Roger Silveira 22:47
harder and harder depending on that number, right. And so that helped quite a bit. And then of course, it turns itself off, when there’s only one or two occupants in the space, that doesn’t get as much. But we bought a system that doesn’t as a monitor, it actually regulates the amount of pressure and again, a little different than just buying a one monitor. So, you know, if you monitor manually, you have to also adjust manually. And with 2000 classrooms, I don’t have the bandwidth to adjust manually. So we all try to automate it as much as possible. Right, right. And the technology is actually relatively cheap is about 250 the thermostat to keep the fan running. If you go with the full automation, it’s about 1100 a classroom to fully automate. So it’s not it’s not cheap, but it’s not terribly expensive. But what you get
Greg Owens 23:31
right for what you get, it seems, you know, like, it’s, it sounds like a very, very economical Plus, you’re saving energy over long over the long haul.
Roger Silveira 23:41
Yeah, because there’s, you know, early on, when I started doing this, I got a lot of pushback, even from the scientific community that well, you want to increase ventilation, so you want to put more fresh air in a space, you’re gonna use a lot more energy. Mm hmm. So theoretically, that’s true. Theoretically, in the lab, if you take, you know, twin unit, their kitchen units side by side, and you pump more outside air into one of them, it has to condition that outside air. So right ventilation is outside air, you have to condition so if it’s really hot, you have to condition that hot air,
Greg Owens 24:10
which is San Jose, San Jose, you can get up to temperatures of 105 Yeah, pretty easily. Right? And so
Roger Silveira 24:15
if you put in a lot of fresh air, it costs more energy, because gotta condition it. Yeah, theoretically, is correct, where I have a problem as those are very old, and there’s a lot of dysfunction within the equipment. And so if you repair your equipment update, put in some new controls, you can significantly improve the fresh air in classrooms and use less energy. And so we’re not replacing we’re not taking dysfunctional equipment and just adding more to it. We actually want to replace it put some controls in that are filtration. So there’s a process to it that that improves air quality and saves energy,
Greg Owens 24:48
right. How much of leak detection because I’ve also read things about that with HVAC that you know a lot of air, at least in homes and it can only imagine it’s true in commercial buildings to is that like when you’re circulating that air and it’s going through all the ductwork. And if the ductwork is older and it’s gotten shifted, or there’s cracks in it that, that, that that’s there’s a 20 or 30% of your air is kind of escaping before it gets to the place that you you wanted to be in. Yeah,
Roger Silveira 25:18
part of the program that we put together, AB 41 addresses that. So there’s the called retro commissioning. And so before COVID, it was referred to as retro commissioning, not assessments, and the tools used to pay for that, because it saves energy, all that leakage, right. Kind of like,
Greg Owens 25:35
like a pipe of water pipe leaking, right, your water you’re wasting air that you’ve spent isn’t either cool or heat. Yeah, exactly.
Roger Silveira 25:43
So part of that part of the assessment they call assessments now, but on paper, if you look them on paper, it’s just retro commissioning. And the reason why this date was able to get the, the 600 million that was approved, is paid for by the utilities, that at the end of the day, if you do these assessments, and you put the co2 monitor in and you get things to work like they’re supposed to, you fix the dysfunction, you’ll save energy in the long run, because a lot of a lot of lot of the maintenance issues and the dysfunction, that equipment costs a lot more run when there’s dysfunction.
Greg Owens 26:12
There seems to be no downs, it seems so logical and no downside to the spending of this kind of money. And then you’re saying, well, it’s coming from the Energy Commission anyway. So it’s not even like didn’t even really necessarily raise taxes, let’s say right, like it our property taxes. It’s it’s, it’s, it’s subsidized by your energy bills, though.
Roger Silveira 26:32
Yeah. Because the energy companies have to invest a certain percentage of their their fees that they charge every month back into energy saving. Yeah, they’re
Greg Owens 26:41
men. They’re mandated to do that. Yeah. Utilities are another interesting business model, right. Like they have to, they have to sustain themselves, they have to make some money, they have to pay a return to investors, but then they also have to save the environment and, and get people to stop using them.
Roger Silveira 26:59
Yeah, I mean, I’m a big fan of utilities. And you know, East Side has a very well, the largest solar systems in schools. It was the largest them to about two to three years ago, we produced 7.2 megawatts of power. Wow, to solar power plant. We’re basically a small power.
Greg Owens 27:16
Yeah, you’re like, you’re like we’re, we’re a school, we educate kids. And we, we put we have a power plant.
Roger Silveira 27:23
And so you know, when I came on board here five years ago, and I and I, one of the first things I did is I wanted to save some energy. And so I started doing some utility analysis on where our money goes, because we spent $6 million a year on utilities. So that’s a pretty big number for the school to absorb 6 million. 6 million. Yeah, million on utility. I need to water gas, electricity, those affiliates cost 6 million a year. So I was looking for ways how do we reduce that number? So I started training all of our spend. And I noticed early on that after we put in solar, our spend dropped by two thirds. So we drop 60%. But more than 60% was a 67% drop in our spin after solar. So I thought was great.
Greg Owens 28:09
It makes sense. It totally makes sense for a school or businesses where as high capacity because you’re using the most amount of energy during the daylight and times during the day. We’re open eight to four, right? Yeah. So all the hours, and it’s air conditioning and heating, cooling, air conditioned ventilation is probably using up the most amount of energy. Oh, yes, the
Roger Silveira 28:29
lighting and lighting and air conditioned 70% of our total usage, right? You’ve got those two things out at 334 o’clock, you reduce your bill by 30 by 7%. Right there. Right. So the model works really well. But I noticed that there were within five years of putting in solar, our bill was back to the original 3 million a year on electricity. So something something was not working. Wow. So I went after the providers to make sure the solar system was working. And we can confirm we’re getting we’re producing all kinds of power. What I found was the solar provider had put in his had requested the utility put an additional meters so they can verify production. So they want to make sure that we’re producing plenty of power, we have a guarantee that we’re gonna produce power, but the utility is screwed up and cross the numbers between the verification meter and actually the meter. So we have two meters on campus. And each school has a meters. Well, we were we started paying for what we produced versus getting credit.
Greg Owens 29:27
Wow. You and this is through I mean, you have you have sort of a love of data, right? Like you’re you’re data driven. You’re looking at the numbers and you’re like this doesn’t this isn’t adding up. We were doing so well before what changed. We haven’t changed anything. Something’s wrong. Exactly. And then from there, you’re doing a detective job of sort of like, what could it be? What could it possibly be? Probably the last thing on your mind was that they crossed the numbers.
Roger Silveira 29:56
Well, the first thing I went after was production. Yeah. Where’s all the solar? We’re producing? We got we got all these panels, where’s the power going? And then once we confirm there’s lots of power. Okay, then if there’s lots of power, then where’s it going?
Greg Owens 30:09
Where’s the leakage down? Power? Does it leak easily, right?
Roger Silveira 30:13
So we end up recovering about 1.2 million from the utility, just for power, we would recover more, but they have a three years. So they only go back, they only go back three years. Right? Wow. And that lowered our annual spend by about 700, just by fixing that dysfunction. Wow. And that’s, you know, a lot of us like says data driven. So I see the tools and other data thing that I use, we use that data for attendance. So you know, that data helps us improve attendance, it improves test scores, we’re using that data to improve test scores, even behavior. You mentioned earlier, about peak though, if you look at all the co2 graphs that we chart in the classroom, so you look at co2 levels, they peak right around noon, and so it starts to build up slowly in the morning. And then right around lunchtime, there’s less classrooms, the afternoon, it drops significantly in the afternoon, as kids get out. And so we started looking at behavior, we track behavior, every time a student gets sent to the office for some type of disciplinary behavior, we track, you know, date, time and all that fun stuff. Kristen Bell Curve decrease of Bulker at around noon, peaks around noon. And so if you overlay my co2 data, where a peak times of high co2 levels are cloudy, and you overlay that with poor behavior, they overlap, they have the overlap the exact same time, which is really creepy to think that.
Greg Owens 31:30
So you’re saying, you’re saying like kids are like behavioral issues start going up as the co2 levels go up? And your data is correlating to that?
Roger Silveira 31:40
Yeah, correct. And if you look at the science, you know, the science, there’s some science behind it, because the longer you’re exposed to high level of the two, the more fatigued and irritable you become. Mm hmm. So keep in mind, like I mentioned earlier, a big portion of our district is from a disadvantaged community. So a lot of these kids already come to school pretty emotionally charged, right? They come in difficult backgrounds, they got they got tough homes, and they got some issues going for him.
Greg Owens 32:07
Yeah, this thing single parents like, yeah, parents that are working nights that are not around as much that I mean, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of challenges there for
Roger Silveira 32:16
sure. Yeah, they already come pretty emotionally charged, you put this functional space. And discipline is a two party transaction, people realize that discipline is a student, and then there’s a teacher. So if this, for example, if this teachers in the classroom, and they’re tired and fatigued, it doesn’t take much to set them off. And then you have a student that’s already emotionally charged. You don’t want to give them any more to get them to some of that edge.
Greg Owens 32:39
And we forget so quickly how where we’re so influenced even just by the feelings, right? So somebody’s feeling like a teacher’s feeling it and kids and dog kids dogs, animals can pick up on the feelings faster than adults can a lot of times, right? Like they they know something’s wrong, but they don’t know what’s wrong. Right? So like, that teacher might be fatigued and tired and getting grumpy, and still doing their job and putting on a smile and all that but kids are feeling like something’s wrong here. Right? This isn’t, the feelings aren’t equal in here, and they start getting anxious.
Roger Silveira 33:15
Yeah, and it’s not I mean, it’s not, when I presented some information that was submitted today, it’s not a silver bullet, you’re not gonna solve all the problems. So we’re not trying to we’re not trying to flatten the curve here. Because we’re not going to, we’re not going to cure behavior by improving air quality. But if we can have an improvement in any any tick down, 123 5% down is better. Right?
Greg Owens 33:35
I mean, I read I read this book, atomic habits, and it talks about just like improving one thing in your life by 1%. Right? Like just a little tiny, like, if you just improve your sleep just a little bit better. Right? And your improve your exercise. I mean, all these little improvements start adding up to something really, really
Roger Silveira 33:53
important of the compound like compound interest. They start Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s important. And I don’t think people realize the importance of these things. Like you said, adding up into into students doing better, teachers doing better.
Greg Owens 34:07
Feeling better, feeling better about going to school, feeling better about going to work, right. I mean, all
Roger Silveira 34:12
such in play, even like you mentioned feeling, so just give us some word background. So one of the things I noticed when I first started, was my first year here, we had a summer in October, late summer, and that classrooms got 100 rooms got 105. And it was pretty hot for a whole week. I was walking around one of the high schools, I noticed that about a third of the doors are open, and it drove me crazy. It’s like why are all these doors open? What is what is going on? Oh, interesting, not care. It’s like 95 degrees. It’s nine o’clock in the morning already. You know what’s going on?
Greg Owens 34:44
So we’re going through one of these heat waves, you’re you’re looking at classrooms going like why are the doors open? The air conditionings just leaking out into the hallway, not necessarily as needed, where it needed is in the classroom where they’re actually working, and it’s driving you crazy. So what What was why were they opening the doors? Because it wasn’t?
Roger Silveira 35:02
Well, I was I was, at the time, I wasn’t paying air quality into your feelings and your oxygen levels in your brain. And so when we are stuffy people, when they feel stuffy, they’ll do just about anything to go get some fresh air, you see people walk out, they go for a walk to do anything to get fresh air. And so your brain recognizes I had sleep apnea. That’s how a pen and a little bit about how your brain reacts around low oxygen levels. Yeah. So your brain will seek out oxygen. So if that space is has really high co2 levels, and there’s low oxygen in there, your brain wants to find relief, no matter what its subconscious is looking for relief. And so as I interviewed teachers wire, why do you have the door open? The number one answer why is stuffy in here? It’s just too stuffy in here, right? They’re just not getting enough fresh air. So that stuffy feeling over read logic of keeping the door closed to make it cooler in space.
Greg Owens 35:56
On hot days now with your system, the doors are all closed. They’re feeling
Roger Silveira 36:01
we get away good. Oh, occasional one that wants to open let kids in and out. But the numbers have significantly reduced. Right. If I don’t see how I don’t see me, there’s probably an 80% reduction in doors open. People don’t feel stuffy. And then they feel they have control over this space do now. Yeah,
Greg Owens 36:16
yeah. So Roger, like on this podcast, I’ve been also asking people about their own sort of path and origin story of how they got into this place in time in their career, highlighting that there’s this, there’s there’s careers out here that are very interesting. You are a unique example here. We’ve also found like something that you really love, you can I can feel it right, like you’re so into this and you’ve got so much knowledge about it. And you’re making such a huge difference. Well, how did you get yours, your start, and to get to this place in time?
Roger Silveira 36:49
So I mean, when I was in high school, I love cars. So of course, I took two years of automotive school. Yeah, so I got a mechanical background. So I learned learn about machines. I love machines. And so that kind of limited the like machines and the mechanical.
Greg Owens 37:04
I haven’t had that car, which kind of cars like what era of cars? Were you? Um, in high school?
Roger Silveira 37:10
I like muscle cars.
Greg Owens 37:12
Yeah, me too. I figured I mean, we’re both sort of closer to that generation, right where it’s like, definitely. And so
Roger Silveira 37:21
my dad was a construction worker for 37 years. And so I got sucked into construction, all through high school. I tried automotive, but my siblings were on because production and making twice as much money as I was. So then I got I left automotive and went into construction. The money was better. Right? Then I bounced between facilities maintenance and fleet maintenance, for some time for big truck leasing company. I did all the facility maintenance. And then I ran my own construction business for several years. And then in the last downturn, 2008 there was no work and got really, really slow.
Greg Owens 37:55
I went to it went to zero for some of us, right, like, it was zero for me. It was in tough times, man. It’s, uh, you know, he
Roger Silveira 38:04
lived it. It was tough time.
Greg Owens 38:05
Yeah, I mean, we’re painting painting is a little bit a little bit better than new construction because we’re doing repaint. But you know, like, we were working for banks, mortgage companies. Sharper Image, remember sharper image. We were doing all of their painting throughout the whole northern California area and all of it evaporated.
Roger Silveira 38:25
Yeah, my entire construction business of eight years was was built around Ruma instance and light commercial. Right? So 90% of every check I received with people’s equity lines of credit. So those are the checks I was collecting every every week for the work I was doing. Right. When the housing market tanked, it took away all remodels. There was no room additions that are gone literally overnight. 75% work disappeared overnight. Do have you seen the movie The Big Short? Yeah, right. It’s such a it’s such a painful movie for me to watch because it’s like all the signs were there but I wasn’t smart enough to see them at all
Greg Owens 39:02
right? I thought I was doing great. I thought I was doing great. But it’s like no there was there was just a flood of money coming into people’s hands.
Roger Silveira 39:14
And then I shut my business down I said I you know I have a mortgage and kids I gotta I gotta find a way to make a living. So I got into tech I got into doing facilities in tech. I did some I conductors. Three years. I spent a year at Microsoft and data centers. That’s how I learned a lot about ventilation was actually through data centers. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they highly thought of the air because
Greg Owens 39:36
it’s very it’s super sensitive. The companies have money so there’s no budgetary problem right? No budget their problems and they’re like hey, we’ve got all these computers that need to be cooled down and we need good ventilation and clean rooms. So what am I gonna spend millions on? Yeah, so
Roger Silveira 39:51
I did clean rooms for for semiconductors. Then I did data center so I had a little bit background there and then that work wasn’t very fulfilling. Believe it or not. TECOM isn’t that exciting to work for? It’s all about shareholders. And, you know, those people are just we’re pariahs. We’re leeches on the profit margin, and stuff. I wasn’t very fun to work at. And so I thought, taking my experience in facilities and just using it, to give back the communities around in schools was a good way to take my experience and do something more for the general good of humankind than in lining the pockets of tech companies.
Greg Owens 40:28
Were you thinking about co2 levels before you went into this schools? Or was at the schools that you started getting?
Roger Silveira 40:35
My second school so I worked at another district for three years before I came to East Side. And it wasn’t till I got here, and I ran into that was one article sent me off. There was one article about co2 attendance from from Berkeley Lab.
Greg Owens 40:49
Do you just want to read why didn’t you read this article? Like, how did it come across your desk came across my newsfeed and came across your being just because of the types of things that you like, looking at? Yeah, cuz I’m always looking at engineering, you’re looking at mechanics, you’re looking at different things.
Roger Silveira 41:05
So Google sends me all kinds of interesting information. Right? So like, that article popped up, I read it is right in the middle of triaging a building with sick people. And so I thought, Oh, wow, this is interesting. And then the building on the screening happened to have all the fresh air cut off. And so I thought, well, I guess this is, this is interesting. This is kind of looks like what I’m triaging. Right now, I’m triaging a building with sick people with no air at all. And here’s, here’s an article telling me that, you know, portacot is affecting how many days kids come to school, so I just kind of made the connection. There. This
Greg Owens 41:36
is a building that had a higher level of people getting sick, and you were getting complaints.
Roger Silveira 41:42
Yeah. So there’s, there’s there’s complaints about a couple of different teachers in the same building stick with fatigue issues, headaches, nausea, and then a horrific odor problem. They actually nicknamed the crayon building, because it smells like a box of crayons. So it smells
Greg Owens 41:55
like it’s like a chemical smell then chemicals smell. Yeah. Hi. See earlier, you’re like, Hey, what’s going on? They’re like, Hey, we’ve got a problem. Can you kind of like start doing some detective work because this place smells like crowns and other
Roger Silveira 42:07
brands. And so before I got here, they had already started the car. So they hired and I remember the company to test for mold. They couldn’t find any mold. They couldn’t find any moisture issues. They’re replacing all the carpet. The carpet problem helped a little bit. But it didn’t make the problem go away. And so we started looking at the ventilation system found that they were all closed. Hmm. So there was zero for it. It was in full recirculation mode. Just like your car full recirculation, recirculating,
Greg Owens 42:32
it’s the same air getting around and around, still no off air being brought into it that has your oxygen and has all the other things you’re needing.
Roger Silveira 42:41
And that building had no operable windows, they couldn’t open a window when the doors open to a hallway. Right? So there’s no way to get any air in that building. You’re just researching this day, no
Greg Owens 42:51
way to get any airflow through. If you just open even if you open the doors in the hallway, you’re not getting ventilation,
Roger Silveira 42:57
you’re not getting ventilation, right, it requires one Emerson reliant on mechanical ventilation. And that one’s closed off. Literally somebody close it up. Yes. So it took some time to figure that out. And then once I once I read that article, I started reading other articles, and then I went down this rabbit hole. And so I’ll tell you a funny story. And so I obsess over sort of thing. Like,
Greg Owens 43:21
it’s good that this has become your session,
Roger Silveira 43:24
right? And so, um, I was eating, drinking, breathing everything co2 and air quality. I read every article I could find I Googled everything read every paper I could find. And then I would go to our, you know, I was friends and places, and I would just regurgitate all this information. And my wife one day told me sciences to hate, and you’re scaring our friends thinking you pipe down on the co2? Did I obsess? I said, Okay, fine. And so but I didn’t stop reading. And I didn’t stop talking about it. I just did it behind your back.
Greg Owens 43:56
Right? Because I mean, if somebody like starts to complain about fatigue and that kind of stuff, you’re like, Huh, what’s the ventilation like at your office?
Roger Silveira 44:04
Well, that’s what I was doing. So I, you know, my wife and I says, Hey, what what’s going on? You’re acting really strange. You know, I walk in the room, you close your computer. You’re outside on the phone having a strange conversations with people. Are you having Are you are you having an affair? That’s a no, no, I’m just, I’m really more about co2. And I just didn’t want to freak out. And then when I go outside and talk to people about co2, you asked me not to pipe down. Right. And it became it became funny that my wife refer to as my as my mistress. This is not mine. I have an entire website devoted to it. So two has become my ministry.
Greg Owens 44:36
Right. Right. So that’s so great. Yeah, I mean, like, of all the different things you can, you know, you can there’s, there’s people that go in different directions, right? They can go into exercise, they obsessed obsession, right, like they can go to the bar, right? There’s lots of people you and I both know, people in the construction industry that they’re there every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and are at the bar right? And my mother asked
Roger Silveira 44:59
me For money for.
Greg Owens 45:04
And there’s some that like, sit down and I’m like, No, I want to find out more about air quality. And I want to like, I want to, I want to dig deeper into this. Right. And, and, you know, it’s, it’s interesting to me because you never know where these obsessions like how they come into your life and how they sort of grab on and propel you forward in a way, right? Because like, I mean, this is probably not something you thought 10 years ago that you’d be so into five years
Roger Silveira 45:29
old, never would have imagined five years ago, five years I’ve been featured. Yeah, I’ve been featured on NBC News. I’ve been in Yahoo News, I’ve been on Business Insider, I’ve been on goGreen radio, I’ve been on blooper magazine. And so I never in my wildest dreams would imagine that I would be, you know, on a new NBC News talking about co2 and monitoring air quality in classrooms before COVID. This is before COVID
Greg Owens 45:51
or COVID, and everything even more, and now it’s so much more relevant and needed, right and moving forward. For sure, because COVID doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to go away, at least for the next five to 10 years. Right? It’s gonna be a constant thing. And we’re never gonna forget, right? Like, we’re people are going to want to make these upgrades to their buildings and make sure air quality every new building, I think every new building that’s being built is reassessing the air quality inside their building.
Roger Silveira 46:23
Yeah, for for example, you know, schools are regulated by a DSA, the, it’s the DSA is the the architect, Division of State architect, we’re not managed by the local codes, local city, ordinance or state. So the the is the state architects district that are going to get it. And so they regulate all construction. So after COVID started, they now mandate every classroom get a student to monitor. So if you build a new classroom, it’s required to put it in as many codes changing.
Greg Owens 46:52
Yeah, that’s so great. You’d bet you’ve had such a major influence on the state of California and across the US, I’m sure with all of this knowledge, and that what you’ve brought to the table. So it’s so fascinating.
Roger Silveira 47:04
Yeah, it’s, it’s been it’s been an interesting, very interesting, and there’s glad I started before, because, you know, there’s school still struggling, and I have a headstart. We’re fortunate that I was doing this four years ago. So we really got a head start ahead of anybody else. And now people know, I’m into this. So I get I get, I get newsletters and stuff. Almost every day, somebody sends me something, right. Hey, did you see this? Or hey, did you see that? Yeah, I got one from a study in Italy. Or they found that schools that had good ventilation had 82%, lower COVID rate. So just confirms what we already know. Because the data keeps coming in to confirm what we already know, right? You’re
Greg Owens 47:41
just building a better and better case now. Right? Like as the studies come in, because it takes time for these studies to really come in, you can’t, you can’t come up with like one school you have that you want to see a compilation of, of like, hey, we did this, and this is what the result has been right? And then they watch, watch, your next thing will be on the behavior and all that other stuff.
Roger Silveira 48:00
I’m trying I’m trying to get somebody to do a formal study. Because right now, what I have is a correlation my data, which if you look at the symptoms, that makes sense, but I want to I’m trying to get them to do a formal actual study on it. Right, right. Because the the scientific data is there. And but there’s no way nobody’s done an actual study study on it. There’s burnouts. I have a correlation, but I don’t have a scientific study.
Greg Owens 48:22
Right. Right. Yeah. And that should definitely, I mean, it’s so hard to get those to take place. But I would think in this day and age, it should be easier, right?
Roger Silveira 48:32
It’s getting easier. It’s getting easier. I mean, right after COVID I have a group of lobbyists that I that I work with, I call him up said hey, I’ve done a ton of research on viruses and influenza, and this is going to be in the air. And so we need we need start getting prepared. Because the viruses, the viruses, the virus, right? Mm hmm. So we need to prepare in a Tony, hey, pipe down. Don’t Don’t be freaking people out yet. We don’t want to help as well. I’m just the study is on influenza. So I’m just regurgitating what I see. I don’t I don’t write the studies. I don’t make I don’t read, regurgitate what I read. And so I I’ve seen several studies on influenza, and how been how ventilation helps lower influenza rate. And so it’s a virus similar to COVID. And if you’re trying to mitigate viruses, why not start talking about it? Now? They told me Hey, pack down, we don’t freak people out. Right? There’s already a lot of fear in here. Let’s not freak people out. Well, it didn’t take very long before it became common knowledge that hey, design is there.
Greg Owens 49:29
And now everybody’s freaked out. Yeah, it was. It this is great. Um, how can people find out more and I’ll make sure it’s in the show notes and that kind of thing. How can people find out more about you know what you’re doing what you’re up to, and the need for fresh air.
Roger Silveira 49:48
So I have a website and the blog called weneedfreshair.com so if you just Google weneedfreshair.com you’ll find me that way. The articles I’ve been featured in are posted on the website, you’ll be able to have one white paper that I did that I co authored with a group called the California high performance schools chip. And there’s other information, but you can find me there. All my informations there. You can book a talk, if anybody wants to talk more about it. Yeah. I also help district fund H back projects through energy. So if they if they want to do a big H back project to improve air quality, we think I can teach people how to convert that air quality problem. That’s a mechanical problem into an energy solution. And then we can get some energy dollars and solve that problem. Wow.
Greg Owens 50:35
Yeah, that’s, that’s great. That’s such needed, then such needed things out there. And you sort of know how to navigate those waters for those grants. And to get those funds.
Roger Silveira 50:44
Again, schools, it’s hard to get money in school facilities, really, it’s really difficult. So you have to learn over the years, like I’ve learned over the years, how to navigate through, and where to find it. Because it’s not easy. It’s not like Microsoft or Google or Facebook, where they have just giant piles of money. Just don’t have those resources. So we have to be as creative as possible. Right?
Greg Owens 51:05
Right. That’s, that’s wonderful. And then any other asks or requests out there, like for you, and what you’re trying to try to do. I know you’re trying to, you’re trying to get a study together to get this. I mean, it would be great for Stanford or somebody like that, or UC Davis to, to really sort of jump in,
Roger Silveira 51:22
I have a lot of data and you know, I’m a data that so UC Davis, we did a study on prion for example, Brianne leakage because it impacts the environment. So, because of my access to data and the size of our portfolio, I co authored a white paper with UC Davis on the difference between modern equipment versus 20 year old woman still has the AR 22. We wanted to compare which which units leak more Freon the new ones or the old one. And so the the study was pretty conclusive that the Newcomb is much built much better and least significant Les Brown in the older equipment. So we’re piloting another, we’re doing another study with UCS Davis on a new piece of equipment, that’s a hybrid age back equipment. It’s 30% more efficient than your typical unit. So it uses water to help pre cool, so it doesn’t use as much electricity, mechanical cooling. So we’re now we’re in the middle of a pilot with them. We’re studying that. So it is it’s fun to be able to work with people by UC Davis and just be their guinea pig and let them try their stuff out on me. Right? That’s right.
Greg Owens 52:22
It’s you’re making such a difference. It’s so it’s so great to have you on the podcast here today. And it’s wonderful what you’re doing and I’ve learned a lot. Thank you so much for doing this.
Roger Silveira 52:33
Anytime. My pleasure. Yeah.
Outro 52:41
Thanks for listening to the Watching Paint Dry podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.