BOC team members Melissa Sokolowsky and Rebecca Sheppard attended this year’s WAMOA Fall Conference in Yakima last week.
Attendees really got into the 80s theme, with fun booth decorations including VHS tapes and lots of neon, and costumes representing popular 80s culture, such as Jazzercise, Top Gun, Miami Vice, parachute pants, leg warmers, and fanny packs. It all culminated with an 80s dance party complete with music videos.
Melissa and Rebecca’s session, Smart HVAC Strategies: Improve Indoor Air Quality and Reduce Energy Consumption, highlighted resources and tools available to make decisions related to healthy and efficient building operations. During the session they demonstrated various tools from the Smart Buildings Center’s Tool Lending Library that assist with capturing indoor air quality indicators and data needed to check for Building Performance Standard compliance. They discussed applications such as:
- Using CO2 logging meters to verify ventilation system effectiveness
- Deploying temperature data loggers to check for proper economizing to save space conditioning energy while still providing enough fresh air
- Airflow testing tools such as an airflow meter and flow hood to measure flow rates in ducts and across grilles and calculate air change rates in specific zones
- Using a digital manometer to check for positive/negative pressure relationships between zones to assure proper exhausting of stale air and harmful substances while balancing envelope issues to save energy
- Using motor loggers to assure fans are on when needed, but not wasting energy during unoccupied hours
The session also highlighted newly acquired tools such as an IAQ meter capable of measuring CO2, CO, VOCs, particulates, formaldehyde, and ozone; and an imaging leak detector for detecting leaks of harmful gases as well as efficiency losses in compressed air systems.
If you missed us at the conference and would like information about the BOC program and/or resources we provide, please reach out to us at bocinfo@theboc.info and visit www.smartbuildingscenter.org to check out our “Resources” and “Tool Lending Library”.