About This Site

Rustin McIntosh, PE, CEM

I am a mechanical engineer. My specialty is finding energy savings in buildings, and associated related to water conservation, indoor environmental quality, and trouble shooting and reliability of mechanical systems in buildings.

Some of this might read like a book, but I wanted to use a web platform instead because:

• It’s free
• It does not go out of print unless I take the site down
• Changes and corrections can be made real-time, base on visitor feedback and ongoing work
• This can include links to other websites 
• This can include downloads and other features not found in a conventional printed book

Caveats

I am responsible for the content of this website.  I have attempted to post unbiased factual information and good quality resources on this website, however please remember

• nothing is perfect – there maybe mistakes, oversights and such
• none of this is a substitute for good engineering practices
• I have tried to verify that the resources and other websites referred to or linked to in this website are honest, useful and complete, but it is not possible for me to guarantee this, so good judgement should be used accordingly

I am soliciting feedback.  I want to know:

• your opinion
• anything you think is incorrect
• anything you think should be added or removed

Within the blog you can submit comments.  Otherwise you can use the “Contact Us” page to send me a message. Please be specific.  I may not post all comments.  I may change the site’s content based on feedback.   

About Me

Energy studies on buildings to hunt down energy savings and develop projects to improve their energy (and sometimes water) efficiency has been my specialty for nearly all of the past 35 years.  I am a licensed Mechanical Engineer in the state of Massachusetts, a Certified Energy Manager through the Association of Energy Engineers and a member of ASHRAE.  I have worked for a weatherization agency, a public utility, a consulting group, one ESP that does performance contracting, and a number of other operations.  You can see my employment history in my LinkedIn profile.

I have experience with residential, commercial, institutional, medical and industrial building types, among others.  I am familiar with a large variety of HVAC systems and what can be done to improve their efficiency, along with energy savings for other systems like lighting, compressed air and other systems.  I have developed projects for specialized buildings like those containing ice rinks and swimming pools, novel manufacturing processes and the like.  My experience includes retro-commissioning, trouble-shooting and problem solving.  I spent years leading a team of between 6 to 8 engineers in the development of turn-key energy retrofits, which often included replacement of large equipment like chillers and such.

Most my experience has been hunting down savings in existing buildings, but I have been involved in the new construction side of things, including design review, code and LEED compliance.  I have experience in utility-run energy incentive programs, including the associated engineering technical review of customer projects and associated cost-benefit testing, along with energy efficiency program development, policy, and evaluation, and the associated reporting to government regulators.

I have modeled building in eQUEST but I am not an expert, and have not used TRACE or EnergyPlus.  I prefer spreadsheets because they lay their calculations bare and because I feel they are more reviewable, especially for retrofit projects.  I have not used Revit, have not done design work outside of what was needed to specify one or another energy saving retrofit.  I have been trained in AutoCAD and then there was just always someone else there to do my drawings for me.  I have trained in life-cycle costing techniques only to find customers not interested, or if they were they would have their own bean-counters do that. 

I hope the material in this website is useful.  

Links

As a result, you may find this website features fewer photos of grand buildings and smiling faces.  When a situation is explained, relevant technical specifics are more likely to be included than people’s or company’s names or the exact amounts of energy saved from some particular energy bill. 

I have tried to list out and link to other websites and publications, where they are useful and relevant to the mechanical systems side of building energy efficiency.  Please use the “Contact Us” form to put in to have a resource, website, publication added.  Please be aware that this site is intended for technical non-commercial content, and I will choose what to list and link to based on this and other things, like whether I already have something that explains the same thing, for example.  In keeping with this purpose, this site is not intended to be:

• A job board
• A marketing platform
• LinkedIn
• A social media platform
• A replacement for anything else that already exists in a well-established and comprehensive form

Testimonials and case studies 

Things listed as actual testimonials and case studies here may be limited by the following:

1. Up until 2022 I always worked for someone else, so the process of getting permission to publish details of associated projects can be difficult and time-consuming.  
2. Much of what is described here are problems with buildings, their systems, designs etc. and therefore not flattering to the facility management, engineers, architect or even owners associated with them.  Let’s face it, everyone would like a story saying their building is great, but not many want me to tell tales of terrible waste, bad controls, bad design, poor facility management, etc. – it embarrassing!  
3. I find testimonials and case studies are often biased and commercially based, promotional and thereby often not always accurate.
4. The purpose of this website is to explain things in general, so they make sense from a technical point of view, and to site technical information and resources, not to cite a specific customer with a happy (or sad) story.