 Code green think tech Hawaii. Welcome to our small army of viewers this afternoon. We have a wonderful guest in the form of Melanie Islam who is with Mason architects, and she is a lead certified professional and does some really exciting work that we will hear about very momentarily. But first, I had a bit of a shock couple of days ago, and I wondered what in the world, we green advocates had been smoking, because a conservative friend of mine said Howard you've got to listen to this fellow here. And turns out he's a financial advisor, and he loves well he doesn't love oil he says green PV's storage wind. That's all very fine, but oil is our only way out he didn't quite say out of what, and he was really convincing. I said, what, again, what have I been smoking around here but then I went back and listened again. And as an energy professional, I started put punching holes in his argument until it looked like just pure Swiss cheese. But he made a point two points that I had not thought of before, namely, if we're going to power the whole world with photovoltaics plus wind plus storage. We need gazillions and gazillions of PV panels, and gazillions of great big batteries, and each of those wind machines takes a heck of a lot of material and it turns out that the material needed for all three products includes a lot of rare earth metals. And a lot of those metals come from nations that don't like us so much. What are we going to do, what are we going to do, that got me thinking efficiency. That's my Kuliana PV wind storage. That's not enough we need to shift gears into what I'm terming hyper efficiency look for all the other avenues to get us to 100% clean energy. And the first thing that came to mind was building and home restoration. There's a heck of a lot of energy inherent in each building think of all that concrete all that metal all that glass. In the case of my home you can see above there that's a heck of a lot of wood that went into this residence here. So that was a cornerstone and then just to back it up this morning I saw where the European Union is going to make restoring buildings a capstone of their European new green deal. All of which sets up miss Melanie Islam because guess what she specializes in restoration of homes and buildings, and she does this beautiful work. And on that cherry note. Why don't you take it away miss Islam. Thank you Howard so much. Hi everyone. My name is Melanie Islam. I'm an architect sustainability director at Mason, formerly known as a stock tech. So like Howard said we're an architecture historic consulting practice. We've been practicing in Hawaii Honolulu for nearly 30 years. So we have threw a lot of feet in the ground a lot of experience. But you know Howard you brought up an excellent point you talked about all that energy that is living in our existing buildings, you know, we're starting to sort of talk about this conversation. So we're starting to sort of look at embodied carbon, you know, as architects, you know, the AIA just updated sort of our code of ethics, but more importantly, sort of updated our charge and our responsibility to the environment. And one of the big things is how do we more succinctly tie in with our work reduction of carbon and looking at sort of the team energy goals. And in fact, looking at existing building is one of the big things that we need to start doing. We I think all know I think everyone in this audience that that building basically sort of admit about 40% sort of emissions right in the larger picture. And how do we sort of bring that down. We don't often have the opportunity to sort of build all the time so we have to look at how do we preserve our existing building stock. Some of those historic treasures that will never be able to replace and how do we have modernize that and make that more efficient. So I'm just really happy to be here here to sort of share some of the work that we're doing at Mason. That's what I call currently in construction and some upcoming things that are in our community. So, Howard, how do you want to, how do you want to do this. I would like to. Oh, first I want to point out that. Yeah. Another advantage of doing restoration or reuse is creation. Guess exactly like, yeah. Hawaii and the unemployment rate is bad at about 8%. Last time I looked our unemployment rate was it had come much better than in March or April, but it's still about 8%. And a lot of those who could be searching for a new career other than the washing dishes and wiki key or whatever, and restoration involves skilled labor. You need to get training and you have the once you get that job, it's a well paying job. So there's another advantage to new building. So why don't you agree. Yeah, your projects. Sure. Yeah. So I thought I'd share a couple of the work that is currently going on in a couple of projects that I'm working on that deal with existing building review, adaptation of those buildings. And it's also secondly, how to be sort of deconstruct those buildings and sort of extend the life of the materials and then. So the first one that I wanted to share is a project that we've been sort of working on on coconut island. So I think a lot of people know what coconut island is it was sort of in the middle of honey oh hey bae. We've been fortunate enough to sort of work on one of the first structures there for the university and for HIV Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. It's over 30,000 square feet. It's actually two structures. It was originally one of the first lab buildings there, but what like many of sort of entitlement work and how long these changes over time. The building itself fits in an FMA so so we're moving the structure was basically not possible, but we need sort of programmatic needs for the university. So we were hired to look at how do we modernize the structure that we did was sort of brought the building down to its bones were essentially retaining a lot of existing shell and the roof all that sort of body carbon that lives in the masonry that lives sort of in that sort of light gauge steel that structural sort of steel assembly we're preserving that and we're not modernizing the building by bringing it up to code. So we had to fully grow out the building. But the really important thing is the university as a whole sort of working towards a larger energy efficiency, sort of target right energy efficiency reduction things by 2030, 2035 they sort of have all these sort of incremental timelines. And our intent with this project was to ensure that the work that we do at HIV, what sort of means those targets. So as an existing structure we have to look creatively at how do we insulate the building how do we sort of beef up the thermal performance at the walls at the windows and as labs they consume a lot of energy. How do you sort of bring the energy footprint down and then how do we couple and add to the renewable technology to that. So I think a lot of you guys are sort of seeing the slides the top one there is really what the building looks like gutted. So essentially we created a new palette to work from. And then we sort of created a bunch of new sort of laboratory buildings we have two types of labs in the structure, one that fully is naturally ventilated and sort of daily that really helps to sort of bring down the energy footprint. We're, you know, practicing a lot of the tenants that were sort of brought up in our new 2015 I co adoption, which was the passive ventilation through the space use the feeling found to the mood that cool there through. So that's all the ground floor and that really works nicely with the program because that's a fully sort of wet water, water lab that where you're, you know, scientists lab assistants are bringing in all these sort of what sample so this space needs to be durable, but it needs to be efficient, it needs to be nicely ventilated and daily. This image which is like on the top. It's on my top light might maybe find your top left, but that's of your more typical sort of laboratory building that has those really sort of tight air change changes, which are like four to six, you know, their handle changes so that requires a lot of energy, and also sort of has the traditional sort of human that kind of pulls a lot of energy as well too. So this building what we did was we'd be set to installation on the roof. We put it in sort of installation and thermal resistance in the wall cavity, we'd be steps of the window assembly. And then we sort of modeled you know we we kind of sort of study the daylight in the building and we situated sort of window glazing performance as needed. So, overall, we brought down the building used to about 20%, which was above the baseline, and then adding our renewables brought efficiency up to 40% as well too. So in all, it's a really great I think story of how do you use this in structures that can be modernized, but yet can still meet the code and through the larger sort of intense of our state. So this is a really great project that has a lot of great points to it, national ventilation efficiency, daylighting renewables. The other project I wanted to talk about is, you know, you Howard you sort of talked about single family residents, right, they are everywhere. Single family residents is something that we're all going to be sort of impacted by but we can most most important sort of connect with the next project is it's not a reuse project. We would call it in the traditional sense, it's a more of a deconstruction and we sort of built new built new with intention of being energy efficient, and sort of bridging together sort of the contents of what the client why in terms of a contemporary lifestyle but you have a larger goal. So this home, it's your traditional single wall construction home in Hawaii. One story has a combination of Redwood, you know, single wall plan plus a combination of mainstream. So we were really concerned and the client was really concerned about what their footprint would be. So what we did was we worked with reuse Hawaii and we actually deconstructed the home and that was a great thing because it allowed us to divert about 70 to 80% of the construction rate. We have landfill sort of issues where we're not able to sort of bring the waste there or not able to sort of look at reuse. So doing this allowed us to take something that would traditionally probably go in the landfill bring it to Hawaii and have someone else sort of upcycle and reuse it. So that in itself is a good way of how do you sort of salvage material salvage or that embodied carbon and energy in it for someone else to reuse. So with that then it gave us sort of a new place to sort of rebuild in the structure. So we built a new structure to dwelling sort of has an 80 attached to it as well so it looks and starts to address some of the housing issues in Hawaii. But the home again sort of designed to be as efficient as possible we use natural ventilation and sort of daylight at the baseline. The home has cross ventilation throughout a lot of windows but a nice sort of balance into wall ratio. So we added a 35 kilowatts or the PV array to sort of both structures to allow us to have some renewable efficiencies in there. We also plumbed portions of the house to have additional PV put in for that so that the owners can start to sort of see how they're using the home and sort of add array as needed. So those are like some of the works that we're doing at Mason to sort of just address the synergy between efficiency renewables and existing sort of building stock. What else are we doing. How I know we talked about a couple other things. Oh yeah, really great project. I think many of you guys know, you know recently sort of in the news by WC for hers was in the news a lot for the great social impact work that it does with WCCC. So we may have been really fortunate to have a great partnership with the by WCA and sort of work with them at their first facility and look at ways of, I think, more importantly, how do we how does the facility support the mission and purpose of a nonprofit. So it actually first started off with sort of volunteer work that I was sort of doing with the YWC sort of three years ago we worked a lot with sort of with the women that come from WCCC and sort of lived at the Y and envisioned and talked stories with them of what they saw the future to be like at the facility. And when it pointed out, you know, and I think a lot of these things are coming up in conversation about social equity and access right. What it pointed out is that what privileges are taken away from women or men when they get in custody and one of the first things that they want back. And we found that gathering was important, having sort of ability to connect with people and spaces to provide that, but also providing spaces that allow women to sort of build their independence and build sort of that social structure that was deconstructed when they were incarcerated. And one of those first things starts with food. I think food is a piece that connects with all of us writing allows us to bridge connections make conversations. So we started with food and we identify that there was a need to have cooking there for her has always historically been sort of like a lodging facility for women. But it doesn't have any cooking facilities that you know it just just sort of has a serving kitchen so a lot of the food that comes in and out of that facility. So our efforts were through restaurants and nonprofit organizations that bring lunch, breakfast and dinner meals. So our first thing of work was really to provide what we're calling the home kitchen where women can build upon their independence. And they can cook their own meals. And so, sort of a couple of that we worked with a great suite of engineers are sort of all donating our services pro bono to look at then what is the water efficiency in the space. And using opportunities from the cares act funding which they receive and also Hawaii energy energy relief ramp, which is afforded to nonprofits to upgrade lighting efficiency throughout the space. And really just tie in some of the things that we do in all of our sort of private and public practice, but bring it down to a level where it's accessible for everyone. And that everyone knows that, you know, getting access to good quality design good quality products and efficiency is not something of privilege. It is equitable and accessible to everyone. So this is just a great project that we've been working on with providing a home kitchen, we're benefiting a couple of their dining and multi-purpose spaces, some of the living room gathering spaces. We're also looking at the roof repair. So we're adding insulation on so we can improve the thermal comfort of the total facility. So we're doing sort of like smell, but I think impactful work to the envelope and to them for the building. So that's, that's just one other project that I thought I'd share that feels to an existing structure looks at efficiency and whatnot. So, yeah, that's our work coward. Thank you. Thank you. One important point you are indirectly making is technology is improving hand over fist. There's something a law called hates law. It's named after the electrical engineer, and it says that 18 months, the cost of LED lights shall drop by 25% while the efficacy, the efficiency of the lamp shall increase by something like 50% and there is an uproar that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'll give you a little quiz. I needed some lamps. Oh, gosh. Okay. It's a lamp that's giving me illumination right over here. This is an old what you used to look it looks like an incandescent lamp but these days it's an early and it's just a plain old screw in nothing fancy about it. Guess what the C was is 85 up 93 100 higher 116.6 lumens per what we measure miles per gallon in in lights and this is just plain the shelf thing. Oh, here's an you're too, too young to remember incandescent lights. I know incandescent lights. I had that in the house I grew up in. Yeah. Yeah. What is the, what is the efficacy of your typical incandescent light. I don't know 40. I have I should know this is this really bad 2015 10 15 lumens per what 106 lumens per what is an increase of seven fold. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. The Latin word for white hot heat is incandescent just what that light is called the incandescent light. Yep. The state senator measure the heat of 100 watt incandescent and he got 465 degrees. Okay. And what at what temperature did you use to bake cookies. 300. I think so I don't bake. I'm thinking like what I cook. Yeah. Energy codes are all building codes. Turn over or get renewed every three years. Why? Because it's you talking about here. Technology is so, so, so rapidly now. So that that's why we I can see where you keep up with all the codes. I love the code. Yeah. And just regarding fernhurst, you know, it did. It benefits all of us when you're helping disadvantaged people be they men or women, because they don't have the skills that really basic skills that most of us grew up with. Yeah. You know, I, so I've actually, I'm just been involved. I've been volunteering for the Y. I think long before for her, but I found, you know, that statement is true. But I also found interestingly, like someone like myself, right? You just get into some hard time to easily also be incarcerated. Those stories actually have the most impactful with me, someone that could be my kin to be in my cohort and my age group. I think it's like all these things that happen, but I think the main point is that, you know, good design access to efficiency, integration of all these principles that we're talking about and knowing that you have an impact and a role in making a positive impact to environment is afforded to everyone. It is not a privilege. It is not something of entitlement. We can all do be part of it. I'm just a matter of, you know, how do we break down those barriers and start those conversations? Yeah. And speaking of energy efficiency and this. Yeah. We were living in a COVID age. And putting on. Webinars or hosting webinars. About. UVC ultraviolet C. Lighting. Yeah. And they, they, that, that spectrum actually zaps the COVID. It disables them. So. Yeah. The question is how to get, get it safely in there. But one of the things I have found in doing considerable research. This ties into what you're doing too. And I think it's, it's, it's, it's, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, from the perspective of the government's administration or the administration, and doing considerable research. This ties into what you're doing to your. You're promoting the natural ventilation whenever possible. That's one of the most effective. Means of avoiding the COVID is being outdoors. Because all of this air circulation. All over the place. behind somebody who has the COVID up there, some of those little wrestles are going to reach you, but there's something called dose. And mostly them are flying all over the place. So your dosage is very, very low and your immune system can handle it. So you're talking about natural ventilation coming through an interior space. That is also a very, very effective anti COVID measure. Yeah, for sure. We're actually, we found some fans for Furnhurst, big ass fans, i2 has the UBC built into their standard stock. So we're going to install a couple of them into the facility and see how they work. Great, great mindset. Thank you for bringing that out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, speaking of fans, I'm, I'm the energy codes guy, as you may know, and I'm introducing into the next generation of codes is mandatory ceiling fans, even for, this is in residence, even for centrally air conditioned homes, because the typical planes is, is centrally air conditioned. Our climate is so beautiful that on a nice evening can open up the windows, turn off the AC, save yourself some money, and the ceiling fans. And again, you've got this great air circulation and you're reducing your COVID exposure. For sure. Yeah, exactly. That's great. I look forward to seeing that and hearing the conversations related behind that, in our community. Yeah, we always get pushback from the builders. Howard, that's kind of fun. I know. I know. I know. I know. We need to take bold actions though, Howard, in order to sort of really sort of reduce our carbon footprint. You know, we can't do these incremental little changes. We need to take bold actions. That's why I'm going to, yeah. Yeah, you're speaking my language here. Yeah, I thought I shared systems. Yeah, we've just got a minute or two left. Do you have any events that you would like to announce? Yes, I would. I just want to take this time. So, coupled with just the work I do, I also sit on the board for you to see Hawaii. It's a U.S. Green Building Council that administers sort of the lead program, a bunch of other services programs from Green Building Services. And so, we have upcoming a town hall with our CEO, Mahesh Rabantaman, on October 5th. And so, it'd be a really great opportunity for our community to, we're intending to have an engaging session. It's going to be a conversation really to talk about the future of U.S. UBC, how it's working in Hawaii, and how can the role of Green Building help to sort of advance our economy and sort of rebuild in this post-pandemic time. So, I welcome you all to sort of join. There's a registration link on the image above. We also have the next day, some training to really sort of, we were talking earlier about workforce training. We're going to be doing training on Lee Daryl and Lee Carbon. So, how do we sort of bring, looking at how do we bring our sort of building usage down and also a couple of that are kind of footprint. So, that also sort of has a registration link. That's going to be sort of a session where people that are professionals that new CEUs, you can get three hours of CEU credits. So, we look forward to having that on October 6th, on the 8 o'clock in the morning. And the last thing that's really kind of personal to me, is Hydrogen Day. That's also coming out this week on October 8th. I think personal, because I have a hydrogen vehicle, and I did that intentionally sort of start to look at how can we support alternative technology to kind of, you know, be in parallel with pure electric vehicles to kind of get to a clean energy world. So, we're kicking off our first sort of Hydrogen Day on the 8th. It's intended to be a really fun, sort of morning session. I think it's headed by Blue Pan and I think even also the State Energy Office. So, yeah, tune in. And then, yeah, but those are the three events that are coming up next week. So, so hopefully you guys can join if any that are of interest. And did you by any chance include a slide that includes your contact information? Oh, yeah, I think it's like one of the last ones. There we go. Is that it? Okay, because we've got about 20 seconds left. So there is Melanie's contact information. She would love to hear from you and keep up the wonderful, wonderful work, Melanie. Thank you Howard. On a tidal wave. It's a small wave now. The whole renovation thing turned into a wonderful tsunami. And on that, we hope so, yeah. We must bid on farewell from Sink to be Howard Wigg. Say, Fawn farewell, Melanie. Bye-bye. Bye.