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.