Environmental Conservation 697RR - ST-Retroft/Recm Existing Bldgs

Existing buildings on the UMass campus waste a tremendous amount of energy and opportunities to save energy abound. Finding those opportunities and designing solutions is the work of retrocommissioning and retrofitting. To do this work we need to analyze building operations in detail. We need an intimate understanding of the building systems on particular buildings and how they are working, how they should work, how they can be improved, eliminated or replaced. This graduate course will be organized as a mock consulting firm tasked with producing retrofit and retrocommissioning proposals for a few buildings on campus. The idea will be to gain some real world experience doing the work of inspections, diagnostic testing, energy and environmental indicators data analysis,interview building operators , and model the buildings. The University's Energy Engineer, Jason Burbank, will provide guidance and assistance throughout the course. The group will produce final proposals for retrofitting and retrocommissioning including energy and financial analyses that may include simple changes or significant investments in major changes to the buildings. The proposals will be offered for the consideration of the College of Natural Sciences and the Facilities Planning Department.

PreReq:BCT 597G or ArchDes 520 First Meeting for organizational purposes will be on Wednesday September 4th, 2013 in room 105 Holsworth at 4:40pm- 5:30pm.