So tomorrow is my last day as a UNMC employee. And as you may have seen on Monday, I am one of the four riders in Saturday’s Ice Tricycle Races at the Skate-a-thon for Parkinson’s.

Just to catch you up in case you missed Monday’s story, the four of us are in search of pledges ahead of this weekend’s races. The top earners will get the inside lane for the races, which start at noon.

“Chuck,” you say, “you wouldn’t possibly try to parlay your leaving the med center into pledges for your cause at the Skate-a-thon would you?”

Um, yes. Yes I would.

“But Chuck,” you ask, “isn’t that unfair to your competitors who don’t have access to daily campuswide publications with which to advance their campaigns?”

Probably.

And so to be fair, I’ll list me and the other competitors here. Just click on the email address of the competitor you wish to sponsor, tell him or her how much you will pledge and then donate online or bring your donation to the Skate-a-thon on Saturday.

• Howard Gendelman, M.D. – hegendel@unmc.edu
• Fran Higgins – fhiggins@unmc.edu
• Bob Binhammer, Ph.D. – rtbinham@unmc.edu
• Me – cdbsaints@yahoo.com

Honestly, I don’t really care who you support. As always, I’d be glad to take your money. But the fact is it all goes to the same great cause – the Skate-a-thon and Parkinson’s research at UNMC.

I’ve worked extensively with this event each of its three years and it’s been a blast. The Skate-a-thon seems like a perfect fit for UNMC.

What other medical center has our combination of a driven patient – Colleen Wuebben — a burgeoning Parkinson’s program and an ice rink? Heck, what other medical center has an ice rink?

Anyway, I’ve had a great time here at UNMC for six years. I’ve been in a job that allowed me to connect with an inordinate number of you. I’ve made friends that I plan to have for the rest of my life and I’ve been given the opportunity to do things I’d never imagined.

I mean, if you told me six years ago, “Chuck, you’ll ride out of here on a tricycle on an ice rink right next to the new medical school building,” I’d have told you to go visit the folks in the psychiatry department.

But so it is. As I said, I’d be glad to accept your donations this week and put them toward a good cause. My co-competitors would be glad to do the same.

And if you want to come out on Saturday to watch us slide around the ice on tricycles – well, we’d like that, too.

Robert Binhammer, Ph.D., had started to sweat and it wasn’t because of his red, green and white holiday sweater.

The legendary anatomy professor was on edge because it was 11:59 a.m. on Tuesday – one minute before the annual Wittson Hall holiday carol event that Dr. Binhammer has led for decades – and the student who volunteered to provide piano accompaniment had yet to appear.

As more than 100 students settled into the Wittson Hall Amphitheater seats, cookies and sodas in hand, ready to sing their hearts out, Dr. Binhammer pondered a piano-less carol session.

“We’ve never done it a capella before,” Dr. Binhammer said. “We’ve had some bad accompaniment, but never no accompaniment.”

In the St. Nick of time

But right at the strike of noon, the student and some others walked in the door with a Yamaha keyboard and a Marshal guitar amplifier.

“We really need the music,” said Gordon Todd, Ph.D., professor of cell biology and anatomy. “Some of the songs he picks are not-that-well-known.

“It really helps to have the music.”

A holiday tradition

The carol session started on campus more than 30 years ago with the then anatomy department director, Dr. Kenneth Metcalf. Dr. Binhammer continued the tradition when Dr. Metcalf left.

“We just think it’s a nice thing to do, a diversion at the end of the term,” Dr. Todd said.

All together now!

After about 10 minutes, the pianist finally was set up and Dr. Binhammer called for the first tune, “Deck the Halls,” and they were off.

“There are some good singers this year,” a UNMC staff member noted as another nodded.

They rolled through song after song – often just singing a verse, but sometimes, when it struck him to do so, Dr. Binhammer would shout out, “one more verse!”  The students would laugh then oblige.

From the bottom of their hearts!

“This one never goes well,” someone said just before the group started “Feliz Navidad.”

And it didn’t.

To start with anyway.

But after some butchered Spanish and oddly sung lines, the student voices came together in the refrain.

“I want to wish you a merry Christmas, from the bottom of my heart!” They sang in a way that sounded nearly rehearsed.

Something for everyone

They sang nearly 30 carols – at least parts of them anyway.

Among the selections was “The 12 Days of Med School,” in which the names of several anatomy and College of Medicine faculty were evoked by students who were given, among other things, three germy layers, two rubber gloves and “five hours of sleep!”

A holiday torch to pass

Dr. Binhammer officially retired this year but continues to work for free – which is another story that we’ll tell another day very soon. But the time when he won’t be here to lead the carols is on the horizon.

When asked if he’d pick up the torch when Dr. Binhammer steps away, Dr. Todd shook his head quickly.

“I can’t sing a note,” he said. “It will have to be someone with actual musical ability.”

“I cooled my house this summer for the price of a Big Mac,” Karen Dageforde said.

That gets your attention right?

It should. And considering the house Karen Dageforde cooled was a 2,869-square foot  ranch-style house on an acreage northwest of Omaha, it should really get your attention.

Oh, and actually it cost a less than a Big Mac to cool the house.

Darren and Karen Dageforde outside their “extreme green” home, northwest of Omaha.

Presently Big Mac’s go for a little more than $4 in the U.S. It cost Karen Dageforde and her husband, Darren Dageforde, director of utilities in UNMC Facilities, Management and Planning, $2.68 to cool their home. So really it was more like the cost of a small shake.

An efficient amalgamation  

As the Dagefordes built their home a few years back, they aimed to consolidate as many home energy efficiency measures as they could under one roof just to see how low they could take their energy consumption levels.

“We really don’t think it’s fair that our generation uses all of the earth’s natural resources and energy and leaves nothing for those who come after us,” said Darren Dageforde, who is a member of the UNMC LiveGreen team.

So how do they do it?

On the south side of their roof, the Dagefordes installed large solar panels, which generate gobs of electricity. How much electricity? Enough that many months, they actually produce more than they use, and that which they don’t use is put into the Omaha Public Power District system. So get this, rather than electric bills, the Dagefordes get credits from the power company.

“In that regard, OPPD views us exactly the way they do a coal plant or any other facility that generates energy,” Darren Dageforde said.

Power workers need to be sure to pull these switches on the side of the Dagefordes’ house lest they be shocked by the energy coming from the house. The combined result of the various energy efficiency measures in the Dageforde house is that many months, they generate more energy than they use.

The Dagefordes have switches on the side of their house that power workers must turn off before they do work on a nearby lines so that they can cut off the energy being put back in the system from the Dageforde house.

“If they forgot to do that, they could get shocked,” Darren Dageforde said.

Going underground

About 60 feet to the north of the Dageforde house is a large tube that sticks four feet out of the ground. That is the “fresh air intake” on the Dageforde heating and air-conditioning system.

A small bathroom fan in their basement sucks air into the tube, which runs 13 feet below ground for a distance of 160 feet before it enters the home. When the air finally comes into the house, it has been thermally conditioned to about 60 degrees.

This pipe is the fresh air intake of the Dagefordes’ heating and air conditioning system. It runs 13 feet below the ground and then into the house. The ground temperature 13-feet down remains the same year round. So regardless of the weather outside, the air comes into the Dageforde house at the same temperature.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s 100 degrees out or negative 15, it stays the same temp at that level, so the air that comes into our house is always 60 degrees,” Darren Dageforde said.

The same principle is used in the radiant heating and cooling system that runs in the concrete floors of the Dageforde house. Radiant fluid is cycled through the floor and then out to geothermal wells that run 200-feet below the ground and back again to bring the 55-degree liquid into the floor. This helps keep house temperature cool throughout the summer. All it takes is a small circulating pump to run the system, which takes a negligible amount of energy.

The fluid for the radiant system is heated through the use of an energy efficient heat pump to raise the temperature to 75 degrees for warming floors in the winter.  The amount of energy it takes to raise geothermal well water from 55 to 75 degrees also is small.

About those concrete floors

All floors and walls in the Dageforde home are made of concrete, which prevents air infiltration – a major cause of energy costs in typical homes.

“The concrete creates a solid seal,” Darren Dageforde said.

The concrete also is a huge thermal mass storage tank.  The house can withstand extreme outside temperatures for several days without changing the temperature inside the home.

Karen Dageforde ties down radiant heating/cooling tube to the floor before concrete was poured during construction of the house.

Passive solar

The window overhangs in the Dageforde house were designed such that in the summer, when the sun sits high and produces the most heat, its rays are blocked and don’t penetrate into the house.  Conversely, in the winter and fall, when the sun sits a little lower in the sky, more of its rays are let into the house, which means more natural warm air is created in the house.

This design as is known as “passive solar.”

Dageforde tells how his “passive solar” windows work. In essence, they are built to reduce amount of sun that gets into the house in the summer and increase the sun exposure in the house in colder months.

It must cost a fortune right? Right?

Aside from maximum efficiency, the Dagefordes also aimed to build their home in an affordable way. It’s no use in doing this, they said, if no one else could afford to replicate it.

The cost of building their “extreme green” home was very comparable to the cost of conventional build.

“We did this right at market value [builders’ standard cost per square foot for a conventional home], so cost isn’t really a deterrent,” Darren Dageforde said.

“The only thing that prevents more people from doing this is knowledge. And now our job is to get that out there.”

See a fact sheet for the Dageforde home.

 Big implications

Darren Dageforde calls the design a “game changer.”

“If this type of construction was adopted on a larger scale, it could flip the energy situation in this country on its head,” he said.

Learn more

The Dagefordes have given tours of the home to students and others.

Contact Darren Dageforde at 402-559-5278 to inquire about a tour or to learn more about the house.