INTELLIGENT WORKPLACE: PRODUCTIVITY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION
A comfortable work environment increases employee productivity, says Volker Hartkopf, director of the Center for Building Performance and Design. In a $4 million, 7,000-square-foot living laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Hartkopf and a team of architects and engineers have created an "intelligent workplace" prototype. A consortium including technology companies like Johnson Controls and Siemens, other corporations like Bank of America, and the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation is backing the project. Environmental controls which the center developed with Johnson Controls are installed on each desk, letting a worker cool or heat the area as needed. When the desk is unoccupied, the system automatically shuts down. The controls also let a worker shift the position of lighting or breathe fresh air through individual vents. "Particularly in view of the Kyoto agreements to reduce energy consumption, this is of interest to the entire world," says the US Environmental Protection Agency's John Chamberlain, a member of the center's board. A new building designed with energy efficiency principles, though initially more costly, could reap as much as a 30-percent energy savings over a conventional building, says the center's associate director Steven Lee. Yet businesses are apparently more willing to spend on information technologies, says Hartkopf, than on the buildings accommodating the people using them. The personal environmental control system costs from $900 to $1,400 a unit excluding installation. To convince budget-conscious administrators that comfortable environments improve productivity, the center is consolidating results of a study on the personal environment system with other studies. [For more information, visit http://www.arc.cmu.edu/cbpd/absic.html.] - The New York Times, 15 Feb 98, sec 3, p 11, by Lisa Napoli.

LOOSE-FILL INSULATION FROM RECYCLED CARPET
Between customers at the Philco, Illinois plumbing supply store where he works, Tom Deem thought a lot about the roughly four billion pounds of old carpeting sent to landfills each year. In 1993 he came up with the idea of turning old carpeting into loose-fill insulation for attic applications and now has a patent pending on his recycled carpet insulation. In a thermal test, the stuff achieved a respectable R-3.3 per inch. Deem plans to package the insulation into 40-pound bags, each of which will cover roughly 19 square feet at a rating of R-38. He expects the retail price to be $3.50 per bag, considerably less than cellulose and loose-fill fiberglass for comparable insulation value and area coverage. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is now testing Deem's insulation for fire safety and Deem hopes to begin selling his recycled carpet insulation by June. For more information, email Tom Deem, Recycled Carpet Technologies, Inc., rct100@aol.com. - Environmental Building News, Jan 98, p 6.

OCCUPANCY SENSORS NOW MORE RELIABLE
Motion sensors that turn lighting and HVAC off in unoccupied rooms have become common energy conservation tools. Recent improvements in occupancy sensors made by MyTech, Watt Stopper, and Sensor Switch are overcoming a number of difficulties that have limited their use. To eliminate false "offs" caused by failure to detect small movements, newer models sense occupancy with dual technologies - infrared sensors combined with either ultrasonic or audible sensors. To correct false "ons" caused by gusts from windows and air diffusers, installing technicians can now fine-tune sensitivity to nearby air movement and to the magnitude and location of triggering motion. One model automatically adjusts itself to changes in room layout using an adaptive computer chip that learns occupancy patterns. Some sensors allow a technician to interrogate them without a ladder. Standing near the unit, a technician uses hand motions to ask the sensor to reveal its settings through coded flashes of its LED indicator light. - Architectural Record, 02.98, p 208, by Lindsay Audin.

SAN JOSE CONTROLS SEDIMENT RUNOFF
Construction excavation and grading operations that mound earth above curbs and scrape away vegetation make the soil vulnerable to erosion during the rainy season. A construction site can produce 10 to 20 times as much sediment as a farm of equal size. Carried by storm water to waterways, sediment can choke fish by clogging their gills and reduce the sunlight needed by tiny aquatic plants. On construction sites larger than five acres, Federal and state regulations require contractors to prepare and carry out a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan to reduce pollutants in stormwater discharges from construction activities. Federal regulations also require cities like San Jose, California to develop and implement stormwater pollutant controls. San Jose requires contractors developing construction sites less than five acres to use erosion control practices and requires an acceptable erosion plan before approving a grading permit. Contractors can prevent sediment from entering storm drains at construction sites by using hillside erosion controls like hydroseeding with straw mulch, erosion control blankets, and V-ditches for channeling water away from slopes. Sedimentation ponds can serve as a secondary measure to collect runoff. [Friends of the San Francisco Estuary offer an Erosion and Sediment Control Field Manual ($25) and Guidelines for Preparing a Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan ($2), call 510.286.0924.] - San Jose and Silicon Valley Business Journal, 16-22 Feb 98, p 5A, by Tamara Gilbert.

DEVELOPERS PAY ANTI-SPRAWL FEES
Lancaster, a California city about 60 miles north of Los Angeles, is now getting national attention for the innovative anti-sprawl fee system it adopted in 1993. The city's Urban Structure Program encourages concentrated growth by levying higher charges for new development located outside core service areas. The program has gone into place smoothly, says USP coordinator David Ledbetter, because the city based the system's fees on rigorous analysis and involved developers and others affected by the fees in planning the program. For more information, call David Ledbetter, 805.723.6000. - Planning Commissioners Journal, Winter 98, p 10, by Dean L. Pierce.

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