Good Day Tools develops the Clog Popper and announces a video contest to promote it

Good Day Tools has developed a new tool called the Clog Popper to clear clogged air conditioning and refrigeration condensate drain lines. With the hand-operated device, which works much like a plunger, you insert the Clog Popper into the pipe to be cleared and then quickly pull it out with a pull of the hand. This creates a vacuum in front of the clog, and the pressure differential forces the clog out and allows water to run freely out the pipe. The device is designed for ¾” schedule 40 PVC pipe, a standard size in air conditioners, but it adjusts to fit other sizes. The optional accessory pack comes with fittings, adapters, and plugs that allow the Clog Popper to work with virtually all configurations and sizes of condensate drain lines.

Based in Cincinnati, OH, Good Day Tools is a startup company that develops and markets products that help HVAC technicians and mechanical contractors do their job better. They made their name with the Draft Simulator, a hand-held instrument invented by co-owners Rich McFarland and Gene Warren that can calibrate and test pressure switches in induced-draft furnaces and many other applications. (See Progressive Engineer's profile on Rich McFarland at http://www.progressiveengineer.com/profiles/richMcFarland.htm.) For more information, visit www.GoodDayTools.com.

To promote the new tool, Good Day Tools and HVACR-Tools.com announce their sponsorship of the 2013 Clog Popper Video Contest. They are offering a $2500 cash prize and $500 gift certificate for HVACR-Tools.com to the person that uploads the best video onto the Internet about the new Clog Popper product. "We want to show the effectiveness and simplicity of this innovative new device, and we thought a video contest would be a fun way to go," says Matt McFarland, co-owner of Good Day Tools.

The contest will run May 1 through September 1, and the winner will be announced within 30 days after that. Limited to two minutes in length, the videos should inform viewers on how the Clog Popper clears air conditioning and refrigeration condensate drains and make them want to learn more about the device. The winner will be determined based on overall artistic merit of the video as well as creativity, information quality, and humor. To enter the contest, entrants should visit www.clog-popper.com/video-contest and complete the entry form online. No purchase is necessary to enter the contest.

Arup hires Janine Witko and strengthens its water business in the Americas

Arup, a multidisciplinary engineering and consulting firm, recently announced that it has hired Janine Witko, P.E. as Arup’s water business leader in the Americas region, to be located in the New York City office. Under Janine’s leadership, Arup will refocus its strategic efforts on building its water business in the Americas. Arup’s commitment towards climate change adaptation is manifested by pursuing projects focused on water supply quantity and quality treatment issues, wastewater/CSO planning, and design and asset management. While Arup’s water business services are applied to a wide range of projects throughout the world, Janine will be responsible for further developing these services and growing its client base in the Americas.

With 30 years of professional experience, Janine joins Arup from Halcrow, where she served as vice president and North American water director. Her knowledge and leadership have influenced notable projects for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and United Water. A registered professional engineer in New York, Janine received a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s degree in environmental engineering from Manhattan College.

Arup’s global water team includes civil engineers, hydrologists, hydrogeologists, geotechnical specialists, ecologists, environmental scientists, rivers and coastal scientists and geomorphologists. Its water business in the Americas has experienced steady growth over the last five years and has been involved in projects such as Lake Mead, a deep-water intake to preserve the water supply to Las Vegas, in Arizona; Bay View Hunters Point, a sustainable infrastructure development, in San Francisco; and the East River Water Front Esplanade, a rejuvenation of a waterfront park in New York.

Founded in 1946, Arup opened its first U.S. office 25 years ago and now employs 1,000 in the Americas. For more information, visit www.arup.com.

Green building consultant Jerry Yudelson's Top Ten MegaTrends for 2013

Green building and sustainability consultant Jerry Yudelson has released his annual list of “Top 10 MegaTrends” for the green building industry. Yudelson says, “It looks like a good year ahead for the green building industry. Based on our experience, it seems clear that green building will continue its rapid expansion globally in 2013 in spite of the ongoing economic slowdown in most countries of Europe and North America. More people are building green each year, with 50,000 LEED projects underway by the latest counts; there is nothing on the horizon that will stop this mega-trend or its constituent elements.”

Yudelson’s “Top Ten Green Building MegaTrends” for 2013 include:

1.    Green building in North America will rebound strongly in 2013, in terms of LEED project registrations. Yudelson says, “Even with commercial and governmental projects proceeding at a lower level, there should be faster growth in green retrofits, with surging college and university projects, along with NGO activity.”

2.    The focus of the green building industry will continue its switch from new building design and construction to greening existing buildings. The fastest growing LEED rating system the past three years has been LEED for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance (LEED O+M), with cumulative floor area in these certified projects now greater than in new construction. 

3.    Green Buildings will increasingly be managed in the “cloud,” represented by the large number of new entrants and new products in fields of building automation, facility management, wireless controls, and building services information management in 2011 and 2012. Yudelson says, “2013 could well become 'The Year of the Cloud' for how quickly this trend will manifest.”

4.    Awareness of the coming crisis in fresh water supply, both globally and in the United States, will increase. Leading building designers, owners, and managers will be moved to take further steps to reduce water consumption in buildings by using more conserving fixtures, rainwater recovery systems, and innovative new onsite water technologies.

5.    The global green building movement will continue to accelerate, as more countries begin to create their own green building incentives and developing their own green building councils. Nearly 90 countries with incipient or established green building organizations, on all continents, will drive considerable global green building growth in 2013. At the end of 2012, 40 percent of all LEED-registered projects were located outside the United States. LEED projects are now being pursued in more than 130 countries, with LEED’s Alternative Compliance Path serving to facilitate the process.

6.    Zero-net-energy buildings will become increasingly commonplace, in both residential and commercial sectors, as LEED and ENERGY STAR certifications and labels have become too commonplace to confer competitive advantage among building owners. Developers of speculative commercial buildings will also begin to showcase zero-net-energy designs to gain marketplace advantages.

7.    Green Building Performance Disclosure will be the fastest emerging trend, highlighted by new carbon reductions requirements in California (AB 32), the City of Seattle, and many other jurisdictions. Commercial building owners will have to disclose actual green building performance to all new tenants and buyers and, in some places, to the public at large.

8.    Transparency and “Red List” chemicals will become increasingly a subject of contention, as manifested through such tools as the new Health Product Declaration and the inclusion of points for avoiding certain chemicals contained in LEEDv4, currently scheduled for release in June 2013. Environmental and Health Product Declarations will begin to appear in large numbers in the next two to three years, as building product manufacturers increasingly try to gain or maintain market share based on open disclosure of chemical ingredients.

9.    Local and state governments will step up their mandates for green buildings for both themselves and the private sector. There should be at least 20 new cities of significant size with commercial sector green building mandates, mostly in the “blue” states. The desire to reduce carbon emissions by going green will lead more government agencies, universities, hospitals, and corporate owners to require green buildings from design and construction teams.

10.    Solar power use in buildings will continue to grow, given the prospect of increasing focus on implementing aggressive state-level renewable power standards (RPS) for 2020 and the move toward zero-net-energy buildings. As before, third-party financing partnerships will continue to grow and provide capital for large rooftop systems on warehouses and retail stores, as well as on homes.

Jerry Yudelson is founder and lead consultant of Yudelson Associates, an international sustainability and green building consultancy in Tucson, AZ. A LEED Fellow, Yudelson, has authored 13 green building books and chaired the country’s largest annual green building conference, Greenbuild, for six years. For more information, visit www.greenbuildconsult.com.

Institute of Transportation Engineers honors Baxter & Woodman engineer Ralph Tompkins

Baxter & Woodman Consulting Engineers announces that Ralph Tompkins, P.E., F-ITE, has received the Life Member Certificate from the Institute of Transportation Engineers. Tompkins has been an active ITE member for more than 25 years. The Institute of Transportation Engineers is an international educational and scientific association of transportation professionals responsible for meeting mobility and safety needs. ITE promotes professional development of its members, supports and encourages education, stimulates research, develops public awareness programs, and serves as a conduit for the exchange of professional information. 

Tompkins has 41 years of experience in the engineering industry, 28 with the City of DeKalb, Illinois Public Works Department culminating in his appointment as Public Works/City Engineer. Tompkins' most notable accomplishments include development of a state-of-the-art Geographic Information System, development of the DeKalb Taylor Municipal Airport into one of the leading general aviation airports in the state, development and implementation of the annual five-year capital improvement plan, and establishment of the engineering division of the public works department of the City of DeKalb.

Baxter & Woodman is an employee-owned design firm that provides planning, design, construction, and technology services for water, wastewater, stormwater, and transportation facilities for municipalities, counties, and state agencies. Environmental, geographic information systems (GIS), water and wastewater operations, and advanced technology needs complement the firm's civil engineering expertise. Clients are served from nine regional offices in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.

GAI Consultants honored for traffic study in busy thoroughfare

GAI Consultants (GAI) and fellow team members recently attended the 10,000 Friends of Pennsylvania Annual Commonwealth Awards to receive an award for the Oakland/Carnegie Mellon University Pedestrian Safety and Mobility Study project in Pittsburgh, PA, which was recently selected as a winner of the 2012 “Community Transportation Excellence Award.”

“This project represents a paradigm shift in thinking,” states GAI Senior Engineering Manager John Wojtyna, P.E. “For the first time human beings take top priority over machines in the overall movement of pedestrians, bicyclists, and other vehicles in a busy traffic corridor.”

GAI Consultants provided consulting services to the Oakland Transportation Management Association (OTMA) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) for a pedestrian safety and mobility study funded through the Pennsylvania Community Transportation Initiative (PCTI). The Oakland community has the highest concentration of academic and medical institutions in the region and state, with a daytime population of over 100,000 workers, students, and visitors mingling with 60,000 automobiles that use two main arterials.

GAI was retained to review and analyze accident data, inventory University parking, document needs, identify campus destinations and bike/pedestrian corridors, and gather data on pedestrian and cyclist movement. GAI developed design concepts for potential street configurations that maximize safety and access for pedestrians.

This project, completed in December 2010, is the first step in ensuring greater safety for the students, workers, and visitors, as well as the numerous drivers that travel through Oakland daily. The project also creates a plan to increase multi-modal access to this high-traffic area, which will encourage use, development, and future investment in the Oakland area.

GAI is an 850-person, employee-owned, multidiscipline engineering and environmental consulting firm serving clients worldwide in the energy, transportation, real estate, water, municipal, government, and industrial markets from U.S. offices throughout the Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast. For more information, visit www.gaiconsultants.com.

Benjamin Franklin Plumbing and RenewABILITY Energy USA help New York and New Jersey homeowners

RenewABILITY Energy USA and Benjamin Franklin Plumbing have established an agreement to help homeowners affected by Hurricane Sandy in New York and New Jersey by installing Power-Pipe Drain Water Heat Recovery systems free of charge during any repairs made by Benjamin Franklin.

“The Department of Energy reports that residential water heating is the second largest use of energy in homes outside of space heating. Power-Pipe drain water heat recovery systems reduce residential water heating by 25 to 40 percent and are a proven, practical, energy-saving technology, with no moving parts which simply pre-heat incoming cold fresh water, with outgoing warm drain water,” notes Rod Buchalter, residential sales manager for RenewABILITY Energy. “This will provide a significant long-term savings for many homeowners rebuilding in the affected area.”

“Decreasing long-term utility costs with a proven technology installed in thousands of homes across North America, for those rebuilding was the key motivator for the agreement”, says Darren Dixon, vice president of operations for Clockwork Home Services, owner of the Benjamin Franklin Brand. “With an installed cost of $749, R3-36 Power-Pipes are built to last, are maintenance-free, and include a 10-year warranty." 

Consumers can see the technology at the following links:

Consumer video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3F3k0zeglk
Installation video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jE0C7bsTv8

Founded in 2000, RenewABILITY Energy USA’s parent company RenewABILITY Energy Inc. developed and manufactures the Power-Pipe Drain Water Heat Recovery system in Kitchener, Ontario.  The patented and patent pending Power-Pipe systems are sold across Canada, the United States, and Europe. For more details, visit www.renewability.com.

Editor's note: Progressive Engineer recently ran an article on RenewABILITY Energy. See it at www.progressiveengineer.com/company_profiles/renewability.htm

RETTEW announces Ed Reese as new vice president

RETTEW, a multi-discipline engineering and consulting firm, has introduced Edward Reese as vice president. Reese’s responsibilities will serve a dual purpose: direct RETTEW’s offices in Pittsburgh, PA and Canton, OH and lead transportation business development firm-wide. As the regional manager, he will oversee 78 staff members in their daily operations and be responsible for developing, maintaining, and strengthening the growth of RETTEW in the region. In his role as business development lead, Reese will generate, maintain, and expand RETTEW’s presence in both the local region and within the transportation focus area. He will nurture relationships with key, strategic clients and develop new business to improve transportation infrastructure throughout western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio.

Reese brings more than 25 years of experience in the engineering field, including business development, regional marketing, strategic planning, and senior leadership positions in the transportation, water and wastewater, civil and municipal, and environmental market sectors. Prior to joining RETTEW, Reese served as a senior vice president of HDR, an international engineering, architecture, and consulting firm. He was responsible for transportation marketing, strategic planning, government affairs management, and business development. A Pittsburgh-area native and resident, Reese is a graduate from Penn State University with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering degree.

RETTEW began in 1969 as a single-person office and today has more than 400 employees and 11 offices in Colorado, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.rettew.com.