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Wednesday
30th January The
course assembled to attend a meeting with Prof. Clarke, for him to explain
Part B of the course. After his explanation of the course we were
introduced to the potential project supervisors, where each described
their project briefs that they had to offer the class. Dr.A.Grant
Dr.P.Strachan
Dr.S.Jovanovic
Prof.Clarke
C.Mclean
The
class was then asked to sort themselves out into groups of students who
wished to do a specific project title, and relay the group members’
names to Prof.Clarke, before the end of the week. After many debates
amongst classmates the groups started to form up, and groups took some of
the projects up. |
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About 11 people were undecided about the project to take and eventually after speaking to some of the project supervisors about the projects in detail, we decided on our team members. We were group F, and our subject was Sustainable Building Design, and our project supervisor was Dr. Paul Strachan. Group F
Our first meeting with Dr. Paul Strachan was arranged and a brief discussion on project directions. Dr. Paul Strachan invited Christoph Morbitser of HLM Design Ltd - Riverside House, 260 Clyde Street, Glasgow G1 4JH, to attend so we could get some idea of ongoing projects that might form a suitable case study. Unfortunately Christoph could not attend the meeting due to business commitments and therefore Dr.Strachan decided to arrange a meeting with Mr. Jim Webster of HLM Design. This meeting was also a chance to speak to him about sustainability from an architectural point of view. After our meeting we all decided to task ourselves about researching the library and Internet about this subject. The team decided to meet also every day to discuss our finding, so that we had ample information to meet with Dr. Paul Strachan with, and to give some indication of our project direction. We
decided to meet with Dr. Paul Strachan routinely on Wednesday mornings, to
discuss our progress, in M329 between 10:00hrs and 11:00hrs as this suited
our supervisors lecturing schedule and Scott Martin of the group, because
he was out with our course and did not interfere with his classes, as he
was a part-time student. Prof. Joe Clarke emailed the project group about the Friday Crits, which started on the 9th February with the first 3 groups presenting. He also emailed the project groups so we were all clear on who was doing what. The groups presenting are shown below. A.
Green Islands Project
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Due to Scott being unavailable because of his work commitments, we decided to meet on Tuesday evenings around 6 o’clock to discuss our findings. Wednesday 13th February Our meeting with Dr.Strachan was to discuss and understand sustainability and its dimensions, these being Social, Economical and Environmental and to explore these factors. We also wished to analyse the mechanics of sustainability within different disciplines and to investigate some of the work done so far in sustainable building technologies. Course field trip to BRE Scottish laboratories in East Kilbride where we were shown the solar energy test cells which form part of a European-wide research programme, and the variety of uses to which they are adapted, followed by a brief presentation by Mr. Paul Baker on the test cell programme. Friday 15th February The groups’ first crit presentation was based on the work which had been investigated so far, with the reasons why the project was chosen, what our group planned to deliver in the project, along with a proposed project schedule. As these were the first presentations, the Crit Panel was very easy on all the groups presenting, assuring that the crits from then on would not be in our favour.
The groups presenting are shown below: D.
Internet Energy Services |
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The group decided to set up a Hotmail account to be able to send and store information and that everyone could access, use and communicate information through. We decided to investigate sustainability within building design further and to look at some of the work done so far on this subject. We were interested in how sustainability was measured and started to look at quantifiable methods that were being used, both simple and multi-dimensional measuring techniques. The group centred on Life Cycle Analysis and we approached Dr. Paul Strachan with our suggestions. Also, Dr. Paul Strachan put us in contact with Dr. Stephane Citherlet who had written part his thesis on Life Cycle Analysis. Friday 22nd February Some of the group met up with Dr.Citherlet and discussed LCA and possible project avenues to follow. The
first three groups had to present on front of the class and the Crit
Panel. |
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The groups meeting with Dr.Citherlet was very positive and we decided to go down the route of Life Cycle Analysis. We discussed our proposals of looking at life cycle analysis of a building and our thoughts on attempting a method of optimising the life cycle analysis procedure. The feedback we got from Dr. Stephane Citherlet was that this seemed a good idea, however it may be difficult in practice and the results obtained from such a study would probably incorporate some personal bias. The reason for this is that impact (weighting) factors would need to be assigned with different assessment methods, which may be subjective and would have to be decided by the group. This in turn would make the scientific evidence, obtained from the study, less credible. One theme that came out of the conversation was that there have been many case studies carried out on the life cycle analysis of the building materials used in building design, as the major energy input into the design of a building comes in the form of the embodied energy of the materials. However very little work has been done on the life cycle analysis of such things as the luminaries, cabling, boiler and heating system design, etc. This is something that we feel may be of benefit to us as this is innovative and may bring something new to the area of Sustainable Building Design. Wednesday 27th February 02 Our meeting with Dr. Paul Strachan on the morning was very productive. He was glad that the meeting with Dr. Stephane Citherlet was positive and that the idea of looking at the HVAC, luminaries etc life cycle analysis was a good project direction to go, as these are just as important as the building materials given their often higher rate of replacement. He also stressed that it might be difficult to obtain the data we required but at least we should be able to estimate the importance of such "operational" components and work out a method for analysing their LCA. George makes a trip to see Mr. Jim Webster at HLM about a possible case study, a Glasgow school. The
course field trip this week was to The Lighthouse in Glasgow’s city
centre, where the university’s ESRU department had previously aided and
worked with the designers of the building as part of their contribution to
the 1999 Glasgow -City of Architecture. This visit was centred on the
viewing platform at the top of the building, which gives impressive views
of Glasgow’s city centre. We were accompanied by Prof. Joe Clarke and he
explained the systems incorporated into the building and the viewing
platform. The platform is heated and lit by renewable resources as an
ongoing experiment with the ESRU. The southern external façade
incorporates PV panels and there are some ducted wind turbines on one of
the roofs with further PV panel on the turbine baffles. After the visit we
were given an insight to the work the PhD students and the research staff
within the ESRU were currently involved in. Friday 1st March 02 The
group has its 2nd presentation in front of the Crit Panel.
After the crit the panel questioned us and suggested that the presentation
and everyone’s skills had to improve. |
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Tuesday 5th March 02 The group decided on a work scope to follow, looking at Life Cycle Analysis, the ISO standards and the structure that the standards follow and reviewing them as we went through the process. The literature review continues through the vast amount of data published on the Internet, from independent, academic and governmental sources. Angelos volunteered for the job of constructing the groups website, and begins to look deeper into the website design, format, content and information required to complete the website. Wednesday 6th March 02 The groups meeting with Dr.Strachan goes well as we show him our progress and how we will put focus on the project. Course field trip to Shettleston, accompanied by Lori McElroy, to see a working heat pump, supplying 18 homes with heating and hot water, from an underground storage area over 100m below the surface, utilising a flooded mine shaft. The architect John Gilbert explained the workings and initial implementation of the heat pump and the use of recycled building materials with the residents’ homes. Thursday 7Th March 02 George
is asked by Mr. Jim Webster to go to the offices of HLM to pick up
drawings of a school building take might be used as our case study. Friday 8th March 02 The first three groups make
their 3rd presentation |
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Tuesday 12th March 02 George,
Angelos and Asterios have a meeting with Mr. Jim Webster from HLM Design
about Life Cycle Analysis and how it we should use it for our project. Wednesday 13th March 02 Our meeting with Dr. P. Strachan in the morning goes reasonably well; with Dr. Strachan stressing that time was becoming short. Course field trip to The Time Capsule accompanied by Dr. Nick Kelly at view the CHP plant within the leisure centre. The resident engineer Mr. Craig Hamilton took us around the centres plant room explaining the working, benefits and costs of the system installed. On the day of the field trip a new Iveco gas engine was being installed within the plant room and was ready to be commissioned. Our
project timetable was at the half way stage and the bulk of the work being
done by the group this week was reviewing previous weeks findings and
observations. From this review, work was chosen or assigned to people.
Angelos shows us how the website will look and what format the site will
take. |
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Tuesday
19th March 02 The entire group meets in M329 at 6.30 o’clock to discuss and show information, spreadsheets and an LCA article that Stephane had email to the group email account. From the drawings material information was extracted and Colin, Scott and Asterios set about hunting down material data and the calculations. Angelos assigned each member with a section of the website to complete such as project log, background information, spreadsheets and asked for everyone to supply a full CV and passport picture to go with the CV. George went to see Iain MacDonald about the Esp-r model of the school. Wednesday
20th March 02 Our meeting with Dr. P. Strachan centred on showing him new information we had retrieved and how the calculations were coming along. Course
field trip to Hagshaw Hill Wind farm in South Lanarkshire and we were
accompanied by Lori McElroy. This Wind farm is made up of 26 turbines each
producing approx 600 kW each, from the 41m diameter rotors. The Wind farm
has an output of 15.6 MW and has been operational since 1995. The engineer
showing us around the Wind farm was a student who had completed our own
course several years before and was very informative and forthcoming with
information about the plant and future developments of Wind farms through
Scotland. Thursday
21st March 02 The
group meets at George and Asterios’s flat to prepare the slides for the
next day’s crit focusing on the content and what format the presentation
should take. Friday
22nd March 02 Group Presentation – third crit Our
presentation centred on LCA and informing the panel on our approach and
our findings so far, and what difficulties we were starting to encounter.
As we expected the crit panel were not as gentle with our presentation
format and our skills at putting the information across as in the previous
crit. We took all the criticisms from the panel in a constructive manner
and we spoke to Dr. P. Strachan after the crit about the presentation
format. |
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The group this week had a lot of individual work to be completed and each member went about it, relaying all information, data and articles through the group email account ensuring every person was informed on the progress of each other. Colin spoke to an electrician about a simple electrical wiring diagram for the schoolroom, looking at what would be needed such as smoke alarm, fire alarm, lights and electrical sockets. He was also informed on the type of cables required, specifications and also cable manufacturers. This diagram was used to calculate the lengths of wiring required within the schoolroom and this information was passed on the Asterios who was tasked with the cables LCA spreadsheets and calculations. Scott continued with the calculations on the construction materials and emailed Colin with questions that had to be answered by the cable manufacturers concerning materials used, quantities, product life expectancy and if the companies had completed an LCA studies themselves. He also approached building merchants and waste disposal companies about transportation and material costs. He looked at the transport distances for doing the LCA. He went to B&Q (supermarket for building and home improvement goods) to have a look at the manufacturers addresses on some of the products that were in our building. He also did an Internet search for manufacturers and got addresses of manufacturers for several of the building materials. The transport distances for the decommissioning stage would prove slightly more difficult however and he was able to get some information on this also from waste disposal companies. George worked on the energy consumption of the schoolroom using Esp-r, but things in this camp went sour as George’s computer seriously crashed burning the motherboard and losing all data on the model. George was not happy! Angelos went on with the website and helping George by letting him use his computer so as the group would not fall behind. We
did not meet with Dr. P. Strachan on Wednesday morning to report our
progress as the group was focused on the tasks on hand and concentrated on
completing the bulk of the project background. |
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Tuesday 2nd April 02 After
looking on the Internet and professional recommendation Pirelli Cables
were picked as the preferred manufacturers because of the technical
information readily available on the Internet and they complied with all
the British Standards and fire regulations. So Colin telephoned and
emailed Mr. Alex Driver at Pirelli Cables Engineering Department, PO Box
6, Leigh Road, Eastleigh, Hants, SO50 9YE, about LCA data. This proved
very fruitful, as Mr. Driver had recently compiled a LCA study for Pirelli
on the company’s heavy power transmission cables. They spoke at length
on the company’s use of LCA and the availability of technical data. Mr
Driver relayed this conversation to Mr. Colin Reed, the Senior Application
Engineer at Pirelli Cables who asked for some time to collate some data
for the group. Wednesday
3rd April 02 The meeting with Dr. P. Strachan did not go to well as only two group members attended. Dr Strachan was not happy, as the attending members had no updates to show him on the progress of the group. Unfortunately Colin, Scott And Angelos were all in bed with the flu. The
course field trip was to Longannet Power Station in Fife, owned by
Scottish Power. This is a coal-fired power plant, which is located next to
a coalmine. This is a large station, with a power output of about 2.4 GW
(4x600 MW) on full load. The tour was excellent and included an insight
and explanation into the workings of the control room. Thursday
4th April 02 The
group meets to discuss the final presentation format, and decide to
present our project findings as our fourth crit. Friday 5th April 02 Group
presentation – fourth crit. |
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Monday 8th April 02 Colin contacted Brand Rex data cables in Glenrothes, Fife to find more information on wiring materials. The contact was a Mr. Danny Roarty, but he was not in the office so he was passed on to a Ms. Catherine Thompson. Ms. Thompson told Colin of a current on going study with the Polymer Research Centre at the University of Surrey, and it was best to speak to a Dr. Gary Stevens about LCA data. After telephoning the research centre and email was sent to Dr. Stevens and to wait for a reply. Colin received and email from Mr. Colin Reed at Pirelli who had sent all the material information that was asked for. This information was hurried off to Asterios to complete his spreadsheet on the cables LCA. Scott attempted a calculation to compare embodied energy of the cable within the room which Angelos did the inventory for, to the total energy of the building materials. Some of the materials were unknown so these were not taken into account for the calculation. He asked everyone in the group to check his calculation as the embodied energy of the cable equated to 0.035% of the total embodied energy of all the materials, which the group were concerned about. The
rest of the group continued with their assigned tasks. Wednesday
10th April 02 The group meeting with Dr. P. Strachan went very positively and productively as he saw how the group had progressed with the LCA calculations for the building materials and the cables completed. He discussed how our storyline for our final presentation should be and we scheduled a presentation rehearsal in his office for the following week, before the final crit in front of Prof. J. Clarke. Thursday
11th April 02 The group met up in M114 to assign each member of the group a section of the presentation to make up slides and notes for, also we took this time to generally review and revise our work over the past 11 weeks George’s computer is alive again and just in time, Angelos is having the same problems. George completes the energy consumption simulation. Angelos’s
computer started to crash continually, so he sent the website that he had
completed so far to the group email account for security. |
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Most
of the week was put aside for each member to finish and polish their
sections of the project with all the finished parts being sent to the
group email account for security. Each member also wrote their slides for
the final crit and emailed Scott the slides for assembly to the PowerPoint
file. Wednesday 17th April 02 Course field trip to Summerston landfill gas site accompanied by Dr. S. Jovanovic. This is waste to energy site producing 2.8 MW (3420 KVA rated) for approximately 15 years. The 3x950 kW gas powered engines consume 1700m3/hour 50% methane to maintain the capacity. The site covers 157 acres and a maximum depth of 32m. Glasgow City Council Engineers gave the class a very informative tour of the power plant and the leachate treatment site, explaining the workings and environmental considerations that are involved in such a site. Friday
19th April 02 Group presentation-our final crit The group’s final presentation in front of Prof. J. Clarke and the Crit Panel went well, but the panel made some very constructive points about our content and skills. After
the presentation George arranged to see Iain MacDonald about a graphic
rendering of the Esp-r model, so we could use it as part of our final
presentation. |
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Tuesday
23rd April 02 The
group had our arranged presentation rehearsal in front of Dr. P. Strachan
when well some good points and some bad points. Wednesday 24th April 02 Course field trip to Crauchan pumped storage hydro station accompanied by Dr.A.Grant. The 400 MW pumped storage plant at Cruachan in Argyllshire was commissioned in 1967. It involved the excavation of around 300,000 cubic yards of diorite to construct the machine hall, caverns, tunnels and shafts. Along with the schemes at Inverawe and Nat it constitutes the Loch Awe project. Cruachan is operated by Scottish Hydro-Electric (formerly the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board). The upper reservoir was formed by building a dam on Ben Cruachan and from this reservoir the water is carried down via two 5 m diameter high pressure shafts 402m long at an angle of 55º to the horizontal to a cavern 335m below where the power station is located and the power is formed. George
goes to see Iain MacDonald after the field trip to see about problems
encountered in the capture of the rendered model. Thursday
25th April 02 The
group meet in M329 to do our final presentation rehearsals, so we moved to
one of the larger lecture rooms on the 4th floor of the James
Weir Building to rehearse and to point out each others faults. The entire
afternoon was spent rehearsing and timing of the final presentation, until
we got the presentation down to the allocated time. Friday
26th April 02 The
group presentation in front of the crit panel, on the findings of the
project and how the group would present the entire project and conclusion
to Industry the following week in the University Court Senate Suite in the
Business School. Sunday
28th April 02 All
Web Site assignments to be completed and emailed to Angelos for final
editing and site construction. Thursday
2nd May 02 Final
Group presentation to industry and external examiners at the University
Court Senate Suite in the Business School. |
