ERDI Fall Conference in Vancouver
Article written by Marie Cresswell, President, TCI.
ERDI Fall Conference in Vancouver welcomed 50 Directors of Education and Superintendents and over one hundred corporate partners from thirty-five Canadian corporations to share exchange ideas and develop innovative programs, services and products for students and staff in the schools across Canada.
Gina Niccoli-Moen, Superintendent of Schools and her team kicked off the conference Wednesday, presenting a candid reflective session on the Burnaby School District’s Anti-Racism journey to date. From Board motion to student, staff, parent and community engagement, to third-party consultation and recommendations the session identified some of the Burnaby School District’s critical steps, challenges and opportunities along the way.
Conference Plenary: Plaza Ballroom
Mental Health Recovery during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring Organizational and Systems Approaches.
As we know, the mental health effects of the pandemic have identified significant mental health burdens at home and work. There is a growing need for greater mental health awareness and effective approaches to support individuals’ mental health during this critical time.
The presentation explored approaches on how we can effectively address the continued mental health needs of students and staff.
TCI and Nerva had the privilege of presenting during two eighty-minute panels to ten Directors of Education during the conference to gather constructive input from educational partners of ERDI. The response was very positive to our strategies and communications on increasing ventilation to ASHRAE standards and being aware of not over ventilating classrooms as there is an environmental implication as well as a cost implication. The biggest aha moment for both panels was the lack of measurement and accuracy of data currently available given Ontario’s investment in school improvements and HEPA filters a well as we try to determining if schools are meeting or exceeding ASHRAE. Panelists were asked two questions for homework:
How would you rate your schools and your classrooms in terms of being under or over ventilated? The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) standards recommends four air exchanges per hour (ACH)
What health and safety issues related to ventilation has your board experienced?
Most boards reported good to excellent. While others weren’t sure. The majority of boards do not have the granular data that was presented during our TCI Nerva panel on a diffuser by diffuser basis.
85% of schools are over ventilated with opportunities for energy and carbon savings and 15% are under ventilated and not meeting ASHRAE standards.
“The return on ventilation for air quality and associated cost avoidance through duct sealing has been a significant value add for our organization. Beyond the short- and long-term benefits of the work related to cleaner air in our schools, technically, I am really interested in next steps that explicitly engage our students as climate change leaders, adaptively. That is, experiential learning in the areas of energy management and conservation, as well as environmental sustainability, will provide the opportunity for student leadership and advocacy… and that is exciting for us,” says Pino Buffone, Director of Education, having completed 24 sites with duct sealing and HVAC optimization. “We look forward to saving energy and reducing our carbon footprint with this technology.”
Juan Malvestitti, Director of Sales and Marketing Nerva Energy educated panelists on ventilation and air purification, “ACH per hour, all that means is that you’re exchanging the air in this room every 15 minutes. If you have to ACH that means you’re extending it, exchanging it every 30 minutes, which obviously allows any airborne viruses to kind of propagate in the air even longer, which is something that you don’t want, you want to make sure that it’s been constantly filtered. So back to the idea of, we said, okay, as engineers, if the public sector as a whole because we do a lot of work at hospitals and municipalities, if the public sector is going to be a space that remains open during the pandemic as an essential service, how can we help to create more air volume? As engineers, you never want to assume that there’s one solution that fits all, there never is every building is extremely different from one to another age, size and quantity of systems, makeup, etcetera. So that’s where we started as we said, Okay, we want to look on not only a building by building basis, but truly an air handler by air handler basis. So if we fast forward to three years having completed over 100 schools, we went into the program sorry if you go back when we went into the program knowing that ASHRAE actually speculates in their duct design manual that every commercial ductwork system leaks between 10 and 25%.
So as a mechanical engineer, if you’re designing a system for a new building, you’re supposed to oversize that system by 10, or 25%. To compensate the air that’s going to be lost from air handler to diffuser, oftentimes being hundreds of feet of stretch to get that air from where it’s being produced over to where it’s being consumed. In each individual space. Of the 100 projects we’ve completed, the average is actually closer to 30%, as it relates specifically to schools. So just to give you an idea of, for us, one of the most important pieces is to truly quantify the air volume that you have in each classroom, because an air handler could be feeding seven different classrooms, through 120 feet of ductwork, and every classroom will have a different volume of air based on the leakage studied experience, downstream, where you can have the last classroom that has 20%. And the first one had 80%. And that’s what we’re finding, with the average being 30%.
And duct leakage is obviously not a new concept. It’s been around forever. But unfortunately, it’s above the ceiling. So, nobody thinks about it’s not something that you see the touch you feel every day. So, the awareness level around that specially pre-pandemic was huge. So, the way that we quantify air leakage on a system by system basis is quite simple. The air handler itself is rated to produce a certain amount of air, and that’s the CFM rating of the unit. CFM stands for cubic feet per minute. So, it basically tells you if you have a 15,000 CFM unit, typically it’s feeding 10 classrooms, and it’s supposed to create 15,000 CFM of air, the only way to truly quantify if you’re achieving the performance of the design of that unit is to go to every diffuser that that system supplies and to do an air volume reading itself.
Because if you look at air balancing reports, or if you look, all it’s going to tell you is that the system is balanced, but it has no way of dictating where the leakages are occurring. And that’s exactly what we did. So, we said, Okay, we have six air handlers in the school, air handler A is rated for 15, CFM, 15,000 cfm. It serves these 10,000 classrooms at 10 classrooms. Let’s go on a diffuser by diffuser basis so that we could arm you guys with the understanding of whether you’re below or above ASHRAE Standard. And now you could begin to make educated decisions because you’re working with factual data, you understand down to the defuser, how every classroom is performed. So that’s how we kind of went about it to make sure that it was backed by data and engineering, and not just the band aid solution of we’re just going to go seal everything and hope for the best. So, if you go to the next one. For us, as energy engineers, one of the biggest benefits to eliminating duct leakage is that air handlers are like an engine, right. So, if I have to work that engine harder and longer, because I have to compensate for air that has been lost, that equipment is going to die sooner, it’s going to require more maintenance, and ultimately consume more energy to achieve the end result. So as energy engineers, we see ducks as the biggest cost avoidance opportunity that you have, because that air is not supplying anything. Unless you’re looking to keep the mice more, it’s not doing anything, it’s in the ceiling, it’s in your mechanical spaces, it’s in the walls, it’s everywhere in between. So that’s one of the key components there, mitigate our air losses, make sure you’re driving more air to the classroom, because that’s where you want the air to be.
And obviously, climate change is becoming more and more relevant with the carbon tax with the way energy prices are rising. And just generally as a, as a social topic, the more gas you consume, the more carbon you’re producing. It’s as simple as that. So, if you’re producing sorry, if you’re consuming 30% more gas than you have to because you’re wasting it, then you’re wasting 30% of your carbon footprint. And eventually, you will have carbon benchmarks that you need to meet. So, there’s an excellent opportunity as well to make sure that your GHG reduction is there, if you want to go to the next one.
As engineers, we actually came across this technology we’re working at a hospital hospitals are probably one of the most air intensive environments because they have to achieve 16 to 20 air changes per hour because of the nature of what they’re supplying and their constant volume systems 24/7. As I said, we know we have duct leakage. But we can’t start tearing walls and ceilings down because we have critical areas of the hospital where we would have to shut down the hospital. It’s just not doable. That’s where the CEO of Nerva, seven years ago found this technology that’s actually been around for 20 years out of Ohio, originally developed at the Lawrence Berkeley Institute in California.
And when he came across it, he was in shock, because as an energy engineer, he had never really come across it. And the whole idea is that it mitigates having to tear down walls, having to go into the ceiling and having to manually seal which is quite impossible because an accessibility B, you’re literally taping or mastic around that which typically parts of the ductwork are not accessible. So, it’s not something that you could do easily. So, we all know, obviously, the challenges with trying to seal the ducts through a conventional method. It’s not practical, it’s costly, and there’s really no guarantees. So that’s kind of where this aerosolized duct sealing technology comes in. It’s called aero seal. Again, it’s been in the market for 20 years, and it seals ductwork from the inside. So, there’s a completely automated software driven machine that connects into your ductwork stream, it pressurizes, the ductwork through force of air, and then it releases the sealant. In order to find pressure differentials. If there’s a pressure differential, that means there’s a leak. So, it finds those leaks, and it scabs them over in order to make that duct airtight, it could see all things that are as fine as a Human Fall call all the way up to five eighths of an inch. That’s the maximum capacity for sealing that it has before it’s compromised. And its capacity to expand and contract, which as we all know that word does, right. If you go to the next one, one of the most fascinating parts, which was a great endorsement that just happened about 14 months ago, is the technology was backed both publicly and financially by Breakthrough Energy ventures.
It’s about 12 Different leading philanthropists with Bill Gates as the chair. And they’ve endorsed this as one of the most sort of market changing technologies because of its application for any kind of building, and a problem that is found in every building. So as far as being able to mitigate carbon, which is what they’re all about climate change. They’ve come on the record to say that this is one of their 12, they only have 12 technologies. So it was quite impressive to see them go through that process. So I’ll fill you guys in a little bit as to our process, because then we kind of understand the problem, we understand the solution. But we want you guys to get a better idea of how we work through your schools. It’s a four-phase process. And the first thing we do is we want to make sure that you receive a completely rehabilitated system. It’s not just about sealing the ductwork, it’s about making sure that we’re able to leave you with your air handler performing as close to his design as possible. And then more importantly, with all of the granular data that you need to support how you’re performing on a classroom by classroom basis.
Friday Evening Celebratory Dinner is always a classy formal evening and exquisite dinner with ERDI friends and an excellent way to close out the conference. Student from the West Vancouver School District band opened up the evening with several songs performed by the students which set the tone for an upbeat celebratory evening.
ERDI recognized five Directors that had recently retired that evening: Larry Hope, Director of Trillium Lakeland District School Board and current Education Advisor for TCI. Stuart Miller, Halton District School Board, Denis Andre, Retired Director of Education, Ottawa Catholic District School Board. Louise Sirisko, Director of Education, York Region District School Board and Bill Gartland, Program Director, Ontario Catholic Supervisory Officers Association.
Stuart Miller, AudioEnhancement
Stuart referenced The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide—about one-third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, At the time, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain. Citizens were ordered to wear masks, schools, theaters and businesses were shuttered and bodies piled up in makeshift morgues before the virus ended its deadly global march. Very little information was recorded in history how Educators handled the Spanish Flu.
“With Covid we will see a lot more information transcribed as Educators across Canada provided additional health and safety measures, online learning and so much more to engage learners during the pandemic not to mention valued services and measures to maintain comfort and performance,” says Stuart Miller, Retired Director Halton District School Board.
Larry Hope, Larry Hope Consulting
“ERDI has been among the best professional development opportunities of my career. It’s the place I’ve come across some of the best innovations and programs for staff and students. ERDI is where I’ve developed some of my most valued and trusted professional relationships with both education and corporate partners”, says Larry Hope, retired Director of Trillium Lakeland District School Board and current Education Advisor for TCI.
Conference attendees enjoyed Stanley Park and Granville Island to name a few of the beautiful tourist attractions within reach.