Vacation Planning News? (Follow-up to Seaver TED Talk post) + Redux
From the Monday edition of The Washington Post comes an article titled “Beyond trail mix: New standards will bring healthier, sustainable food options to the national parks.”
This news is heartening. Uh huh, good for the heart!
The National Park Service (NPS) has initiated new food standards for concessionaires at various national parks around the country.
Don’t lament the passing of “rubbery hot dogs” just yet. There’s a phase-in. But, for those looking for something different, feast your imagination on menu items such as “Cumin scented rockfish tacos,” and an ending called “Berry (locally grown, hopefully) Yogurt Parfait.”
The initiative just introduced “includes guidelines encouraging concessionaires to use local, sustainable foods when possible, including seafood certified as sustainable [recall Barton Seaver], meat without hormones and antibiotics, and coffee harvested using worker-friendly standards.” Wow! Sounds wonderful.
See the article here, but just in case, let me excerpt a good tale: “The Chez Panisse founder [sustainable foods guru Alice Waters] and her distraught travelng partners were regrouping outside [the Mesa Verde National Park eatery] when Waters realized they were standing in a patch of purslane.
Waters fell to her knees, picked bunches of the edible leaf vegetable, washed them and whipped up a purslane salad. ‘I always travel with oliver oil and salt,’ she noted.” Indeed!
Remember Seaver’s advice: Cut down on your portion of meat. Make up for it by eating more fruits and vegetables–and salads!
NPS summer rovers… Enjoy new food beginnings!
Redux: “Comfortable? Just Right!”
Last week I blogged about thermal comfort. To the discussion, I’d like to add some information about the mechanical system planned for your building that will make satisfactory survey results much more likely.
The system is called VRV, or Variable Refrigerant Volume, and is a variation of the ductless mini-split system.
In an email exchange with the design team’s mechanical engineer where I advised him of the disappointing thermal comfort survey results, he wrote back:
“I was unaware of the 80% failure rate of these surveys, although I guess it goes to show that it is really hard to please everyone. However, a VRV system gives you more control than any other system on the market and Daikin is top-of-the-line when it comes to VRV systems. Daikin has a deadband of 1 degree, which means when it is set in AUTO mode at 73 degrees, if the temperature in the room is 74 degrees, the unit will kick into cooling and if the temperature is 72 degrees, the unit will kick into heating. Other VRV manufacturers have a deadband as high as 4 degrees, so the temperature swings in the rooms can be severe. Daikin also offers the AUTO feature which means the unit can switch from heating to cooling automatically whereas with some of the other manufacturers, the user must manually change between heating and cooling. Daikin also offers a dual setpoint feature, which is not offered by any of the other VRV manufacturers. This allows the user to set heating at 72 and cooling at 75, and when the room temperature is between those two numbers, the unit will be off. This is a good energy saving option.
VRV is also better than rooftop or split systems in that those units tend to be a little oversized which can lead to cooling the rooms more than they should and using more energy in the process. Because VRV is variable refrigerant flow, the units are only using as much refrigerant as they need to heat and cool the space and nothing more. There are no problems with overcooling of spaces or energy waste. VRF systems also do not use backup electric heaters like split systems or rooftop VAV would use, which is a huge energy saver.”
Importantly, the VRV system uses the refrigerant R-410A which is an environmentally friendly refrigerant with, as the mechanical engineer put it, “zero Ozone Depletion Potential.”
This allows for satisaction of the LEED Prerequisite for Fundamental Refrigerant Management, which bans the use of CFC-based refrigerants. What’s more, a LEED point is earned for the credit Enhanced Refrigerant Management, where “the selected refrigerant minimizes or eliminates the emission of compounds that contribute to ozone depletion and global climate change.” The prerequisite and credit fall under the LEED Energy & Atmosphere category.