I hope your staying warm and safe this winter. We've been busy at Granite State ASHRAE pushing forward on a number of initiatives. As I mentioned in the newsletter earlier this year, energy efficient improvements in the built environment and raising the awareness of the importance of good indoor air quality are two key areas of focus for this year But we also need to continue to encourage young people to become involved in the building sciences and related issues in the area of global warming and climate change.

In this months issue, I will provide an update on the following topics:

I am very happy to announce that Matthew L'Heureux has agreed to be our Granite State ASHRAE Student Advisor. He will join Ivo Nedyalkov, who has been our Student Facility Advisor now for a number of years. Matt is a Campus Energy Manager at UNH and is part of the Energy and Utilities group overseeing the energy efficiency programs. Matt is also a UNH graduate and will be of great benefit to us in the recruitment and ongoing management of the UNH ASHRAE Chapter.

On February 18th we had a recruitment event at UNH in Kingsbury Hall to encourage some new students to join our chapter. It's been a tough couple of years with COVID related issues that had resulted in a reduction of participation in our existing UNH student chapter. So we were pleased to have about 15 students come and listen to why they should join our UNH Student Chapter. I would like to thank Ivo and Matt for their help, as well as Maddie Goldberg and Tyler Wilson of our chapter for coming along and helping to encourage the students. Although we missed this years design challenge, now that we are staffed and have some student interest, we will present the ASHRAE Applied Engineering Design Challenge this fall. The UNH team won the challenge in 2018 and received a $5,000 and trip to Atlanta for their efforts. Go Wildcats!!

Nothing makes me happier than witnessing a bunch of young kids trying to solve real world problems. If we are to encourage more people to pursue the fields of science and engineering, the Young Inventors Program is where to begin. Tina White is the Director of the program, which is now operated out of the Leitzel Center at UNH. YIP is a STEM related program focused on encouraging you inventors to get involved in science and engineering.

This year the Granite State Chapter made a significant contribution by providing 10 judges and $500 is funding. I would like to thank Ralph Draper for his commitment and contribution to this program, along with Matt L’Heureux (UNH Energy office), Maddie Goldberg (Petersen Engineering), and Tyler Wilson (Design Day Mechanical). Other judges recruited by the chapter, but not current members of ASHRAE, included Steven Wourgiotis (UNH adjunct), Tim Bickford*(Unitil), Russell Miles (UNH faculty), Sterling Tomelini (UNH faculty, ret.), and Gary Treadwell* (Beswick Engineering), Chan Ling (Beswick Engineering), and David Blakeslee (PNSY ret.). Thanks to all that attended, participated, and supported this important program. For more on this event, please see the press release on our website.

We have continued to move forward with the education effort related to highlighting energy efficiency as a key component of a residential home purchase decision. This effort resulted from the session we co-sponsored at the Local Energy Solutions conference in the fall of last year entitled "The Role of High Performance Homes in NH's Clean Energy Future". Since that time, we have continued to work with Clean Energy NH and ASHRAE colleagues at Resilient Buildings Group in Concord, Laura Samoisette and Jake Gehrung, to educate the home buying public on the value of energy efficiency in the home buyer process. The result has been a series of articles written for NH Realtor Magazine. The first article was published in the Winter publication entitled Redefining Affordable Housing. The most recent article was just published in the Spring edition entitled Energy Efficiency and Operating Costs.

Another effort in this are is to develop an education class realtors can take as part of their continuing education process. We are working with Wes Golomb to create and deliver a basic course in energy efficiency in residential homes. Wes was the Energy Conservation Coordinator for the Public Utilities Commission in NH and has recently written a book on this topic entitled Warm and Cool Homes. The goal in this effort is to raise the importance and value of energy efficiency in the home buying market by improving the realtors ability to articulate the benefits of energy efficient homes.

We had to reschedule the April event due to scheduling conflicts. But we have confirmed an event for April at the Laars manufacturing facility in Rochester NH. This event will consist of a lecture by Dr. Joseph Lstiburek of Building Science Corporation. The title of his talk will be "There is No Such Thing as a free Thermodynamic Lunch". Joe is an ASHRAE fellow and Distinguished Lecturer. He is also a prolific writer with many publications in the ASHRAE Journal, and a great speaker. I will create a specific notice and invite for this event in a separate communication, but mark your calendar for April 28th as this is an event you won't want to miss. Laars will also be providing a tour of their manufacturing facility, which is very impressive.

We will also be having our annual Golf Outing on June 23rd at the Candia Woods Links course in Candia NH. This is a great event and a chance to meet some of your colleagues in our Granite State Chapter. Josh Benoist will once again be managing the event and we will be back with specific sponsorship opportunities well in advance of the event.

The NH Granite State Chapter will be hosting the Chapter Regional Conference August 25-27 at the Grappone Center in Concord NH. This is an opportunity for us to show off our great state and meet with our regional colleagues to discuss issues of importance to us all. If you would like to help us make sure this is a great event, please let me know and we will add you to our planning team. A promotional video of the event can be seen by selecting the image on the right, or selecting this link For more information on the event, please reach out to Josh Benoist at jbenoist@denronhall.com

Last Thursday, the White House released the latest update to its COVID-19 Preparedness Plan, which includes a focus on indoor air quality. The new Clean Air in Buildings Challenge is a call to all building owners and operators, as well as organizations at large, to adopt key strategies that will help improve air quality in buildings. This, and the newly released ventilation guidelines, come as many previously in place restrictions, such as indoor masking, are gradually being phased out across the country. To help building owners in these measures, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published a best practices guidebook for improving air quality and reducing the spread of dangerous airborne particles. The guide was published in collaboration with the Department of Energy, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and other federal agencies and contains recommendations broken up into four groups:

In each of these categories, the recommendations delve into potential action measures that building owners and operators should consider, each varying between short-term and long-term measures. The guide, however, does not address the cost of carrying out these upgrades/recommendations. In a statement from the White House, it is suggested that funds from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan can help upgrade air quality in schools and public buildings. Please reach out to us here at Granite State ASHRAE if you would like more information on how to achieve these goals in your community buildings.

We would like to thank those of you who are Granite State ASHRAE members, and for those readers that may not already be a member, please join us by becoming a member at this link: Join ASHRAE We are continually trying to improve our mission to help educate our community of issues of energy and our environment and your participation can help us make a difference in your community.

And please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any topics or subjects you would like is to cover for you or your company.

Paul Bemis

President Granite State ASHRAE

603-369-6085