Notice of Meeting

Ryerson University

Oakham House / Student Campus

Centre

Date:             Monday October 3rd, 2011

Venue:          Ryerson University - Oakham House/Student Campus

Centre (SCC 115)

Click Here for Dinner Meeting Map

Reception:    5:30 PM (SCC115)

Dinner:          6:30 PM to 9:00 PM

(Including Presentations)

May Dinner Meeting Summary 

Toronto City Hall Energy Upgrades

The May 2011 Toronto chapter tour was at Toronto City Hall to show the building's most recent energy upgrades.  The tour was led by the chief engineers for this ongoing project, Slavko Zdravkovic, P.Eng. (City of Toronto) and Michael Rosenblitt, P.Eng. (LKM Division of SNC Lavalin). This latest energy retrofit of City Hall included replacement of air handling units, upgrades to the HVAC system, and installation of new DDC control.

Situated at 100 Queen Street West, construction of Toronto City Hall was finished in 1965. Architect Viljo Revell had designed a uniquely imaginative building for Toronto. Council chambers is a round clamshell shape supported on a single concrete cylinder and surrounded by a podium. Two curved office towers cup the central Council chambers building. The interior of the City Hall building is round, and organic, like being inside a large mushroom or nautilus shell. The HVAC system must follow these contours.

Energy efficiency was less a concern in the 60s than it is now. Toronto City Hall has had a series of energy upgrades over the years. In addition, the HVAC load on City Hall has increased, especially since amalgamation, and in the Council chambers in particular. City planners and engineers, Toronto Hydro Energy Services, and the LKM Division of SNC Lavalin have been working together to achieve better energy efficiency. The goal is for Toronto City Hall to become a showplace of sustainability and to eventually achieve zero carbon emissions.

Energy Upgrades

The 1987 energy retrofit of Toronto City Hall earned an ASHRAE energy award with one of the first uses of free cooling. A lighting upgrade at the time resulted in a 120 ton reduction in cooling load. 3000 fluorescent fixtures were converted from T12 to T8. Incandescent lighting was converted to indirect strip fluorescent, or quartz lamps.

In 2009 City Hall began purchasing "green", renewable power from Bullfrog Power. The purchase of 19 million kWh of green power achieved a reduction of over 4000 tonnes of CO₂. There was also a change from cooling towers and centrifugal chillers to ENWAVE Deep Lake Cooling, which now serves all City Hall's cooling needs. Connection to Enwave's Deep Lake Water cooling system will reduce City Hall's electricity consumption by 1.9 million kilowatt hours annually and will reduce CO₂ by 325 tonnes (a 75% reduction in CO₂ emissions as compared to conventional chillers.)

An upgrade to the domestic hot water heating system started by removing the 1964 vintage, air pressurized domestic water distribution system with storage tanks and steam converters (total of 4). This equipment was replaced with booster pump packages and instantaneous steam to hot water heating. In addition, instantaneous perimeter or reheat hydronic heating is now also being employed. The use of instantaneous, low pressure, steam heating, reduces steam use. As well, there are no storage losses.

The original single pane windows are in the process of being replaced with a double pane, thermally broken, aluminum frame design. This will result in a 0.7kW reduction in heat loss during the winter; and a 1.5kW reduction in heat gain during the summer.

The air handling units in the sub-basement mechanical room and mid-level mechanical rooms in both east and west towers have been replaced. The new units employ chilled water cooling, steam heating, and steam humidification. All air handling units had to be brought up in pieces in elevators, and assembled on location.

Council Chambers Air Handling Unit Upgrade

The 1998 amalgamation of 7 municipalities into one city, with meetings held at Toronto City Hall, increased the HVAC load, especially in the Council chambers. The air-handling unit for Council chambers was replaced in 2005. This new air handling unit featured a variable speed drive fan, steam heating coil, humidification, and UV light capability. The delivery of 31,000 cfm conditioned air to Council chambers was proposed, but the new supply fan could not deliver more than 19,000 cfm to Council chambers. At 19,000 cfm, there were severe acoustic issues such as buzzing and whistling. Therefore the volume of air delivered was adjusted to 12,000 cfm. Ductwork was removed and replaced with new ductwork. Larger supply and return duct risers had to be installed in the shaft under Council chamberss. Three recirculation units were replaced with perimeter heating coils. A new HVAC unit was installed to supply the second floor interior balcony space. A new DDC control system for Council chambers was installed which could match capacity to loads and maintain the temperature within a one degree Fahrenheit band. Finally "heated debates" in Council chambers, would be heated only in a figurative sense... With all these energy upgrades, Toronto City Hall has been transformed from an architectural wonder into a model of sustainability.

More about Slavko Zdravkovic and Michael Rosenblitt

Slavko Zdravkovic is a professional engineer, and has been a project manager with the City of Toronto since 1988. He previously worked for H.H. Angus and Associates and Giffels. Mr. Zdravkovic is responsible for the design of mechanical systems, and project management for system upgrades and retrofits for Toronto's existing building portfolio.  

Michael Rosenblitt is a professional engineer and Unit Director of LKM Division of SNC Lavalin Inc. He was president of the Toronto chapter in 2007. Mr. Rosenblitt has worked on many important projects such as connection of Mount Sinai hospital to the Enwave deep lake cooling system, Toronto Council Chambers HVAC, Atlantic Freezers refrigerated distribution centre, and ORC Secure Office Facility. 

City of Toronto Green Roof Bylaw

As a second topic, at the May 2011 chapter meeting, Ms. Shayna Stott, a City of Toronto Environmental Planner, reviewed the City of Toronto's Green Roof Bylaw.  Green roofs reduce the City's heat island effect, aid in storm water management, beautify the city, among other benefits.  The City of Toronto has taken a leadership role in requiring green roofs for new construction.  The Bylaw requires green roofs on new commercial, institutional and residential development with a minimum Gross Floor Area of 2,000 m².  Residential buildings less than 6 stories or 20 m in height are exempt from being required to have a green roof.  A variance may be applied for which would allow a smaller amount of green roof than required under the Bylaw, provided that a cash-in-lieu payment of $200/m² is made for the reduced green roof area. All cash in-lieu collected through the variance process goes to the Eco-roof Incentive Program of the City of Toronto to install green roofs on existing buildings. In May 2010, the city's largest green roof opened to the public.  It is situated on top of City Hall, with approximately 3,250 m² (35,000 square feet) of vegetation.

Job Postings    

Below is a summary of all current job postings available on the job postings board on the Toronto Chapter website.  For more information go to torontoashrae.com.

• Naylor Group Inc.
• Manager of Mechanical Estimating
• Wes-Mech Technical Sales Inc.
• Technical Service Representative
• Carrier Canada (Mississauga)
• Technical Service Representative
• Ontor
• HVAC Inside Sales / Customer Service Representative

Viewpoint

In 2004, I started attending the ASHRAE Society Annual and Winter Conferences every year.

I remembered I felt quite overwhelmed when I found out that the ASHRAE Exposition and the ASHRAE Conferences are 2 different events run separately but concurrently in one of the Winter Conferences. The ASHRAE Exposition is an event catered more to the actual HVAC & R products and the ASHRAE Conference is more for the actual engineering and technical side of HVAC & R with seminars, forums, symposiums, programs and topics on refrigeration design, energy calculations, high performance design and standards. In a nut shell, the Exposition is the commercial product side and the ASHRAE Conference is the engineering side adhering to a stringent non-commercialization policy that really impressed me.

Normally after the seminars and programs in the mornings, the Technical Committees have their TC meetings in the afternoons.

Since I have ASHRAE mentors and friends in TC 7.3 Operation and Maintenance Management, naturally, I was encouraged to sit in the TC 7.3 meetings and quickly got accepted in the TC after attending several meetings from 2004 to 2006. I volunteered to be a corresponding member when they were revising their TC's Chapter 38 Operation and Maintenance Management published in 2007.

In 2006 July 1, I was formally appointed as the TC Handbook Sub Committee Chair responsible to plan and revise Chapter 38. This is 4 year cycle plan for all ASHRAE Handbooks.

I quickly gathered as many handbook committee members as possible that consisted of some older TC members that wrote the Chapter published in 2007 and newer TC members.  This way, we keep the experience revisers and also have new members for fresh ideas. I provided new ASHRAE information like new ASHRAE Guidelines, Standards and ASHRAE Strategic Plan to all members to review. The hardest challenge was to convince the older TC members that we, as a group, are going to re organize the entire Chapter but not re write, to improve the flow of the Chapter with the additional of new information.

I met and worked with many TC members from all over including operations and maintenance personnel and facility managers from NASA, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Hospitals, Universities, municipalities and School Boards.

This year, for the new 2011 ASHRAE Handbook- HVAC Applications, our new and revised Chapter 39 on Operation and Maintenance Management is published. All 14 handbook committee contributors got credit for their immense hard work and all received a special copy of the 2011 ASHRAE Handbook-HVAC Applications with their name printed on the cover of the Handbook.

Membership Promotion  

I would like to begin by welcoming all of our members both young and old to the ASHRAE Toronto Chapter 2011-2012 year. This year is shaping up to be yet another successful year for both the chapter and its members. Many of our committees and volunteers have been hard at work to prepare a program that will tend to the needs of all our members.

It truly is a great time to be not only an ASHRAE Toronto Chapter Member, but also an ASHRAE Society Member. This year, like many years in the past, ASHRAE is blessed with strong leaders who have a passion for both our society and our industry.

Our society president Ronald Jarnagin's principle theme this year is 'Sustaining ASHRAE Through Leadership".  This is a fundamental theme because it addresses the most important aspect of our organization, our members.  ASHRAE members are the heart and soul of our organization and without each one of us, ASHRAE would not exist.  Without ASHRAE and the immense opportunity it offers to its members, many of the world's problems would never have been solved.  In order for us to sustain our membership base and even grow into the future, president Jaragin states in his 2011-2012 Presidential Address that leadership is the most important factor to our success.

Throughout this year there will be many chances for our Toronto Chapter members to take the lead.  There a numerous committees, volunteer positions, scholarship opportunities, project awards opportunities, design competitions and social activities to participate in.  One of the goals of the membership committee is to have more active members.  We want to see you take advantage of all that the ASHRAE Toronto Chapter has to offer, especially our launch of the "ASHRAE Toronto Mentorship Program."

If you have any questions about membership or the ASHRAE Toronto Chapter, please contact me at membership@torontoashrae.com and I will be happy to help you.

Imtee Baksh, P.Eng
2011 - 2012 Membership Chair

Student Activities

Monthly Dinner Meetings 

Dinner meetings are a great opportunity for students to meet industry 

Student Technical Tours 

Student Activities is currently putting the details together for a student-focused technical tour. We hope to provide the details at the next monthly dinner meeting

ASHRAE Society Winter Meeting in Chicago 

The Toronto Chapter will be subsidizing a limited number of students to attend the ASHRAE Winter Conference in Chicago. The event will take place from January 21 to January 25, 2012.

Student Branch at Humber College 

During this summer's meeting in Montreal the ASHRAE society approved Humber College application to establish official Student Branch. The Toronto Chapter would like to congratulate and thank Dr. Dragos Paraschiv, a faculty member at Humber College and Lakh Dhillon a student branch president for 2010-2011, for all their hard work and enthusiasm toward establishing a Humber College Branch.  

Student Branch at Ryerson University 

This year Ryerson Student Branch is holding the Toronto Chapter first 

Toronto Chapter Officers 2011-12

Executive Board

Board of Governors

Committee Chairs