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.

Biomass Design and Potential

 This course touches on some of the considerations one should make when designing and planing an automated biomass heating system.​ It will cover fuel choice and logistical advantages, equipment availability and pros and cons of different choices,  sizing for financial viability, and emissions implications of fuels, moisture content and combustion equipment. We will also take a quick look into the near future and discuss a few up-and-coming cogeneration options.

 

Living Building Challenge: Historic Building, Modern Lessons

The Living Building Challenge (LBC) can be applied to any building project, including historic renovation and new construction. Charley Stevenson and John Rahill will compare and contrast the LBC renovation of an 18th century plank building to the design and construction of several new LBC buildings.  By examining the three most challenging petals (water, energy and materials) they will illuminate the benefits of and the obstacles to LBC compliance.

Foam-Free - Fabulous, Feasible, and Fun!

Three experienced practitioners will demonstrate that we needn’t (shouldn’t?) be captive to foam in the high performance building industry by showing practical solutions that eliminate foam in new and retrofit applications – above and below grade.  Using real projects and assemblies, the speakers will discuss an integrated design build process, review the implementation of details and sequencing and the verification and commissioning of alternative construction methods.  Without dwelling on the negative environmental impacts of foam insulations, alternative, safer insulation materials will

Navigating Product Selection: How to Find the Greenest Materials in the Age of Full Disclosure

Are you drowning in the arcane alphabet soup of product labels? Frustrated with inflated environmental claims from manufacturers? Unsure of the health and safety risks associated with your favorite building materials? Help is on the way! Join the experts from BuildingGreen, who have been researching and writing about green building products for 25 years. In this hands-on half-day workshop, you will learn how to cut through the b.s. and select safer, greener products, and you’ll get an in-depth understanding of the trove of information you can find in product disclosure tools like environmental product declarations, health product declarations, and the newly required safety data sheets. Understand the full context, get down and dirty with the devil in the details, and learn which information you can safely ignore. You’ll also glimpse some of the newest, most innovative products that are paving the way for a greener future, and you will leave with powerful educational materials to share with clients and other team members. Bring your questions, share your insights, and get ready for an enlightening and entertaining morning!

Getting to Zero: Frameworks & Roadmap to help you achieve portfolio-wide performance improvements

The future of our planet and our profession depend on our ability to co-create collaboratively and achieve levels of synergy that transform our impact. Net Zero, the 2030 Challenge and LEED define performance targets. Yet, critical gaps remain between rising performance goals and the organizational capability to consistently achieve them. AIA 2030 data shows that 57% of gsf uses energy modeling, meaning 43% doesn’t. Most teams don’t know what the anticipated energy use is. Firms also report that LEED certified projects, which tend to have more commitment and higher levels of integration, have 24% lower pEUI than non-LEED projects, yet LEED still represents a small percentage of a firm’s portfolio. This session provides participants with frameworks and proven methodologies to transform their practice from “random acts of sustainability” to consistent capability based on cultural change, clearly articulated methodologies, truly integrative design and effective use of metrics to achieve continuous improvement.

Huddle Together for Warmth: Multiple Solutions for Multifamily Passive House

We will show two mid-rise multi-family projects in the northeast that meet either the Passive House or PHIUS+ building energy standard. The Distillery’s 28-unit Phase 1 building in South Boston, MA and the Bayside Anchor 45-unit project in Portland, ME, both now under construction, will be used to discuss the design and construction principles that are employed to radically reduce energy consumption and construct beautiful, low energy, and healthy urban living spaces. Details, testing data and lessons learned will be shared with a special focus on large scale air barrier implementation, efficient ventilation systems, and cost savings and funding metrics.

O&M Stories in MF Housing: Challenges, Solutions & Results

In the world of multi-family housing every operational dollar is earmarked, budgeted, and designated. For both Selfhelp Community Services, owning/operating 960 units, and POAH, owning/operating 8500 units, this rings especially true. Both organizations have worked to create operational plans and protocol, short and long term goals to reduce energy spending, and have thought creatively about how to manage, track, and create change within their organizations. With technical assistance to support both organizations and build capacity, they have telling results, some failed experiments, and also successful solutions that are working well to save energy and reduce costs. In this session you will hear how both organizations tackled similar hardships, how they reduced energy and water spend with little upfront capital. Both organizations learned how to use data to monitor and understand consumption, and expanded their capacity for energy and water management through systems, trainings and drawing on technical experts where needed.
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