Florida Solar Energy Center offers green building courses

COCOA, FLA. – The Florida Solar Energy Center, a research institute of the University of Central Florida, is offering a series of five courses that focus on designing and maintaining high performance green buildings for mechanical contractors, building inspectors, facility managers, indoor air quality specialists, architects and engineers. Initial course offerings will be held at FSEC in Cocoa, Fla., this February.

The series of courses will demonstrate how to design and maintain a green building that has good indoor air quality; how to make a building durable, comfortable and energy efficient; how to protect buildings from mold; what types of air-conditioning systems cause mold problems; and what advanced dehumidification technologies are available for use in buildings.

“A recent study finds about 25% of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified green buildings use more energy than expected and about 12% use more energy than allowed by the building code,” said Rob Vieira, director of buildings research at FSEC. Our courses will provide the knowledge to address these issues.”

The courses will focus on problems in commercial buildings, although the principles discussed will be applicable to all buildings. Building researchers will discuss such areas as HVAC systems, ventilation requirements, humidity control, building envelope design, pressure imbalances, window selection, vapor barriers and related issues.

Students who attend all five courses in the series and pass exams in the first three courses will earn a FSEC Green Commercial Building Design and Maintenance certificate.

Upcoming courses and dates are as follows:

• Feb. 18: Designing and maintaining HVAC systems for high performance green buildings.
• Feb. 19: Design charrette — practice design of a high performance green building.
• Feb. 26: Commercial energy code and green building modeling using EnergyGauge Summit.

The cost of each course is $269. Additional information is available at: http://www.floridaenergycenter.org/go/courseschedule.