Fun in the snow

Well, we did get over 12 inches of nice light snow. It was blowing around quite a bit and visibility in town was quite low at times, but the lack of traffic and the efficiency of MnDOT and St. Louis county kept us in the clear for the most part. I did run the plow down to the end of the road (about 1 mile) and back because we were expecting company (and the FIT and MINI have low ground clearence). We had lots of hands around to move snow that that got done without alot of effort.

With the snow covered drives and roadway it was time for fun. The "kid's" decided to would be fun to get towed around the driveway lop behind one of the cars - so that's what they did. Keep in mind we live at the end of a dead end road and can see traffic coming for quite a bit - so don't try this at home.

Short days in Zone 7

Well, yesterday/today marks the beginning of having more light! I find that I am a bit seasonally effected, the dark mornings and evenings leave me with far less energy than inthe spring and summer. for us, the day was 8 hours and 30 minutes long, not even a full workday with lunch. Blah! Oh, well, walking back from the neighbors house this evening at 8 pm in the pitch black, snow crunching under our feet, LED Christmas lights glowing on the garages was pretty nice.

We are waiting for a storm tonight, The National Weather Service Has been changing the forcast several times over the last few days, but now that the snow is almost here:

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DULUTH MN
406 PM CST SAT DEC 22 2007

...A POWERFUL STORM WITH HEAVY SNOW AND BLOWING SNOW TO HIT MUCH
OF THE NORTHLAND OVERNIGHT AND THROUGH SUNDAY...

A NARROW TONGUE OF DRY AIR WILL PUSH OVER THE NORTHLAND THIS
EVENING...BRINGING A BREAK IN THE SNOW. HOWEVER A POWERFUL LOW
PRESSURE SYSTEM WILL QUICKLY OVERTAKE THE DRY AIR AND REINTRODUCE
THE SNOW THROUGH THE NIGHT. CONDITIONS WILL DETERIORATE QUICKLY
TONIGHT...SO BE PREPARED IF TRAVELING AND CARRY A SURVIVAL KIT.

THE SNOW...HEAVY AT TIMES WILL SPREAD OVER MUCH OF THE REGION
BY DAY BREAK SUNDAY. THE BULK OF THE SNOW FROM THIS STORM WILL
FALL DURING THE DAY SUNDAY...TAPERING OFF SUNDAY
EVENING. EXCEPT ALONG THE SOUTH SHORE OF LAKE SUPERIOR WHERE LAKE
EFFECT SNOW WILL CONTINUE INTO MONDAY MORNING.

STRONG WINDS GUSTING AROUND 40 MPH WILL BE FOUND NEAR LAKE
SUPERIOR ON SUNDAY. THIS WILL RESULT IN SIGNIFICANT DRIFTING AND REDUCED
VISIBILITIES TO LESS THAN A QUARTER MILE AT TIMES. TRAVEL WILL
BECOME HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.

So we'll see what happens tomorrow.

Flying Cranes and the Marshes of Sand Country

Late in November I traveled with one of our project teams to Necedah, WI, home of a US Fish and Wildlife National Wildlife Refuge. This NWR is well know due to it's program of training the endangered whopping cranes to migrate to another NWR in Florida.
View Larger Map
We were there to review a schematic design for a new visitor's center to serve the many visitor's that come by to watch the training of the crane's using ultralight aircraft. The "flight" training occurs throughout much of the summer and fall, but at this time the facilities available for groups to observe this are very limited. A design had been prepared by another consultant, but due to contractual changes we will be (hopefully) carrying out the construction documents.

As luck would have it, the Aldo Leopold Legacy Center in Baraboo, WI was having a tour of their new Platinum LEED-NC building on one of our nights in the area, so we made a trip down with the folks from USFWS. A very interesting building that has great performance metrics, but also has some usability flaws, too. I think the biggest example we saw, was that ther was no parking lot lighting. Now in our climate, it can be pitch dark at 5 pm so if there was any idea of having evening programs (and this was one) this was a big safety item. The gravel driveway and slopping site made it a bit tricky. There was an attemp to install thouse little solar powered landsc ape lights, but with low sun hours and cold affecting the batteries, the car that was brought up to the building to shine it's headlights on the walkway was a welcome enhancement.

Quickly, the HVAC system was a bank of water to water heat pumps serving a radiant heating and cooling slab. A same high quality air handling unit served the ventilation air through an earth tube intake system and displacement supply grills into the occupied space. Also lots of areas that were put into "cold" storage for the winter months. There are a number of these so called net zero buildings around, but it does seem that a majority of them are low energy density (say classroom or interpretive) seasonal use buildings. Not a full blown commercial office or institutional building with at lease 2080 hours of near full occupancy and computers. Frustrating to me that there is use of the term net-zero without mentioning the seasonal use. This was the case with a NZE case study presented at Greenbuild this year.

Yikes, has it been that long?

Well, I had great ideas of keeping this up over the last month, but.... I'll put up some posts with what has been happening, some things "green," some things personal, hopefully a picture of what is happening in my small part of the bloggissphere (sic?). I've been eating turkey, talking turkey, visiting project sites and vacationing so there is a lot of catching up to do.

Old shoes

I have issues with shoes. My feet are short wide and have a high instep. My mother claims that it is due to my dad's genes and there may be something to that. I used to always have kind of ratty shoes as it was hard to find a pair that fit right and I didn't treat them too well.

A few years ago, perhaps 8 years or so ago, I found a pair of Merrel suede slip on's that I really liked at REI in Bloomington. These shoes were really comfortable for me. I liked them so much I went back and bought two more pair so I was up to three pairs. The following year I tried to find similar pairs, but since either they caused chaffing because I don't wear socks much of the year or they wouldn't go over my instep I had poor luck except for a pair of Timberland's.

Well, long story short, I wore these shoes everywhere. In the snow and cold, out walking, to work, out to get the paper. the soles are still in good condition, but the leather is stained and falling apart and the trim is wearing away. They have stretched beyond comfort and the foam lining has crumbled away.

Today they are in the trash heap and I have new shoes.

Rats, no pictures

I just couldn't find anything photographic that pertained to goings on so I've been slacking. Short work week for me - worked on some mechanical specification things and prior approvals with Ryan. We are trying the new solvent welded CPVC chemical resistant drainage piping that is marketed by Spears Manufacturing on a high school project in Wisconsin. While in the past we have used CPVC alone, the solvent welded joints and piping is the past did not have specific chemical resistance approvals. Now there is a NSF rating for the system along with IAMPO approvals. The solvent is a bit different, but is a yellow color so that inspectors know it's been used. I expect the joints will be more fool proof that the commonly used retained gland/olive assemblies without the cost of the electrofusion systems (which still make sense on some projects).

I also had a meeting with one of the local mechanical firms regarding a LEED-NC certified project they are working on as a design builder. Cost is a big issue as they have already budgeted this project out, so we are splitting the work out so that I have major involvement only on the Energy Performance Credits EAp2 and EAc1 and will advise them on other issues as needed. Of course there is that conflict between the "Green" phlosophy of sharing knowledge and the business interests of using that knowledge based edge in the market place to either get more work or otherwise economically benefit from it. Especially hard is the issue of the project being delivered architecturally by a competitor and not necessarily wishing to make that any easier for them while still wanting to assure that my (now) client and the final user of the building (also a client of me, just not on this project) achieve the performance goals needed to get to LEED certified. (The building owner/developer is not a current client of mine although I have worked for him in the past(an not likely to be one in the future!)).

Aliceon and I had Thanksgiving dinner at Ledge Rock yesterday with my folks, and now are getting ready for another turkey dinner at the Compound with my daughter, her husband, and our friend Jeff. I made the stuffing yesterday, the gravy is half done along with the turkey. Aliceon cooked up three pumpkin (actually butternut squash) pies this morning.

We all have a lot to be thankful for, our friends and those dear to us are healthy and seem to be doing well. We are able to enjoy our life, the outdoors, travel our pets and the like to an extent that many others are not able to due to any number of reasons - we consider ourselves some of the luckiest people around.

P.S. shopped online and not in the store wow is that nice away from the stinky masses.

No Knead Bread

For those of you that haven't seen this, about a year ago Mark Bittman in the NYT food section wrote an article about a "new" bread making technique he called No-knead bread. http://http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/ Just Google bittman no-knead bread and you will find it in referenced in all sorts of food articles. It turns out homemade bread like you can not believe. Crispy crust, nice holey interior perfect for toast with butter. As most simple breads it doesn't keep for long periods, so I slice it and freeze what I can't eat on the day I make it right away.
The concept is simple, start with flour water salt and a little bit of yeast, mix and let sit overnight (or longer), then put it inside a preheated hot oven and cast iron or ceramic pot to hold in the steam and bake. Anyway, that was one of the weekend projects.
I wish I had some photos of the waves coming into Stoney Point Saturday evening - big splashing waves from the NE. There were some surfers out too and I saw at least one take a nice long ride (for Lake Superior anyway). It was just great to stand our among the wind and the spray and watch the power of the lake for a while. A shout out to Mattman who celebrated a birthday on Sunday - I don't actually know how old he is, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was getting up to 40 or so.

Quality Fans?

Here are a few shots of the fume exhaust fans for a life science building we are just completing (high silver LEED award anticipated). Quite a bit of leakage was found during smoke "bomb" testing of the systems and a closer look at the way the fans were constructed sure showed us why. Take a look at the gaps in the bolted face of the fan scroll and the squeezed out gasketing where it was used. Unfortunately, the campus/system standards call for these fans to be installed in a mechanical space, so now the issue is whether there is an unsafe condition in that space for the maintenance workers.

The future of shop drawings

Well here it is, the electrical shop drawings for a 11 story office tower. The day James Brew has been predicting for many years is here in our market, but driven by the contractors not by the architects and design profession. The project is 8200 Normandale, developed by United Properties in Bloomington, MN and a Pre-certified Gold LEED-CS project . Adophson & Peterson are the Construction Managers and we (LHB) are the LEED consultants. This sort of project is not one that we usually work on so it's been interesting to watch the process and interaction between players. LEED is important as a differentiator in a tight market and will make this project more profitable due to the quicker leasing and completion of the project.

I was able to have noodles for breakfast, something I usually do about 4 times a week at home.


The public art in Chicago is really cool - the LED powered images on the glass block was really something - but the Jelly bean was my highlight, I'll try and post the video I took of this later.

Chicago sights

Harold's Chicken on south Wabash - best fried chicken I've ever had - light and crispy (and with hot sauce)


Chicago Symphony Orchestra - Performing the Poulouc Gloria and the Ravel Daphne and Cloe - I sat in the Terrance Seating right about the orchestra and nest to the Chorus. Wow was that fun.

Recycling?

McCormick Place had instituted a new recycling program for Greenbuild, but it had it's problems. Many lunches came in a cardboard boxes with compostable silverware and the like - pretty cool, but the bins were too small for the box lunches and the bins just filled up so quickly that it was ridiculous. There was a similar attempt on drinking water, no bottled water was provided, but you got a (ugly) reusable bottle with your registration material and there were strategically placed iced water jugs throughout - of course these emptied out so quickly that they became sort of a cruel hoax - you would be thirsty and head for one, grab a cup if you didn't have your bottle and find the jug empty and of course the adjacent one too.

Exciting plumbing

Exciting plumbing at the Kohler showroom in Mechandise Mart.

Stuff at Greenbuild

Registration desk on Wednesday - a 2 to four hour wait even if you preregistered.

A rainwater filter/diversion device - nice to see a working model, we are using a larger version of this on a project in northern Wisconsin.
A low profile electrical modular low and high voltage distribution system integrated with systems furniture.

GreenBuild Sights

People, people and yes, more people. I noted on Kyle Bernstein's blog, that he felt he couldn't blog during Greenbuild effectively, and I felt I was in the same boat - someday I'll get there, but for now, it's after the fact blogging - yech. The Skyline ballroom in the McCormick West Convention center was packed. Some of us waited a couple hours to make sure we could get in to see President Clinton speak during the plenary session on Wednesday morning.



Dan Shaw, my colleague in civil engineering at LHB joined me at my table for Paul Hawkin's inspiring speech on Thursday. I usually try and avoid people I know so that I can have conversations with new people doing different things. I had a great conversation with a guy with a major commissioning/construction firm in California while waiting for Hawkin and some architects from Utah just getting into LEED. I ended up sort of berating a young architect that wanted to wait and wait to take his LEED Accredited Professional Exam instead of biting the bullet and getting it done. He had even just recently taking a training class, a perfect time to get his testing complete.

Member day at Greenbuild

First things first - I had to have a Chicago Hot dog - so to the Gold Coast Dogs site on Wabash.

Then off to the presentations about the USGBC and the Chapters and what is coming up. Many of you already know that the LEED product formerly known as LEED-NC Version 3.0 has morphed into a sort of database set of credits that will be specific to the type of project involved. I guess the multiple products, the multiple approval paths, and the coordination of them all made a change necessary. The other big new was about the creation of another entity to handle the certification parts of LEED including the LEED APs, the testing protocol, certification process for projects (buildings), and the certification of project appraisers. It is intended to follow ISO processes and all of this suggested that separation of the rating system creation and the rating system certification is necessary to eliminate conflicts of interest.

Chitown and Greenbuild

Monday was spent traveling to Greenbuild 2007 in Chicago. The flight from Duluth and Minneapolis was interesting because the weather conditions were perfect for icing. The aircraft was a Saab SF-340, which is propeller driven, but seems to be well suited for ice - short stiff wings, lots of visible deicing boots. I think I watched from 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of ice form as we neared Minneapolis. The ice flying off the propellers hitting the fuselage kept up a rat a tat tat for the last 30 minutes of the flight.


Multiple delays on the flight from Minneapolis to Chicago - but here I am staying at the Swissotel with a room view out over the Navy Pier. Last night I ran into Leighton Deer, my counter part at HGA and we had a nice conversation about the state of sustainability at our respective firms.

Member Day today - off to check it out.

Winter is coming!

Well, it appears that the time is upon us to install the winter tires. The weather forecast looks like we will have cold enough temperatures so that the winter tires won't tear themselves to bits on the highway. It was a beautiful day for the project, sunny and cool while I was out, not as windy as it has been all week. Dunlop Wintersport D3 Run Flat winter performance tires for the Mini on R90 MINI wheels; Bridgestone Blizzak WS60 studless winter tires on steel wheels for the Fit. Keto and Lupine the Golden Retrievers provided moral support.

The MINI is so short and has such a stiff suspension that the single jacking point lifts up the whole side. My old floor jack was all steel construction and the wheels have rusted to the extent that they don't roll anymore - it was a really heavy unit and dragging it around the gravel driveway left a lot to be desired. Mark Strohm, a local foreign car mechanic recommended an aluminum jack for any of us getting up in age - and am I glad I followed his advice. It feels like the aluminum jack is about 50% of the weight of the old jack.

I knew the summer tires I had on the MINI had zero "siping" for snow and ice handling, but I was surprised that the so called "all season" tires on the FIT had so little siping and very little tread depth or design for snow and ice performance. I'm glad that we are going with the dedicated winter tires for the FIT along with the MINI. Only one mishap, I ended up breaking one of the wheel covers for the FIT, I have an e-mail in to Tirerack to see if I can buy just one replacement.

Bodily Functions and Clean Roads

Ahh November, brisk cool nights, crunching leaves and the annual physical. Fasted this morning so I could get my blood work done at the same time, usually I forget and have to go back, and went in to see how my natural and artificial chemistry (daily meds) are doing together. We'll see how the blood work comes out, but the blood pressure is managed and the normal bending of joints and cough tests turned out OK.



Late in the day it was out the door early to help our adopted section of road, a portion of Highway 61 (yes, that Highway 61) between Duluth and Two Harbors. I was really disappointed at the turnout. We have 115 people that work in our Duluth Office and we had seven of us out picking up the trash, 2 finance people, one civil engineer, 2 electrical designers, a draftsperson, and a mechanical engineer. No focus leaders, only myself from the Duluth Management team. Usually there are a few others that show up, notably Dave Sheedy our Duluth Office Leader, our finance director Lori, and some of our marketing folks, but - I really am thinking it might make sense to give this section up for adoption.

It apparently is not important enough, even to those persons that count MnDOT as a client, that we make this small bit of community service a priority. Even a word of encouragement would be something. I once thought that having a civil engineer organize the work effort would perhaps help get out more people, especially those involved in Transportation, but that has not turned out to be the case. It would take having our leaders out there and them telling others that this is an important thing for this to work the way it should.

Oh, yes - Kate Loyd, and I did the section from the Homestead to our sign and back - about 1-1/2 miles round trip and collected about 5 bags of trash - mostly cans bottles and paper.