IAQ Testing Outside of Schools?

Wow, I am really baffled because for the last 4 years my Indoor Air Quality testing machine sat in my office collecting dust! What we thought was a great idea turned out to be a $15,000 bad investment. Why, because no one wanted to know that they had poor IAQ simply since once they knew they would have to do something about it.
In many states 90% of the schools were built before 1978 and 20% before 1950! Forget energy efficiency, what about IAQ and its direct impact on test scores?
Hard to believe we, the EPA, are testing the air outside of hundreds of schools in 22 states and do not care what the kids are breathing inside! The news just gets worse every day and as I write out my income tax check it is with disbelief that we have come this far.

School Budget Help

Need help stretching your schools budget? Do you have too few dollars for programs and teachers due to rising costs and falling revenues? Would you like to increase test scores, improve efficiency while fixing ailing infrastructure and creating a healthier environment? Consider Performance Contracting as a solution to our delima.
Several Energy Services Company’s (ESCO), will develop projects that don't require any upfront capital money. Companies such as Trane, Siemens, or JCI facilitate securing financing that gets repaid for through the captured energy savings over time. The savings in energy are guaranteed by these fortune 500 companies. If the savings are less, the ESCO pays the shortfall. In other words, instead of continuing to pay your electric utility the same amount that you pay them today, through energy efficiency, you pay the utility less money but use those savings to pay the bank for the financing.
It is a budget neutral or slightly positive impact for your schoole while you modernize and make buildings more efficient, reduce carbon footprint, and don't increase taxes to pay for it.

Energy Efficiency: What is taking so long?

Few people know that the average commercial or municipal building uses about 50% of its energy on lighting, 30% on Heating Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) with the remaining 20% going to plug loads such as computers, printers, shredders, etc. The best way to make an existing building “A Green Building” (see USGBC) is through a comprehensive energy efficiency project that addresses everything from Building Automation to water and sewer usage. Unfortunately this is not the route most buildings experience and the reason is simple, money.
Lighting is cheap, quick, and relatively painless so far as renovation and upgrade go. Utility incentives typically drive lighting contractors to convince cash strapped owners to upgrade their lighting without considering the big picture. Lighting technology efficiency improves enough every 7 – 10 years to make upgrading viable. (see electronic ballast) Many uninformed owners jump at this seemingly no brainer and fail to capitalize on the larger opportunity a comprehensive program would deliver. Once the lighting is done installing water conservation, automatic temperature controls (aka ATC), occupancy sensors (these are sometimes done with lighting upgrades but in those cases they lack a tie in to the building automation system. (aka BAS) and other common energy conservation measures (ECM) becomes less of a financial boon so many owners do not do it.
Most work contracted today is arranged through a budgeting/bonding phase then development of Plans and Specifications followed by a bidding process. As you might imagine none of this happens quickly, think in terms of years. This is how buildings and renovations have been accomplished forever and largely why we are in the mess we are today. If anyone thinks that the lowest bidder will provide the highest quality most efficient product from a lifecycle cost perspective they are seriously mistaken. More often than not we build the cheapest way and pay the highest operating costs. This of course is because the people responsible for capital budget may not even know the people concerned with the operating budget.
An excellent choice for funding a project is called Performance Contracting (PC or Energy PC). In this model an investment grade energy audit is performed to determine how much money can be saved through ECM’s. Once this is done the financing is secured, typically through commercial sources, the project is executed and the energy savings pay the monthly lease payment. There is zero out of pocket money required; the operational funds that used to be sent to the utility are now diverted to satisfy the financing and we have “Green”.
There are several reasons why PC is not used and the major one is fear. PC is different and as in most new things there have been abuses, poor delivery by weak performers, and mis-trust in the marketplace. It is time to get over it, whatever the reason and start getting things done. PC projects can get moving immediately once the Request for Proposal or Request for Qualification (RFP/RFQ) phase is completed and a company is selected, think weeks here. The investment grade audits, depending on the size of the building again weeks or months, followed by design and implementation could be accomplished now, in 2009. On the other hand we could just resurface a road or something.
PC works, pass it on!