Improving the efficiency of existing buildings and eliminating fossil fuel usage are vital steps to meeting states' goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout New England. Focusing on finding scalable and replicable models for building typologies, such as triple deckers, will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as increase tenant comfort and reduce energy bills. This session focuses on the best ideas and lessons learned from MassCEC’s Triple Decker Design Challenge.

Retrofitting vacant and underutilized historic buildings to PHIUS standards leverages an existing building’s embodied carbon, which combined with low carbon and carbon storing materials, can transform our historic buildings into carbon sinks. With careful consideration, the Federal Historic Tax Credit program can provide an additional source of funding for these ambitious Passive House projects. Currently under construction, Moran Square is one of the first PHIUS Historic Tax Credit projects in the US. The site includes a historic firehouse, a vacant lot, and historic three-story building.

Domestic hot water doesn’t get the attention it deserves, so this session will be talking about nothing but it! Decarbonizing DHW in multifamily settings is full of challenges, especially in a heating-dominated cold climate. We will be discussing decarbonization strategies from new construction and existing buildings, central and decentralized systems, and touching on adjacent topics like loads and futureproofing.

SPONSORED BY DXS NEW ENGLAND

Multifamily buildings with good insulation, great windows, and decent ventilation systems – what's not to like? Unfortunately, over the past five years, we have received calls from multifamily building owners who are battling persistent summertime humidity problems. Comfort complaints, sweating ductwork, waterlogged drywall, and mold on furnishings, clothing, registers . . . you name it. We will discuss how we went about these investigations and the tools we used to diagnose these issues.

Transparency is the foundation for making informed decisions about the products we specify. The AEC industry is familiar with sustainability goals related to energy efficiency, but holistic discussions related to material goals across the entire team are still rare. Large strides have been made in interior product disclosure, but much less so for building envelope, MEP  and lighting systems. Without transparency our ability to quantitatively convey the magnitude of decisions made across the project team, and track progress as the design progresses, is limited.

This session will share insights from three research projects focused on greenhouse gas impacts of efficiency-related measures. How does the choice of insulation materials in new construction affect the building’s carbon footprint? What do five years of weatherization data tell us about GHG impacts of insulating existing buildings? What is the lifecycle carbon impact of using heat pumps to offset fossil fuel boiler heat when considering the electric grid, embodied carbon of new heat pumps, and heat pump fugitive emissions from refrigerant leaks? 

While there are established and feasible means to electrify space heating for many low heat load buildings like residential buildings, offices, and retail stores, all-electric solutions for high heat load buildings such as laboratories, research and development buildings, and hospitals continue to present challenges. Emerging products and strategies in the air-to-water heat pump, heat recovery and exhaust-source heat pump market are creating viable solutions to meet the majority of the annual sensible heating demand with efficient electrification.

Beach Green Dunes I and Beach Green Dunes II are two of the largest multifamily Passive Houses in the country. They are adjacent to each other in the Rockaways in NY (in the flood zone) and were completed two years apart. Although they look almost identical, they are very different under the hood. Each has a different structure, envelope (ICF vs Block), ventilation strategy (Unitized vs Centralized), and heating and cooling system (VRF vs. ground source heat pumps) along with several other differences due to changes in city regulations and varying site conditions.