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Stop Press - Stewart has strange bed-fellow The Green Party recently criticised Tony Blair for his stance on "the expansion of nuclear power" - and let's face it there are probably very few of us who really fancy the idea of nuclear power with all that radio-active waste dumped at sea or buried deep underground doing goodness knows what. Holding future generations to ransom doesn't make much sense! However, we - the UK - and indeed Europe - have a wee bit of a problem. In 2005 the UK became a net importer of gas. We have plundered our own vast reserves for 20 years now and it is running out. We have been profligate (big word of the day) using vast amounts to generate electricity or selling it to others less fortunate with no reserves of their own - how generous of the British public! But now what do we have left? Our gas and oil is starting to come in from via pipelines from some very unstable suppliers. The gas supply can be cut at any time as we have seen in Russia just last month and lets not even think about terrorists and the threat to supplies they might pose! So we build wind turbines - fantastic but not likely to ever meet our whole demand for electricity even if we cover every green space available. Ok then we can generate lots of lovely energy from wave power - but that is unlikely to fulfil the whole need and it is a long way off - problem is that we need energy now! Ah - but we have coal! Why did we ever close all those mines and lay-off miners who were contributing directly to our own economy - and then start importing Australian coal - I doubt I will ever get an answer from Lady Thatcher on that one!!! However coal does offer a partial solution and the technology is there to make it a relatively clean energy source. There is still a rather large gap in our demand against our ability to supply energy. Maybe nuclear does a role to play after all. So I seem to be "in bed with" Tony Blair on this one - perish the thought - but what are the choices. |
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A Message for Tony Blair? Lets hear it for the Japanese! Following the success of CoolBiz - a summer programme led by the Japanese Prime Minister to get civil servants to wear cooler clothing and turn up the thermostats on their air conditioning to save energy - I now hear that WarmBiz is coming. From the start of October thermostats were turned down to 20DegC and if civil servants are cold then they have to put on more clothing!!!!! Now I don't know about you but I can't imagine Tony Blair standing on the steps of No. 10, wearing his woolly vest with pride, telling us all that our civil servants are going to put up with slightly colder conditions this winter! Just to get to that decision would take weeks, months, even years of consultation, studies on the long-term health effects etc - anything to avoid coming to a definite decision. Why is this country run like this? Now I don't know how much energy Japan has saved already, nor how much it expects to save this winter but I would lay odds that it will far exceed anything that might be gained through implementing changes to the Building Regulations or the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive! In one easy move Japan has shown how simple it is to instigate change and effect real energy savings. No lengthy consultation periods, no steering groups or government quango's, no need to train thousands of inspectors to check that we all follow the letter of the law. Just a country getting on with what needs to be done. And all this at a time when it looks very much like we - the UK - will not even reach our Kyoto commitments. Decisive action is needed. You can start - dig out your thermals and your fleeces and turn down the thermostat in your office - send out a message to Tony Blair and to all those whiners at your place of work who "need" an office sitting at 24DegC and more! You know who they are!
(Translation = Well done to the Japanese Prime Minister - I salute you for making valuable energy savings!) |
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LG3 / CAT2 ??????? No More CAT2 luminaires? Please! In 2001 CIBSE revised a document called LG3 - so what you may ask - in which case this page is probably not worth reading any further. For those of you who know about LG3 and care about office lighting in particular this is important. LG3 contained three CATegories relating to the cut-off angle of downward light to reduce reflection on computer screens and in their 2001 revision CIBSE effectively scrapped this idea. HOORAY - BUT WHY? Well lets take a typical example of a design and build office block. Almost inevitably it will be equipped with CAT2 4x18 or some variant with indirect/direct downlight, T5 tubes and a central CAT2 portion. It is sold on the pretext that it "complies" but really it is just an easy opt-out from proper lighting design. The truth of the matter is that the shiny aluminium reflector / louvre does nothing for glare - it is only a mechanism for removing reflection. Just look into one from below - you can still see the open tubes - I have seen some recently where you could look directly at T5 tubes - boy did that hurt my eyes!!!! Just think what is was like for the poor souls working under them - honest truth - we found one guy working in a BASEBALL CAP all day to shield his eyes! What is LG3 anyway? It is only guidance - very useful guidance of course but not the Bible. However, this is the real world and the majority of building professionals still think that there is a legal requirement to meet LG3 and so we have to live with this and work accordingly. So - if a client specifies that a scheme must comply with LG3 we will design on that basis the first luminaire will be sited within 600mm of the perimeter. This often means that clients install more lights than truly needed - roughly 10% and it also implies a certain amount of uplighting - but we can reduce the impact with dimming and use of daylight tubes.
Use
of systems such as Virtual Daylight® brings a sense of the great outdoors
into the modern office. Interiors become light and airy,
over-illumination and glare problems are banished at a stroke and
employee well-being becomes the focus of the lighting and office
design. Contact us today and see what we can do for your workforce / workplace. Look at the office on the left - it is a good example of what can be done using Virtual Daylight - check out the spacing of luminaires - 3m centres on both axes - what that means is less luminaires but quality illumination. As one of my clients puts it "more bangs for your bucks"! Lets talk about Lighting Design With my Carbon Trust hat on I attended a training seminar on Lighting - what an eye opener! A great deal of emphasis was placed on LOR - Light Output Ratio - which is great but it is not the only consideration. The optical efficiency of any light fitting is spoken of in terms of its Light Output Ratio and much is made of going for fittings with the highest LOR so that you are specifying fittings which put as much light as possible onto the work surfaces. Using the LOR is a very blunt instrument but regretfully there are still a great many engineers who find it difficult to see beyond more lux/watt as being the determinant of "good". Energy efficient lighting is counter productive if it is detrimental to the people working in the building. That should be self-evident. So we argue that buildings need to be designed to balance energy conservation with ergonomics. Luminaires that light all of the work surfaces are more likely to satisfy this need without causing discomfort glare to users. This characteristic may be used to lower the final power load of the scheme. High LOR luminaires are often the main culprits in offices that are very badly lit from an ergonomic standpoint. They are also commonly used to overlight space without the need for proper design. This leads to higher energy loads because perversely the LOR is no final determinant of the amount of energy that will be consumed by the scheme. Other considerations (LG3, cellurisation, uniformity, acceptable SHR etc) will often require the same or greater number of luminaires leading to very high peak illuminance. |
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Building Regulations These have recently been updated - what should you know about the changes? The main modifications relate to:
The latest versions of the Building Regulations Approved Documents for England & Wales are available as freely downloadable pdf files from the ODPM website www.safety.odpm.gov.uk/build_regs/ The Building Technical Standards for Scotland are available from the Scottish Executives website |
