
Image : http://www.flickr.com
A senior living community is more than a building full of people. This is an environment of residents, relatives, nurses, and staff. Finally, is the place to call residents at home, where they show a sense of comfort and safety.
But again, it's a house full of people to develop a physical space to create a warm, without prejudice to their practical functions critical to providing quality health care. Shared spaces,Homes, kitchens and offices need air conditioning more efficient. This community also needs systems that are energy, efficient lighting and appliances, to reduce costs. It needs innovative construction, which can do everything from track movements of people to carry out assessments of resident base.
Everything that goes in your buildings, they can influence or contribute to achieving operational excellence in your company. Thus, the Building Technologies are plausible andaffordable?
Smart Building Control
Probably more than ever, senior living communities that are benefiting from a range of technologies that allow HVAC save money and increase comfort. Besides helping to clean systems run more efficient buildings, while improving the quality of life of residents, especially if you make the air quality, energy efficient systems, effective marketing tools, too.
Will be Shea, Corporate Director of Facility Management for Newton,Massachusetts-based Five Star Senior Living, said the company's strategic implementation of intelligent building control systems to many of its municipalities. "We take the latest technology that gives off and its application in our building to the right place," says Shea. In other words, the first company to target the communities most suitable for these systems and test results on the road. This saves investment costs and permits a case by caseAdjustment.
The latest control systems for buildings, for example, both the employed only a building in a different room temperature navigate easily monitor PCbased format. "If one part of the building is crammed up to 80 degrees, we can see that now," Shea said. Building control systems can also load balancing, storage and capacity of heating or cooling for the peak consumption.
A number of Five Star Senior Living communities have been equipped with suchTechnologies, starting with the less efficient buildings. "We're looking at the buildings that consume more energy, buildings with older equipment," says Shea. In some cases, control 30 years old. The cost of conversion is $ 30,000 to 150,000 $ depending on the size and complexity of adaptation, "but you can see the ROI for these technologies to run fast enough."
If owned and operated by municipalities, Hershey, Pennsylvania-based Country Meadows RetirementCommunity, updating the control system push has been a distributor for the updating of obsolete pumps and similar devices. The company has consistently improved the infrastructure in many of the 33 municipalities, some of which again 15 to 25 years. Prevent new and more modern heating system "to save, large variations in temperature and energy, but admit that our neighbors to their individual comfort," said Michelle Hamilton, Vice President of Operations for the company. "We also started the last twoChange years area residents room PTAC (packaged terminal air conditioning) units, the line area, energy efficient GE 5800 PTACs model, "she says.
I agree in many industrial buildings and facilities often professionals with the fact that the systems of heating and cooling systems are one area in which the owner of the biggest advantages are related to the comfort of collection operations, and a rapid return on investment .
"The major advances in technology are the mechanics, just the way we dealHeating and cooling of buildings, "says Doug Pancake marry mainly Irwin Pancake Architects, based in Costa Mesa, California. Plus, the progress goes well beyond the air conditioning. The latest technology in HVAC structure to the needs of the child line. Pancake points of thermal storage as an example.
"We are designing systems that effectively to generate cold water or ice at night when you get a really good price from the power company," said Pancake. The idea is toConstruction of a warehouse with cold water, when prices are low, "and then later in the day when prices are rising, you are the water is cold, which is in circulation." However, as part of a strategy like this: "E 'became a place must find a way to keep the tanks, advises" Pancake.
Lights 'green'
In 2010, approximately $ 60 billion in new construction will meet certain environmental criteria, compared with $ 12 billion in 2008, according to McGraw-Hill Construction Research & Analytics.
InIn particular, Green Building strategies for initiating many older communities with a light switch. While luminescence may not be among the most glamorous of all the technologies of construction, who lived there, and ROI are the most visible.
Last year and a half has changed in the Country Meadows all the bulbs in the communities in favor of compact fluorescent lamps, says Hamilton. The result is energy use 75 percent less than the same productAmount of light. "The compact fluorescent lamps are also used in all the chandeliers and wall lamps, with a warm and welcoming, and very light."
Hamilton notes that the company also started replacing all of its original inefficient fluorescent lighting in common areas and corridors of light more efficiently forward, which reduces the amount of energy used and a double wash of light, reducing the number of devices in most areas, but still the production of "much-neededbright and welcoming atmosphere for our residents. "Country Meadows is located in the middle of a two-year program to change the lighting in all public areas.
Retrofit at Five Star Senior Living, Shea is doing with its products of Sylvania. 'And' fast low-level technology but is also a good way to get up and go see, bottom-line savings without capital investment large, "he says.
Future direct
While HVAC and strategies of green are firmly in the mainstream,others "a la carte" Building Technologies also promising. The least appealing, but perhaps the most interesting technologies for the new building is the smart toilet, "says James M. Warner, president of JSA Architecture Planning & Interior Design in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. A unit of manufacturer Toto is an automated analysis of urine to be performed and a measure of weight, body mass, blood glucose and blood pressure. For the production of Toto toilets to connect to a PC with graphics and charts.
"This is theType of technology that people in a facility for assisted living healthier longer hold and what they think, "says Warner.
Also on the hydraulic system of a community-related, says the latest technology Pancake pipe can save time and money in building costly. In particular, they replaced the copper with PEX system for easy installation of plastic pipes. E 'amazingly quickly, "he says, and, unlike copper, it can take twists and turns, without danger of buckling up.
NewGenerations of plumbing and pipes may not be the most interesting topics of home automation, but what he lacks in glamor, make for cost savings. Yet there were some buildings along both weaving technologies certainly provide a higher level of efficiency and a cool factor for the merchant community.
For example, Five Star Senior Living is currently testing an integrated GPS functionality on some of its municipalities to provide care to Alzheimer's. The technology is part ofphysical construction and has the ability to monitor people in an efficient and unobtrusive. "If someone walked through a door in a state of rapture, it would still be looking for a position with the residents, and return quickly," says Shea. "There are good opportunities in this market."
In the same way, Warner is fascinated by the motion detector integrated the latest from manufacturers like Philips. These tools highly developed infrastructure capable of identifying a business model and the mapif there is something wrong.
"The software is associated with this device can analyze the movement and if something changes drastically, if someone throws a nap or it will be that staff believe a taste of what to take," says Warner. Motion detector These technologies are evolving in a traditional way in high-level communications, announced today that seems to take the rest of the population informed. A recent study conducted by the National Institute on Aging funded aims to prevent fallsSeniors using the motion sensor latest technology. Researchers with the help of sensors in the carpet, walls and clothes for long-term studies of the elderly in old age, so that preventive measures can be developed and adapted to play guard against the possibility of falling and shed light on activity patterns and behavior.
Twice better
Motion sensors, GPS functions, analysis WC, HVAC controls of the next generation of tubes of all these and many other physical characteristics of the structureStrategies not only help to improve living conditions for residents, who are a point of sale "for the community. If potential residents and families to know your community and compare it with others on the market and they'll be like to have the your building?
Especially in the company's competitive Senior Living, will make every effort to improve the quality of resident care and contribute to the problems of operational efficiency. Family members and residents of the value of green initiativesFor example, in order to implement even more strategic importance to the ecological systems.
According to a poll by Harris Interactive, baby boomers and seniors are more for the environment and green living a priority in their daily lives: 94 percent go to the baby boomer generation have taken steps over the past year to hit green, 81 percent are in addition to ecological aspects of those assets will leave for their grandchildren, the grandchildren, and 79 percent want to do more to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide. Furthermore, it is ALFADevelop cooperation with the EPA, a category of assisted living within the Division Energy Star health facilities.
Armani Fragrance Marine Collagen Nissan 300zx