Industry professionals should engage in the development of new standards and serve on technical committees to help shape the future of plumbing and mechanical systems.
Plumbing design professionals rely on third-party product standards and qualifications to minimize design risk efficiently. Written specifications often reference product certifications.
The Water Demand Calculator has been adopted in several states and cities, including California and Seattle, and is expanding peak flow rate calculations into commercial buildings. The future looks bright as version 3.0 is in the works for commercial buildings.
In my last column, I focused on talking about how engineered plumbing systems were at a crossroads. This month, I would like to discuss some of the emerging trends in plumbing science.
While many non-plumbing design professionals think plumbing engineering isn’t particularly difficult, real-world data and the latest developments say otherwise.
In terms of civic engagement, younger generations have been voting and volunteering at higher rates than previous generations. Regardless of one’s political beliefs, I think we can all agree that politics has become a much bigger portion of daily life. Whether on social media or at our local coffee shop, we all are spending more energy talking about the bigger picture.
Almost 80% of all water consumption comes from two groups: No. 1, thermoelectric power, and No. 2, irrigation (farming). Public supply, which includes industrial buildings, commercial buildings and residences, accounts for only 10%.
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.
In creating Hunter’s Curve, the beauty of what Dr. Roy Hunter did was to take an incredibly complex problem in probability theory and make it simple — so simple, in fact, that all it required was basic arithmetic.