The Passive House (PH) building standard is the most stringent energy efficiency standard in the world. Several affordable housing authorities in the US currently or plan to include it as a sustainability option in funding applications. Achieving the stringent air tightness requirements of the PH standard requires careful coordination through all phases of design development and construction. The team from Steven Winter Associates will take you through the steps and tools necessary – including integrated design, air barrier documents, detailed site inspections, and review testing tools and protocols. They will share successes and failures from their wide experience, from three-story low-rise buildings to 33-story high-rise structures with 300+ units.

Architects, designers, builders and facility managers are often in the dark about environmental and especially climate change impacts as they look at exterior material choices for new construction, cyclical recladding, and overcladding. Cost and appearance are important parameters that usually drive the final choice. Cladding materials used in construction are critical to carbon reduction goals and loom larger as operational energy use diminishes. This session will provide tools, rules of thumb, and sources of information and will look at methodologies available to sort through climate impacts of cladding choices in North American residential and commercial markets.

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.

Our current framework for net-zero buildings doesn’t account for embodied carbon – that is, carbon pollution created during material manufacturing and distribution. In this session, we will show how systems thinking about carbon and an integrated design approach can change building practices from a problem to a solution. We will present data on the embodied carbon impact of green buildings; address how to quantify embodied carbon in design/build practices; and discuss present-day carbon-positive construction materials and assemblies, which can reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere. This effectively uses buildings as carbon-sequestering reservoirs, which can mitigate and even reverse climate change effects. Understanding the carbon cycle, and how we as design/build practitioners can make beneficial choices, is the next horizon for integrative green building.

Affordable housing offers a huge opportunity to refinance and rehab to the Passive House standard. The project team from Chris Benedict, R.A. and RiseBoro Community Partnership will show construction details from their ground-breaking tenant-in-place rehab project designed for Passive House. CBRA will discuss the construction challenges (and successes!) to date, and RiseBoro will outline the financing and development approaches that should motivate all stakeholders to pursue this path.

We truly regret having to cancel this session. Terry Brennan is unable to attend.

This session will focus on applying Passivhaus/Passive House standards to large buildings: recent research on the impacts of tall buildings, from architectural enclosure detailing, mechanical systems, zoning, code, marketability, and constructability; and optimal management of internal loads.

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.

There are five basic components of building envelopes, each of which needs increased attention to meet and exceed current Energy Code while providing comfort for building users and durability and resiliency for building owners: 1. Opaque Assemblies - Walls and Roofs 2. Fenestration 3. Air Barriers 4. Thermal Bridging 5. Foundation Insulation and Slab Edges Join Jim and Jodi as they share revealing and entertaining stories from their practice. Engage in a discussion on how the challenges they reveal can be addressed by applying the nine habits of sustainability.

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.