October 2008 Product Solutions

Glass replacement

Sheffield Plastics Inc. MAKROLON 15 Polycarbonate Sheet, a glass-replacement product, offers exceptional weather ability with increased protection against tough environmental conditions and long-term UV exposure. It is lighter than glass and features insulation properties, making it a practical and cost-effective solution. It ensures product endurance with a 15-year limited warranty covering breakage, yellowing and coating integrity.

Circle 152 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Athletic equipment

Future Pro. The Easy-Up Youth Goal allows students to play basketball from the official 10-foot height to lower levels for younger students. The backboard goal combination can be installed by one person over any style or make of goal and backboard. No tools are required. Schools can choose a goal that is fixed at 8 feet, 8.5 feet or 9 feet in height, or an adjustable goal that raises and lowers from 6.5 feet to 9 feet. All goals have a 48-inch by 32-inch graphite backboard with a lifetime limited warranty.

Circle 153 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Online procurement

Interflex. Focused on K-12 school food service, BidAdvantage for Schools is an online competitive-bid system that streamlines the bid process and communications among food manufacturers, distributors and brokers. Schools can tabulate vendor quotes easily and award food-service bids, while meeting governmental regulations and eliminating time-consuming paperwork.

Circle 154 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Sustainable lighting

Litecontrol. Litecontrol offers lighting systems to address the qualitative visual needs of students and teachers while minimizing the impact on the environment. The SAE 7700 and the Radi-X fixture provide efficiency and comfort for sustainable classroom lighting. The SAE 7700 complements the existing SAE 9700 and 9800 fixture families with its highly efficient optics and open steel baffle design. The Radi-X uses LiteCycle resin, a new baffle material to maximize visual comfort for students and teachers.

Circle 155 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Bus tracking

Seon Design Inc. vMax with Tracking is a simple, reliable and cost-effective solution to the operational and financial challenges facing transportation managers in education institutions. User-friendly software displays the exact location of buses on a map, including the street name and time. The maps are displayed on a separate screen apart from the multiple-view camera channel window, allowing the user to view larger images of the maps. On video playback, these dual screens are synchronized completely.

Circle 156 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Steel curtainwall

Technical Glass Products. SteelBuilt Curtainwall Systems allow larger areas of glass, smaller frame profiles and wider free-spans than is possible with aluminum framing. The Infinity Series takes design flexibility even further with back mullions of almost any profile, including I-, T-, U and L-shapes, and can use almost any type of framing member as a back mullion, from stainless steel to glulam beams.

Circle 157 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Table edging

PS Furniture/Palmer Snyder. MAXX Edge is not a separate component, such as traditional vinyl “T” edging or metal edging. Rather, it bonds to and becomes part of the tabletop. Because it eliminates gaps, the end result is no space for food particles or other bacterial substrates to collect, making for a more hygienic table.

Circle 158 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Volume control

FSR. The IT-VCM is a stereo or mono line level volume control module that accepts a balanced or unbalanced stereo audio line level source and provides a balanced stereo output. The module responds to RS-232 commands and manual controls including volume up/down ramping, audio levels and more. Additional IT-VCM modules can be daisy-chained to control multiple sources.

Circle 159 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Curb appeal

Aluminum composite material panels add aesthetic element to high school addition

The Metal Initiative. Until recently, the 22-acre campus of Mamaroneck High School, near New York City, consisted of the original 1926 building and a former junior high school situated about one-quarter mile away. The newest addition, a 28,000-square-foot, three-story facility, serves as a unifying element for what had been a highly segmented school complex for about 1,300 students.

About 10,000 square feet of 4mm Hartford green aluminum composite material (ACM) panels shaped as exterior stepped barrel cornice pieces and aluminum column covers contribute to the addition's curb appeal. The building projects straight stepped barrel cornice pieces, as well as a large, curved stepped barrel cornice with exacting radius conditions. The cornice measures 35 feet long by 30 inches high and has a 50-foot radius.

In selecting ACM panels for the cornices and column covers, Brian Snyder, project architect and senior associate at The Geddis Partnership, said the material offered more design flexibility and color options than glass fiber-reinforced concrete and other materials evaluated for the project. “We were working with a curved roof and needed a material that would lend itself to a curved profile,” says Snyder. “ACMs are exceptionally versatile. They can be pattern-cut and rolled into any shape.”
Circle 160 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Planning a payback

Heat mirror insulating glass saves high school 40 percent in annual energy costs

Southwall Technologies, Inc. Manheim Township High School, Lancaster, Pa., which consists of renovated and newly constructed buildings totaling 40,100 square feet, is expected to qualify for LEED silver certification, in part because of its extensive use of suspended-film insulating glass.

By using suspended-film insulating glass, project engineers were able to specify a smaller HVAC system, which provided considerable cost savings. Specifying suspended-film insulating glass cost the school about three times that of generic low-e glass, but saved 40 percent in annual energy costs. The payback is 11.5 years. Factoring in a $90,000 savings by being able to specify a smaller HVAC system reduces the payback to 6.5 years.

The thermal and solar shading performance of suspended-film insulating glass enables glazing solutions that can achieve up to 21 LEED credits, or 54 percent and 40 percent of the total required credits for gold and platinum certification, respectively.

Circle 161 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Time crunch

Solvent cement joining system for plumbing in new residence halls saves labor costs and keeps project on schedule

Lubrizol Advanced Materials. To accommodate a projected 3,900 additional students, The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, part of a five-campus system, launched a massive project to construct six new residence halls in less than eight months.

Each of the six buildings houses 239 bathrooms — a total of 1,434. The plumbing portion of the project alone was estimated at $11 million, and between 80 and 100 union plumbers were required on the job site working together to meet the tight completion deadlines. The contractors assigned to the job knew that copper pipe was not an option because it requires more time and labor for installation.

The plumbers used Corzan CPVC pipe and fittings for the mains and risers in 2½-inch, 3-inch and 4-inch sizes. FlowGuard Gold CPVC pipe and fittings were used for the branch lines leading to the individual residence hall rooms. The labor savings realized by using Corzan and FlowGuard Gold CPVC pipe and fittings resulted primarily from the solvent cement joining system, which eliminates the need for soldering. Installation and cleanup are fast and easy.

Additionally, FlowGuard Gold and Corzan CPVC pipe provide superior thermal properties, translating into improved energy efficiency and less condensation. Both also provide a quieter plumbing system. Equally important, neither FlowGuard Gold nor Corzan CPVC pipe will pit, scale or corrode. This minimizes maintenance concerns, increases system service life, and enhances performance reliability.

Circle 162 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu

Efficient operations

Equipment upgrades and conservation strategies result in million-dollar savings.

Johnson Controls. The Oklahoma State University (OSU) Center for Veterinary Health Sciences (CVHS), Stillwater, sought ways to optimize energy use and decrease its monthly energy spending. It worked with Johnson Controls to assess facility conditions and identify areas that could operate more efficiently.

The university used capital-planning management software to maintain data and forecast long-term spending. The result was a 20-year performance contract, which enabled OSU to fund the facility upgrades with the expected energy savings they would experience over the course of the contract that amounted to more than $9 million.

Facility improvements included replacing inefficient heating and air-conditioning units, installing occupancy sensors and high-efficiency windows, and retrofitting plumbing equipment to optimize water use. Based on a utility bill comparison, the project already has delivered more than $154,000 in operational savings during the installation period.

“Even before we had all of our systems operational, we could see our utility bills decreasing,” says Michael Lorenz, dean of the CVHS.

In less than two years, the amount of energy saved by the project equaled what would be consumed by 175 single-family homes. The amount of water conserved could fill 18 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Circle 163 for more information at freeproductinfo.net/asu