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NEWPORT NEWS Before plans were announced to construct a new showroom facility on its corporate campus, Ferguson officials were preparing to go vertical with its fourth office building.

Denise Waters Vaughn, Ferguson director of corporate communications, said Tuesday there are currently no plans to revive former plans for another office building at Ferguson's Jefferson Avenue campus, despite the firm experiencing robust growth.

Prior to announcing plans for a new 15,000-square-foot showroom earlier this month, Ferguson officials back in 2007 had part of the nearly 10-acre site designated for a new office building.

Christine Dwyer, Ferguson public relations manager, said the scope and size of the proposed office building were not publicly released.

Original plans for the proposed building called for consolidating corporate operations for Wolseley Canada, Ferguson, and at the time, Stock Building Supply.

"The original plan was to centralize back office support functions, such as human resources, legal and finances, and expand into the new office building on the property where we are currently planning to build a new showroom," Dwyer said.

But then the Great Recession hit, forcing the large-scale wholesale supplier of construction-related plumbing products, to cutback on spending, layoff employees and dismiss its original plans to construct a new office building.

Ferguson currently operates in five buildings in Newport News: three on its corporate campus along Jefferson Avenue, and two other buildings that house its national information technology and accounting branches along Warwick Blvd., Dwyer said.

Officials are also set to relocate its national call center from Newport News into 45,000 square feet of space at 521 Butler Farm Road in the Hampton Roads Center in Hampton, creating 171 new jobs, while bringing 144 existing workers to the site.

"Employees of the national sales center were working in various locations around the headquarter campus, which is why our new space in Hampton is ideal," Dwyer said. "Although plans have not been finalized, the space will likely be used for additional offices and meeting rooms."

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Ferguson scraps plans for additional corporate office

By Nels Johnson

njohnson@marinij.com @nelsjohnsonnews on Twitter

Rich Benson

In a presentation that one county supervisor said made him look more like a philosopher or academic than Marin's top property appraiser, Assessor-Recorder Rich Benson outlined a vision involving management, teamwork and increased productivity in the office.

In an unusually frank, wide-ranging discussion with the Board of Supervisors as part of his annual planning and performance session with the board, Benson said the challenges he faces include how to increase the quality and quantity of work his staff produces during a time of mounting workload.

"Are we really doing the best in terms of quality and production?" Benson asked. "We are pretty much at the bottom of the heap," when compared to averages across the state, he conceded, referring to property appraisals. "Our model wasn't working."

At the same time, with Marin posting more remodeling activity than other locales, home sales increasing and values soaring, there is more work to do than ever as hiring continues to fill a half dozen office posts, he said.

"The process of increasing productivity is extremely difficult," as is trying to measure appropriate production, he said. "We have to work smarter," in part by mining data that indicates reasonable, average valuation increases applicable to such things as kitchen remodels in various communities.

Yet appraisers increasingly must return to the practice of on-site field inspections to get the job done, he said.

"We're going to have to do more appraisals," Benson told the county board, absent supervisors Susan Adams and Steve Kinsey. "That means going out and inspecting the properties."

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Marin Assessor-recorder offers vision for managing office

As the 2014-15 academic year nears, school districts around Burlington County are making sure that construction projects are complete and that hallways and classrooms are spruced up and ready for students.

Some districts are busy at work on projects to be completed by September, when school starts after Labor Day.

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Burlington County schools gear up for 2014-15

Editors note: this article is part of a series exploring the role of networking in the Internet of Things.

Three types of networking topologies are utilized in the Internet-of-Things: point-to-point, star, and mesh networking. To provide a way to explore the attributes and capabilities of each of these topologies, we defined a hypothetical (but realistic) application in the building monitoring and energy management space and methodically defined its networking requirements.

Lets pull it all together to make a network selection for our building monitoring application. As described previously, the application will monitor, analyze, and optimize energy usage throughout the users properties. To accomplish this, monitoring and control points need to be deployed throughout each building, including occupancy and temperature sensors. Sensor data will be aggregated back to a central building automation panel located in each building. A continuous collection of data will provide a higher resolution of temperature and occupancy information, thus rendering better insight into HVAC performance and building utilization patterns. Comparison of energy utilization throughout the portfolio of properties allows lower performing buildings to be flagged.

The networking requirements for this application are summarized in Table 1.

The attributes and capabilities of each of our three network topologies are summarized in Table 2.

We now have the information we need to assess which topology best fits our application requirements. From our review we can see that all three topologies have adequate reliability, interoperability, component availability, and cost. However, the first four attributes in each table range, power consumption, scalability, and bandwidth address the core requirements of the application. These four attributes are quite different for each topology. Within this series, the following points were made regarding these networking options:

Our best networking topology choice is therefore a Zigbee mesh networking architecture. The Zigbee standard, as mentioned earlier, has been designed for low power, low data rate networks and has been widely used in residential, building, and industrial automation/control applications.

The Internet of Things is in its early stages of development. Networking architectures, protocols, and standards are continuing to evolve on both broad (horizontal) and industry-specific (vertical) fronts.

6LoWPAN is one noteworthy emerging standard that has been designed to allow Internet Protocol data, specifically IPv6 packets, to be sent and received over low-power, low data rate 802.15.4-based mesh networks the same networks on which the ZigBee protocol operates. A gateway device converts the IPv6 packets into the 6LoWPAN message structure and then back again to IPv6 so that a Wi-Fi device can receive them. Even with the required packet conversion, the 6LoWPAN protocol promises to provide a much tighter integration between 802.11 IP-based Wi-Fi networks and mesh networks designed for small form factor device (thing) networking.

Originally posted here:
How to identify a scalable IoT network topology

Traditionally, there have been two main options for solar installation designers and engineers to convert DC to AC power: string inverters or micro inverters. Both present significantly different advantages and disadvantages for installers, with installation expenses varying up to 20 percent depending on the inverter selection. Either solution had drawbacks: what one would gain in convenience, it would sacrifice in performance and maintenance and vice versa. But a new class of inverter is entering the market that combines the installation simplicity of a string inverter with the intelligence and energy harvest advantages of a micro inverter.

Analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) showed installation labor to be largest expense category associated in PV applications. With installation and maintenance costs outweighing the panels, framing, and other associated expenses by a factor of two to three, a new solution was needed to make solar energy installations more affordable for residential and small/mid-sized commercial applications.

The micro-parallel inverter (MPI) is a new emerging class of inverter; aimed at helping to further the proliferation of solar energy into the residential and small commercial market segments (5 kW-200 kW) by reducing installation and maintenance costs. A micro-parallel inverter is designed to invert four panels in parallel and provide advanced data, communications and IT features. The MPI system can also be utilized for off-grid, grid-tied, and grid-tied with emergency backup applications. It has a wide enough input; voltage, current and frequency range to operate with generator or battery based grids for application flexibility that surpasses its two predecessors.

Incorporates the Latest Communication Technology

Designed around the concept of easing the ergonomic burden of installation, registration, and maintenance, the micro-parallel inverter tackles the difficult chore of reducing the cost of acquisition and ownership by simplifying the installation, cabling and activation processes.

MPIs benefit from newer technological innovations in controller and communication modules, allowing additional features previously not available in existing inverters. The resulting innovations give the MPI improved intelligence, ubiquitous data display with remote control, and continuously adjusting energy harvest schemes controlling the MMPT for each individual panel. This control automatically throttles energy conversion based on temperature to maximize the energy production of each panel. Fault alert processing notifies maintenance when a specific part has failed, and isolates the location and identifies the specific failed part for expedited ordering and replacement. These features will reduce unneeded maintenance truck rolls to repair and replace.

MPI Installation Is Simplified

Wiring for residential or commercial 240-VAC single or 3-phase MPI systems is similar to standard building construction. PV system installation with the MPI is configured as a modular, plug-n-play approach.

Continue reading here:
New Micro-Parallel Inverters Aim to Reduce System Costs, Improve Performance

Could Holladay Park project be a model for future plans?

On a sunny Wednesday afternoon, OBryant Square in downtown Portland is mostly deserted. On the parks raised northeast corner, two piles of discarded clothing and one discarded shoe sit in the shade of a tree, a flattened cardboard box on the ground beside them.

Four men are sleeping on the parks upper level. A dozen or so people rest on the parks perimeter, on benches and retaining walls, most in shade, all but a few balancing lunches from the nearby 10th and Alder food carts on their laps.

Five park garbage cans are already overflowing at 3:15 p.m., with chopsticks and half-filled sauce cups on the ground beside the cans. Plastic forks and paper napkins are scattered throughout the parks bark dust.

A tall, 30-ish man with a scruffy beard scavenges a couple of the garbage cans, coming away with what looks like some leftover biryani and a half-filled paper Coke cup with straw.

There is absolutely nobody in the center of the park, its plaza. The large bronze fountain built in the shape of a rose dominates the plaza but is empty. The fountain hasnt spouted water for at least 13 years.

Two men and two women, travelers maybe, homeless quite possibly, have taken ownership of the parks northwest corner. Approached by a reporter, one of the women shakes her finger and shouts, Keep walking.

A few blocks away, lively Director Park has shown what intelligent programming and around the clock security can accomplish. Holladay Park next to the Lloyd Center is on its way to joining the list of Portland destination parks. OBryant Square is, well, the counterpoint, an example of what happens when a city park is badly designed and allowed to determine its own fate.

Design is the primary reason OBryant cant be made to feel safe, says Matthew Arnold, associate principal director of urban design and planning at SERA Architects. More specifically, Arnold says, the problem is the altered grade of the park.

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Tale of two designs: O'Bryant Square languishes; Director Park flourishes

As the algae bloom in Lake Erie continues to grow, so does the debate on who's really to blame.

A report released by Environmental Defence, an environmental and health organization, Wednesday morning suggested a four-point plan to fix the bothersome bloom.

We are seeing increasing intensity, increasing frequency in algal blooms on the Great Lakes obviously what we're doing so far is not enough, said Nancy Goucher, water program manager for the organization.

The plan outlines four key points that will fix the algae issue, including harnessing market forces to help farmers cut down on nutrient runoff, building water smart cities, improving scientific understanding of the blooms and forming a policy framework that pushes for action.

A press release from the organization stated:

The Ontario government should evaluate the applicability of market mechanisms such as tax shifting, pollution taxes and nutrient trading to transfer money from undesirable acts like polluting to desirable ones that reward farmers for 'doing the right thing.'

It's this kind of statement that raises questions from agriculture experts like Ivan O'Halloran, an associate professor at the University of Guelph Ridgetown Campus who studies nutrient use and soil fertility.

What they're saying is reasonable, he said. The only concern I have is that when you write it that way they did it sort of implies that farmers are doing the wrong things now and I don't believe that is the case for all farmers.

O'Halloran has been fielding questions about farmers and phosphorous for years.

He's encountered all sorts of explanations and studies and while he admits that farmers play a role in adding phosphorous to Lake Erie he said the issue isn't that simple.

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Algal blooms on Lake Erie. Who's to blame?

As the algae bloom in Lake Erie continues to grow, so does the debate on who's really to blame.

A report released by Environmental Defence, an environmental and health organization, Wednesday morning suggested a four-point plan to fix the bothersome bloom.

We are seeing increasing intensity, increasing frequency in algal blooms on the Great Lakes obviously what we're doing so far is not enough, said Nancy Goucher, water program manager for the organization.

The plan outlines four key points that will fix the algae issue, including harnessing market forces to help farmers cut down on nutrient runoff, building water smart cities, improving scientific understanding of the blooms and forming a policy framework that pushes for action.

A press release from the organization stated:

The Ontario government should evaluate the applicability of market mechanisms such as tax shifting, pollution taxes and nutrient trading to transfer money from undesirable acts like polluting to desirable ones that reward farmers for 'doing the right thing.'

It's this kind of statement that raises questions from agriculture experts like Ivan O'Halloran, an associate professor at the University of Guelph Ridgetown Campus who studies nutrient use and soil fertility.

What they're saying is reasonable, he said. The only concern I have is that when you write it that way they did it sort of implies that farmers are doing the wrong things now and I don't believe that is the case for all farmers.

O'Halloran has been fielding questions about farmers and phosphorous for years.

He's encountered all sorts of explanations and studies and while he admits that farmers play a role in adding phosphorous to Lake Erie he said the issue isn't that simple.

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Algal blooms on Lake Erie. Who's to blame? 0

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Significant Tree Maintenance Adelaide - Phone AdelaideTreeRemovalcom now at 08 7100-1599 - Video

Removal of sweet chestnut tree near St Mary's Church in Thornbury creates furore

6:18am Thursday 14th August 2014 in News By Joshua Wright

Children playing on the tree which was moved to Streamleaze Green (9212296)

THE SWEET chestnut tree in Castle Street was cut down last week after being deemed a safety hazard.

The tree, by the vicarage near St Marys Church in Thornbury, which protruded onto the pavement had restricted the path to being 33 inches wide and was originally marked for felling because of the risk of bark falling on to passersby.

Thornbury Town Council was given a grant of 2,600 by South Gloucestershire Council (SGC) to fell the tree and SGC then moved it on to Streamleaze Green where plans are in place for it to be sculpted.

These plans will be discussed at Thornbury Town Councils Environment Committee meetings on Tuesday, September 9 and Tuesday, October 14 which the public are invited to attend.

The tree surgeon had to remove many of the trees side branches to enable it to be transported to its new location.

They said that whilst the main trunk was solid there was a considerable amount of rot in the branches, which were beginning to degrade quite badly.

Town mayor Cllr Guy Rawlinson said: Losing a tree, which was at least 200 years old is always a sad occasion, but it now has a home on Streamleaze Green where it will be enjoyed as a local feature.

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Removal of sweet chestnut tree near St Mary's Church in Thornbury creates furore