SchoolDude.com

The theme for this year’s APPA conference was Impact Your History. If you attended this event you know everyone walked away with new skills to take back and make an impact on their campus. In a monumental move, SchoolDude and APPA teamed up to offer a SchoolDude users group meeting in conjunction with [...]

Read More

We’ve all been caught in this situation at one time or another. Scenario 1. It’s 6:35 PM on Saturday evening. You get a call from the band director telling you that the auditorium is HOT. You are in a hurry to go out with family and friends for a great dinner and a night on [...]

Read More

We recently learned of one more innovative way facility professionals are using whatever is at their disposal to do more with less. Jim Seagraves, the Maintenance Supervisor at the Newport News Public Schools in Virginia had a problem. Some drain lines under a slab needed to be repaired by having the lines “sleeved”. So, Jim and his team utilized what he refers to as “high tech redneck” ingenuity to address the situation.

Read More

While schools continue to face cutbacks and smaller budgets in the current economic climate, we must also be reminded that building automation systems (BAS) have helped us use major building systems more efficiently, cut down on energy usage, and have played a significant role in doing more with less. The mentality could be that we can run our BAS on “autopilot” and save even more money on personnel costs. That mindset could not be further from the truth and has the potential to wipe out any savings previously realized. This means that we are still a long way from discontinuing the need for a skilled technician to monitor energy usage and building automation systems. One case in point is that of Upper Merion Area School District in King of Prussia, PA which has experienced this firsthand.

Read More

DX cooling units are the most popular type of air conditioning products used in commercial buildings, and come in two forms: Packaged Rooftops and Split Systems. The acronym DX stands for Direct Expansion, meaning that the air to be conditioned directly affects the system refrigerant via the coils.

Most school buildings have at least a handful of rooftops or split systems so let’s take a moment to discuss energy saving maintenance tips. These maintenance tips apply for all types of DX cooling units.

Read More