Skypoint Wish List

Earlier this year Skypoint residents responded to a survey that I commissioned regarding our North Garden Terrace Deck.  The responses were nearly unanimous - It was underutilized and the pool deck was at times overused.  At the top of the list were the desire for additional grills.

If I have the honor to serve on the Board in 2013 this will be a top priority prior to the busy summer season.  Ideally at least two additional grills would be added and the pergola replaced with one similar to those found on the pool deck.  

Electricity use is also a hot button topic.  Vice President, Sandy Guillette, recently began an audit of our energy use with the help of a third party vendor (this was done at no charge to Skypoint).  The efficiency of our building is, frankly, embarrassing. 

For example the developer installed 440 volt electrical lines in the garage, most likely to save money by allowing less lines to be installed and more fixtures to be operated on each line.  Each round fixture in the garage uses a 400 volt, metal halide bulb that burns just under 300 watts of electricity per hour.  Until recently these bulbs burned 24/7 at a tremendous electrical cost. 

For about $800 we recently separated the emergency circuit from the normal circuit for the garage lighting and put the lights on a timer. About 60% of the lights on floors 3-7 go out each day during daylight hours. Already this resulting in lower electrical costs.

Because each round garage fixture has a manufacturers useful life of 7 years it makes sense to begin to plan for a more efficient replacement.  Sandy is spearheading the effort to stage replace the garage lighting with LED fixtures and bulbs over the next few years.  Not only will this save on electrical costs, we get a rebate of 17 cents per watt reduced from Teco once we can prove that the new lighting was installed (show the receipt!).  That's approximately $1400/ garage floor in rebates just for doing something that will need to be done within 2 years anyway.