IES Blog

When I was at the airport recently, almost every billboard seemed to be hijacked by the Microsoft marketing team promoting “Azure” and CloudPower (their latest Cloud Computing tech). You’d think it was something new! So what is “The Cloud?” Well, it’s just a term which means that you handle data and software somewhere other than your computer, via the internet. All the work goes on in some servers in California, Pune, Beijing or anywhere else except your computer in front of you. A web page provides the interface for this to happen.

Why is “The Cloud” such big news?
Having other people’s servers do all the work for you from a web page has been going on for years. When the two guys who started Google launched the first version of their search engine in 1998, it was one of the first proper Cloud Computing applications. The user typed some text into a web page, which was then transferred to a few computers sitting in a little garage in Palo Alto, which crunched the search numbers and posted the results back on the same page. In 2007, just nine years later it was estimated that Google had approximately 1 million servers. Why did it get so big so fast ? Simply because they worked out the fastest way of searching the internet, and then integrated low-cost advertising when it became really popular. Advertising revenue was $30billion last year. It’s the most stratospheric rise in computing history.

What can it do for me?
Web pages for cloud computing apps have been springing up across the web for some time. Many of you get mail through Gmail. Google Docs is starting to rival Microsoft Office for personal document editing. In some ways it’s better – because it’s on The Cloud, you can work on your document with friends together, store different versions of it, and know that someone else looks after it and keeps a copy. A couple of other really neat applications are free photo editing (www.pixlr.com) and free movie editing (http://jaycut.com/). The whole approach keeps the cost of software down, and you don’t have to install it either.

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Tags:cloud, internet, technology

Ok, blog time again. I am going to take this opportunity to follow up from my blog before about plastic bags. I’m sure some of you will want to use one to suffocate me but I need to get it out there ok? Anyway.. so I am an active member of my local green group, The Beacon Hill Green Committee, meeting once a month or so to discuss and brainstorm ways to improve the “greenness” of the neigbourhood. This month, I was put in charge of an investigation into plastic bag policy. Now, lets look at what other countries have done.

Some countries just decide on an outrite ban but that means they need an alternative and paper bags aren’t much better. However, China did this and saved 37million barrels of crude oil per year though – if they can do it, why can’t everyone? (politics) Ireland chose a different approach, introducing a tax on the bags – 33 cents or so per bag (not sure about the number), but it was high enough to deter people from taking them resulting in a 94% decrease in plastic bag consumption. The accumulated tax then subsidised the cost of a pint of Guinness (in an ideal world).

So, to get back to my meeting. I looked into it for Boston, and there was talk about bringing in a ban or a tax but these things take time (politics), so I took it upon myself to do it another way – through education and awareness of the impacts that they can cause. I think my poster does that quite nicely – straight to the point, shocking and truthful…

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Tags:Boston, recycle, recycling

Any idea? Neither do I. Instead, I would like to blog about quantification because it’s been bothering me. For example, let’s take the Prius. Is it really that good for the environment after you take the batteries into account? The embodied energy..how much energy is required to process, manufacture and transport the batteries? What about the disposal of the batteries? How long do they even last? Does the reduction in emissions from fuel efficiency offset this enough? How do we know? Is keeping an old car that gets 25mpg better than buying a new one that gets 45mpg when you take that embodied energy into account? How long do the batteries last anyway? What about a Lexus hybrid? 6.0L car that comes in hybrid version. Is the hybrid actually worse for the environment?

I read an article saying that driving 2 miles to the store is actually better than walking because the energy required to process, manufacture and transport the food needed to provide the calories for the walk is greater than the emissions from the car. Ummm…what about the energy to extract, process and transport the fuel? What about the energy to manufacture the car? Did the walker get his lunch from the moon??

In the home, is it better to recycle junk mail or switch off your heater and burn the paper to keep you warm? How do you quantify this? What about paper towels vs hand drier vs cotton towels? Which one? Are the paper towels recycled? Is the hand drier hot or cold air? Is the water you use to wash the towels hot or cold, detergent natural or synthetic?

Oh btw, these are not rhetorical. Answers on my desk Monday morning please. Oh and bring me some cheese.

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Tags:Environment, recycle, recycling

I spent a night recently at Fenway Park, the oldest ballpark in the States, and as I finished my bottle of water, I found myself wondering how many people recycle out of this group of 35,000.  As the Sox work to clench the Wild Card in the American League, I consider what a profound influence this park and their practices have on the environment.  Playing host to 35,000 fans a night for 80 home games a season you can wonder how much is the organization doing to help the environment?

So of course the next day, I got on the website and investigated.  I found that they are rather conscience of their persuasive position.  From Bio Diesel fuel in the lawn movers and solar panels on the roofs to the use of only recycled products for publications and locally grown foods.

For more indepth information please go to http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/bos/community/gogreen.jsp.

Pete

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Tags:Environment

Ok, so I am back with some tips and tricks for Google SketchUp! This blog will show you how to import a model from the SU warehouse for use within the VE. Just think of the possibilities. Take any building you like from the warehouse, and within a couple of hours, you could be doing full blown energy assessment, daylight analyses, natural ventilation feasibility studies, even LEED compliance!

So…. how do we  do it?

1. Open SU – bit obvious this one

2.  Go to the SU warehouse under the file menu

3. Browse the models or type in your favourite building  in the search field

4. Download the model directly into your SU

5. Now, generally these models will come in as components or groups. As you may have noticed, the plug-in does have the facility to recognise groups and components. It can explode them and scan for fully enclosed volumes which can then be considered eligible for any subsequent analysis. However, the majority of models in the warehouse do not have fully enclosed volumes, so when the plug-in scans the components or groups, the rooms will not be found. So… in this case, we need to manually explode the components first, then add in any necessary surfaces to fully enclose the shape, then run the room scan. 

6. So, highlight the building, right click and choose explode. Most of the time, this may need to  be done a couple of times and there may  be a ground plane/Google earth map that needs to  be unlocked first too. This will be shown in red so right click and unlock this.

7. Once the building is completely exploded, look for surfaces that need to be added. The ones I have tried are massing models that just need a bottom surface added to fully enclose, but it depends on the complexity of the model.

8. Then, add in any detail you want  in terms of glazing etc that may have not been included and check the opacities of surfaces are correct. Remember the rules for the opacity of the materials -
0%   - hole
1-99%   - transparent (for glass)
100%   - opaque (for walls or doors)

9. Run the room scan – it should pick up the building as fully enclosed now. Ok, you can now go ahead and start analysing the building using the plugin after you enter the usual information for building type, constructions etc. This of course, as I said, is likely to be a massing model. If you want to start partitioning the space, this can be done in SU or, once you import it into the <VE>, the edit tools can be used to cut the building into floors and partitioned for a more accurate assessment of the building.

Here are a couple of samples of buildings from the Warehouse

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Tags:3D Warehouse, downloads, plug-ins, sketchup

This time, instead of talking about the VE or SketchUp, I would like to provide some insight into my world outside of work and the passion I have for the environment. This is a project I am currently working on;

Ok, the problem is one you all contribute to on a daily basis, perhaps unknowing of the effects they can have. Unaware of the alternatives and the choices you can make. You probably think it’s such an insignificant item that it couldn’t possible have an effect on the environment. The plastic bag. How many times have you walked into a store to buy a single item and the store assistant not only supplies one bag, but frequently double bags it? Are they on bag commission? Let me give you some background on plastic bags and what harm they can do, then maybe you will forego the bag and carry the item or bring your own reusable bag next time. If you are a store assistant, maybe you will think twice before offering. Ultimately this is something I’d like the government to mandate, but one step at a time.

Introduced 25 years ago, these bags are now consumed at rate of approximately 500 billion per year globally, or 1 million per minute. It is estimated that 1% or 5 billion of these bags end up as wind blow litter each year. These bags that take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade, often wind up in waterways or the landscape, becoming eyesores and eventually degrading water and soil as they break down into tiny toxic bits. Their manufacture and disposal also uses large quantities of non-renewable resources, especially petroleum, a key ingredient in plastic. Large amounts of global warming gases are released during their production, transportation, and disposal. Environmentally, disposable plastic bags are a serious problem. Hundreds of thousands of marine animals, including endangered sea turtles, die every year when they eat plastic bags mistaken for food.                                                         

What about a ban on plastic bags? Would that help? That’s what they have done in San Francisco. However, consumers still need something to carry their groceries in. What about paper?

Paper bags are not the answer, since independent studies show they have roughly as many negative impacts as plastic ones. These problems could be avoided by advocating the use of reusable bags instead, and the consumption of fewer disposable bags. The negative impacts of disposable bags could be reduced easily and significantly by charging for their usage at the point of purchase. In cooperation with retailers, the Irish government introduced a plastic bag tax (PlasTax) that has slashed consumption over 90% and raised $9.6 million for environmental and waste management projects. Another benefit is that stores save money on bag purchases and improve their public image. The money could even go towards subsidising reusable bags, purchasable in the store.

A combination of consumer education and governments and retailers working together, we can rid the world of them. Take a reusable bag next time. My task is to persuade the Mayor for the moment and I’ll go from there.

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Tags:Environment, recycle, recycling, reduce, reuse

What I’d like to do in my blog is provide some basic guidance with some simple hints and tips for taking your sexy SketchUp model one step further and running the likes of detailed energy consumption, Architecture 2030 Challenge benckmarking and LEED daylighting compliance analysis.  Now, I’ve had a bit of experience using SketchUp over the last couple of months but not even close to some of you “super users” so please forgive me if some of this is old hat to you.  However, and this is the point, there is a difference between the conventional way of drawing a SketchUp model, purely concerning the shell of the building and its aesthetics, and having individual rooms acknowledged for analysis eligibility.

Now, I am going to assume that you already know about the SketchUp plug-in and the room finding icons and so on and so forth (if not, please go to the SketchUp link on this website or go to www.youtube.com/IESVE).  All I’d like to do is help you to get your model ready quickly and efficiently to streamline the process of analysing your building design.

Right, let’s cover the basics first, and then we can apply it to something relevant. You may have seen some of this in the literature, but I’ll assume you haven’t.

The first movie clip shows the basics of room creation and how the room finding algorithm finds spaces based on surfaces.

Once the 2nd room is extruded, you will see there is no floor. The fundamental rule for “rooms” to be acknowledged is they must be enclosed volumes. These have no floor, hence no rooms are found.
Drawing a line across the floor will then bound these spaces with the floor and also a partition wall. 2 rooms are found.
I don’t want a partition wall, so I’ll delete the surface. Woops! Only 1 room is found now.

I’ll draw the surface back in by adding a diagonal line to bound it, then delete the diagonal line.

This time, instead of deleting the surface, I’ll make the surface 0% opacity and it will be picked up as a partition, albeit an invisible one, but at least light, heat and air can pass through it. Ah ha! Now I have 2 rooms again.

Ok, so that fundamental rule  is that to divide spaces into separate rooms, there must be a surface connecting them, then the levels of opacity will determine whether they are walls, windows, or holes.

0%          hole
1-99%    window
100%     wall

Ok, let’s take that rule and apply it to my design.

1.  We shall assume we have the floor plate but no individual spaces.  If you want to know what the heating and cooling loads are for each of the rooms, not the whole floor because they have 1. Varying space usage and 2. Different orientations and hence varying solar penetration.

2.  One of the spaces is in an open plan office but it’s very large so we want to split the space into perimeter and core, but maintain the space as open plan for solar tracking and heat/air transfer purposes.

3.  So the steps shown in the 2nd movie are as follows.

a.  Floorplate with no floor, no room found

b.  Floor drawn, room found

c.   Partition walls drawn to define enclosed office spaces.

d.   Core and perimeter spaces drawn

e.   Partition walls modified to have 0% opacity therefore in any subsequent analysis, light, heat and air can pass through into the adjacent space, but each room is considered its own entity from a load perspective.

The next step will be to run this model through the likes of VE-Ware (our free tool), the VE-Toolkits and modules within the full Virtual Environment. This will allow you to gauge its performance in terms of daylighting, airflow, energy and thermal comfort. And you thought your sexy SketchUp model was just for show eh. Wait ‘till my next blog.

Pete M

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Tags:Architecture 2030 Challenge, hints and tips, LEED, sketchup