Trinity Construction: Upgrading Tennis Courts

Tennis Courts at Trinity University in midst of upgrade. Photo: Digital Subway

In the wake of recession, most universities' endowments suffered a major blow. However, anyone would be skeptical to believe this given the aggressiveness of construction projects at Trinity University. A perfectly good tennis court in great condition, with a capacity for eight simultaneous games was torn down for an upgrade right before our eyes. I overheard a Trinity student saying, "They took down a freakin' good tennis court, it better look damn good once it's completed."

This is how the tennis courts shown above looked before  upgrade. Source:  http://bit.ly/qV7EQR

The administration has proclaimed that the tennis court was in dire need for a major face-lift, additional seating capacity, shading for spectators, a scoreboard and extra space between individual courts. It can be agreed that shading, scoreboard and extra spaces are welcome attributes to an already awesome tennis court in red and green. However, it will be an arduous task to find supporters who would agree that the tennis ground itself needed a major face-lift. 

Tennis Court beside Murchison is also being upgraded. Photo: Digital Subway

Spending more than 2 million dollars for just adding shade, extra space between courts and a scoreboard appears as an imprudent move in terms of economics and value obtained. However, there is little room for argument among amateur economists (including me) when decisions like these are thoughtfully approved by economic scholar and university president Dr. Dennis Ahlburg and other wise board members in the light of all possible investment opportunities.

Trinity Construction: Utility Plants and Horizontal Drilling (video)

Trinity University in a maze. Photo: Digital Subway

If you miss the exhilaration and excitement of finding your way through a maze, consider visiting Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. It is free and open to public which makse it the best deal anyone could find in these tough economic times. A green and beautiful campus has become a maze and a sight of bustling activities due to simultaneous construction projects being undertaken. 

Laying out of pipelines for consolidation of utility plants at Trinity. Photo: Digital Subway

One of the projects in the process is the consolidation of three utility plants into two in order to be efficient and save space for Center for Sciences and Innovation. Currently, three central heating/cooling units service the university's needs for hot and cold water. These shall be consolidated into two energy-efficient units - one boiler and chiller each separately. 

Drilling Machine used for horizontal drilling. Photo: Digital Subway

At first, it might seem like a multi-million dollar project like this may not be cost-effective keeping in mind the elimination of benefit from heat exchange that could take place between boiler and chiller if placed in the same plant. However, the new chillers use modern technology to cool water and thus their operational costs will be lower in the long run and result in net savings. I have neither looked at economics nor technical details behind the equipment used in this project so I can not comment any further. But it has been acclaimed that the project will be completed before university reopens in Fall 2011.

A worker joining pipes for injecting drilling fluid. Photo: Digital Subway

A project of this magnitude is no easy task and requires rigorous drilling at multiple sites to re-channel pipelines for flow of hot/cold waters. The Californian contractor performing this task is using horizontal drilling, the same controversial technique using in extracting natural gas from shale formations - also known as fracking. The only difference in this project that has exempted it from being criticized by environmental groups, students or professors alike is the lack of use of hazardous chemicals. However, upon closer inspection, I discovered that a drilling liquid (see below) is being injected while drilling. Since I was unable to obtain a sample or conduct any tests, its nature and toxicity remains a mystery.

A Gel/Drilling fluid of unknown toxicity injected during horizontal drilling. Photo: Digital Subway

Pipes for chiller and boiler. Photo: Digital Subway

An anonymous Californian worker (anonymous because I forgot to ask his name) described that the tip of the drilling machine has a 2 degrees bend which allows easy maneuvering and makes horizontal drilling possible. A metallic pipe of 2 inches in diameter and 10 or 15 feet in length is first used to drill a hole from one end to another, which can be as long as 1000 feet. As drills are made, more pipes are joined using a socket. Furthermore, once the initial drill is made, other drills are made around it to accommodate the larger pipe which could be several inches in diameter. See a video demonstration of this process below. He admitted that it is a difficult task and requires both strength and technique. However, it pays well since he is part of a labor union back in California.

               Video clip of horizontal drilling process at Trinity University. By Digital Subway

If you have any questions, concerns about this report, please leave your comment below. All digital media in this post is copyrighted by Digital Subway.

San Antonio earning a name in Clean tech Industry

San Antonio's major Julian Castro announced a partnership to bring five cleantech companies to San Antonio next year or so. This is under his overarching Mission Verde Plan that wants to make San Antonio the greenest city in the U.S. I am excited that San Antonio is doing a lot of activities to make the city sustainable and promote greener lifestyle among city residents. While working as the energy management intern at Office of Environmental Policy, City of San Antonio, I am glad that my work to benchmark city-owned facilities for utility consumption will assist the city to become greener by reducing its energy consumption. 

CPS Energy is also aggressively supporting renewable energy generation by calling for investors to build utility-scale PV in the region in the upwards of 400 MW. This will place San Antonio on the charts among the cities with the largest PV installations. Since CPS Energy is a municipal owned utility with a monopoly in San Antonio for supplying electricity and natural gas to homes and businesses, it can drive changes from top-down very easily. In addition, unlike privately owned utilities, it is not always trying to maximize profits. It has responsibly encouraged homes and businesses to perform energy audits that are highly subsidized by CPS Energy, either through its own funds or stimulus money. It also supports installations of programmable thermostats and many smart meters as part of pilot program have already been installed. Its website offers numerous suggestions on how to reduce energy consumption and what kind of electrical appliances to buy/install for maximum efficiency. This is a very exciting time to be in San Antonio, Texas or the South in general because it is among the leading regions in renewable energy production and cleantech jobs.

A Temporary Technological Sabbath

Summer has been very interesting for me. Interesting for several reasons, primarily because my lifestyle has been very different than during the hectic college semesters. I wasn't planning on blogging as part of my temporary/partial technological Sabbath. Oh yes, I need to tell you about this. I have stopped using a cellphone since about a month after I got it wet and rendered it dysfunctional. No immediate plans to own a cellular device either. It is not the WHO report, linking cell-phones usage to a heightened probability of developing cancer from its radiation, that drove this change. It is primarily because I wanted to reassess the pervasiveness and impact of technology on cohesion/interaction among human beings.

The pace of digitization of appliances from analog has changed our lives pretty dramatically. We no longer produce analog acoustic waves for communication between us. Digital communication signals coded in 0 and 1 is what emanates from our devices varying from smart-phones to laptops. Communication has moved from being analog to mostly digital. Google is proud to service few billion search requests daily and happily lets tens of thousands of new users connect using its Android OS on smart-phones. Facebook too is adding millions of new members every month and Mark Zuckerberg (I don't care if I spelled his last name incorrectly) has vowed to eliminate privacy from our experience. Apparently, he believes there shouldn't be anything such as privacy. Amid this battle for digital attention, there are groups of secretive hackers expressing dissent by taking down websites of corporations and the government. What a world we live in, utterly confusing and digitized.

I am not against digitization of our world. In fact, as an aspiring and soon-to-be degree holding electrical engineer, I relish designing and thinking about novel designs for electrical and electronics products. If you have not noticed, my blog is titled "The DIGITAL Subway" and url also has the word digital. So, what is all this whining for? Well, I'm sure you know why. The ground has been shifting right before our feet. The very "laborsaving devices" that we built to free up leisure time are keeping us more occupied and busy. Staying busy has become the norm of hard-working and “intelligent” city-dwellers. The devices that we built to better communicate with our fellow acquaintances have overwhelmed us and captured all our attention. A typical workplace has become a 100 square feet of dreaded space with a computer. Seminars have transformed into webinars, meetings into conference calls, face-to-face talk into phone calls and small talks during lunch breaks into thumb swipes on touchscreens of smartphones for texting or browsing the web.

If you want to read more about how technology has changed us, I would recommend the book called, “Better off: flipping the switch on technology” by Eric Brende. Eric is a MIT graduate who took a break from his graduate education to live among a group of Mennonites to experience the life devoid of any motor-operated device which includes cars, cell-phones or any machine you can think of.

Note: More on this topic to come in subsequent posts. I actually decided to write something after a long time because I need some practice for my GRE essay; my GRE is in less than a week now.

3-Day Start-up @ Rackspace in San Antonio

This is what our board looked like today while developing ideas. Photo by: Digital Subway

Organized by Trinity University and hosted by Rackspace, 3 Day Startup event has been so intense yet interesting. Ideas about startups were pitched and among them six ideas were chosen to develop further. A basic working principle with marketing results, business model and expansion has to be developed for each of these ideas.

Sample of another board. These cool models were drawn by Dustin. Photo by: Digital Subway

I am working with the group that is trying to develop a "Collaborative Inventory Management" for local farmers in order to sell their produce efficiently. It is a really cool idea with an expanding market. This model is already working in Georgia state in the U.S. according to the research of Dustin Larimer. Since this is an idea for a tech startup, this is all I can tell you without diving into the details. I can't spill the beans. 

It's a lot of fun and a 3 day event, hence the name 3DS (3 Day Start-up). I am really glad to be participating in it. Let's see how tomorrow goes while pitching final ideas to the investors.

More pictures of 3DS. Photo by: Digital Subway