September 29, 2013
Countdown to BE NYC!
With only
days until the conference, Greenhome NYC is shining the spotlight on the experts who will be making the
BE NYC an exceptional industry event!
One of the professionals participating in the conference is
Henry Gifford.
Henry Gifford is director of mechanical system design at
Architecture and Energy Limited, a Manhattan firm that designs buildings that are very energy efficient, yet cost no extra to build. He is a longtime practitioner in the Building Science and energy efficiency fields, specializing in multifamily buildings, and thinks one good measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.
Henry is a speaker in the “One Pipe, Two Pipe” workshop in the Smaller Buildings track.
How did you become focused on this particular area of sustainability?
When I was 20 years old I bought two apartment buildings in the Lower East Side. They were expensive to run, and I knew I couldn’t lower the mortgage payments, taxes, or insurance; and I couldn’t raise the rent. So I started to see what I could do about paying less to Con Edison. I could see that my bills went up and down, jumped around a lot – even in summer. I called the service company for them to send someone out to check the boiler. He barely stepped into the boiler room, glanced at the flame and said “Yeah, it’s efficient.” I knew that he knew more than I did, but that there had to be more to it than that. Pretty soon I became more interested in spending time in boiler rooms than in housing court.
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