LEDing the Lighting Revolution Part 2: Advanced Strategies both Efficient and Smart

What is the ultimate in LED lighting today? Our speakers are now combining the best fixtures with the smartest controls to drive total energy savings to 80-90% or more, indoors and outdoors. Paying close attention to task and time, these strategies introduce a whole new way of looking at lighting-and may require the retaining of a whole new generation of technicians.

Super Insulated Walls and Moisture: Does Bad Stuff Happen?

High-R or super-insulated walls are a common component of high performance housing. However, in cold climates, these walls run the risks of cold-weather condensation, and general durability issues due to reduced heat flow. Two practitioners have been monitoring the moisture performance of several high performance walls, and will share their results. Chris Corson has been examining highly vapor-open walls based on classic European Passive House designs, without the use of plastic foams.

Lies, Damned Lies and Green Building Standards

Never get the R-15 wool insulation pulled over your eyes again! Separating green from greenwash is getting harder as standards proliferate. Tristan and Paula from BuildingGreen bring you the latest in clever greenwash with this lively and interactive chat on what makes a label truly green. Even if you come knowing nothing about green building labels, you'll leave with new knowledge--as well as new wisdom. We'll show you how to ask the right questions and make your own judgment next time a company tries to convince you that its pet metric or label is the greenest of them all.

Footprinting Our Projects & Operations

High-performance building standards and goals typically focus on operating energy. But how much energy does it take to build (or retrofit) that high performance building, or operate your company in the first place? We'll try to answer this question by examining the South Mountain Company carbon footprint project and a Byggmeister analysis of the embodied energy of several retrofits. Finally, we'll discuss what we can do about it — what we can change in our business operations and building practices to reduce the footprints of our work.

Creating a Culture of Energy Responsibility: How to Move Americans to Make the Right Moves

Americans say energy efficiency and renewables are important, and that they’re worried about their ability to pay for energy in the future, our dependence on foreign countries and depleting resources. But what are they doing about it?
Research shows Americans’ propensity to act on energy generation and efficiency options is in a three-year decline. Why?

Is it All Hot Air: Ventilating Homes, Why? How Much? and How?

Why do we need to ventilate homes? How much air do we need to do it? Once we’ve figured that out, what systems should we install? These are big questions, but this session will hopefully provide useful answers. We’ll begin with a discussion of health impacts of ventilation and different ventilation rates. The latter part will explore various ventilation systems: pros and cons, costs and benefits, and tips for installing the best systems for your project.

How to Heat Water in All-Electric Homes and Apartments

With the drop in envelope loads and the rise in efficient heat pumps (even in cold climates), quite a few homes are moving away from fossil fuels towards electric HVAC. One recurring question is: what to do about water heating? This session covers various options - simple electric tanks, tankless electric heaters, solar thermal, heat pump water heaters, etc. - and presents real cost and energy data from several research & evaluation projects.

Minisplit Heat Pumps: Lessons from the Field

Minisplit heat pumps are now used in most high performance homes in New England. Kohta monitored eight homes built by Transformations and Marc has over sixty homes and non-residential buildings with minisplits. After a brief overview of system types, we’ll share energy use data as well as comfort and distribution studies, and cover issues with installation, sizing, setbacks, and some of the quirks of this nifty technology. Have fun with two MIT nerds!

Community Energy Footprints: Taking Residential Efficiency to Scale

For all the Non Net Zero Homes out there, how can energy tracking at the community level help achieve 2030 goals? Four diverse building pros share lessons learned from their experience tracking the energy use of a typical Boston suburb using several benchmarking methods, and discuss how cross referencing tools and technologies can help create community buy-in for achieving C02 reduction targets. The session will close with an open discussion of how to scale up expertise to the community level.

Design/Build and Integrated Project Management 101 - Are you ready?

For many teams, it is an almost impossible challenge to simultaneously deliver high performance and cost efficient buildings while maintaining high customer satisfaction and profitability. Integrated design/build delivery providing single responsibility, from schematic design to construction through commissioning and monitoring has proved to be a viable model for successful delivery of cost efficient high performance buildings. This session will examine aspects of planning, marketing, estimating, system development, project management, human resources, accounting, and legal concerns.

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