BuildingEnergy Pro Tour

Attendees of this Pro Tour learned how this land was transformed from the site of a single-family condemned house to the site of 4 combustion-free, net-zero duplex homes. The team behind this infill project detailed the history and lessons learned, offering this as an example for municipalities looking for ways to infill for community, housing, and tax support without extending infrastructure.

Thanks to everyone who joined NESEA for the first event of the 2018 BuildingEnergy Pro Tour Series, featuring a net-zero-ready home on the Vermont/New Hampshire border. This production-built home is situated in a small development of net-zero-ready houses, all with a focus on affordability and universal design principles.

This Pro Tour will feature Corona Senior Residence, an 8-story building which is poised to become the first senior housing development in New York built to Passive House International Standards.

This Pro Tour will feature Elm Place, a recently-constructed, 30-unit building which is poised to become the first multi-family Passive House structure in Vermont.

This Pro Tour took attendees to the Highland Street Homes Project, two energy-efficient duplex homes designed to look like a traditional Georgian Colonial and its companion carriage house. The featured homes are part of Boston’s E+ Green Building Program, which is promoting regenerative multi-unit residential buildings and bringing energy and environmentally positive homes to the city.

This Pro Tour will bring attendees to the first complete CLT (cross laminated timber) building in New York State, a 21,00 sq. ft. project that will be the latest addition to the commercial campus of New Energy Works & Pioneer Millworks.

This Pro Tour takes attendees into Fine Homebuilding’s ProHOME, a single-family residence specifically designed as a teaching tool for builders and designers. The home is an example of a building that will appeal to clients both in terms of energy performance and comfort and functionality.

This Pro Tour brought attendees into the recently completed, net-positive headquarters of SunCommon, a company providing photovoltaic array financing, leasing, and installation in Vermont and New York State. Hosted by the project team from Maclay Architects and Energy Balance Inc., this half-day tour of the 15,000 square-foot project highlighted the design process and unique challenges of a commercial developer "built to suit" project while providing insights into the performance data from the building’s first year of occupancy.

Join NESEA for our first Pro Tour in Pennsylvania: a deep-energy retrofit of an 1898 brick row house renovated for Passive House EnerPHit certification and energized by a "Powerwall" of retired BMW Mini E batteries.

This Pro Tour will bring attendees to the Williams College campus for a close look at an academic center built to the stringent standards of the Living Building Challenge. This project consists of two distinct parts, combining new-construction with a deep energy retrofit of a college building dating back to 1793.

Attendees on this Pro Tour learned how the Zero Net Energy (ZNE) design for this large institutional building was developed without increasing costs, despite the cold climate and high-energy needs of the health and science equipment the occupants rely on.

Join NESEA for a tour of the Distillery North, the largest Passive House in New England: a cost-competitive 30 unit apartment building located in South Boston. This is the first phase of a three phase project that will eventually span three buildings, 260,000 sq.ft, and an entire city block.

This event features a Pro Tour of an international award-winning home built to Passive House standards, designed to serve as a teaching tool for sustainable building while seamlessly blending into the historic neighborhood that surrounds it. Registration for this event includes lunch, the Pro Tour, and NESEA's Annual Meeting.

Attendees of this event were able to tour two very different projects: a newly construction net-zero house and a former grist mill, built in 1850, that has been converted into a residence and offices through a phased deep-energy retrofit process.

NESEA returns to central New York for a Pro Tour of the LEED Platinum (pending) MacArthur Elementary School. This new construction, high performance school is the result of a collaborative, stake-holder driven design process led by Ashley McGraw Architects. Pro Tour attendees will learn about the history of the building and the efficiency and resiliency strategies that were integrated into the project.

On April 7, 2017 NESEA held a tour of Bayside Anchor, a recently-completed 45 unit apartment building in downtown Portland, ME. The building is a joint venture of the Portland Housing Authority and Avesta Housing, designed by Kaplan Thompson Architects and built by Wright-Ryan Construction. The project originated as the winning entry in “Lowering the Cost of Housing,” a 2013 national competition organized by Deutsche Bank.

At the third and final Pro Tour of the first Passive House in Wayland, more than 75 attendees will got to see the finished product now that systems are up and running.

This tour gave attendees a chance to see a finished Passive House in northern New Hampshire, giving them insights into the building process and the performance data. Attendees also toured a water-powered sawmill that has been in continuous operation since 1856.

On June 03, 2016, NESEA held our first-ever Pro Tour in Connecticut. Attendees took a mid-construction tour of Waystone Farm on an 8-acre parcel in North Guilford, Ct; a project inspired by a Connecticut couple’s lifelong dream to leave as small a footprint as possible while also being as self-sustaining as they can; from an energy standpoint but also in terms of living off their land.

Construction on this new residence started in spring 2016; the Pro Tour will offer a chance for participants to see the way the project has come together, while the building process is still underway. This home serves as an example of residential construction that strategically employs standard building materials and techniques to meet the passive house standard.

This Pro Tour took us through a mixed-use site featuring residential green building methods in a small-scale agricultural setting. The event featured three distinct residences (a main house, a guest house, and an apartment) built with the guidance of Passive House and Net Zero principles.

This Pro Tour will brought participants into the forest of southwestern Vermont to walk through the innovative, Leed Platinum Certified Burr and Burton Academy Mountain Campus (BBAMC). Since its completion in 2012, BBAMC has been functioning as an immersive satellite campus where students can learn about environmental science and sustainable, green building principles.

This Pro Tour will took attendees to the Melpet Farm Residences, a recently completed affordable housing community in Dennis, MA. These homes were built to near Net Zero standards despite the intensely regulated pricing of affordable housing units.

The Abbot Mill complex consists of 13 former woolen mill buildings dating from the late 1800s, now on the National Register of Historic Places in Westford, MA. This Pro Tour showcased the six years of work that it took to rehabilitate this historic industrial property into a modern, high-performing residential complex.

Our June 17 Pro Tour in Pulaski, NY featured one of the first net zero homes in Central/Western NY. This isn’t your typical net zero design – traditional stick building elements were combined with the age-old craft of timber framing to form the bones of the project. Natural lighting, on-site PV array, and a design allowing winter passive solar heat gain and summer shade are just the tip of the iceberg.