BuildingEnergy Pro Tour

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.

With construction on these two buildings recently completed, the August 2016 ProTour was a chance for participants to see the finished products, after occupation and with systems up and running. The tour included a walk-through of both sites, as well an overview of the LBC certification process, and a Q & A with members of the team that made these projects a reality. Because there are currently only eight certified LBC projects in the world, this tour provided a rare opportunity to hear from people working to the meet the LBC criteria.

On April 1, NESEA kicked off the 2016 Pro Tour Series with an event on Martha's Vineyard. After braving the rain to arrive in Vineyard Haven, attendees spent the afternoon touring two recently completed high-performance houses. The first house was a completely new structure, purpose-built to incorporate high performing energy systems and materials. The second house was a deep energy retrofit, where an existing house was reworked to become a net zero home. Attendees heard about the different approaches to these projects, which required different strategies to achieve the same energy goals.

This Pro Tour will featured one of the largest Passive housing projects in the United States, that also manages to meet the aggressive affordable housing cost cap set forward by the Maine State Housing Authority.

On December 4th, NESEA hosted a BuildingEnergy Pro Tour in Falmouth, ME of a modular, net zero home and the nation's third Passive House-certified school!

Over 70 people joined NESEA on this Pro Tour of the first Passive House in Wayland! The tour of this 2,500 square foot home was led by hosts Mike Dutra and Nicholas Falkoff from Auburndale Builders, Michael Hindle, CPHC, and Donald Grose, the project designer. The tour concluded with a reception, and a presentation entitled "Going Foam-Free in Passive Construction." CEUs: 2.5 AIA LU/HSW, 2.5 GBCI, and certificates of participation were available Member registration: $25 | Non-member registration: $35

Due to the overwhelming enthusiasm for the August Pro Tour of this site, NESEA was thrilled to be able to offer a second Pro Tour of the first Passive House in Wayland! The tour of this 2,500 square foot home was led by hosts Mike Dutra and Nicholas Falkoff from Auburndale Builders, Michael Hindle, CPHC, and Donald Grose, the project designer.

Join NESEA on a Pro Tour hosted by NESEA member Menck Windows of their recently completed 75,000 square foot advanced production and process technology facility featuring state-of-the-art CNC equipment.

On October 2nd, NESEA hosted a Pro Tour of a Passive House retrofit in Manhattan! The project team was striving for Passive House EnerPHit certification, LEED Platinum certification, and committed to healthy “Red List” compliant materials. The tour was be led by Janus Welton, CSBA, LEED AP BD+C EcoArchitecture DesignWorks, PC and other project team members and concluded with a reception and presentation.

NESEA hosted a Pro Tour of two sustainable homes in Lancaster, NH! The tours of these two homes, one a Net Zero Home, the other a Deep Energy Retrofit, were led by Ben Southworth, who designed both projects, as well as builder Tom Southworth, project manager Matt Hammon, and home owners Imre Szauter and Fletcher Manley.

On 9/18/15, NESEA held on a Pro Tour of two projects under construction on the Hampshire College campus in Amherst, MA, designed to meet the rigorous standards of the Living Building Challenge (LBC). There are currently only eight certified LBC projects in the world.

This Pro Tour visited two sites located in Augusta and Lafayette, NJ, both of them residential homes. Each of these houses uses combinations of both passive and active renewable energy systems, including wind power, and most notably solar power.

During this Pro Tour of the Berkshire County Jail, a group of architects, engineers, and municipal planners, among others, toured the site of one of the deepest reductions of energy use by a state facility in Massachusetts.The project is projected to result in a 52% reduction in energy use through operational improvements, electrical and mechanical systems optimization and onsite renewable production. The tour of this 148,000 square foot facility was led by Bart Bales, PE, MSME of Bales Energy Associates, the energy engineer for the project, and concluded with a reception, presentation and Q&A session.