Construction Informer

What do you do if you have taken the process of insulating a home from science to art?  Well, you might try entering a competition. That’s what Ray Blackwater with Durango, Colorado-based San Juan Insulation & Drywall did and he is now the “Best Insulation Installer in America” for 2008.

According to Insulate America, Blackwater defeated last year’s champ Salvador Hererra from Insulating Inc. in Raleigh, NC. This year’s three other regional winners who competed for the crown included:

Jesus Campanero from Chico, CA

Matt Fletcher from West Boylston, MA

Martin Sanchez Soto from Charlotte, NC

The competitors had to install insulation of various types in a mock up of a building that included all the usual things that get in the way or make the job difficult, like electrical boxes, wires, pipes, headers and even a vaulted ceiling. Judging criteria included quality of workmanship, adherence to safety, and speed and productivity. New this year, the sixth year of the competition, was the amount of scrap they each generated.

October is Energy Awareness Month so Johns Manville in association with Insulate America sponsors the competition to draw attention to the professionals that give their all to help make sure buildings achieve their maximum energy efficiency.

To me these are great initiatives. There really aren’t enough efforts that showcase the day-to-day work construction people do. Especially with the slant of showing it in a professional sense. You can find all kinds of people showcasing the negative actions of people in construction, so these kinds of things help to balance the picture for those who are willing to look a little deeper.

Ray Blackwater of Durango, CO. (Photo: Business Wire)

There’s a huge furnace below our feet and there is a major effort underway to tap into it and generate electricity as well as supply heat directly to buildings. This industry, while still young, is gaining momentum and many people with construction skills stand to find some good paying, long-term work building it into a cornerstone of the nation’s energy policy.

According to the Geothermal Energy Association the geothermal sector is expected to add an estimated 7,000 jobs to its current base of more than 11,000 during the next five years. This includes work in the electrical generation area only. The kinds of typical construction skills needed include welders, mechanics, pipe fitters, plumbers, machinists, electricians, carpenters, construction and drilling equipment operators and excavators, surveyors, architects and designers, and HVAC technicians. Over the next 20 years that job base is expected to grow five-fold to just about 35,000.

Reno NV will host the annual Geothermal Energy Conference and Expo with pre-conference events on Oct. 4 and the main expo kicking off on Oct. 6. There is probably a good reason the expo is in Reno since all of the excellent geothermal fields, and most of the good ones, are west of the Mississippi.

There are many opportunities for people these days to connect with those in the growing green fields of employment. Besides talking directly with companies in the business there are many recruiters that specialize in green jobs. One in particular goes by that name - GreenJobs and covers all the emerging energy technologies.

Last year, on September 24 to be exact, I took a close look in this post at the Architectural Billing Index (ABI) that is put out by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). At the time July 2007 billings had a score of almost 60 but was quickly followed in August by the biggest drop since September of 2006 hitting almost 54.

Remember, those numbers predict the level of construction activity about a year in advance. Then in March of this year the commercial ABI was reported to be at 41.8 for February. That was called its lowest level since 2001. That was followed in March by a drop to 39.7, it’s lowest ever.

So that pretty much wipes out this year as far as potential recovery on the commercial side and pundits are now saying it could be most of 2009 before that sector picks up.

So it’s little wonder the AIA is asking Congress to renew the Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings Tax Deduction beyond this year. That deduction amounts to $1.80 per square foot of constructed energy-efficient commercial building. The organization thinks this will provide some stimulus to the design and construction industries.

“Currently, many developers are reluctant to pursue new commercial projects because of uncertainty over whether federal tax incentives will remain in place beyond this year,” said Paul Mendelsohn, AIA vice president, Government and Community Relations. “Ensuring that the commercial buildings tax deduction remains in place for years to come will remove this worry, help provide a much needed jolt to the economy and address critical environmental concerns.”

The AIA says the construction industry accounts for one-tenth of the US gross domestic product.

Ethical Efforts: As an industry, construction has had a bit of a reputation for questionable practices. Some of those less-than-desirable behaviors relate to ethics.

Now, a group of construction company CEOs are attempting to address this through a forum that will happen October 16 and 17 at the Marriott Metro Center Hotel in Washington, DC. Founding members of the  Construction Industry Ethics and Compliance Initiative (CIECI) include Austin Industries, Lane Construction, Traylor Brothers and The Walsh Group, just to name a few.

This initiative seeks to build more trust in the construction sector by making things more transparent and accountable. There is also the desire to get rid of conflicts of interest. That one ought to be challenging.

This panel of CEOs has an aggressive agenda for the two day event. It wants to identify how ethical business practices help profits, create examples of the kinds of things that are included in an ethics and compliance program, and map out ways companies can build ethics and compliance programs on a limited budget.

Attendance and membership on the forum can be set up through Dick Bednar at 202-624-2619.

Teaching Green: On another front, and another cause, more than 30 Washington DC-area builders are set to unveil what’s being billed as the “nation’s first green collar job training curriculum.”

The idea is to train current construction workers, and those enrolled in technical education, in construction methods that are sensitive to the environment. They will also learn the green building ratings systems advanced by U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

This training is going to focus on things like:

• Understanding the kinds of challenges that construction activities cause for the environment
• Understanding the life cycles of buildings and how each of those affects the environment
• Learning to identify, qualify and quantify costs associated with eco-friendly alternatives to traditional building materials and practices
• Knowing the LEED certification rating process and then applying construction practices that contribute to certification

Hopefully it will be easy for other communities to follow in these footsteps because the curriculum is endorsed by USGBC and will be used to train workers on revised LEED standards for 2009. I guess it would just be a matter of when, or if, the curriculum will be made available to others.

Geothermal power generation is on track to deliver enough power to electrify the cities of Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco and Seattle, according to the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA). There are currently 103 projects underway and that represents a 20 percent increase just since January 2008.

That’s the geothermal electrical generation picture, but geothermal has been in use to heat and cool buildings since the 1940s, and today there are more than 50,000 of these systems installed in the US every year.

I was involved with the construction of a log cabin in a remote and mountainous area a number of years ago where one of these systems was scheduled. In this instance we dug five, six-foot deep trenches, 125 feet long and four feet wide. Into the bottoms of the trenches the installer coiled a poly-type of pipe that used fused connections. Eventually the pipe ends, one incoming and one outgoing, connected to a geothermal heat pump. This heat pump used fluid to collect heat from the ground, or from the house, depending upon the season, and effectively heated and cooled the place very well. At that time energy savings estimates were at 70 percent over traditional competitors.

This project was a very expensive add-on to that home of a little over 3,000 square feet, but with a 70 percent reduction in energy bills it still had a ROI of about eight years in that climate. The equipment used in these systems today have a 25 year life expectancy and the ground loops are expected to last 50 or more years.

At the time there was another source of heat sink\rise being used - well water. As long as a well had a production capacity exceeding nine gallons a minute you could pull the well water to act as the heat sink\riser. That’s how much had to be allocated for the geothermal operation, so for a typical household with an average- sized pressure tank you’d need at least a gallon a minute more than that to furnish the household water.

For a good primer of these kinds of systems take a look at this Department of Energy site. If you have a project where you’d like to explore using one of these systems and your plumber is reluctant to take the plunge you can most often work it out so a factory rep from the maker of the heat pump will be on site to assist with technical knowledge and skill-building.