Why does a bike stay balanced when you are moving and fall to the side when you are standing still? Anyone who has ridden a bike knows that if you keep moving you won’t fall but as soon as you come to a stop you will need to put your feet on the ground or risk tipping over.

What characteristic do solar thermal collectors, hydronic heat pumps and thermal storage tanks supplied by biomass boilers have in common?

At the recent ASPE Convention and Expo, I visited friends at the Leonard booth. I was invited to see their new electronic thermostatic mixing valves. Simply stated, it was cool. The adjustment of the hot water temperature setting was quick and easy on the basic model. The other models can connect to the building management system, or even your cell phone.

Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida on Sept. 28, carving a path of destruction through the state and killing more than 100 people. The real magnitude of Hurricane Ian’s death toll is still unknown, with media outlets reporting differing numbers as officials are still digging through debris some three weeks later.

I love design-build mechanical projects, and York Arts was one that presented many challenges. The basement level would be two large pottery classrooms with a third room isolated for the electric kilns, the first floor an art gallery and offices and the upper floor was to be classrooms and a large open space where lectures, painting classes or gatherings would be held. With such a diverse and wide-ranging load for maintaining thermal comfort, multiple zones would need to be created.

There is a battle going on in the industry when it comes to domestic water distribution systems, and it lies in how plumbing engineers size domestic water piping. System longevity, pressure drop, water age, noise and building codes will influence the approach taken in sizing a domestic water system.

In 2012, the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO), the University of Cincinnati (U of C), and the American Society of Plumbing Engineers (ASPE) began to work on a new sizing technique 80 years in the making. The main drivers were Dan Cole (IAPMO) and Steve Buchberger (U of C), and later Toju Omaghomi (U of C). As part of this effort, hundreds of thousands of data points were taken and evaluated to determine actual human behavior and plumbing fixture use in residential homes.

Motors are found everywhere in buildings, and engineers are responsible for making sure they are sized correctly and have adequate source energy to make them work. The heart of almost every HVAC, plumbing and fire protection system is the source equipment. 

One of the best things about hydronic heating systems is that it’s easy to integrate some method of domestic water heating. This combination has been used for decades in systems where a boiler was the sole heat source. It’s also possible when a heat pump serves as the heat source.

I am often asked, “How do you remove the stranglehold that the union has on the Uniform Plumbing Code and Uniform Mechanical Code?” My answer is always the same — you outvote them at the Annual Conference at the end of the code change cycle.