yeah, we don't have good data yet. A lot of those roots,
again, our plan, some of them are, are just a few months old. So we don't have great data on what the
effect is, but we're very optimistic about the work that's been done. And again, we talked about
modelling baseline, baseline and benching, benchmarking. Once we're able, once you're able to
benchmark what those improvements have yielded in terms of energy savings. It, it helps to cost justify
future and more aggressive projects. Minimum specification, this is window and glazing system. The
biggest problem we have is an older buildings, 20 30 40 50 years old. The windows systems are
shocked, generally single glazed, the frames are gone. You're getting a lot infiltration, exfiltration, and
you're losing a tremendous amount of energy through the windows. So with a new building, you've got
the opportunity to do, to do new windows. And the minimum specifications would be, as you see here,
in terms of the u value, which is the insulating value, the shading coefficient, high performance, high
performance glazing, and then of course, thermally broken frames with an existing building. There are
things that when they are scheduled for replacement or failure, you would meet the specification. But
let's say you've got a system that's not, they're not totally shot, but they're, they're on their way out. You
know, they're kinda like late middle age and and but they're leaking. Well, there are things you can do.
You can go and replace the seals on store front windows. You can make sure that that caulking is
installed properly with older buildings. And now we do we do a lot more with the sealing of building up,
making sure the envelope is is wrapped and sealed so that air can't get in older buildings, not so much.
And so when you've got a sealant joined around a window and that sealant joint fails. That's a direct path
for hot humid air to find its way into building buildings operate generally. Older buildings than negative
pressure. You, you certainly want billing, stop writing positive pressure. But a lot of the older buildings
operate negative pressure. So you're drawing in all that hot, humid air and cold air, cold, drier winter
season. And that can really mess up your energy performance in the optimization mechanical systems.
So a window system that's not quite due to be upgraded or replaced, at least make sure the seals are
good. And that's an easy thing to redo and or seal any open, broken down sealant joints. This is a very
Talking about shading and I talk about a previously think about shading with windows. There was a
study done in the city of Austin by A&M, I think was in the seventies. And they might have been the
eighties, but they looked at if they replaced every window in the city of Austin with the most expensive
you could window, you could buy triple glazed, gas-filled Louis coated windows. How did it compare to
just adding shading on the south and west sides? Strikingly, what they found was that a single plane,
single pane window with the proper shading outperformed the best window on the market that you could
buy by a factor of four. So the simple thing is start with shading, then put in a window that's cost
effective in terms of it's usually just an insulated windows. I said with the specification we had on the
previous slide, that's thermally broken. You're going to have the most, probably the most optimized
window and glazing system you can provide.
This is a simple chart that we've developed over the years, is tweak a little to get the ideal winter and
summer sun angles and how to protect those glazing systems. To, again take advantage of the low winter
sun for heating and shield the interior from. The direct solar heat gain in the summertime. So it's that
simple. Here's an example. You can see the upper, the upper shading mechanism. There's a lower
shading mechanism. This is south. This is the interior. In the middle of July when the sun is very intense
and very hot. Another, another aspect of shading is on the east to often designers don't pay attention to
the sun and coming in on the east, where the eastern sun is a problem, it isn't so much heat gain with
eastern light. It's more a problem of glare coming in and and making an office difficult or classroom
difficult to work in because the glare so intense. So this was the solution that we came up with. At that
low angle, low morning angle, the sun comes in, hits these baffles and throws at day lining up on the sky
or on the ceiling of sorry, in illuminates a ceiling with natural day lighting. So you can see that this is all
naturally day, unnaturally daylight space and the lights are not on and you can see that the foot candle
level is sufficient for close close work. So that reinforces what I'm saying about proper proper design on
the building envelope. You can virtually eliminate the cooling required offset direct solar heat gain, and
also the load from lighting that has to be on when the sun shining. Here's another example. This is on
campus.
There are two kinds of shading devices shown here. This is a direct shading device that angles about
right to shield this glass. It's solid over the door. You want to think about rain protection, that sort of
thing. These vertical blades actually do serve a purpose. And they block that low level eastern zone for
glare and they blocked that low-level western sun, which is also problematic. So there are, and I don't
have a plethora of options here just to show you, this is just to give you a general idea. But we've, we've
innovated hundreds of different ways to shade a building properly. This is another example that's on
campus and you can see where heavy thermal mass was used to block the block the sun. And again, here
are some sun shades. This was probably more decorative than it needs to be because there's really
nothing that or shade other than it will keep this wall a bit cooler. This is another shading device. We
finished recently, our firm finished it. Say this was direct south sun right here, that's a tennis center. It's
the building is just finishing up. We needed to shade that sun. We looked at a number of ways to do it.
And the one that our user decided on was this one which was very whimsical, where we took a steel
plates, folded them, we did the graphic and we've perforated, perforated the surface of it so that it
diffuses the sunlight. So all that comes through the south windows is diffuse light. And we have knocked
off again the direct solar heat gain. This is another building on campus and this is at Richalnd. And this
building I really enjoyed because the quality that day lighting is amazing. And here this is the facade
that was shaded that I showed you. Some of the, some shades on the other slide. These are skylights up
here and they're diffused and you can see how the natural light can serve. The lighting is on. And I've
been told that this would not be normal. It was done for the photograph. And and typically those are tied
to to sun sensors so that they would normally, during regular. Regular operations, these lights would not
be on them because they're just not needed. So again, it's another case its supports the fact shade out the
direct solar heat gain. If you shade properly, you can introduce that natural day light into a space so that
you've reduced your air conditioning load. And you've got wonderful day light to illuminate the space.
And I'm going to segue, this is not really a ten steps about energy efficiency, but what's really true is that
there's more and more discussion about biophilic influences on the human species. And it is true human,
humans respond to daylight so much better than they do in a space that's artificially lit. Here's another
space. It has it has windows on both sides. This is south, this is North. The North shading isn't as
important. I don't believe they're shading on the south the south facade, but if it did have it, this is
another good example.
Again, the lights are on here and I think it's just a function of the controls that were just not operating on
that day. And again, you could do things Kelvin, that's the kal wall system. Kal wall brings in natural
light and offsets all the heat gain and you get wonderful day like this is the skylight from the interior that
I showed you previously. On that roof, there was no daylight in this building. It was an old warehouse.
So we simply cut out sections of the room and introduce a daylight with these. These are triple line
skylights. But these, these work and Cal will actually works because the way the systems are designed.
So again, you can see that proper design of the glazing systems can provide wonderful natural daylight,
offset the need for artificial lighting and deal with mitigating or offsetting that direct solar heat gain.
These are some other examples I'm going to show you real quickly this this can applied a new buildings
and of course, old buildings. If you've got an old building that has a facade that isn't shaded properly.
This is all, these are simple cables that run up the building, plant it down here. And this is a green
screen. It's a living green screen that has multiple effects. It knocks down the direct sunlight from the
sun, so you get diffuse light. But what it also does is plants are amazing just like a living roof, at
absorbing that heat gain from the sun and creating a cooler cooling effect on that facade. So the point
I'm trying to make is when we design buildings, we need to think holistically as Garrett sits so well, you
can't take piecemeal examples. However, if you've got an existing building, certainly you have to, you
have to approach it one piece at a time. And these are simply some more living roofs. So I've sort of
tough touched on this already. Artificial light sources. We need to utilize LED technology. Eliminate all
hall walk, all high wattage lighting. Get rid of old lights. Old incandescent lights are virtually just, just
energy vampires to second all energy away. And then targeted prioritization. So this talks there, this
speaks to what I said earlier is that identify what the use of the space is. Determine what your foot
candle levels are, introduce natural day lighting. Augment with artificial lighting to the extent that it's
needed, but not much more. This is an integrated example. This photograph shows you that we have
natural daylight coming in. This is on the south, it's shaded. This is a light shelf to throw natural day
lighting in. I was sharing with Garrett the other day that all of these lights are photosensors. They have
photosensors to sense how much daylight is in the classroom before they come on. Each row is operated
individually. This room would have been at far better natural day lighting. Our original design had this
light shelf coming into here about right to there. So it illuminates recorders of the rule of law for budget
purposes. That was cut back because it's a difficult thing to cost justify. Well then it was. But I think
again, that goes back to the modelling. Take a look at, hey, if this eyebrow costs this much more, what
are the long-term savings of offsetting the artificial lighting using the daylighting over a 20-year period,
30-year period, 50-year period. If it's a municipal building, you've got an easier, easier road to make that
financial case. And you do with a commercial building where they're trying to amortize their costs 5-7
years. Here's another example. This is that fan of center. This is all south-facing glazing. There's no glare
and you can see the natural daylight and these lights are on because we're testing him. But this is this is
going to be a retail area. And so here again, the lighting is just a supplement when we don't have proper
day-lighting. Garrett I'm gonna hand the baton to you to talk about HVAC systems.
(Garrett Speaks)
Here, I'm gonna pause real quickly here I've put my email address in the chat, hopefully everybody can
see that if you need to step out participants and, and you go to another session or if you have other
obligations. So you can send some questions my way and we'll do our best to get those answered back
out to you. Since we did start a little bit late or would you have the go-ahead to keep going and we still
have some more content to cover. So we're going to keep all can enroll in. And so if the participants,
you've stuck with us thus far, if you wanna stay on with us, we would appreciate it and will continue
covering the content and make sure that we've got this recorded for anyone who might view it at a later
date. But we'll go ahead and work through it in its entirety, maybe a little bit quicker. But what will you
keep rocking and rolling? Alright, H back. Again. We, you know, there's a lot of discussion. This is the,
the energy hog on, on most buildings, particularly and our climate zone. And the strategy for us is to
upgrade and replace or on new construction, specify the highest efficiency equipment that we can.
Certainly there would be some, some trade off theorem. But in generally the idea is you can, you can
have a great new building envelope. We can have a great new piece of equipment and still use it poorly.
So nameplate efficiency is not the end-all be-all. But if you start with a great piece of equipment, you're
set up to be in a good position. Couple strategies here, dx equipment for all 24-seven zones. We have
extensive IT project where all IT spaces that were not did not have existing dx indirect expansion air
conditioners are receiving those. And we have other before seven Operation areas that will be moving to
dx as well. So that's good. Giving those large pieces of equipment turned off and having some very
specific HVAC for those areas, upgrade or replace existing controls. VFDs again, these are things that
are pretty standard stuff, but it takes awhile to work through. When I think about 4.9 million square feet,
that is Dallas College. There are a lot of devices to work through. High-efficiency equipment in terms of
chillers and their controls, boilers and trolls also looking at the use of VRF, kinda got a bad rap because
it was rolled out in the industry. But I think if installation is correct and we're using braised joint
connections on all refrigerant piping. And you follow the manufacturer recommendations. Some of them
require that you do not use this site gloss that you do not use filter line dryers. So that is a deviation
from kind of the norm on dx installations. And certainly all the techs out there have to be charged
positively with nitrogen and increasing fresh air from a. And being intentional about how we do that is
one thing, making sure we've got accurate CO2 readings, that sort of thing. And then something that's
really come up recently in the last six to eight months filtration. And we think that certainly for our
environment, ultraviolet treatment and bipolar ionization or options that though we need to be
evaluating and determining how they fit in our overall strategy.
We've got a couple pictures of some devices here, Gary, if you advance it forward. I'm sorry. Two files.
Okay. This is brand new cooling tower down into our Mountain View campus. Again, shiny and great,
and a definite upgrade over the existing unit. They're going to have improved heat rejection capability.
VFDs on all the large motors there in, you know, just sets up the campus to have a good serviceable
pieces of equipment that is, that is high efficiency. The next picture is a chilled water storage tank also at
Mountain View. And from an energy usage standpoint, you know, chilled water storage allows us to
display some of that load to overnight. Gary can you hit us one forward there? Yep. Okay. So chill water
storage tank. Again, when we start thinking about renewables, if we can display some of the load to
overnight. That reduces the amount of moles that you might need during the day when the building is
fully occupied. Additionally, and chilled water systems at night, the heat rejection is more efficient,
more effective overnight on water-cooled systems, in air cooled systems as well. Put water coolness as
this we have done there at Mountain View. And these are some condensing boilers. We've got a few, few
shots of condensing boilers. That's our standard now across the college that any boiler that's replaced is
going to condensing. High-efficiency, most of them I percent efficient or higher due to their condensing
ability. So really great options for a lot of folks have become the norm for us. They're, they're becoming
real workhorses for us. This next picture is a rack of VFDs. Of course we've gotten VFD is on on all
campuses, on all different types of equipment. Yeah, there we go. This is at Richland campus a whole
rack of VFD is there. Again, we've had several inserts on various campuses for 20 plus years. And that's
a real staple of energy efficiency if they're used well, we have seen inappropriate application of a VFD
where the control is not really used in any beneficial way. Then is that the motor may start up slowly but
then go to 100% capacity and stay at that level. That's not the purpose of the VFD and you're really
missing out on some opportunities there. So matching controls with the equipment is the best way to
maximize. Here's some brand new condensing boilers at Brookhaven campus. Again, gorgeous
installation. I get excited about that when I see it. But at the end of the day, this is going to be equipment
that's going to be with us for a long period of time. And it's going to, in the long run, provides some
great savings.
Gotta magnetic bearing chiller here offered by York. And very effective machines, extremely little
friction on the centrifugal compressor. And they're becoming more and more prominent. And again, this
one is at Brookhaven as well. The next picture is that the Richalnd campus. And straight ahead in the
middle of the picture is a retrofit device by Trane, it's called the Adaptive frequency drive, is a VFD for
that large centrifugal chiller that's behind it. And again, that was a retrofit coupled with some more
advanced controls provided by train to make that machine even more efficient. Alright, and the last
couple of pictures we have r of the RF system. Again, this particular unit is referred to as a cassette.
They have some wall mounted units for the interior usage. And again, we've got filtered device and a
small interior fan. And there would be multiple of these spread throughout the building. You can share
heat as it is across the system. One portion of the building may be in heating load, the other portion may
be in cooling load. And you can balance those heat flows out through these VRF systems.
(Gary Speaks)
And those are the condensing units. You see there. Weatherization. So this is again, when I was talking
about weather stripping doors and windows. This is more applicable to older buildings that have been in
service for quite some time and sealants age. So over time, regular maintenance program needs to go
through and whether strip doors, windows systems, upgrade or replace door sweeps astral storefronts,
aging sealers and cocking openings, mechanical penetration, open gaps, pathways, cracks and so on.
Because this really can, can affect the overall energy performance. Or you're building a building that's
just leaking conditioned air with no control of that. It undermines the operations of the mechanical
systems as well as, as just straight up energy loss. To the extent that once you really create these great
systems of lighting, fresh air management, lighting controls, new HVAC equipment and so on. Again,
it's all for naught if things aren't maintained. So again, I'm going to pass his back to Garrett to talk about
the kinds of things that need to be done in terms of software that controls a building systems, and then
regular maintenance to keep the system is operating at their optimum levels.
(Garrett Speaks)
For sure. As many of you know, Dallas College's gone through a reorganization from seven individual
campuses into a more cohesive college movement all in the same direction. And with that comes the
opportunity to unify our strategies on energy management and good things that had been happening
across all of our campuses. And really pull those together into a cohesive methodology for making sure
we're using resources well. There are some opportunities for sure that are out there. Lighting control
strategies and age back controls. A lot of them are software driven, some of its hardware driven on
HVAC controls. Big one is consistent set points are not mentioned again here in a moment. I'm
optimized sequences of operations. Okay, there's new guidance from ashtray on the guideline 36, which
provides some recommendations on high-performance sequence of operation. It Resource, economize or
controls. We already talked about the impact, potentially negative impact of bringing in too much
outside air. But a lot of folks miss out on the opportunity for economizing and north Texas because they
say, oh, it's Texas, it's hot or we don't need, you know, it doesn't make sense to have economizes. Well,
particularly for the institutional environment. We tend to have times even in the winter where we have
higher heat load. And whether that's equipment or a high number of bodies and an interior space. So it
economizes release. And we still take advantage of hundreds of hours a year of free cooling through
economizes in CO2 management. Again, that's just making sure that your CO2 sensors are in good
shape. And then you have great set points. The, there's some misunderstanding of attribute a guideline
and 62 or standard 62. And that is 700 parts per million above the baseline CO2 level is where you set
point ought to be. So for us here in Dallas at somewhere in the 1100 to 1200 parts per million. You
wanted to run it, it wasn't, you know, I don't think you get too much argument for me. But 1100 to 1200
parts per million on CO2 is a great starting point there. And then scheduled regularly scheduled
maintenance ok makes sure the equipment is working well. And kinda last couple items, commissioning
checklists for PM's, preventative maintenance work on equipment that's going beyond just changing
filters and increasing motors, those things have to happen. But we need to be very intentional about how
we exercise equipment. Make sure chill water vowels are functioning properly and make sure dampers
are functioning properly. We're ramping fans up and down. Not only do we want to see the equipment
and respond, we want to see the correct response from sensors. We want to see when the fan ramps
down, we want to see the pressure sensor drawn and that sort of thing. So that's just taking your
maintenance and becoming a little bit smarter about about how we do things. And then the last
implemented campus wide six core strategies. And these are ideas that have been implemented it at
various campuses, but we need to get rolling everywhere in the real quickly. In class. Equipment
scheduling, alright, turning things off when they're not needed. Matching are schedules with with the
class loads. Second one, consistent space set points. Third, equipment staggered start and that is
avoiding startup demand peaks. Equipment capacity control. If you've got two chillers for redundancy
on the building and their size such that one machine can load on the building. You don't want to ever see
both machines load up and startup together, right? This should be on that proper sequence. So making
sure that the correct equipment is selected for the correct load is a great strategy. Two more proper
equipment maintenance we just talked about, and building automation operation. And that is relying on
these intelligent controls. Too often building operators put overrides, we want to get away from that
because we're putting band-aids on the items that we're having to go back and revisit maybe seasonally.
So if we let the controls do their work, we can identify where we have breakdowns and failure's. Not
only is it going to improve energy efficiency, it's gonna improve occupant comfort. Right?
(Gary Speaks)
One thing that we move to the next slide, but that would've mentioned about CO2 management. It's
primarily to control the quality of fresh air. But when you think about it, if you've been in an auditorium
or a classroom that's designed for a 165 people. There's five people in there. Nobody's freezing. That's
because we're building so design there's a CFM fresher requirement or person that has to be provided to
that space. Most engineers will design that, build that fresh air makeup for a 165 people with no controls
to drop it down to the fresh air you need when there's only two or three or five people in that room.
That's what those CO2 monitors do. They they monitor the amount of CO2 and if fresh air is not needed,
then it's not generated. So you're not using energy to create conditioned air for a 163 people that aren't in
the room.
(Garrett Continues)
Here's a picture of a Trane centrifugal chiller, again with a factory installed adaptive frequency drive and
the controls, sophisticated controls that go along with that machine. So very high-performance, a piece
of equipment. I think we've got another shot of it from a different angle. These machines have served us
well. In the technology really has come such a long way. And it opens the door for more refined
responses in terms of central plant optimization, where we can start looking at variable flow. Certainly
on the secondary side, primary flow and even variable condenser water flow. And Trane has a great
engineering newsletter on that subject of variable plant flow. Then here's a relic of our existing systems,
which we still find in many buildings here across the nation that is pneumatic control. And at the time,
you know, state of the art. And these have had a great service life. But they need to go away. There's
great opportunity and making sure everything on direct digital control. And being able to really refine
control between systems again and goes back to having a more holistic approach on controls rather than
each component doing its own thing. DDC direct digital controls facilitates that device level and then
the system level, and then even building to building level communications. And just more controls. You
gotta live our VSDs.
(Gary Speaks)
Lighting controls, I think Garrtt pretty much covered that already. But what's important or or additional
things like occupancy sensors, light harvesting sensors that we spoke about, sun control shading devices,
occupancy schedules that match the calendar program use. And then I did touch on the impact of
biophilic design and what's becoming, becoming an even greater influence now is diurnal lighting
patterns. We're not there yet, but at some point like finishers will mimic the, the colorization or the effect
of sunlight at Sunlight moves through the course of the day. It changes as a species we've evolved,
waking up in the morning, go and sleep at night. And the quality of that light has really affected how we
are mental acuity and so on. Occupant behavior. This is the other thing that, that really can, can make a
huge difference in how a building consumes energy. And we want to begin to talk about what is that
occupant behavior. And we need to talk about implementation plans between occupants, users, facility
managers. Typical example is, is perhaps an office space or, or a dorm room or something where
someone's got someone has a space heater under the desk. And they have toasters in the room. They
have a whole bunch of other task lighting, just a lot of initial plug loads that can really drive that load
up. And some of that can be offset by just, just simple educational programs and saying, look, you don't
have your heat on and the window open. So it's as simple as that. And working on plug loads to
well-controlled and Garrett you want to add anything to that?
(Garrett Speaks)
Notice, particularly for Dallas College, this is a major opportunity for improvement. And again, it comes
back to unifying all the campuses, unifying our processes. There's been so much emphasis put on
making sure we've got the right classes to meet the needs of our students. And we'll get the right
personnel in those classes to meet those needs. Now on the facility side, we need to make sure that we're
interfacing well with those other portions of the organization that are helping make those decisions. So
that we're really working together to make the best decision on how to utilize resources. And again, it
goes back to education piece and goes back to having folks that understand general rules about
mechanical equipment and how they're used and what the impact is. And just making sure we're
choosing appropriate spaces for the, for the function. And so much emphasis is put on the operations
side. And the operations folks and facilities folks have a great impact on energy usage, but so do the
occupants. If we need to work more towards marrying those business functions that traditionally in
many organizations tend to be separated.
(Gary Speaks)
Mobility, integration. This is again something we can do with minor to make it or create spaces that
accommodate things like bicycles. And if you can, encourage students to use bicycles to get around
campus rather than and then using other forms of transportation. That's sort of a campus wide thing, but,
but and not really affecting the building use, but overall, campus energy reduction, wellness integration.
Again, this is a little outside of the ten steps, but as we just talked about behavior, behavior, how
behavior can affect energy consumption and building. If you create some wonderful public spaces that
are shaded properly, that have plants, give students and staff members opportunities to connect with
outdoor spaces when the weather's nice, they're not going to be sitting in a room with lights on. And
that's perhaps too warm or too cool and encourages them to go outside and join the natural environment
and take advantage of natural conditions. We're gonna kinda close on renewables here real quickly. And
as I, as it says there on the slide, to achieve true net zero performance beyond a highly optimized
structural envelope, it's going to require the use of energy generated by green non-fossil fuel sources. So
when we began this presentation, I showed you the challenge of only 17% of our energy generation
comes from renewables. Well, this kind of shows you the distribution of renewables and what's growing
and what's going to continue to grow. And you can see that wind generation is going to grow at a much
faster level than solar. But it's just something to consider that once the primary purpose of getting a ten
steps to get them at zero, we're trying to get to net zero. And then whatever MD energy demand is, the
residual energy demand would need to offset that with renewables.
These are on campus, these are freestanding solar panels. Just shows you the controls and the rear side.
And, and I think what's a very strong component of any renewable program is to educate the users and
participants to understand what's going on and what these systems do and what they're offsetting. I
really like to use real time monitors that can tell you how much, how much energy is actually being
generated, how much, how much, or how much fossil fuel energy is being offset. This is an example of
that other groups that I showed you. And you can see how we integrated the hot performance PRX
systems and solar panels are on the roof. Integrated design, planning and design looks decide spelled
wrong, is that it is all about to achieve the kind of things we're talking about to get to net 0. You can't
have everyone working in their own, their own little corner. And anon integrated system. The entire
team, staff, architects, administration, engineers, contractors, subcontractors, all need to be on the same
page working together to innovate solutions to reduce the overall energy demand. What are the ideas
that you can do? You know, if you've got, if you need glass on a western exposure, alright, well how do
we, what can we do? Well, let's do a green screen. Or if we do a green screen, what do we get employed
to do that? What sort of design solutions can we, can, we, can, we, can we generate to make that
happen? But then you've got the contract and says, oh my god, that's gonna cost a fortune. Okay, is there
a less expensive way to do it? And that's why integrated design is so, so important rather than as we
have for so long, a very segregated and divisive process. And one of the last things I want to talk about
was just the simple fact that the campus Dallas College's is growing trees on campus to replace those
trees that have aged into continue to, to add carbon sequestering methodologies to the campus. I think
nearly our last slide. The thing that I wanted to talk about with trees, we've got time for a quick story,
very quick. There was a campus in England and it was Oxford College. The, they have very strict
preservation standards. One of their larger halls, the major roof beams at dry rotted after almost 1000
years they were they were no longer structurally sound and you would have wood has a lifespan, it just
does. So they need to be replaced. And the architects come up with steel that was rejected.
They came up with steel cladded wood that was rejected. The campus and in the UK mandated that
would beams of that size go up there. And the architects and everyone involved, a team was like, well,
they don't exist, you can't wood doesn't grow that large anymore. We don't have anything like that. We
can't get those. We cannot get the size of those beams. Well, the campus Forster was in the back of the
room and he was chuckling and everybody's kind of pointed at them and you know what, you think this
is funny. And he said, No, I got your beams and everyone would stun. You could hear a pin drop inputs
like when he talked about you've got our beans. So he called them out to a force that they had on campus
where he showed them the architectural specifications from 1000 years ago. That said that they need, as
they put up, they put up those beams and needed to plant a forest. So that six hundred and ten hundred
years from now when those beams needed to replace, those trees would be standing on campus to be
harvested and replace those beams. And they had gone through the calculation how many trees they
would lose to freezing insects, but all the things that can happen to trees. And sure enough there were
the proper amount of trees was there they harvest them, harvested them may do beams, put them up and
replaced with the forest. So that's an interesting, I think, response. And if we're talking about true
sustainability and net 0, that's the kind of holistic thinking we need to, need to employ with our efforts to
design buildings. And with that, I'll close. And Garrett, I guess we'll take a few questions or I guess we
can I don't know how to get to the questions unless I stop sharing the screen.
(Garrett Speaks)
Sure. Our moderators gonna tee some up he has received in the chat and I could see couple here.
(Gary Speaks)
I want to leave our sponsor page up or, or
(Garrett Continues)
yeah, you can have that up and that's great. And people can view that, will kinda wrap it up and try and
have a hard stop and belief here at 12:30. Thanks for everyone for sticking with us. We'll try and get
through some questions. If not, again, I've gotten to my email address out in the chat Garrett Rosser@
dcccd actually Gary, if you could go back to that slide that has untapped information probably is the
better thing to have up right now. But let's do that. If you need to reach out to Gary your and myself
about the content or other other plans or things that we might not have touched on here, but you're
interested in. Feel free to reach out to us.
(Joel Speaks)
All right, thanks so much for that great information Garrett and Gary, We do have a few questions to
start. The first question we got was from Nicholas and he said, I like the sun illustration. What book is
that from? Illustrates?
(Gary Answers)
That is an old book. Yeah, what is it in? There's a book called passive solar energy. And I think it was, it
was produced in the late sixties, early seventies. And I think that's where that graphic came from if I
recall.
(Joel Speaks)
Do extremely relevant. 50 years ago. Absolutely. Next question from Valerie about plant do plant
damage the facade. She said once an insurance company would not ensure her home because of the
vines on the house?
(Gary Answers)
Yes, that's true. Vines are problematic because fig leaf ivy any of the ivies, their root systems can
actually work their way into the grout joints and or under siting in or behind siding or through a little a
little pinhole in a sealant joint, they can cause major problems. So while it looks great, binds growing
directly on, on a facade, Yes, that's problematic and you don't wanna do it. The nice thing about doing
green screens is it is an independent structure that's separated from the wall, from the facade. And so it
grows up independently of the actual facade.
(Joel Speaks)
Perfect, thanks so much for that. Next question, this one is for Gary. First of all, thank you for this great
information from Beth, who's my home also uses solar panels and the change are added. The relation to
the upper ceiling, the room temperature really improved. Certainly. However, the green grass roots need
to be mowed by person routinely and safety is concerned. So any thoughts on those green grass roofs
and maintenance associated with green roofs?
(Gary Speaks)
Yes. Roofs that are grass like the San Francisco building you saw that hasn't green grass roof. And there
are several other examples. There are grass species that you specify that will only grow to his specific
height and stop. We've done roofs with natural grasses and things like that. And you don't mow them,
you just once a year you go up and clean them. What normally has to happen as you saw, there's a
border around that San Francisco project. So it really is driven by code, but you have to do a handrail or
you do a distance from the edge of a pair of parallel. So again, that's a code issue. But you don't have to
use grasses that have to be note there are a number of grasses is that will stay very low at fairway grass
on a golf course, you know, it'll grow to six inches and stop. So it just depends on your region, how
much water, how the roof is designed, and the kind of plant you choose so that you don't have to go up
there, you know, you can I mean, how Garrett did a living roof over his petition to his house? And he
goes, he's got a little and push mower. He goes up there and he mows it. I tend to go more toward
designing root systems that just have to be maintained once or twice a year and don't require that kinda
maintenance.
(Joel ASpeaks)
Great options there. The final question is directed to you Garrett it does Dallas College have any plan to
add the grass on the existing building to reduce the energy consumption in the summer across all of our
campuses?
(Garrett Answers)
Now, at this time we don't have plans to, in a sense, retrofit roofs to green roofs. That may be something
that might feature say, of a freestanding parking structure. But it kinda has curated dimension from
maintenance standpoint and and just the commitment to make sure that that system maintains working
as intended. I think that's something that we're going to have to be pretty cautious about and make sure
that we have something that that is going to serve the college well beyond the individual to make that
decision. So that's what we're always trying to think about. What are the impacts now? What we do 20
30 50 years from now, because these buildings, a lot of old buildings now and that we're currently
occupying and using well, are upwards of 50 years olds. And we expect that they're around for longer
than that.
(Gary Speaks)
So to Garrett's point, it's very difficult to put a living roof on an existing building unless it's a high
masonry building, something like that. It's much living roofs really require a holistic approach right
from the start of that solid. If it's a concept that wants to be introduced, then all the systems that go into
supporting it, maintaining it all have to be factored in. We do know from the living roofs that we've done
is that there is a great deal of analytical data that's been collected that shows that a typical, typical life
groups about 25-years. Sometimes you can get a little longer, but around 20-25 years. And living roofs,
if done and designed properly, can double that lifespan because the root of the membrane is underneath
not, not exposed to UV degradation or extremes of expansion and contraction. So there's a benefit to that
as well. But if they are not designed properly, not constructed properly, they are a pain a pain in the
place where you sit.
(Joel Speaks)
So thank you so much. Garrett and Gary, this has been an extremely engaging and informational fashion.
Even as moderator, I'm taking home, walk away from that experience. I encourage all of our participants
to definitely take down the information that you feel your screen, they're both Garrett and Gary have
graciously allowed you to ask any further questions to them in that way. We also want to encourage you
to the summit exhibitors between now and 12:50p. So definitely take advantage of this time that we had
before the next session start. And again, thank you so much, participant and thank you, Gary and Garrett
for your time today. Again, we look forward to learning more.
(Gary Speaks)
Your Welcome, Wonderful.