On October 22, 2022 we held the inaugural Touch A Trade event in Kent, CT. The goal of this event was to introduce pre-teen and teenage children to various trades via hands-on experiences. This first event attracted nearly 500 participants, exceeding projected attendance and demonstrating the value of similar future events. This session will focus on our planning process, outcomes, and feedback from presenters and visitors alike, and appraise the value of the Touch a Trade event as a viable workforce development strategy to be scaled in other communities.

With rising determination to fight the climate crisis worldwide, practitioners are finding the Passive House standard a potent solution for the building sector. As passive and other sustainable building standards are proliferating worldwide, those standards meet a host of different location-specific challenges. This diverse panel of women architects and certified Passive House consultants are seeking to understand the adaptation of the Passive House standard globally.

Typical university dormitory projects are capital intensive and take several years to complete. This project turned this practice on its head. Using modular construction, on-site precast foundations, an integrated design-build team and low-embodied-carbon materials in a holistic approach, Colby College housed students as quickly as possible while ensuring the highest standards of beauty, accessibility, energy consumption, and healthy materials. Design started in September 2021, and students moved in in August 2022.

Windows are a key part of the building enclosure, but they are also the costliest, most fragile, and worst thermally performing component. We will present on windows from our viewpoint as building enclosure consultants and forensic failure specialists. We will explore energy and comfort impacts of glazing and glazing ratios, and then move on to water control detailing and the window-to-wall interface. Covered topics will include sill pan and rough opening flashings, “innie” vs.

The Massachusetts Maritime Academy consists of 16 buildings comprising approximately 600,000 sf, with heating for the buildings is provided by gas fired hot water boilers in each. They have undertaken a planning effort and initial design for a distributed campus-wide ground source heat pump system, combined with extensive energy retrofits. The plan consists of a neutral temperature Energy Transfer Loop that will tie various geo-exchange systems together to feed heat pump plants in each building.

Have you heard about the building standard that's not a standard? Learn how to create energy efficient, healthy, sustainable homes with an emphasis on making the concepts and technical details accessible to builders and designers of all levels of development. Two of the four co-authors of the Pretty Good House Book will go through the essential elements of what makes a Pretty Good House and share how it can help make low-carbon energy efficiency more accessible to contractors, designers, and clients.

Electrification of HVAC systems and the elimination of fossil fuel heating in high rise building space conditioning systems poses unique design and system selection challenges.  Presenters will share two case studies for the design of VRF HVAC, one using air-to-air systems and one using air-to-water systems. They will discuss challenges including maximum piping lengths, acoustical restrictions, and airflow problems, and solutions including closely spaced condensers using CFD analysis and the design of access to piping and wiring in large condenser farms.

While the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) is already being used by some states, wider adoption is anticipated with the initiation of DOE’s Resilient and Efficient Codes Implementation (RECI) program. This session highlights key changes in the IECC and identifies 2024 proposals that will have the biggest impact on reaching emission goals. The presenters will explore the relationship between required codes and voluntary standards, as well as the adoption status of Model Code and Stretch Code in Massachusetts, New York State and New York City.

Electrifying the manufacturing process of building materials is a critical step towards decarbonizing the built environment. Going where no companies have gone before, two leading edge companies share their journey to reduce the carbon impact of their product. Each will tell their story on their path to decarbonizing their manufacturing process. This is the prologue, and the episode continues as they stretch their goals.

We will present tales from the trenches for ventilation approaches within the context of the Passive House building certification standard. This standard has set a high benchmark for low-energy buildings and is widely known as the most rigorous energy efficiency standard currently available. Attendees will learn how balanced ventilation is best applied in a cold climate at a large scale and how commissioning plays a key role in this process.