Single family
PACE Financing: Scaling Commercial and Residential Net-Zero Energy Retrofits
One of the biggest market barriers to net-zero energy retrofits is the incremental upfront cost. Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing overcomes this barrier, and it’s expanding with new innovations. Those innovations include resilience renovations, consumer protections, and the use of PACE to unlock Net-Zero Energy retrofits and new construction. Resilience renovations are on the rise following hurricanes, floods and power outages. Also, PACE for new construction can make Net-Zero Energy homes beat standard costs for home ownership. Come find out how to grow the market for efficiency and solar in your region from leading industry experts.
What Not to Spec: How to Avoid Toxins, Endocrine Disruptors, and Carcinogens in Your Next Building Project
The products you specify--and how you structure your specs--have enduring impact on your building's occupants, the community where the product is made, and the workers who install it. We’ll share lessons learned about screening and choosing products employing the most rigorous material vetting standards in green building certifications. Where do you focus and where should you not? This session will coach designers in approaches and procedures to make any project healthier through careful materials selection. And while it's not designed to get you through the LBC Materials Petal, it will undoubtedly help.
Real Life Air Source Heat Pumps
Learn about cold climate heat pumps from an expert in HVAC and Building Science. This session will focus on the real world performance of Air Source Heat Pumps monitored from past projects, including the presenter’s own house. We’ll discuss a range of heat pump applications, installation practices that affect efficiency, and some key issues and resources to consider when specifying and sizing heat pumps. After attending this session, practitioners who use this technology will know how to use it better. If you have questions about Heat Pumps, bring them with you! There will be time for Questions and Answers.
The Drawbacks of Breathing: Nighttime Carbon Dioxide Levels in New England Bedrooms
During the 2016-17 heating season, we tested the indoor air quality in the bedrooms of 22 Vermont homes spanning a wide range of size, age, airtightness, heating system type, and occupancy. Most exceeded twice the 1000ppm threshold for carbon dioxide (CO2) often targeted by energy and ventilation standards. An investigation of cause and effect led to a clear culprit. You will also learn about the latest research on the impacts of CO2 and other pollutants in our homes, see real-world data on the ability of centralized and distributed ventilation systems to tackle these problems, and hear about best practices for design and commissioning of ventilation in new and existing homes.
KISS (Keep It Simple, Smartypants): A builder’s perspective on straightforward construction details for constructing a low-cost, high-performance home
Rhode Island’s first PHIUS certified passive house was built for $160/sq. ft. In this session, builder Steve DeMetrick of DeMetrick Housewrights will walk through the entire construction process, from excavation to finish for this 1800-square-foot home. Steve will get down to real details, like how to airseal electrical boxes in zip sheathing and what to do with all those mini split lines. Steve’s approach blows away all the mystery (and $$$) out of high-performance construction. Grab a cup of coffee and come learn about what’s happening in Rhode Island.
Meeting the Demands of Healthier Buildings: How to Navigate Building Product Certifications
A building or home cannot begin to be deemed healthy if its building blocks – both the material used for exterior construction and the elements used to build and decorate the interior – aren’t healthy to begin with. Identifying healthy products is made easier with a wealth of new tools and certification programs that are being implemented, but that variety also creates confusion over what each program brings to the table and how that meets the needs of the user. This session will review the different product certifications in use, identify their main priorities, and show how to search for them online.
Making the Invisible Visible: A Blueprint for Seeking Real Estate Value for Energy Efficiency
In the real estate market, decisions about home purchase, construction, and upgrades suffer from lack of data and knowledge about energy efficiency or, worse, don’t consider energy efficiency at all. How do we change this? This session will point the way. Attendees will learn to be proactive – to prepare clients and lenders for the mortgage application and appraisal process and make energy efficiency count. We’ll share ways to be an advocate of sustainable building practices with local real estate professionals.
Building Inherent Value: Implementing the Passive House Building Standard
Two certified Passive House Consultants, an architect and a builder, will talk about the tremendous benefits of the Passive House building approach, and nostalgically lament what this means for our now limited friendships with the boiler maintenance guy! They will review the design and construction principles that are employed to achieve a super-insulated, air-tight envelope and the essential addition of continuous mechanical ventilation.
Should We Stop Trying to Update to the Latest Model Building Energy Code?
States across the Northeast expend significant time and effort in the pursuit of adopting the latest model energy codes from the IECC and ASHRAE. With the 2009 and 2012 model energy codes this resulted in significant improvements in the minimum building standards, but more recently national model codes have produced fewer savings at a time when the need for dramatic energy performance improvements has never been greater.
Unvented Roofs without Spray Foam: The Latest Building America Research
The current building codes let you build moisture-safe unvented roofs using spray foam or rigid board foam. But what about just using cellulose or fiberglass instead? Our team has been studying this issue over many climate zones for years. The current Building America/Department of Energy-sponsored research has a test hut here in Massachusetts, looking at a variety of assemblies, over the past two winters. Cellulose vs. fiberglass? Diffusion vents vs. no diffusion vents?
The New Gravity: Climate Change and the Imperative of High-Performance Housing
The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA) and the 17 multi-family Passive House projects they’ve funded are transforming the affordable housing industry toward a Net-Zero-Energy standard by 2030. This initiative has proved a catalyst for radical and significant market penetration of Passive House/Net-Zero-Capable housing, inspiring 12 more state housing finance agencies to similarly incentivize Passive House through their Low-Income Housing Tax Credit programs.
Signal to Noise: What Engineers See and You Miss in Products Specs
A spec sheet can be baffling. We want to make smart choices but have trouble discerning what matters and what doesn’t. Two experienced engineers will walk us through reading spec sheet data. We’ll learn what they look for and why.
The Not-Quite-Edible House: Making Healthy Material Choices
This session outlines key strategies to help your team make informed decisions around building assemblies, products, and finishes. Whether you’re looking for simple, low-cost upgrades for a remodeling project or building new for a client with allergies or chemical sensitivities, you’ll walk away with new ideas to put into practice.
Best Practices for All-Electric Homes & Apartments
With well-insulated envelopes and newer heat pumps that work in cold climates, some designers and developers are moving away from fossil fuels towards all-electric buildings. This can certainly save infrastructure costs, but what is the effect on operating costs? What about comfort and reliability? This workshop will present findings from research; case studies from the around the Northeast; and best practices for determining if, how, and when to forego fossil fuels.
How To Prepare For High Performance Windows
Your windows are nice, but how’s your install? Windows are often big, heavy, fragile, and in high performance buildings, windows are the most expensive components. When you pay for all that performance, you also want to make sure windows are properly installed. It’s about your building enclosure: one wrong move and your exterior walls can also suffer expensive damage. Optimal window installs take into account vapor drive at different times of year, and take steps to super-insulate the window frames for the best thermal performance.
Energy, Water and Time Efficient Hot Water Systems
Once we build a high performance building, there are still major challenges with what to do with hot water distribution. Most practitioners are using outdated methods to control distribution piping, plumbing fixtures & appliances, and waste heat that runs down the drain. This workshop will present practical measures you can incorporate into your next project that result in high performance hot water systems and very satisfied customers.
Energy, Water and Time Efficient Hot Water Systems
Once we build a high performance building, there are still major challenges with what to do with hot water distribution. Most practitioners are using outdated methods to control distribution piping, plumbing fixtures & appliances, and waste heat that runs down the drain. This workshop will present practical measures you can incorporate into your next project that result in high performance hot water systems and very satisfied customers.
Evolving Assemblies
We know. You want to geek out about clever construction details and cutting edge construction methods, and in the process perhaps learn some strategies that you can bring back and apply to your own work. Well then, this is the session for you.
The Updated ILFI Net Zero Energy Certification, Reveal Label, and New Partnerships
The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) has radically reworked its Net Zero Energy Building certification to be significantly more straightforward and user friendly, at the same time as improving energy performance data and case study information.
Systems and Stewardship: Placemaking as Practice
Systems Thinking invites us to observe and propose the "boundary conditions" that will ultimately define every project's design goals. By extending that conversation to include our responsibility to be stewards of the project's "Place" we invite our clients into a fundamentally different evaluation of what matters to them, us, our community, our environment, and most essentially, the place that we will be making together.
Three Vermont High-Performance Homes, Three Approaches
This session offers a thought-provoking comparison of the construction and performance of three high-performance homes completed in Vermont in 2015-2016: all two story, one with a basement, one traditional double stud, one double stud with air barrier behind the inner stud, one exterior I-joist wall. The projects’ architect and construction leaders will discuss design, ease of construction, cost and performance of the different systems, and reasons to choose one over the other.
Retrofitting Residential Properties
One-to-four unit homes present special challenges to energy-efficiency upgrades. Many of these homes were built from 1890—1960 and lack insulation, leak air, and waste energy and water. This panel will share data and solutions to improve the energy- and water- efficiency of these homes, discuss cost-benefit analyses of planned improvements, describe options for testing results of completed upgrades, and explore how to pay for this work.
All About Windows
Windows are arguably the most important architectural element in a home, impacting the appearance, comfort, energy use, ventilation, and overall enjoyment of our homes in a number of ways – some not so obvious. This interactive session will explore important details concerning windows, including how they impact comfort, how they can be used to supplement a heating system and assist with ‘passive survivability’ when the power fails (with real data from four homes), and their impact on annual energy use.
Permanently Passive: Building With AAC
Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) is a masonry product with a long history in much of the industrialized world, yet it has seen relatively limited use in the United States. The two presenters, Dan Levy and Steve Bluestone, both find AAC preferable to wood as a building material for many reasons, including resistance to fire, water, mold pests, and structural loads. And AAC does all of the above with a single material installed by a single trade.
State of the Art: High-Performance Natural Building for Cold Climates
The phrase “natural building” tends to evoke images of humble, rustic homes built out of mud and sticks by barefoot idealists in rural backwaters. The natural building movement has come of age, however, and today's professionally-executed natural buildings can match any green building in air-tightness, energy use intensity, durability, and aesthetics, all while achieving reduced levels of embodied carbon and enhanced social benefits.