DATE: Friday, October 17, 1997              TAG: 9710170661

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MEREDITH COHN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   67 lines

EXPO DISPLAYS NEW BUILDING PRODUCTS EXHIBITED

To many kids, creamsicle, honey dew and bubble gum are not foods. They are Crayola crayons.

Those colors are available in paint form for schools, homes and anywhere children play.

Norfolk Paint in Chesapeake showed off the crayon colors, as well as glow-in-the-dark, glitter and black chalkboard paint at the Tidewater Chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute expo Thursday at the Holiday Inn Executive Center.

Dozens of other displays ranged from environmentally friendly air conditioners to fake stones made from cement to alarms that can tell the difference between cooking meals and burning paper.

The Construction Specifications Institute is a 50-year-old membership organization that has set standards for materials used in building. Most of the members are architects, engineers and manufacturers or their representatives. Architects and engineers in the Hampton Roads region responsible for choosing materials, mainly in commercial buildings, were invited to the expo, said Tidewater chapter president Thomas T. Winborne, a senior vice president at Clark-Nexsen, a Norfolk architecture and engineering firm.

``It's a chance for people to show off their newest and top-of-the-line stuff,'' he said.

At the Norfolk Paint table, Carole Front, a decorating manager, said the Crayola products are made to be fun. The glow-in-the-dark paint, for example, can hold its glow for 20 minutes after exposure to light.

Some of the products aim for practicality.

John O'Brien from Sika Corp. in Bowie, Md., displayed information on a chemical that is painted on concrete to help inhibit corrosion - a big problem in Hampton Roads because of humid, salty air. Another product, a 1/16th-inch-thick plate that's bonded to concrete to bolster its strength, provides building owners with a cheaper, easier and lighter alternative to bulky steel beams, he said.

At Virginia Beach's Conceps table, Susan P. Rapp, a sales associate, explained how her clocks can tell exact time for hospitals and schools. One setting allows them to ring bells telling students to go to class, turn lights on in the parking lot of an office building, shut off equipment on the weekends and adjust to daylight savings time.

A fire alarm system, also offered by Conceps, can use its microprocessor to tell the fire department on which floor a fire is burning, fan the flames to contain them in one area and send the elevator to the first floor.

It's also smart enough to tell the difference between real fires and conditions that seem like fire, such as humidity or heat from cooking.

``The most common complaint from building owners is false alarms,'' Rapp said, which results in lost productive time and possibly fines from the local fire department. ``This cuts down on that drastically.''

Loss of productivity was also Donald E. Larsson's concern. His company, Larsson Equipment Corp. is the U.S. representative for the Stockholm-based Stifab-Farex air conditioning system. It doesn't use fans so it's quiet and is more energy efficient then conventional systems, Larsson said.

``It's environmentally friendly because it uses little refrigerant and energy,'' he said. ``But the thing we're trying to promote is that more comfortable people are more productive.''

The system uses convection cooling, radiant heat and a ventilation system that passes fresh air from outside through the building only once. And finally, for hot and chilled water, geothermal energy is transferred from the earth into the building.

Many of the vendors are members of the Tidewater Chapter of the Construction Specifications Institute, which meets the second Thursday of each month at the Greenbrier Holiday Inn at 7 p.m.

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