A Field Guide for Engineers will provide instructional content and inspiration to novice and veteran engineers alike. Covering design, commissioning, troubleshooting, and operations on HVAC and electrical systems and controls, this blog will be informal and fun, and very rich in content. en-us http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325.html?nid=3756 Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information. Subject to its Terms of Use May 9, 2008 http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1610025361.html?nid=3756 I arrived at the 16th National Conference on Building Commissioning late in the evening yesterday and became immersed in passionate discussi... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1860025186.html?nid=3756 I don't know how many of you took a look at Michael Ivanovich's Wired on Engineering Education post, but in it, he points you to a blog&nbsp... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1310024131.html?nid=3756 When I started my last post on the cooling tower level control issue on a current project, I had planned to use a string of posts to discuss what... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1440022744.html?nid=3756 Field experience can teach us a lot of things that simply can not be learned in the classroom. In fact, some of the most valuable (and sobering) ... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1880021988.html?nid=3756 In the last post, I said I would share a few more of the things that have helped me feel connected with the earth and environment. What follows i... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/450020845.html?nid=3756 The first draft of the Green Space column I recently wrote for the January issue of CSE was actually much longer than what was published; like 5 ... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/210019221.html?nid=3756 Several years ago, Tom Stewart and I wrote a paper for ACEEE titled Making Energy Intensive HVAC Processes More Sustainable via Low Temperature H... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1110019111.html?nid=3756 This post was inspired by a question from Alicia Breen, one of the students in a monthly retrocommissioning/ongoing commissioning class that I teac... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1810018181.html?nid=3756 This will be a quick post where I'll link you with some resources that came up during a recent CSE web cast I participated in regarding Green Hig... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1900017990.html?nid=3756 In the three posts preceding this one, we have been exploring the "2/3 rule" for locating the sensors controlling pump and fan sp... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1420017542.html?nid=3756 In the past two posts, we have been using this simple variable flow system ... ... to look at why the 2/3 rule optimizes a pumps performance as ... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/620016862.html?nid=3756 In my previous post, I looked at what happens to differential pressures at different points in this variable flow pumping system as the flow rates ... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/610016861.html?nid=3756 Recently, I was out in the field scoping out an existing facility for retrocommissioning opportunities. One of the operating engineers poin... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1330016133.html?nid=3756 In the previous post, we were looking at how the number of turning vanes in an elbow impacted its performance and discovered that there are a lot... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1310016131.html?nid=3756 Recently, someone asked me if it made sense to add turning vanes to a radiused elbow. That’s one of those questions where there is no exact... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1050014505.html?nid=3756 (Continued from previous post) I guess what I am trying to say here is that, if you react to the technical issues I raise in my article like I d... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1040014504.html?nid=3756 I recently did an article for HPAC magazine that explored the issues associated with developing a control sequence. It was a technical piece, but t... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1570013957.html?nid=3756 In my previous post, I mentioned that using an electric resistance coil to generate a btu of heat can be expensive relative to burning a fossil f... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1330013933.html?nid=3756 Well, I'm back! I thought I would have this posted sooner but summer and technology intervened. Right after my last post, I headed to the Oregon... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1420012742.html?nid=3756 Performing an average daily energy consumption analysis for the lab facility I have been discussing in the past several posts resulted in the fol... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1400012740.html?nid=3756 In the previous post, we looked at how I used benchmarking on a recent project to compare the energy consumption in an Oregon laboratory facility w... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1390012739.html?nid=3756 Last week, in the course of beginning a retrocommissioning process on a lab facility, I came across a bit of an anomaly and in the course of expl... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/1480012548.html?nid=3756 As you may recall from several posts back , one of the discoveries that came out of the damper test I was discussing was that the minimum outdoor... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/590012459.html?nid=3756 Recently, Bill Acker gave me a call discuss the economizer damper test results I had been talking about in the blog over the first seve... http://www.csemag.com/blog/1250000325/post/310012031.html?nid=3756 In the last post we looked at how climate can vary across the country (and the world for that matter) and how these climate variations might...