Big News!

Update 10/18 -6:30AM

As you will read more in EWeekly, our industry has won a pretty significant victory in the code world as the ASHRAE appeals panel has OVERTURNED the two most controversial and possibly damaging code items from ASHRAE 90.1-2010. Folks, plain and simple this is a great moment for us as an industry. The plan for reduction of the window to wall ratio and the new minimums for Visible Light/Solar Heat Gain have been rebuffed. The excitement is because our industry worked together with a common goal and for the first time since we started this concerted process (I started in 2004) we have a victory. (We've even lost when we won votes at NFRC 49-6... so believe me to get a win like this is huge) The bottom line is we are stronger as an organized group than we are as individuals and quite frankly we are only trying to do what's sensible. No one is against energy efficiency- quite the opposite really, but we want to do it logically without destroying our industry. This announcement surely starts that process. Congrats to Dr. Culp and the Aluminum Extruder Council, Urmilla Sowell and Bill Yanek of GANA, Marg Webb and IGMA, Guardian, AGC, and Pilkington for filing the appeals and fighting it to the end. Truly monumental!


Elsewhere…

-- I was completely bummed to miss Solar Power International last week in LA. When I went last year it was an amazing show and people were so incredibly hopeful. So to those of you who went, any insight on the mood there would be great. Something tells me it wasn’t as cheery as last year but probably still better than most shows have been.

-- Best line of the week… the guy who said the housing market forecast was in various “shades of lousy”… oh man that line just hit it on the head. So if the housing market is “shades of lousy” the commercial building market must be shades of words that can’t be typed on a family blog eh?

-- Is there anything more frustrating than flying? Seriously? Last week I saw TSA make a big issue out of an IPAD. The TSA agent said the IPAD either had to ride alone in a bin OR stay in the guys briefcase. Umm, I don’t get that logic- do you? Well when the guy complained off to extra screening he went.

-- Then on the plane- the packed, steamy hot plane… two rows ahead me (and shockingly not my row) a young lady boarded late holding a child that had to be at least 1. She only had one seat. A middle seat. And so that row, even though the child was small, it sure wasn’t a “baby” in my mind had 4 people jammed in for 3 hours. Miserable. The thing I thought was that baby is bigger than a lap top, yet you can’t hold a lap top on your lap for takeoff or touchdown….

-- Look out Ashley Elementary, my son was passed the activist gene… young Zach was elected to student council… I can’t wait til he starts a blog railing about the new evil lunch procedure and how the lunch ladies just mark in lockstep with the paraprofessionals working the floor.

LINKS of the WEEK

-- Every so often someone comes out raging about the LEED program. Add this Toronto professor to the list- great arguments here.

-- A bizarre experiment with a Happy Meal… what will it look like 180 days after buying it…

VIDEO of the WEEK

Folks this story is 7 minutes long but simply amazing. Its about a soldier that was impaled by a live rocket propelled grenade. Simply stirring and interesting and props to good friend Greg Carney for sharing it. Check it out.