Buildings + Beyond Podcast

Featuring Laurie Kerr As Deputy Director for Green Building Policy at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability under Michael Bloomberg, Kerr helped develop PlaNYC, New York’s influential sustainability plan, and spearheaded the development of New York’s innovative green building and energy efficiency policies. These included the first comprehensive policies by any jurisdiction to address energy efficiency in existing buildings, the greening of New York’s codes and regulations, a clause that solves the splint incentive problem in commercial leases, and programs by city government and leading sectors to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% in ten years — which currently impact over half a billion square feet of space. Subsequently, Kerr conceived and launched the City Energy Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is assisting ten major American cities – from Los Angeles to Chicago, Houston and Atlanta – in developing large-scale efficiency policies similar to New York. She is now the President of LK POLICY LAB and the Director of Policy at Urban Green Council. As we enter a new era of climate policy, we wanted to evaluate some of the efforts major cities have made along the way. How do cities compare? What improvements have they made? And where should cities start with regards to climate action? To help us answer these questions, we called upon Laurie Kerr, a climate policy veteran who helped shape the sustainability plan of one of the most notable cities in the world with regards to climate change and climate action – New York City. Laurie discusses which programs were successful (and which were not) during her time with the Bloomberg administration, and compares these initiatives to those of different cities around the US. Episode Information & Resources Greener, Greater Buildings Plan New York City Carbon Challenge Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) C40 Other Relevant Resources: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report Electrify Everything? (Blog) We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)Welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment. Kelly: (00:13)By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich. Kelly: (00:19)And I’m Kelly Westby. Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards. Several weeks ago we ran an episode on New York City’s new existing building carbon bill. This bill did not come from nothing and in order to translate this legislation to other cities around the country and the world, we need to look at the series of policies that brought us here. Today, we are going to take a step back to dive into the initial steps towards sustainability policy and then look to the future to see how other cities are or can be getting on the road to carbon neutrality. And I don’t think there’s a better person to take us on this journey than Laurie Kerr. Laurie is a national leader in urban sustainability policy as deputy director for green building policy at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Longterm Planning and sustainability under Michael Bloomberg. Laurie helped develop plan y c New York’s influential sustainability plan and spearheaded the development of New York’s innovative green building and energy efficiency policies. Subsequently, Laurie conceived and launched the city energy project at the National Resources Defense Council, which is assisting 10 major American cities from Los Angeles to Chicago, Houston and Atlanta and developing large scale efficiency projects similar to New York. She is now the president of LK policy lab. Speaking of carbon policy, remember to join us on June 27th 28th at the 2019 North American Passive House Network Conference, which will be at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City featuring presentations from industry experts on cutting edge strategies for achieving low carbon, high performance buildings. This year’s conference is gearing up to be the best to date and even includes sessions from my cohost, Robb Aldrich, among other SWA folks. And of course don’t forget to sign up for some of the incredible pre conference workshops. These will take place on June 25th and 26th. I’ll be talking about commissioning, how to make sure your high performance building actually performs. You can also hear the buildings and beyond acoustical director, Dylan Martello and plenty of others. Use the code n a p h n 19 star s w a to receive a 10% discount on the standard two day conference and expo pass for more Info on the 2019 n a p h n conference visit. The show notes page for this episode. Kelly: (02:47)Thank you Laurie from for being on this podcast with me today. We actually just had an episode on the basically groundbreaking carbon caps for buildings. But obviously it didn’t come out of nothing. You’ve done a lot of work over the past 13 years, over a decade, looking at what we should do to kind of get on the path to low carbon. So that’s what we want to talk about today. We obviously focus on buildings, our podcast is called buildings and beyond, but can you give us a little background on why New York City has decided to have a pretty big focus on buildings or at least looking at buildings and energy use and what the impact is on the environment? Laurie: (03:38)Well, before I went to the mayor’s office, I got a sneak peek of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions inventory and what I saw was really surprising. 75% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions came from energy used in buildings. We didn’t know that before that and that really focused our mind. I also did the math on our growth rates and figured out that about 85% of our buildings in 2030 were buildings that we already had in 2005. So that meant clearly that if New York wanted to address climate change, it would have to focus on its existing buildings. But there were no models. What do you do? The energy codes are all designed around new buildings, existing buildings, unless they’re making some improvement are allowed to run inefficiently forever. That’s just the way it works. So I remember pouring over the data and trying to figure out what we should do. And Maryland Davenport, who was the doyenne of the real estate industry walked by my desk and started asking me a few questions and I guess my answers were pretty poor because she said, you poor dear, you really don’t know very much do you? But we learned a lot and we did a lot. We eventually came up with the world’s first comprehensive plan to address energy use in existing buildings. It was called the greener greater buildings plan, but we did other things too. We launched a green codes task force to green the city’s laws and regulations related to buildings and we developed a series of policies including the Mayor’s carbon challenge to many different sectors eventually. And then we launched the New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation to help with financing. We launched BEEx to help with training and information. So it was a very broad brush set of programs and policies Kelly: (05:58)And BEEx is building energy exchange.? Laurie: (06:00)Yes. Kelly: (06:00)Okay. I just like to define all the acronyms here. And so kind of diving in a little bit to that greener, greater buildings plan, you outlined these couple of things, some of them I guess at this stage it sounds like most of those things are still promoting good habits but not necessarily requiring specific things. Like you were talking about building energy exchange that’s educating the market. You talked a little bit about the greenhouse gas inventory that’s just measuring what are we doing here? How did we transition into some laws around what buildings would start to have to do? Laurie: (06:47)So the greener, greater buildings plan which was our biggest effort focused exactly on energy in existing buildings, has a couple of features. About half of it is about information. So the benchmarking and the audit piece, which I’ll explain are really about information. And then there are some requirements to reduce lighting energy and to submeter, and to Retro Commission, which are about making improvements. But I want to go back a little bit. Cause it’s partly what we did and partly how we eventually grappled with this very complex industry. New York City actually has a million buildings. There are big ones, little ones, old ones, new ones. It’s just a very complex disorder. And that’s what Maryland Davenport was kind of getting at. Right. And our big kind of key to solving that, at least in the first phases was when I was looking over the, the data and I realized, Hey, wait a minute. Half the square footage is contained in 2% of the buildings, the buildings larger than 50,000 square feet. So that’s how we should start. And those buildings aren’t only a little easier to get to cause there are relatively few of them, 20,000, approximately, but they also are a little more sophisticated. They usually have a professional management companies in charge. So that seemed like the place to start. So the greener, greater buildings plan is focused on those larger buildings. Kelly: (08:38)And I want to dive in on that a little bit because I think, and potentially based on recent New York Times headlines, but I think there’s sort of this misconception that, that some, t

Featuring Brad Mahoney Brad Mahoney is responsible for all aspects of MP Boston’s commercial development, including design, construction, leasing and tenant coordination. In addition, he is also the sustainability and technology lead on MP Boston’s next Boston project, an iconic 1.5 million square foot project in Winthrop Square. Brad joined MP Boston in 2012 and oversaw the restoration of the historic Burnham Building, the former Filene’s Building, in Downtown Crossing. He was also on the development team for Millennium Tower, which is Boston’s tallest residential building. Prior to joining MP Boston’s team, Brad worked at Lend Lease as a construction manager where he oversaw a wide variety of projects ranging from large scale residential to historic restorations. He also managed an expansion for a life science client by using an integrated and virtual MEP design assist platform. As we continue our discussions around high-performance buildings, we would be remiss if we did not discuss the laudable endeavor that is MP Boston’s Winthrop Square. Projected to be the fourth tallest building in Boston and the largest Passive House office space in the world, Winthrop Square is a pinnacle of high-performance design. Although construction for this project has just begun, we were eager to hear about the plans for this immense undertaking. So, we sat down with MP Boston’s Director of Sustainable Development, Brad Mahoney. Brad shares some of the extraordinary energy conservation measures that will be included in the tower and highlights the many benefits that the project is anticipated to achieve, including advanced productivity, wellness, and social engagement. Episode Information & Resources About Winthrop Square: MP Boston Curbed About Passive House: Passive House FAQ Pathways to Passive House Certification We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Rob Aldrich Kelly: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby. Robb: (00:21)This week I talked with Brad Mahoney who is the director of sustainable development at MP Boston and we talked about Winthrop center, which is a very large building under construction right in downtown Boston, 691 foot tower. The top 30 stories are residential, 420 apartments, and then below that are 20 stories of office space, 750,000 square feet of office space. And if everything goes as planned, this’ll be the largest passive house certified office building in the world, as far as we know, we talk mostly big picture: why they’re doing what they’re doing, a little bit of how they’re doing what they’re doing. If you want to learn more details and if you can make it to New York City at the end of June, consider coming to the n a p h n conference. Robb: (01:15)That’s the North American passive house network conference. Dylan Martello from SWA will be presenting on some of the details of the curtain wall system and there’s a lot that goes into it, especially for such a big building. I’m looking forward to the conference. I’ll be talking in a session about heat pumps- getting more from air source heat pumps. Lois and Kelly will be talking about the importance of commissioning in high performance buildings. Lots of industry experts really focused on high performance buildings and especially low carbon buildings. So if you can make it June 27th to 28th at Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City. And if you want a discount code, we have one of those for you. If you want 10% off for the regular conference admission rate, use the code naphn19*SWA for 10% off. All this is on our show notes. So you can go there and you can click on it and you can copy the discount code. The conference website is naphnconference.com. Hope to see you there, and here’s my talk with Brad Mahoney. Robb: (02:30)So the whole building will be certified to LEED? Brad: (02:34)Correct. Robb: (02:35)But the office and the residential sections are kind of being tackled in a different way? Brad: (02:41)They are. Robb: (02:42)And it’s the office section that will be passive house and LEED platinum? Brad: (02:51)Yeah, that’s correct, Robb. It’s exciting. This will be the largest passive house office project in the world. Certainly the largest here in the northeast. And the other thing is we’ve gone through our passive house journey, and we found that there are these inherent synergies that passive house has with other components of the ecosystem that we’re creating here at Winthrop. So we’re certifying the office space to WELL gold. We’re really trying to help create and define the workplace of the future. Robb: (03:30)To a lot of people it may seem curious as why you split it up. I mean, why go for passive house only on the office section? Is this your first foray into passive house? Brad: (03:50)Yes. This, this is our first passive house venture. And to answer that, I think you really have to look at the market, right? Companies are looking to attract and retain top talent, right? You read about it everywhere and that’s kind of where this conversation starts. So we’re creating a healthy, high performance environment, that’s founded in passive house, right? And we think this project will be where companies want to be. You will have to be at Winthrop Center. There’ll be over 4,000 women and men working in this building every day, and it’s that appeal. The other piece is, you know, if you look at the office component per person, it’s where you can most directly impact carbon reduction, the amount of energy per person, right? So first off, the residential- 400 units, 4,000 employees in and out of this building every day. Robb: (05:13)So there’s many more people using the office sections and there’s a bigger opportunity for energy savings, for comfort, for health. Now and when you’re thinking about the passive house concept, is this something that kind of you championed or did you see a need in the marketplace for efficient, healthy office space? How did you get to be looking at passive house here? Brad: (05:48)So it really did start at the onset of the project when we started this. How do we make this project truly next generation, right? So when you look at passive house, which is ultimately performance based standard, right? And right now when you hear about performance, you think about energy performance, carbon reduction, long term carbon reduction goals, things that we all, both in our community and at large care very much about, and the desire to express what we’re doing, and make the office user understand that, but feel that they have a play in that- feel that they are able to participate in that solution, participate in this idea of going beyond the things that may be traditional. People understand what sustainability means, when you look at some of the top measures, how do people feel that they’re able to contribute, you know, conserving water and recycling? Well, this goes far beyond that because you’re talking about energy reduction and there are many, many other benefits that have tremendous appeal to the office user. You know, better indoor air quality, right? Thermal Comfort. Noise reduction because the triple glazed windows, long term the quality of construction. Robb: (07:38)So it was really the tenants, when you were toying with this idea, it was really that this is going to be better for the tenants Brad: (07:46)it’s going to be better for the tenants on many, many levels, on many levels. Robb: (07:52)And obviously the idea is, hey, we’ll be able to lease this quicker. or it might be for a little bit of premium. Was that a tough sell or did that just seem like a next logical step when you’re thinking about going passive house? Brad: (08:15)So it became clear. I think when any organization is contemplating something new, and this is new, not just to us, but it’s new really to the industry, you take a long hard look at it. And we took a long, long hard look. And the more we studied this, the more it really became clear that this is where we want to go to really set the bar and create a new paradigm because we believe this is where development ultimately will go. And we’re trying to do that in a way that really allows for the best experience for our customer, for our tenants. Robb: (09:04)You don’t want to be obsolete in 10 or 20 years Brad: (09:07)right, I mean the benefits, the resiliency benefits, right? I mean that alone, you know, you can find that there are pieces and elements of passive house that can appeal to different subsets within each organization. And it really has a broad overall appeal. Robb: (09:35)Are you getting feedback yet from brokers or possible tenants or is there interest yet? Is that resonating with folks yet? First of all, actually, let’s back up. What’s the whole schedule for this? Brad: (09:53)So we open in three years, 2022. So we are starting those conversations with tenants, with brokers. People want great space, right? That’s number one, right? Views are huge, location, and we have all of that, right? And what we’re doing is we are tremendously enhancing that. Right? So when you think about what are the elements of passive house? You know, triple glazed windows, energy recovery, heat recovery- really understanding the

Featuring Marc Zuluaga Marc Zuluaga has directed energy audits on over 20 million square feet of existing buildings and leads a team committed to applying a rigorous technical approach to the evaluation and implementation of a wide range of building upgrades. Most notably, Marc has worked since 2005 to pioneer a retrofit approach to central exhaust ventilation systems in multifamily buildings, working openly and collaboratively with practitioners across the country. More recently, in research sponsored by the Urban Green Council, Marc acted as the team leader on a project to quantify the winter heat loss due to air leakage around window and sleeve air conditioners in NYC. The study, titled “There Are Holes in Our Walls,” found that these gaps collectively represent a hole the size of a Manhattan block, resulting in an annual operating cost penalty of $130 – $180 million dollars. Marc has also provided technical input to inform various policy initiatives; in 2010, he served on the NYC Green Codes Task Force that was convened by the Mayor’s Office to recommend green changes to the laws and regulations affecting buildings in New York. Considered one of the most ambitious and innovative legislative initiatives of any major U.S. city, New York City’s Climate Mobilization Act has significant implications for property owners. The most significant bill in the package, Introduction 1253, will hold owners accountable for their buildings’ energy performance by mandating buildings over 25,000 SF to reduce their emissions 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050, with incremental targets along the timeline. In this episode, Kelly sits down with SWA’s CEO, Marc Zuluaga to learn more about what is being referred to as NYC’s Green New Deal – and what it means for NYC’s real estate market. Marc breaks down the details of the bill and shares some advice for building owners and managers. Episode Information & Resources Blog: What Does NYC’s Climate Mobilization Act Mean for Building Owners? Article: NYC Council Press Release Article: Curbed Magazine Article: New York Times Website: www.smartbuildings.nyc (how Smart Buildings can lead to compliance) Website: The Retrofit Depot (deep retrofit tools and resources) Report: Upgrading NYC Steam Systems for the 21st Century Report: There Are Holes in Our Walls We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Featuring Mary Jo Peterson Mary Jo Peterson is an award-winning author, speaker, educator, and designer with over 25 years of experience. She is president of Mary Jo Peterson, Inc, a design studio and consulting firm established in 1993 with specialized expertise in kitchen, bath, and universal/accessible design. The firm offers consulting services to private clients, manufactures of product, and builders/developers/architects in the design of universal spaces and products. Prominent projects include design for Del Webb, Pulte, and other major homebuilders, demonstration exhibit space for GE Appliances, Jenn-Air, and Hafele, and everyone’s favorite, the Betty Crocker Kitchens at General Mills in Minneapolis, MN. Ms. Peterson has contributed to the development of new national universal design standards introduced in 2013. Author of Universal Interiors by Design (McGraw-Hill Professional, 1999) and Universal Kitchen and Bathroom Planning (McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing, 1998) as well as Kitchen Planning and Bath Planning of the NKBA resource library (latest edition, Wiley, 2013), Ms. Peterson has been elected by her peers to the NKBA Hall of Fame. She is author and instructor of the universal design courses offered by NKBA. Named by NAHB as CAPS Educator of the Year 2014, she is an author/instructor of the CAPS and UD/Build programs of NAHB. Involved with government and advocacy groups, Mary Jo works at integrating universal access and sustainability into home and product design, and actively promotes change and education towards the integration of access, sustainability, and beautiful design. Read more Universal Design recognizes that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to design and construction. By incorporating Universal Design features into the built environment, we can accommodate for the widest variety of people, regardless of their limitations. But, while the buzz around Universal Design is growing, we still receive many questions surrounding what it means for a specific project and where it can be applied. To help answer these questions, we’ve asked Universal Design expert and award-winning author, Mary Jo Peterson, to share her knowledge of the topic and provide some examples of what it might mean for a specific project. Episode Information & Resources News: Universal Design in WELL Building Standard Blog: Universal Design vs. Accessible Design Blog: Designing for All – Cooper Hewitt’s Access+Ability Exhibition Book: Universal Kitchen and Bathroom Planning: Design That Adapts to People Ted Talk: Why We Need Universal Design We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:05)Welcome to buildings and beyond. Robb: (00:08)The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment. Kelly: (00:12)By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Robb: (00:17)I’m Robb Aldrich. Kelly: (00:18)And I’m Kelly Westby. You may be thinking, so what is this universal design thing anyway? While the name would imply otherwise. Universal design is often associated with a tool for handling the needs of people with disability or perhaps in association with aging in place. But Mary Jo talks about universal design as just good design practice. Mary Jo built her own company in 1993 to assist private homeowners and design build professionals around the country achieve state of the art solutions for kitchen and bath designs. Mary Jo’s own journey to universal design came from a desire to support people with disabilities to make their homes easier for them to use and then realizing she could use her approach to improve flexibility and access for everyone. Mary Jo is constantly asking herself and those around her, how can we incorporate clever, beautiful elements that improve human performance? If you care about having a space that is easier to use and makes you feel good at the same time or if you want to design such a space for someone else, you will definitely want to keep listening. So let’s just jump right in. Kelly: (01:26)So Mary Jo, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Mary Jo: (01:29)Happy to be here. Kelly: (01:31)And thanks for welcoming us into your home for the podcast. Mary Jo: (01:35)I’m always happy for that. Kelly: (01:38)I like to set the scene a little bit with some definitions, so just to get us on the same page and our listeners as well. Can you start just by explaining what your definition of universal design is? Mary Jo: (01:50)Yeah, I’d like to, in fact, it’s a pleasure to have the chance to help clarify because it’s a philosophy and an approach to design that people don’t always get their arms around and when we finally embrace it, we really don’t have to have a name anymore. It’s just good design. But in fact, the name universal design refers to, by formal definition, the design of products and spaces so that they will, with respect for the differences in people, be usable by as many people as possible. The UN has a definition that I think kind of adds to that. It talks about freedom to choose. So freedom, again, I think it’s about that respect of people in differences. If I speak Spanish and you speak English, if, if a space has been designed universally, then that sign will be a figure and we both know that it means that that’s where the women’s room is, right? You know that kind of thing. So, yeah, that’s a great example. It’s a lot about respect. Kelly: (02:54)Yeah and I’ve seen another slight difference in definition, I think it’s from a book by Steinfeld and Measel, that it encourages the design of spaces that empower a diverse population by improving human performance, health and wellness and social participation. Mary Jo: (03:12)Right. That’s a more contemporary definition. Kelly: (03:15)Right. And what do you think about the health and wellness aspect of bringing that into design? Where are we with that? Mary Jo: (03:22)I think it’s perfect. I have always thought that universal design spoke to health, you know, other terms, universal design, inclusive design, I think Ed Steinfeld likes to refer to inclusive design. Same kind of deal, but when we refer to health and wellness, we’re talking about a proactive approach that we’re going to create spaces and products that will support people through the changes that may occur in their life and in the life of the spaces that they’re living in. And that really is more of a positive, mo re of a proactive, and that’s what universal design is supposed to be. I think when we define it, we can’t ignore the other terms that are out there. So we talk about accessibility and we talk about universal design and it’s very hard for people who are down in the trenches of it to figure out what’s what there. And I think that if you look at it this way, access really refers to disability. It really refers to creating something that will support someone with respect for a specific disability. It also is a term that is used in compliance in the standards for the ADA, for Fair housing. So it has a very specific definition and it’s also like a solution to a problem. So a ramp would be acceptable as an accessible solution, right? It would be a sloped walkway if it was universal design because you’d want it not to be so visible. You’d want it to be, it has to be, beautiful. You know, I think there are three things that builders often ask me, what 10 things can I do? So I have incorporated universal design and I just want to do that in every house. And I say, no, every house is different. This is really an approach to design. But if there are three things, you know, I would say that this is a design that you have to create it so that it’s something we aspire to. And my best example of that is if you think of a hearing aid and then think of an air pod, we aspire to one, we like one, we think it’s cool. We want to have that in our ear. The other one, we want to hide it, make it go away. So universal design, we need to aspire to it. We also need to make it the standard. It needs to be part of every project that we approach. Every design of product or a space that we approach, because what we’re doing is trying to create some flexibility in that product so that it can be used by the tall and short among us, by the old and the young, by the large and small and with varying abilities. We can’t make everything universal for everybody all the time. But we can have that as our goal. And, so, you know, that’s another thing that we have to work at. And the final thing that it has to be as beautiful. It either has to be invisible or beautiful. You don’t even know it. You know, you walk in and you’re working at the sink and you realize that this is really comfortable. Ah, it’s a better height for me. It’s a flexible height. And now I’ve got it at my height. It’s that A-ha thing. So invisible is good or beautiful. It’s not a grab bar that makes me feel like I’m in an institution. It’s a beautiful decorative element. And Oh, by the way, if I start to slip and fall, I’ve got something to hold onto. Or if I need a little balance as I move through this space. Kelly: (06:55)That’s amazing. And I haven’t actually thought about that. And probably people more involved in the circle think about this a lot, but, and maybe this is my engineering background, but I hadn’t thought about the beauty component of it, the aesthetic component of it. And so that’s a really interesting piece t

Featuring John Balfe, Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) John works on the Buildings Team at NEEP to help drive energy efficiency in new and retrofitted schools and public buildings throughout the region. John works with the various stakeholders in the industry to advance public policy with high-performance building standards in the region, including facilitation of information exchange and knowledge transfer between states and programs. Prior to joining NEEP in 2015, John interned at the Southern New Hampshire Planning Commission located in Manchester, NH. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 2014 with a BS in Community and Environmental Planning. Air quality, acoustics, and thermal comfort are just some of the critical elements to consider when assessing the indoor environmental quality of a building. But how are these characteristics measured in schools, and what programs do we have to ensure they are being prioritized? Joining us for this episode is John Balfe from Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP). John discusses the key components to a high-performance school, as well as the programs and standards that are being implemented to help ensure the development of healthy academic environments. Episode Information & Resources NE-CHPS v3.2 This is the criteria for the design of high performance schools focused on indoor environmental quality, energy efficiency, and ongoing operations. CAPEE (Community Action Planning for Energy Efficiency) This tool is for communities to help stakeholders plan and prioritize energy efficiency projects at the local level. NEEP’s High Performance Schools Webpage This includes links to other relevant info and case studies for high performance schools. NEEP Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up on the latest from NEEP. Blog: SWA’s Top 10 Tips for a Healthier Indoor Environment We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:14)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Rob Aldrich New Speaker: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby. New Speaker: (00:21)This week I talked with John Balfe from NEEP- Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships, and John works a lot with school buildings, high performance schools. There’s an organization called CHPS C-H-P-S collaborative for high performance schools, which offers guidance and also certification for schools all over the country. And NEEP, John’s organization, manages the northeast regional version of CHPS, for folks in the northeast and the mid-Atlantic. I do want to say that the website CHPS.net Is the proper website. A couple of times in the episode, I think I say chps.org. That is incorrect. It’s all correct in the show notes. So here’s an interview with John Balfe. Robb: (01:12)All right. High performance schools. First of all, did you go to a high performance school? John: (01:18)I did not. Well, my high school was decent, but it wasn’t built to any criteria. My old elementary school recently got knocked down and renovated and it is now a high performance school, it’s a CHP school. So it was kind of cool to see. And I actually went back and did a case study on it. So that was kind of cool. Robb: (01:38)Cool, where was it? John: (01:38)It in Middleton, Massachusetts. Yeah, it’s a lot better than when I went there, that’s for sure. Robb: (01:45)Yeah, I was thinking about that when we are kind of prepping for this call, I was thinking back on my school and it was, you know, I think it was built in the fifties or something, it was before I was born. And the one thing I remember when I was thinking about it, it was just the heat. You know, if you go back to school in September, you can get a heat wave in September. This was also in Massachusetts and I remember it just being stifling in classrooms. That’s not a good place to learn. So when we’re talking about high performance schools, the first thing that comes to mind, for me, is indoor air quality. Is that a big pillar of CHPs and of these programs? John: (02:27)Yeah, I think indoor air quality, and we kind of even broaden it a little bit further than that to the indoor environmental quality, so things like acoustics, air quality, thermal comfort of the building are kind of the key components of indoor environmental quality. There all really important because, you know, if a student’s sitting in the back of the class and the HVAC equipment comes on and it’s really loud and distracting, you know, that kid in the back of the class might not be hearing what the teacher is saying. And that can be really difficult. You know, not a great learning environment. I like to always say that there’s three main pillars, energy efficiency and environmental stewardship, really. So, you know, it’s an energy efficient building and reduces the impact on the environment around us. So to me, those are the big, the big three things that high performance schools have in common. Robb: (03:25)Gotcha. Efficiency, indoor environmental quality, not just air indoor air quality and environmental impact. Local locally and globally thinking small and big? John: (03:35)Yeah. I think as much as possible in the chp’s criteria, you can get points for locally sourced materials, and citing your school building in a proper way. I think it has local impact for sure, but, you know, we’re all in this together, so it’s kind of a global impact as well. Robb: (03:59)Awesome. And there are plenty of high performance building programs, green building programs. What is different? CHPs is very specific to schools. What are the big challenges or what’s different about schools that CHPs addresses? John: (04:20)Yeah, I’m glad you said that. CHPs is designed just for schools. LEED has a few different building types that it works in and really is focused on kind of community wide stuff, which is, you know, super important. But schools where the focus of chps from the beginning, and northeast chips, which is the criteria that I’ll probably be referencing throughout the talk today, that was built with input from a lot of regional stakeholders here in the northeast region. Facility directors, school business officials, architects and engineers, so it was really a collaborative effort to, to build this criteria with, you know, what’s really important here in the northeast. So I think there’s regional adaptations of the CHPs criteria, Northeast chps being one of them. So, I think that’s a little bit different of a twist from maybe some other criteria that are out there. And what’s different about schools? I think we all know how important schools are. You know, it could be the reason that folks move to a town, if there’s a really good school system, you know, we often say they’re the center of the community. And I think that’s so true now more than ever, with some of their resiliency discussions coming into play, they’re being used as community centers more and more. And so often we’re seeing a new school being built and that school is being used for many other things besides just kind of the educational component of it. Obviously that’s the main focus, but there’s stuff going on during the summer at the schools and maybe there’s stuff going on in the morning before school or afternoon activities, whether that’s sports or camps or, you know, feeding the hungry in that community. You know, we’re seeing that happen a lot. So I think that’s kind of what’s different about schools. You know, they’re just the center of the community and they’re used for a lot more than education. And I actually wrote a blog on this not too long ago that highlighted that students spend over, I think it was 15,000, maybe close to 16,000 hours over their life in a school building. So it’s, you know, a place where students are spending a ton of time, and having an important focus in these environments, I think just makes good sense. And you know, over the long run can save the community a lot, a lot of money if we’re focusing on high performance. Robb: (06:55)No arguments. So interesting. So like LEED can have a LEED restaurant. A restaurant is used as a restaurant all the time, but where schools are, like you said, they’re going to be, you know, used during the school day and then after hours, other groups, other town groups coming in, often town meetings, elections, the weekends you have all kinds of different stuff going on. And the CHPs criteria has specific methods or credits to kind of encourage you to address these different uses. Did I hear you correctly there? John: (07:33)Yeah that’s, that’s exactly right. There are a few different ways that either the community gets involved in the upfront design of the school building, but there’s also particular credits in northeast chps and probably all the other adaptations of chips as well. They give you points for, you know, joint use of facilities I think is what it’s called in northeast chps. So having plans in place to allow for the greater community to either rent out the different spaces, whether that’s the auditorium, the cafeteria, just a particular classroom or some of the fields out in the athletic yard. So there’s different plans that you can have in place to make these kind of transactions or allowing the community to use

Featuring Iain Walker, PhD. Iain Walker is a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He has more than 20 years of experience as a building scientist and consultant, conducting research on energy use, ventilation, moisture, performance simulation, and commissioning/diagnostic issues in residential buildings. His current work focuses on retrofits, zero/low-energy homes and heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems in residential buildings through field and laboratory evaluations, modeling and simulation activities, and standards setting. Dr. Walker is the task group leader for the American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards committees on building and duct system air leakage and sealant longevity. For the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) he serves on National Standards committees for indoor air quality, weather, moisture design, and equipment air leakage. He also serves on Building Performance Institute (BPI) and Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) Technical Committees, the Affordable Comfort (ACI) conference planning committee and provides leadership and technical input to many local, state, national and international bodies. Read more When you fire on a stove-top burner, whether it is electric, gas, or convection, many byproducts are released. This increase in moisture, gas, and other particulates is not only detrimental to the health of a building, but dangerous for human health as well. To advance our knowledge on this topic, we invited building scientist and ventilation expert, Dr. Iain Walker, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Dr. Walker discusses strategies for controlling byproducts associated with cooking by focusing on kitchen ventilation. Episode Information & Resources Studies: Indoor Air Quality: Residential Cooking Exposures  Measurement of Ultrafine Particles and Other Air Pollutants Emitted by Cooking Activities Particle Concentrations in Inner-city Homes of Children with Asthma… Impact of Natural Gas Appliances on Pollutant Levels in California Homes Indoor Air Quality in 24 California Residences Designed as High Performance Green Homes Guides/Resources: HVI Guide HVI Products Directory Standards: ANSI/ASHRAE Standards for Ventilation and Indoor Air Quality ANSI/BPI: Home Energy Auditing Standard ANSI/BPI: Standard Practice for Basic Analysis of Buildings We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)Welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich. Kelly: (00:19)And I’m Kelly Westby. Kelly: (00:24)I am so glad you have decided to tune in to buildings and beyond this week because this applies to basically everyone. If you ever cook in your home, I think you’ll find this interesting. We are actually going to take a page from the Simon Sinex book and we are starting with why. Iain: (00:42)They should care because the idea is that when you cook, it’s basically one of the activities that you do that emits the most contaminants into, into your home and by contaminants- there are some pretty straightforward ones. Like there’s lots of water vapor when you’re cooking and if you don’t wanna have condensation on your windows in the winter for example, or you don’t want to make your house get too humid, so you might get some mold growth. Do you want to control the humidity levels in it? It’s a good idea to vent the moisture from cooking to outside. Then you have to think about odors. And of course, you know, some odors are good when, when you’re cooking, right? The, the odor is what makes you know, home cooking worthwhile sometimes and what’s make makes food tastes nice and everything. But if you’ve been frying fish one day, maybe you don’t want the smell of fried fish in your house for the next few days. And the last thing is more from a health perspective, which is that aside from the moisture and odor issues there are contaminants admitted when you cook that can actually impact your health. One of the primary ones is small particles and they come from either the burning of natural gas if you’re using a gas cooktop, or the cooking process itself. And then there are things like oxides of nitrogen that also are emitted from from gas burners. And those contaminants are ones that if they get to a high enough concentration can have some health impacts. So there’s a good health reason for venting most of those things to outside. And so it’s a combination of you want to control moisture in your home, you want to control odors in your home, and there’s a health impact also. And I’m not saying that you shouldnt cook. I personally love cooking and everybody should cook. I think a home cooked meal is probably the healthiest way to feed yourself, but we should do it with an awareness that it’s a good idea to control what we do when we’re cooking. And effectively the best way to do it is to vent some of these things to outside. So that’s the rationale for why you would vent a kitchen ever. And if you’ve ever been in a commercial kitchen, you’ll see that they have enormous range heads with huge amounts of flow and they’re physically large and they have gigantic makeup air systems and if you’re cooking all the time, they make a huge effort to vent the cooking to outside. Of course we cook less in our homes, but the principles behind it are for the same reason. It’s about controlling the moisture odor, and some of these contaminants that can have health impacts. Kelly: (03:22)Now, Iain Walker, who you just heard is a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL. He works as a building scientist and consultant conducting research on energy use, ventilation, moisture performance simulation and commissioning diagnostic issues in residential buildings. I encourage you to go to the show notes and look at the link to LBNL’s website. It turns out Iain has been doing ventilation research papers dating back to 1990. Whether you cook once in awhile or you cook all the time, whether you live in an apartment or a house, whether you have no renovation budget or unlimited- stay tuned, there will be something in this episode for you. I’ll let Iain give you a little background and lay the groundwork for you. So we’re going to jump right in. Iain: (04:07)Kitchen ventilation is not a new thing, right? It’s been around for a long, long time. But it’s only recently that we’ve done anything about it and in a way where we could actually put some numbers to it. And by that I mean kitchen rangers had been used and just, you know, simple vents and kitchens have been around for thousands of years. But actual kitchen rangers with a fan in them have been around for a while. But how good are they and how much of the contaminants they capture has been something that hasn’t really been studied until recently. And what we were really looking for was a way to figure out how well these devices work with a longer term goal of maybe we could make them work better even though they moved less air for example, because there surely is an energy penalty just in the fan power and also heating and cooling all that air that you’re exhausting. Right. So that’s why we wanted to like actually put some numbers on how well a range hoods work and try and figure out is there something about the geometry or the amount of airflow that makes some work better and some not and so on. Kelly: (05:13)Great. Yeah. And mostly, the research is looking at single family or low rise multifamily? Iain: (05:22)Well I wouldn’t say necessarily- no. I think, I everybody’s kitchen should get some good ventilation so I wouldn’t restrict it. But you raise a good point, which is it’s easier in some buildings than others, right? In a house, having an exhaust fan in your kitchen is not too difficult to conceive of. Right? Maybe you have to cut a hole in the wall or maybe in the ceiling if you’re gonna go out through the ceiling, put some ducting in. Seems pretty straight forward. But in a high rise building, it can be a little trickier. Often highrise architecture is much more sensitive to having lots of holes in the wall. And then if you’ve got many, many stories all stacked up on top of each other, you’ve got to find room for all that ducting in the end. And it does get a little more complex from an engineering perspective, but not impossible. Kelly: (06:12)So now say I’m a homeowner and maybe I don’t have any renovation budget, but what should I think about when I go to Cook my dinner tonight? Iain: (06:22)Well there’s some simple things you can do if you’re not going to remodel your kitchen or replace the range hood. The first thing, is you should know if your range ofvents to outside, that’s the first question there. There are many hoods over cooktops that just blow the air back into the kitchen and they’re not particularly effective at doing anything for controlling the things I just talked about. As you imagine, they just blow the moisture straight back in. They don’t do much for removing things like particles, oxides of nitrogen and they don’t control odor as much. They often will have a grease filter in, right, that you’ve probably seen, these sort of metal things. If you look underneath your ho

Featuring Bill Zoeller Bill Zoeller is a Registered Architect and Senior Vice President with Steven Winter Associates. He has 33 years of experience in building design and construction, building science research, energy-efficiency, disaster-resistant construction, and building materials product development. Bill has specialized expertise in advanced and traditional materials; design to resist natural hazards; energy efficient building practices; and energy upgrades in historic buildings. He has participated in product development and marketing analysis work for major building material manufactures and has worked on hazards resistance research for HUD and FEMA. Bill leads SWA’s team of enclosure specialists which has over 50 years of combined experience in condition assessments, design consulting and construction administrative services, and has participated on projects ranging from historic museums with rare collection archives, to high-rise Passive House towers. Critical to the make-up of a high-performance building, is a well-designed, carefully construction building enclosure. Thanks to advancements in building-science knowledge, building materials, and construction best practices, achieving a well-insulated, air-tight building envelope can be possible if executed correctly. On this episode of Buildings and Beyond, we talk with SWA Senior VP and building enclosures expert, Bill Zoeller. Bill shares some strategies that professionals should consider when designing and constructing building enclosures and high-performance wall assemblies. Episode Information & Resources High Performance Walls Guide Foundation Waterproofing 101 Foundation Waterproofing – Proper Installation and What NOT to do! Reducing Air Leaks in Multifamily Buildings (and why you should care) We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:01)Welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:14)By focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich. Kelly: (00:19)And I’m Kelly Westby. Robb: (00:21)This week I’m talking with Bill Zoeller who is a senior vice president here at Steven Winter Associates. He and I have worked together for almost almost 20 years now and it’s been observed by several people that Bill and I really don’t have many conversations. We have many more arguments, but I think we’re both very well behaved in this episode. We’re talking about high performance envelopes, specifically high performance walls. I mean designing building good envelopes has changed a lot over the past couple of decades. So we dig into this, the reasons for this a little bit and specifically talk about some high performance wall systems. Robb: (01:03)Thanks for being here, Bill. Bill: (01:05)Thanks Robb. My pleasure. Robb: (01:07)So I talked to you about doing an session on envelopes, a podcast episode on envelopes, which is a huge topic, but the way envelopes are designed and built now is so drastically different and continues to change a lot with new materials, with new techniques, new details. I wanted to dig into that topic a little bit and we ended up deciding to talk about walls because that’s what came up first because every building has walls. So big picture, why are envelopes and enclosures so different now? Bill: (01:48)Well, in order to look at why they’re different now, I think we need to look at the context of where they were and where they were is really the impetus for why they changed and where they were a bunch of years ago, let’s say 10, 15, 20 years ago. If someone was building your basic house pretty much anywhere in the country it was framed with two by four walls, add ore 13 bad insulation, jammed into the stud cavities without much care or Thought of how good or neat or quality the job was. Essentially no care at all to any sort of air sealing between the inside and the outside. So basically you had you know, a frame wall cavity with a little bit of insulation in it and a lot of air blowing through it. Well, it wasn’t very good. And when the energy codes changed to improve the performance, Robb: (02:46)Or actually came into being in lots of places Bill: (02:49)Or came into being in lots of places, they incorporated some attributes that caused some changes to occur. For instance if we have your basic r-13 wall with bad insulation and no air sealing capability, what you’ve got is a little bit of thermal insulation that’s stopping the flow of heat from inside to outside a little bit. But all the air is blowing around it. So even if I have installation in the cavities, the outside air is blowing through the insulation via infiltration and really bypassing the thermal installation altogether. Then, the building codes increased a little bit. And we ended up with two by six walls, r-19 or r-20 insulation in that same space. And we started to employ some air sealing measures. It became known that air infiltration into buildings was one of the largest causes of heat loss and comfort issues and so on in buildings. So the next reasonable response is, well, let’s tighten up the buildings. Robb: (04:06)But there wasn’t yet a durability concern. Bill: (04:12)The building science was not really a known quantity when we started to do that. You know, like anything else, when we start employing new measures and new aspects of anything, there’s always unintended consequences and we certainly found them. In this case, the unintended consequences have to do with the second law of thermal dynamics. And usually when I start this conversation, I start with the first law of thermodynamics, which is basically in a nutshell that energy can’t be created or destroyed. The reason I start with the first law is because I really want to talk about the second law, but if I do that, people always say, well, what the heck’s the first law? So we got that out of the way, right? And the second law of thermodynamics is really the main issue with high performance wall assemblies and why theyre causing problems and why they can cause problems. And that’s that it’s the law of entropy, which basically means that any system of energy in an isolated chamber, or setting, wants to morph towards basically chaos. So if I have heat on one side of the wall and cold on the other side of the wall, what the energy wants to do is basically equalize itself on either sides of the wall. So the heat’s going from hot to cold. So if I’m hot on the inside of the house, cold on the outside of the house, the heat wants to flow through that assembly to get to the outside. But in order for that to occur, I need to have energy. The energy wants to move from hot to cold. But the transfer of energy actually takes two forms of energy to occur In the case of these buildings, in the case with thsese walls. There’s mechanical energy and that’s the air movement, which aids drying and then there’s thermal energy which also aids drying. And if I am reducing the air flow and the energy flow through that wall system, I am decreasing the capability of that wall system to dry. That’s the new part. Robb: (06:41)Okay. All right. But it can go both ways. I mean, heat flow and energy flow can cause drying. It can also bring moisture into building cavities. It goes both ways, but I think it’s like, you know, 20, 30, whatever, long time ago, buildings were solely heat that even if moisture got brought into the wall cavity, it dried out pretty quickly because there was just so much air flow and heat flow. Bill: (07:07)That’s absolutely correct. Right. So now we’ve, we’ve diminished the capability of the drying, but we didn’t diminish the capability of the wetting. It’s still raining on the outside of the building. We still have our cladding dealing with the bulk water as the water flows down in the siding of the building, probably leaks a little bit into the walls because you know, walls aren’t perfect. And we’ve got the other issue of the air infiltration from the inside of the building carrying the relatively warmer moisture moister air into the wall cavity, finding something cold and condensation on it. So the air infiltration for the inside can cause condensation within the cavity. So now we’ve set up a little problem for ourselves. We’ve, we’ve increased the thermal insulation and the air tightness a little bit, but we haven’t really dealt with the moisture management part. We’ve taken the wetting and the drying and pushed it a little bit out of balance. And when we push it a little bit out of balance, we ended up with dampness inside our walls and we get mold and decay and all kinds of bad stuff. Robb: (08:23)So to keep water out? Bill: (08:25)Keep water out. Water is the enemy. Bulk water management is one thing. Robb: (08:31)Siding, flashing, secondary drainage plains? Bill: (08:36)Well, you know, water resistant barriers need to be excuse me, adequate. They’re never going to be perfect. So we have to understand that they’re not going to be perfect. But they have to be well detailed. They have to be proper materials. The water has to be able to go some place. We see a lot of designs for wall assemblies where they look pretty good if you look at a basic section. But if you look at the details, the water really has no place to go. You know, you’re kind of trapped. There’s no capillary breaks. There’s that kind of an it

Featuring Tim McDonald Tim McDonald is the President and CEO of Onion Flats LLC. Tim is a licensed architect in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In 1997, with his brother Patrick, he co-founded Onion Flats LLC; a Philadelphia based real estate development/design/build firm. Tim has been an adjunct Professor of Architecture at Philadelphia University, Temple University, University of Calgary, and University of Pennsylvania. His service and experience extend into his community by holding current positions in the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association Zoning Committee, the Philadelphia Sustainability Advisory Board, as well as a previous position on the Old City Civic Association Board of Directors. Tim is also Founder/President of FAARM, a non-profit organization dedicated solely to the exhibition of art and architecture in Philadelphia. Tim is a Certified LEED Accredited Professional and Passive House Certified Consultant and Tradesman. Did you know that in the U.S., 48% of energy consumption and 45% of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to buildings (EIA 2012)? As designers, developers, and maintenance professionals who work with buildings, we have a responsibility to reverse these negative effects to preserve our resources and protect the health of future generations. So, where do we begin? To kick-off season 2 of the Buildings and Beyond podcast, we are joined by Tim McDonald, President and Co-Founder of Philadelphia-based development firm, Onion Flats. As an architect and developer, Tim has made it his mission to ensure that each new project is one step closer to net-positive performance. By incorporating new strategies in design and construction, Tim explains the top three things developers, designers, and builders should think about when creating quality, efficient, and affordable housing. Episode Information & Resources About the Passive House Standard Passive House FAQ LEED Integrative Process Worksheet More on Tim and Onion Flats: TEDxMidAtlantic 2010 – Tim McDonald – 11/5/10 The Bramble Project Interview with Tim We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)Welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:14)By focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich. Kelly: (00:19)And I’m Kelly Westby. Kelly: (00:24)We are so excited to bring you season two of Buildings and Beyond. To start out this season, I will be speaking with Timothy McDonald. In 1997 Tim and his brother founded Onion Flats, a Philadelphia based real estate design, development, and build firm. Tim and Onion Flats have been on a bit of a sustainability journey over the past two decades and his experience is invaluable to anyone who considers themselves in the design, construction or sustainability industries. Tim takes a design thinking approach to development. Each new project is building on the lessons learned from the previous project and taking us a step or two closer to net positive impact. I started out by asking Tim what he thinks are the top three things developers, designers and builders should think about when trying to design quality, efficient, affordable housing. Tim does an excellent job of describing his perspective, so let’s just dive right in. Tim: (01:25)Well, I guess the first one is related to who we are as a company. And I think that’s pretty important, because we’re a vertically integrated company. We’re developers, architects and builders, which means ultimately that we control the process from beginning to end. And I think that that’s how quality really happens. I think that being a vertically integrated company allows us to build more cost effectively because there just aren’t as many layers that need liability to slow us down or to cost us more money. And I think we’re more agile and nimble as a company. If we run into problems, we turn them into opportunitiesrather than change orders, which costs more money, we actually make a problem costs less money. So I think that that’s the first thing. The first thing is that to be a vertically integrated company is just really helpful in doing any kind of architecture. I think the second one is that you really just have to be committed to a particular definition of what sustainability is. You just have to want it and you have to be committed to it. And for us over the past 10 years, sustainability is no longer a kind of generalized sense. It’s really focused primarily on climate change, because it is the existential threat that we all face. And it is the focus of all of our work. And because of that, we’ve been looking for the right tool to allow us to design and build buildings that are cost effective, that don’t contribute carbon to the environment. And for us, that’s passive house. So to me it’s about, when you find the right tool, you work with that, which doesn’t mean that our sense of sustainability doesn’t also include issues around water and transportation and indoor air quality and so forth. But, I would say if you want to know what we are about, that is the focus, until we’re gone that’s the focus of our work. And I guess the third one might be that we just really believe that there are two ways to get the word out about the significance of this issue of climate change and how buildings contribute to it. And that is either: you demonstrate it through your own work and then you go share that as much as you possibly can, or you legislate it. You get it changed, you get building codes changed. You work with affordable housing agencies, which is this initiative that we started about four or five years ago, to get not so much legislation, but the way that affordable housing gets funded, we worked really hard on that. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are two parts of what we do. One is that we’re advocates of this kind of work and we go around the country to try and talk about it as much as possible, and then we demonstrate it with our own work. Kelly: (05:06)Right. And thanks by the way for sharing this to all of our listeners. Advocating and getting the word out that way. So how did you come to the passive house standards specifically? Were there other standards that you looked at or tried and what were your thoughts around that? Tim: (05:26)So the first project where we took on any notion of sustainability was in 2001 or 2 I believe. And we weren’t really educated in sustainability as a kind of guiding practice. And then we built this project called Rag Flats, which, you know, for us, sustainability was doing our first PV system. It was about collecting rainwater. It was about a kind of urban planning approach to a community, which talked about social sustainability. After that we discovered LEED. And in about 2004, we built the first LEED gold project in the city. After that we built the first LEED platinum projects some of the first in the country. And I think that was really important for us because what we loved at the time about LEED was the structure of accountability, and it allowed us to address the multifaceted dimensions of sustainability that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to holistically put together on your own. So it made us better architects. It made us better builders and made us more aware of what was important. And then we began to realize after we did that for a while, that pretty much all of what LEED was about was just naturally built into our work. So we would never not buy a dual flush toilet again, you know, you’d never not use sealants or paints that had VOCs in them because they were readily available. So there wasn’t a lot of work that we discovered except around the area of energy. And this is when we came to discover passive house about 10 years ago. It was also the time when we started to become more aware of climate change and architecture’s contribution to that. So, it’s really been an organic process of learning about sustainability and what’s important and passive house is just the, I mean, we’re at a crisis and so, you know, I’m much more interested in radically reducing energy consumption. I will always also try to manage storm water, but if I’m not required and there’s a line, and I have to choose where my money goes, it’s always gonna go towards energy conservation because of the impacts on the environment. Kelly: (08:41)Right. And that kind of circles back to, I think it was your second point about having a focus that this is what you’re going after. So anytime you have to weigh those two options, you know where you’re going. That’s great. And I know you talk a lot or at least I’ve given some presentations about the cost of building these really efficient buildings and maybe it doesn’t have to be more expensive to build a more efficient building. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that? Tim: (09:12)Yeah, I mean, the way I like to put it is, forget about passive house for a second. If you went out and just got bids on a code built multifamily building, you’d have a wide range of prices, right? So it’s very difficult to say it doesn’t cost more, or it does cost more. What I like to say is that it can cost more and it doesn’t have to cost more. And the first way to make sure that you hone in and control the costs of a project, have to do with how you’re structured as a company. And if it’s built

Featuring David Unger David Unger is the founding CEO of Sentient Buildings LLC, a New York clean-tech startup that enables property owners and managers to conserve energy and reduce operating costs for multi-family, commercial and institutional buildings through a comprehensive Building Management System (BMS), while Maximizing the Value of Comfort™. With more than 20 years of experience growing technology-focused companies, David has been a pioneer in the use of internet and web-based technologies. The buildings where we live, work, and play are getting smarter. Even our refrigerators can tell us if we need to buy more cheese while we are at the grocery store. But that’s not what this episode is about. Mostly not. Today we are talking to David Unger, Founder of Sentient Buildings and an expert in the strategic implementation of IoT technologies that help to create smarter buildings. In an era of data overload, David discusses how his work aims to consolidate and simplify access to information that can improve the efficiency, comfort, and operations of buildings. He also explains why leveraging open communication protocols is the most critical piece to future-proofing your smart building.  Episode Information & Resources Want to learn more about Smart Buildings? Visit www.smartbuildings.nyc To learn more about Sentient Buildings, LLC, visit www.sentientbuildings.com Case Studies Case Study 1 – 600 Apartments Outfitted with IoT Baseboard Heating and Control Solution (Hudson Valley Property Group) Case Study 2 – Building Automation System (BAS) and Wireless Radiator Valve Control System Installed in NYC’s Ninth Largest Office Building Case Study 3 – Central Energy Monitoring and Control Platform Implemented for Newmark Grubb Knight Frank END OF SEASON 1! This episode marks the end of our first season of the Buildings and Beyond podcast. We are already gearing up for season 2, so send us your feedback, questions, and ideas for future episodes to podcast@swinter.com! We plan to compile your questions and present them on a Q&A episode in between seasons. So stay tuned! About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:08)the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich Kelly: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby, Robb: (00:21)building owner or manager in New York City? Smart buildings NYC is your Go-to guide to learn how to comply with the new codes mandated on all large buildings in New York City. Find out how the technology discussed on this episode can help your building get ranked higher by visiting www.smartbuildings.NYC. Kelly: (00:40)Well, it is bittersweet to be introducing the final episode of this first season of buildings and beyond. I want to thank you all for going on this journey of podcast development with us, or if this is your first episode, definitely go back and listen to all of the others, because we really had some great conversations this season. Today we are venturing a little into the beyond by having a guest outside of the immediate SWA team. David Unger is the founding CEO of Sentient Buildings, SWA and Sentient have a strategic partnership that I think speaks to the way that we see the term smart buildings and what it really means to us. We don’t think that adding more and more sensors to generate more and more data points in buildings is smart. Smart buildings live at the intersection of behavioral science, building science, and computer science. To put it a little more simply, smart buildings bring together building systems, technology and people, and what better person to bring the technology piece to SWA and to those listening to buildings and beyond other than David Unger. Kelly: (01:42)Dave founded an innovative web services company in the 90s and eventually moved to become chief technology officer of US energy group. This transfer focused his technology expertise on improving the built environment, which he has fully solidified at Sentient buildings. I’ll let Dave introduce you to who’s Sentient is and what they do. So let’s just dive right into the episode. So welcome Dave to the podcast. How’s it going? Dave: (02:08)Good! Kelly: (02:09)good. Thanks for coming out to our Norwalk office. So I sort of introduced the topic a little bit in the intro, but I wanted to get started with your take on what the term smart buildings means to you. Dave: (02:26)So smart building to me means a building that has a sense of awareness of its environment. a building that not only can sense what’s going on but can actually react to the environment in specific ways, whether that’s human controlled, or that’s fully automated at some level. But a smart building is a building that can actually react to its environment and control things and monitor and manage things in a way that aids in energy efficiency, aids in comfort and also monitors and protects against major issues that could cause problems in a building. So, a smart building is really a sense of awareness that the building has of itself It’s not an alive building in a lot of ways, but it’s, it’s, it’s a building that can react to its environment intelligently and do something Kelly: (03:24)great. I mean, we all are loving the plant walls that are cleaning our air. So the idea of a fully live building that’s aware of itself sounds pretty good. SWAs position, I would say in the thought of what a smart building means is that it’s tying together the technology aspect that I think you talked about just now. And then also with the building systems and with the people and tying these three things together, how do you think that technology relates to building systems and people? Dave: (04:02)Yeah, well, I mean technology is really the glue that basically can take a system and integrate that system with a communication network. And then expose that network through some type of interface to a person. Right? So the three pieces of a system in a smart building include those three things. Really you need a system that you’re monitoring, controlling or doing something with that you can imbue at some level of intelligence. And then you have the technology which includes the network. So whether that’s a wireless communication network or wired network or some way of getting data from point a to point B. And then back again from point B to point A, the network itself then can collect that data and expose that data in real time or near real time to an end user who can do something about it or, you know, monitor the building or collect data on the building or analyze the data or do something to affect the performance and operations of the building either in real time or over time. Kelly: (05:03)Great. And then you talked a little bit in the beginning about smart buildings and comfort and energy. What else can we do kind of with this technology other than monitoring energy? Dave: (05:18)In the case of smart buildings, it goes well beyond just monitoring the energy systems in a building. I mean, were talking about other systems, security systems, the elevators, the lighting, which does relate to energy, but there are many other systems that are in a building that are effectively smart and can be networked. And a real smart building brings all of these systems together into a single view, an integrated view of building operations. So you can see everything going on in the building, and the building can react. So for example, if you have a card key access system where you can tell who’s coming in and out of a building, then that affects your energy systems, right? Cause then you know, okay, I need to bring this building up to temperature because I have occupants, or my occupancy has gone down so I can reduce that. So there’s, there are a lot of things that you could do with a fully integrated system that includes much more than energy based systems. And that’s really what you have to drive when looking into this in a holistic way. Because the long-term view of this is, is all of the systems need to be integrated, not just the energy systems. Kelly: (06:23)Right. And that’s great. And I think the context now of ASHRAE 90.1 is requiring more monitoring and control of systems. And we also work with a lot of projects that do enterprise green communities and they require water monitoring. And so pulling all these things together in one unified space Sounds like really the best option. Dave: (06:45)Right? Yeah. So when people talk about energy, you usually think about just electricity or gas or even in New York City districts, steam. but in a lot of cases, you really need to look at water- in the usage of water. It’s a commodity. It’s a resource that we typically need to control and monitor and make sure we don’t use too much of. And it can cost just as much. Water sometimes can be just as big of an expense for building owner than the energy costs. Kelly: (07:17)So all of this sounds good. I’m on board. We’re going to have all of the buildings. You can outfit my home with all the smart sensors and it’ll control myself. and the refrigerator Will Walk to the store and buy my milk for me. That sounds great. Right. But I know we have probably some people that are not as on board as you and I. So Srikanth was on the podcast a few episodes ago and he mentioned, I don’t know that he said this word for word, but, that monit

Featuring Srikanth Puttagunta Through his involvement with the Department of Energy’s Building America Research Program, Sri has an extensive background in barriers and challenges that residential builders and multifamily developers face to meet the requirements of codes and higher efficiency programs. He performs design reviews and building forensic investigations, identifies energy saving opportunities, quantifies the associated energy and cost savings, provides technical consulting, and supports measurement and verification of long-term energy savings. In addition, Sri has been involved in several of SWA’s product development efforts and also collaborates with industry partners on enhancements to their mechanical system product offerings. Buying a home can be overwhelming. There are many factors that need to be considered and decisions that need to be made. For many Americans, aesthetics often outweigh certain characteristics critical to a home’s success, such as health, comfort, and efficiency. To help us evaluate these critical characteristics, we’ve asked SWA’s COO and Mechanical Engineer, Srikanth Puttagunta, to walk us through his recent home-buying experience. Sri discusses ways to maximize a home’s value by taking advantage of incentives, enhancing existing infrastructure, and making the key decisions that may benefit your family’s health and comfort for years come. Join us as we dive into the essentials of single-family home ownership.  Episode Information & Resources Learn more about Sri’s home improvement projects in our Party Walls Blog! Programs and Studies Discussed DOE Building America Program DOE Building America Solution Center Correction to podcast, the range-hood study was from LBNL (not NREL) Federal Incentives Solar: Residential Renewable Energy Tax Credit (available through 2021) Energy Efficiency: Residential Energy Efficiency Tax Credit (expired in 2017) CT Incentives Home Energy Solutions (Assessment, Air Sealing, Duct Sealing, etc.) Ductless Split Heat Pump ENERGY STAR Retail Products  ENERGY STAR Central AC/Heat Pumps ENERGY STAR Heat Pump Water Heaters  ENERGY STAR Lighting Instant Discounts Geothermal Heat Pump  High Efficiency Furnace, Natural Gas Boiler, & Boiler Circulator High Efficiency Water Heater – Natural Gas  We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich Kelly: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby Robb: (00:21)and before we get into this week’s episode, we wanted to let you know about a couple of upcoming events. Dylan Martello, who is a passive house consultant here at SWA, and is really instrumental in putting this podcast together, helping to produce the podcast. He’s going to be speaking at both of these conferences and he’ll give you a little bit of Info about them. Dylan: (00:40)Thanks Robb. The first is building energy NYC conference taking place on October 3rd and fourth in New York City. The conference which is presented by Northeast Sustainable Energy Association or NESEA, has become a staple for professionals and practitioners in the field of high performance building energy efficiency and renewable energy. We’ve been to the building energy conferences for many years now and my colleagues and I are looking forward to returning for another great event. Visit NESEA.org for more info. Robb: (01:09)Yeah, I’ve been involved with NESEA for 20 years or so and they’re really good people and I’ve learned tons at NESEA conferences over the years. Dylan: (01:17)Next is the North American Passive House Network Conference and expo taking place at the David l Lauren’s convention center in Pittsburgh, Pa. Join us October 17th through the 21st where we’ll be speaking on a variety of topics related to passive house visit naphnconference.com for more info. Robb: (01:35)Thanks Dylan. Kelly: (01:37)Are you interested in becoming a certified passive house designer or consultant? Checkout North American passive house network’s five day training in various locations across the nation and every other month in New York City. See Their website for an updated schedule. Kelly: (01:54)Welcome everyone. I’m very excited about today. It’s a little bit of an indulgence for me because I am actually working on some planning, some renovations for my own house. And so I have Sri Puttagunta on from Steven winter associates. He’s a mechanical engineer and focuses on residential home consulting. Mostly on the HVHC and mechanical side. He’s also done a lot of residential research initiatives for different programs, building America, and various other programs. And today we’re going to take a little bit of a personal tone and talk about renovations that he’s done on his own house. So let’s just jump right in. Kelly: (02:37)So Sri, thank you for being on the podcast. I wanted you to talk a little bit about a switch that you had made in your life. I let everybody know a little bit about your background in the built environment in the residential sector and you bought a house and turned the tables and now you are the client. So tell me a little bit about what that was like. Sri: (03:04)Yeah. A couple of years ago I was living in a townhouse and had to deal with condos issues and not really be able to touch much in my house, and decided to move out to the burbs. And we ended up purchasing a 1960 split level home. And while it had some nice updates in it from an aesthetic standpoint, it was your typical 1960s home in terms of everything that we love in terms of energy efficiency, and health. So it was an interesting process. One of the main things, was this was probably the first time we actually got into being the client. So everything I’ve done has always been on the consulting side and it’s easy to tell somebody what to do, especially when it’s not your money. But in this case it’s both being the client and the consultant. And of course I can see the bottom dollar. So it was really quite interesting in that aspect. And like every other project you have to sort of make your selections of what you want to do, what you might do later on and what you’re just going to have to skip for this project. Kelly: (04:14)Yeah. And I’d love to get into all of that, but first, do you want to give me a little basic overview of some of the things that you did in your renovations? Sri: (04:26)Sure. The house itself is right around 1600 square feet, it is as I’ve mentioned, a split level. And the main things we focused on originally was, the envelope. So first things where: it had essentially R4 degraded insulation in it. And we are looking at different ways to insulate that both in the walls and then also looking at the roof through the process of doing this. And one of the interesting thing is, we actually found that there was a very large pest infestation in the house. So mice, dead mice literally everywhere. Roof ceiling, basement, it was pretty bad. So We figured this is a perfect opportunity. We’ll do air sealing, we’ll do the installation, and we’ll be able to take care of the pest problem as well. So that was the main thing that we did. Sri: (05:21)We did dense packed cellulose into the exterior walls and then a close spell spray foam in the ceiling. So just because it was in most cases a pitched roof, vaulted ceiling, we wanted to get a high enough R value in the ceiling. And so we did add the roof deck itself. Some of the other things- the home was originally an oil boiler. And when we first were looking for house, I was absolutely against an oil house. I’d said no way. And when we put in the offer for the house, I was standing the street and there’s a gas line in the street and I called the utility company like, I don’t have gas, it’s on the street. And they said, no, you don’t have gas in your street. I was like, I’m literally standing on the valve. Sri: (06:10)And I took some while, but I finally got them to come out and they’re like, oh yeah, you have gas. And so we were able to get gas connected to the house. So we did some improvements in terms of the old existing boiler updating it to a tankless boiler. We kept the radiant baseboards. I didn’t feel like doing any traditional drywall work, so I said, hey, if we want to use it, we can have it. There were some through wall AC units in the house. But I was looking for something a little better than that. And again, part of trying to air seal through all units really don’t cut it. So we actually included a multipart air source heat pump in that house as well. Because it’s split level, we really didn’t have an opportunity to put duct work, so using the individual heads a lot is to get zoning as we wanted to meet our cooling needs. Kelly: (07:04)That’s awesome. And I think you told me a story that I thought was a really interesting anecdote about how you had called the people that used to live at your house and they had some issues with their children, they had asthma symptoms while they were in the house and when they left, they didn’t really have those symptoms anymore. Sri: (07:23)Yeah, when we started doing inspections and everything and we found all sort of issues with mice, there was feces everywhere. And so anywhere we were going, we were vacuuming everything

Featuring Karla Butterfield Karla Butterfield is a Sustainability Director at SWA, working with residential buildings. She has 25 years of experience, with expertise in sustainable consulting services, program certification support, and implementation of high performance building technologies. Read more Paula Zimin Paula Zimin is the Director of Sustainable Building Services at Steven Winter Associates (SWA). She specializes in professional architecture and design, with particular expertise in high performance design within the commercial and residential sectors. Mainstream demand for highly efficient, resilient, and cost-effective buildings is greater than ever before. More people are looking to integrate zero energy design and construction strategies without having to sacrifice modern conveniences and amenities. So, how do we implement solutions that enable us to use less energy… without feeling like we’re using less energy? To answer this question, we sit down with SWA sustainability experts, Paula Zimin and Karla Butterfield, to discuss what it means to achieve zero energy status and learn how we can accomplish this among various building typologies and sectors. Join us for this exciting and in-depth look at zero energy buildings!  Episode Information & Resources Definitions US DOE: A Common Definition for Zero Energy Buildings Torcellini: Defining Net-Zero Energy Buildings Programs & Certifications RESNET Standard / HERS Index DOE: Zero-Energy Ready Home ILFI: Living Building Challenge New Buildings Institute (NBI) NYC Stretch Code (draft) Reports ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guide for Zero Energy K-12 Schools SWA Resources & Net-Zero Projects Blog – Energy Code of the Future Case Study – TREE at EcoVillage Case Study – Taft House Case Study – Torcellini Residence Clarification: When Paula discusses the total source energy consumption of a building, she uses the number 38. This refers to 38 KBTUs (or 30,000 BTUs) per square foot, per year. This pertains to source energy, not site energy, and is also known as “primary energy” in Passive House. Although they are considered the same in Passive House, source energy and primary energy have subtle differences according to the EPA. Correction: Karla mentioned a HERS 45 was a requirement for DOE’s ZERH program. This is not strictly true; the HERS target varies somewhat with climate and home size. A very large home in the Northeast might need to get a HERS index of 40 to comply, whereas a small home might need a HERS index of 52. We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich Kelly: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby Robb: (00:21)and before we get into this week’s episode, we wanted to let you know about a couple of upcoming events and Dylan Martello, who was a passive house consultant here at SWA and is really instrumental in putting this podcast together, helping to produce the podcast. He’s going to be speaking at both of these conferences and he’ll give you a little bit of Info about. Dylan: (00:40)Thanks Robb. The first is building energy NYC conference taking place on October 3rd and fourth in New York City. The conference, which is presented by Northeast Sustainable Energy Association or NESEA, n e s e a, has become a staple for professionals and practitioners in the field of high performance building, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. We’ve been to the building energy conferences for many years now and my colleagues and I are looking forward to returning for another great event. Visit NESEA.org For more info. Robb: (01:09)Yeah. I’ve been involved with NESEA for 20 years or so, and really good people and I’ve learned tons at NESEA conferences over the years. Dylan: (01:17)Next is the North American Passive House Network Conference and expo taking place at the David l Lauren’s convention center in Pittsburgh, Pa. Join US October 17th through the 21st where we’ll be speaking on a variety of topics related to passive house visit naphnconference.com for more info. Robb: (01:35)Thanks Dylan. This week we’re talking about zero energy buildings, ZEB’s which is an acronym, probably a lot of people hear or see more. I certainly do. It’s a big topic. We don’t get to the bottom of it, but we do our best. I’m talking with Paula Zimin who is director of sustainable building services here at Stephen Winter associates, she is an RA, but also does really a lot of energy modeling and she focuses on larger buildings, larger multifamily buildings, commercial buildings, and institutional buildings. And I’m also talking with Karla Butterfield, who is a sustainability director here at SWA and she’s all about residential from single family residential homes all the way up to large, tall multifamily buildings and everything in between. And she does a lot of work with certification programs, zero energy ready home, which we talk about here, LEED national green building standard among several others. So this episode really we talk about all types of buildings, small to large, different programs, different systems, different paradigms. And even, I think we started the episode with the discussion of different meanings of zero energy buildings. What does this really mean? So let’s get to the end. Robb: (02:57)Welcome Karla and Paula Thanks for being here. So zero energy buildings is a big topic. It’s, I think even getting into kind of the mass media. I see it in newspapers and stuff, not only in the magazines and journals and conferences I’ve been going to for a decade or whatever. So it’s a growing topic, growing in popularity. And you guys have certainly dabbled in it and it’s a growing trend. Karla: (03:29)I would say it was a Buzzword tenish years ago, where most people in the industry knew what zero energy buildings or zero energy construction meant, and then went through kind of a controversial period of what does that really mean and what do we really call it. But you’re right, it is in the mainstream now. And most people who are at all familiar with the built environment know what zero energy means. Robb: (03:56)So what does zero energy mean, Paula and zero energy building? Paula: (04:00)So I think in my world, because I work more in the commercial sector and larger buildings, zero energy buildings, gets limited to a building scale, which can be very difficult to do. So in my world, I think that we’re approaching zero energy on a broader scale at the community scale. So it’s certainly a low energy building a focus. There might not be the ability to get to zero energy, but there is certainly the drive to how can we as a community or a larger set of buildings get to zero. Robb: (04:35)So I mean it seems that at the core level we’re talking about very efficient buildings, very low energy needs, be it electricity or fossil fuel or wood or whatever low energy needs and you can meet all of those energy needs with renewable energy, wind or solar or whatever. That’s kind of the general idea? Karla: (04:57)That’s the general idea. A lot of people will argue there’s no such thing as a zero energy building because of the fact that you are using a fuel and so it’s really a net zero or net neutral fuel building. Robb: (05:14)So that was, yeah, so I’ve had people like jump down my throat when I say it’s a zero energy building and they say, no, no, no, no NET zero energy building. And I actually seriously don’t, I don’t understand that distinction Karla: (05:24)Right. And then saying net zero energy also is somewhat offensive to some people. So they want to say, you know, what we are is we’re, we’re neutral with fuel. So one fuel offsets the other. Robb: (05:35)So if you use some natural gas, you generate even more electricity from PV or something to offset that natural gas. Karla: (05:44)Right. And that’s easier to do in low rise buildings. Especially single family buildings are really small. Multifamily buildings, like Paula indicated. Harder to do in more commercial or high-rise buildings because you don’t have enough room for that PV to offset if it’s on your roof. There’s a lot of other solutions for that too. I’m sure you’re going to ask that question in a bit. Paula: (06:04)A lot of controversy is that even though you’re a net zero building, you’re still using the grid. And how does the grid get its energy? Usually through fossil fuels. So if you’re really talking about a carbon neutral building, that’s very hard to do from the building scale unless if your grid is carbon neutral. So unless if you’re grid is hydro or some other, you know, non fossil fuel source. So you could also be off the grid potentially to be carbon neutral. So it’s a difference between a net carbon neutral building versus a net zero energy building and your relationship with the grid. Robb: (06:44)Okay. Okay. So as a catch-all term “zero energy buildings, “you’re going to get disagreement about that? Karla: (06:51)It all comes down to how you want to define it. You have to define what zero energy means to you, whether it’s zero carbon, net zero, or some other sort of definition. Robb: (07:06)Which is not, they’re not necessarily zero energy costs. Karla: (07:08)I think to keep pushing this into the mai

Featuring Robb Aldrich If there is anyone that knows heat pumps, it’s Robb Aldrich. Robb has over 20 years of experience focusing on energy systems in buildings including evaluating new technologies, modeling building performance, optimizing designs, and researching new products and systems. Robb works with builders and design professionals across the country to make residential buildings healthier, more efficient, less costly to build and operate, and more comfortable. Read more Air-source heat pumps (ASHPs) are a booming business. In the Northeast, manufacturers report that sales of residential systems have increased by 25-35% per year over the past 5-10 years. We’ve seen more and more systems being installed in all types of buildings. On this episode of Buildings and Beyond, Kelly sits down with her co-host and Principal Mechanical Engineer, Robb Aldrich, to uncover the potential benefits associated with ASHPs and how to get the most from these systems. Episode Information & Resources To learn more about ASHPs, check out Robb’s post on PartyWalls Blog SWA’s DOE-funded study of ductless heat pumps Cadmus study of ductless heat pumps for MA/RI utilities Cadmus study of ductless heat pumps in VT NEEP’s resources on sizing, selecting, and installing heat pumps NEEP’s cold-climate heat pump specification Northeast/Mid-Atlantic Air-Source Heat Pump Strategies Report We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:08)the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich Kelly: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby. Around here when we think of air source heat pumps, We think of Robb Aldrich. He is a principal engineer and he’s been working at Steven winter associates since 2000, before that, he designed, installed and commissioned solar electric and solar thermal systems. But now he’s just mostly focused on researching new trends and technologies to make buildings more efficient. And we’ll get to hear a little bit today about his research on air source heat pumps. Welcome to buildings and beyond, Robb, it’s very good to have you here. Robb: (00:54)Thank you very much. It’s been a while. Kelly: (00:58)we are obviously going to talk about air source heat pumps and I guess my first question is why are we talking about air source heat pumps? Robb: (01:07)Boy, so 20 years ago, like when I was in Grad school or just started Grad school, the electric heating was just anathema. It was the worst possible thing in the world. Because generating electricity only happened at like 30- 35% efficiency and you know, much, much more resource efficient to burn fuels in buildings to get the heat from them. Kelly: (01:36)and that’s I think what our clients are saying to us now when we talk about air source heat pumps. Robb: (01:40)Yeah. Yeah. It could very well be, but it was 10-15 years ago when I started looking at some of the specs of these, what was then, a new generation of air source heat pumps and saw some pretty staggering efficiencies at relatively cold temperatures and its kind of blew my mind. So I mean a pump, I guess people probably know what a heat pump is, but a heat pump uses a vapor compression cycle to move heat from one place to another from outdoors to indoors in the winter and then backwards in the summer, like your fridge moves heat from inside the fridge into your kitchen, this moves heat from outdoors to indoors to heat your home. And historically, heat pumps- air source heat pumps, which is what we’re talking about today, rather than ground source heat pumps or water source heat pumps, air source heat pumps have historically been used further south where it’s warmer. Because they don’t- they didn’t- used to perform very well at cold temperatures. So in Florida, lots of air source heat pumps, you know, when the temperature got down to 30ish degrees or whatever, they switched over to electric resistance. And that didn’t happen all that often. So it wasn’t really a big energy hit. But up here it would be a big energy hit. Kelly: (03:01)we operate very often below that temperature Robb: (03:04)below 30 degrees. Yeah. So this was something that fascinated me. I was kind of incredulous of the performance, you know, the rate of performance of these systems. So I was keeping an eye on it for, well, for the past 10 or 15 years and watching how the products evolved and really was interested to see if we could actually measure performance to see if they lived up to their hype, their ratings. Kelly: (03:31)All right. Interesting. And maybe this is a step backwards, but that’s the lay the groundwork a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about the terminology that we use around water source heat or air source heat pumps and what the industry is calling things, and what you like to call things? Robb: (03:47)Yeah, there’s unfortunately there’s lots of different terminology that people use and I don’t pretend to be the authority on it, but I try to be at least consistent myself and do what I hear most other people do when they talk about it. So a mini split is a term that you may hear a lot. And to me mini split means mini, small capacity, and split. So you have an outdoor unit and an indoor unit. So like a window AC is not split. It’s packaged, everything’s in one package, you stick it through the wall and it cools inside. So split means you mean have an outdoor unit and an indoor unit and the outdoor unit, a lot of people still call the condensing unit. Because when you have an air conditioner that’s what it is. But when you have a heat pump, the condensers actually inside in the winter and the evaporators outside. So a lot of manufacturers call it the outdoor unit. So I try to also call it the outdoor unit. It’s more correct. Kelly: (04:46)but it can actually be inside sometimes Robb: (04:49)the outdoor unit? Kelly: (04:50)Yeah and ducted Robb: (04:50)no, no, no. The outdoor unit is going to be outside. Kelly: (04:55)Ah in VRF sometimes we see them ducted to the outside in some commercial projects Robb: (04:59)Ah, okay. Okay. Gotcha. So you suck the air right in and out. Huge louvers or fans. Right. Okay. Yep. Gotcha. So it’s almost outside. Very close. On the mini split front, sometimes I think quite a few people use the term mini split only to mean ductless systems. So most people are familiar with those. You’ll see the cassettes usually high up on the wall. They’re very common everywhere else in the world except the US but more and more common in the US. There’s no ducts it just sucks room air from the top and blows out the conditioned air from the bottom. So some people when they say mini splits, they mean ductless, but you can also have ducted mini splits, or what I call ducted mini splits, which have short lengths of duct to deliver air to a couple of rooms. Kelly: (05:54)Great. And then now that we’ve gotten all that under under our belts Robb: (06:01)And VRFS you mentioned VRFs, should we clarify? Kelly: (06:01)I did. Yes please. Robb: (06:04)So this is even more annoying because the terminology doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality. So VRF stands for variable refrigerant flow, which usually is used to refer to larger systems than the residential heat pumps that we’re going to be talking about today. So you’ll, you’ll see six, eight, 10 ton systems. You’ll see several, you know, getting together on the roof of a big building with, you know, dozens of fan coils spread all throughout the building. And VRF is larger systems that can handle much longer pipelines. Every fan coil indoors has an expansion valve. It’s a lot more versatile and bigger capacity and more versatile. the small heat pumps that I’ve been looking at for single family, really all kinds of buildings, but small capacity, like five tons or less, often, much less, often like in the one ton range, they have variable speed compressors and inverter driven compressors and therefore they have variable refrigerant flow, but they’re not called variable refrigerant flow. They’re called inverter driven heat pumps or a whole bunch of other terms, but variable speed heat pumps. So VRFs are usually not called heat pumps even though they pump heat and inverter driven heat pumps are not called VRF, even though they have variable refrigerant flow. Kelly: (07:32)Great. And now that that’s super clear, clear as mud I think someone around here used to say, you brought up inverter driven technology. Can you talk a little bit about inverter versus single speed two stage? kind of how that technology has evolved? Robb: (07:49)Yeah, I guess the history of it, I can’t speak to too much. I think it was in Japan, I think it might’ve been like 30 years ago or something. So the inverter refers to part of the electronics. Here’s my simplistic understanding, but power to these units gets converted to a direct current and then inverted back to alternating current at the frequency you want the compressor to operate. So you’ve got the compressor at varying frequencies. You can deliver different amounts of refrigerant flow and different capacities depending on what the control system wants, depending on the load, depending on, you know, whatever the control algorithms are calling for. So that’s where the term inverter comes from. And there are some e

Featuring Peter Stratton Peter Stratton is a Senior VP and the Managing Director of Accessibility Services at SWA. Under his leadership, the firm’s Accessibility Consulting Team provides services for a variety of private and public clients nationwide, including the owner of the largest privately owned residential real estate portfolio in New York City, two of the top-ten largest housing authorities in the U.S., and the largest shelter system in the U.S. He is the author of a variety of industry publications, including A Basic Guide to Fair Housing Accessibility – Everything Architects and Builders Need to Know About the Fair Housing Act Accessibility Guidelines, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. There are approximately 57 million Americans living with disabilities in the United States; worldwide, people with disabilities make up 15% of our population. Given this information, we must do our part to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to opportunities afforded to everyone – starting with equal access to buildings. This week’s guest is a long-time accessibility expert who serves as the Managing Director of SWA’s Accessibility Services, Peter Stratton. Peter begins the episode with an overview of the existing accessibility requirements in the U.S. and highlights additional measures that should be taken to ensure inclusiveness for all. Join us to learn how we can foster a more accessible built environment through careful design and planning.  Episode Information & Resources A Basic Guide to Fair Housing Accessibility: Everything Architects and Builders Need to Know About the Fair Housing Act Accessibility Guidelines Designing for Passive House and Accessibility Requirements Cost of Accessible Housing Accessible Housing by Design: Universal Design Principles in Practice Aging in Place Guide for Building Owners Accessibility Posts on PartyWalls Blog Regulations Fair Housing Accessibility Guidelines  Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) International Building Code (IBC) Chapter 11 We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)Welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health. Robb: (00:16)I’m Robb Aldrich Kelly: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby. Robb: (00:20)This week I’m talking with Peter Stratton, who is the managing director of accessibility services here at Steven winter associates. And he’s been at this for quite a while. He’s been working on accessibility related topics since back in the eighties or nineties when the first accessibility legislation came out and he’s been helping people comply with the legislation. We talk a little bit about the history of accessibility requirements, how it differs from codes. They’re not always the same thing, which can be frustrating. And basically what he does, how he helps building owners, designers, developers comply with the proper accessibility requirements. New Speaker: (01:04)Pete thanks for being here. Peter: (01:06)Thanks for having me Robb. Robb: (01:08)So one of my big focuses of this podcast, one of my big interests is to talk more with people in this company. I mean, the company’s not huge, 125 people or so, but we do a lot of different things. And accessibility is one of the things that I’m really not very familiar with. So when we decided to do this podcast, I said, all right, I want to interview Peter Stratton first. And I told you and you said fantastic, and then you left the country for two weeks. So what’s up with that? Peter: (01:38)I’m back now though, I was investigating accessibility in Machu Picchu Robb: (01:43)I look forward to the report. I guess first we’re talking about accessibility and people know what it is in a vague sense, but do you have a good working definition or an official definition? Peter: (01:57)working definition? So when we talk about accessibility in the context of what we do here at Steven winter associates, accessibility really means, that a building, a space, a facility is in compliance with a requirement or a criteria. So when we say is the building accessible? we really mean, does it comply with the requirements that are applicable to the building? Robb: (02:22)Okay. And the term universal design I hear a lot is that kind of a above and beyond term? Peter: (02:31)many terms. Accessibility is what- when we talk about accessibility, again, we mean in compliance with the requirement. When we talk about universal design or inclusive design, we talk about sort of going beyond compliance and accommodating the needs of a variety of potential building users versus accessibility, which focuses mostly on accommodating the needs of people with disabilities. So that’s the distinction. Robb: (03:02)And accessibility- The legal requirements for accessibility are a big enough stretch for some people that going above and beyond is, we don’t get into that too much Peter: (03:12)We do get into it often enough, but universal design for the most part is not a requirement of federal, state or local law or building codes. There are universal design requirements that are out there, but not to the extent that accessibility requirements exist. Robb: (03:31)Okay. So when did it start, when did you start working and when did accessibility requirements come on the books? Peter: (03:38)Yeah, well, we been working on accessibility for many years. I personally celebrate my 25th anniversary here at Steven Winter associates this month. But we haven’t been working on it that long, almost that long. Many years ago we were a contractor to HUD’s office of policy development and research and OPDNR at that time had RFPs out on the street for contractors who could get involved in some early research on the fair housing amendments act. Robb: (04:20)And that was new? Peter: (04:21)That was new at the time. Certainly. The law fair housing amendments act of 1988 when we talk about the Fair Housing Act, subsequent to the passing of the Fair Housing Amendments Act, you know, the industry was kind of confused about having to comply with the legal use of a federal regulation and also with the requirements of a building code or criteria. Robb: (04:50)And there wasn’t overlap? So this was, this was the legislation, not building code. Peter: (04:53)This is federal legislation in addition to building code that that was, that applied at the time. and then architect for example, understands building code and criteria, technical standards. And at that time, little bit confused about the legally use of a federal regulation, which they at that time learned that they need to comply with. And so there was some early research on what it all sort of really meant for the industry. And we were involved in that early research and then it sort of snowballed from there. And here we are all these years later with a significant number of people on the team doing a lot of great stuff. Yeah. Robb: (05:40)Very cool. And is it mostly with developers we’re working with? I mean, what’s the stretch? Peter: (05:49)I mean, so our clients run the gamut. We work with a whole bunch of stakeholders, right? So architects, developers, contractors, public agencies, and lots of attorneys because it is very litigious as you can imagine. And we’ve got developers and other entities that are sued often for noncompliance with requirements. And we do a lot of that litigation consulting. So working with a lot of attorneys these days. But for the most part I’d say we work primarily with developers and architects- that sort of bread and butter. New construction. The requirements depending also cover existing construction alterations, renovations. But I think our bread and butter for the most part is new construction, multifamily housing. Robb: (06:40)And so is that separation between legislation and codes still present? Has it gotten better or has legislation outpaced codes and codes are trying to catch up? Peter: (06:56)You know it’s a mixed bag. So in the very beginning, we had the legal use of federal regulations to worry about when we design and construct facilities, and I’m talking about housing, but we have all the federal requirements like the ADA that apply to facilities that are non housing facilities, like public accommodations. Fair housing is obviously housing and the ADA is public accommodation and commercial facilities. Title Three of the ADA and title two of the ADA covers activities of states and local governments. So if the local government does have a housing type of a facility, like a shelter, although it is housing, it is also subject to ADA title two because it’s a activity of a state or local government, I should say. So federal regulations have to be complied with in addition to the building code in the very beginning, many years ago it was a tough kind of nut to crack. Peter: (08:02)You know, what’s more stringent, what takes precedence over the other. I really only need to worry about the requirements of the building code when it comes to access because that’s enough to get me in compliance with federal regulation, which is not true. And so that was the sentiment at that time. Robb: (08:22)Were talking about nineties? Peter: (08:24)we’re talking early nineties, mid nineties. Now a lot has changed, more current additions of the building code. And I’m talkin

Featuring Eric Wallace Eric Wallace is a Building Systems Engineer at Steven Winter Associates, providing consulting, design, and inspection services for solar energy as well as a variety of programs, including Energy Star Multifamily High Rise, Enterprise Green Communities, New York Energy Conservation Code, and ASHRAE Standard 90.1. Prior to SWA, Eric spent four years designing commercial-scale solar power systems. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado in Boulder. By the end of 2050, solar energy is projected to be the world’s largest source of electricity. While utility-scale solar will comprise much of this capacity, there will also be significant growth in the commercial and residential sectors – particularly in cities. On episode three of Buildings and Beyond, Kelly interviews SWA’s solar expert, Eric Wallace, to discuss the various factors affecting solar photovoltaic (PV) growth including changes in technology, policy, and financing. Tune in to learn about some of the barriers and opportunities that solar developers face in the height of a solar revolution.  Episode Information & Resources Solar Energy Basics NREL U.S. Solar Photovoltaic System Cost Benchmark: Q1 2017 Solar in the City: Designing Solar for High-Density Areas NYSERDA’s VDER Resources The Duck Curve Community Solar Basics Programs NYSERDA’s NY-Sun Program Massachusetts Energy Storage Mandate New Jersey Energy Storage Policy We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)Welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich. Kelly: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby. So I’m excited to be talking to Eric Wallace, who works at Steven Winter associates providing consulting, design and inspection services for solar energy systems. He actually also gets involved in a variety of programs including energy star enterprise green communities and New York City energy code projects. But before joining SWA, Eric spent several years designing commercial scale solar power systems, large and small commercial scale, as well as some single family and multifamily and institutional projects. Today we’re going to focus on solar photovoltaic systems. We’re going to talk about urban installations and specifically New York City regulations. So I’m just going to jump into the conversation that we have with him. So, welcome, Eric. Thanks for being on the podcast. Eric: (01:13)Thank you very much, Kelly. Eric: (01:14)So I just want to kind of dive right in: Can you lay the groundwork for us? What does the solar market look like right now and what’s your component of it? Eric: (01:27)Sure. So the big story of the solar market over the past decade is really about cost reduction and sustained incentives. So just since 2010, residential and commercial scale systems have dropped about 60 percent in cost, and utility scale systems have dropped almost 80 percent in cost. What remains to be the highest cost barrier for solar are what we would call soft costs. So those are your engineering, your sales acquisition costs, or any permitting costs. So anything other than the material and labor costs. So that has dropped hugely in countries like Germany and Australia, but it remains high for a variety reasons in the United States. But despite that there’s been a huge drops in cost. On top of that, we still have great incentives. The federal investment tax credit is worth 30 percent of the cost of the system right now that’s scheduled to sunset over the next few years. Eric: (02:32)The good news is that it survived the most recent revamp of the tax plan under this administration, which kind of proves the general knowledge that climate change might be controversial, but solar power isn’t. It has bipartisan support across the board and because it’s saving people money, and giving people more choice on power. Other than that, you also have new tariffs in the past year or two both on modules and cells, as well as on steel and aluminum. And the exact impact is yet to be seen. There’s some estimates around 10 to fourteen cents per kilowatt for installation increase in cost, but they are reviewing exemptions to the rules and there’s bound to be legal challenges to these tariffs. So it’s still not really clear what the overall impact is going to be. Kelly: (03:23)Okay, great. And you mentioned incentives and a lot of them are tax related. Have you run into any issues with clients that you’ve worked with that have problems taking advantage of the tax incentives? Eric: (03:38)Yeah, the biggest issue is usually if we’re working with a nonprofit developer, for example, with a low income housing development. Sometimes they can find ways to get around that if they can get an equity investor, or have a for-profit branch of their organization that can take advantage of the tax incentives. So there are ways around that. There are also certain companies that specialize specifically in providing what we call a power purchase agreement to nonprofit entities that can’t take advantage of those incentives. So if a nonprofit developers trying to build a low income multifamily building but they can’t get those incentives, they can go through a company like grid alternatives that specializes in providing that for them. Kelly: (04:26)Okay, great. And can you talk to me a little bit about the type of solar and specifically solar pv photovoltaic systems? What’s common? I know years ago we heard about building integrated pv, we heard about different chemistry, like cadmium telluride. Discuss a little bit about what’s happened with the specific types and where we’re at now. Speaker 2: (04:52)Sure. So there are a variety of different technologies available, but the most common and cheapest is the crystalline silicon module, kind of your standard regular module. There were waves and pushes for things like concentrated photovoltaics, thin film modules built in Pv, but a lot of those really didn’t survive or if they’re still around they didn’t win the race because regular crystalline pv just dropped in price so rapidly. And when you’re talking about installation methods, this can be the same for multiple technologies, but you essentially have a ballasted option where your pv modules are weighted down by concrete blocks and they have a pretty bare bones, lightweight, tray or small racking system that lays pretty low profile on the roof. Those are going to be your lightest, cheapest, and definitely the most common. You can also do something like a light gauge steel rack on top of your roof if you want to get some extra till, some extra height. You can combine more modules into a tighter space when you do that sort of racking system Kelly: (05:59)Ballpark what would be the percentage increase if you went to that type of system? Eric: (06:04)It’s a little less than 50 percent- up to maybe 50 percent. So a ballasted system using really high end modules is going to be about 14 watts per square foot. That’s primarily because the way your ballasted system works, the rows of modules are all tilted individually, so you need space between the rows. So one row doesn’t shade the other one. When you go to a rack , your modules are all just bundled up right against one another, and they’re on a continuous tilt. So your watts per square feet is going to go up to something more like 18 to 20 watts per square feet. Kelly: (06:39)Gotcha. Okay, great. Talk to me a little bit about how you optimize for a typical building, kind of thinking in an urban environment. How do you optimize that type of building for installing solar? Speaker 2: (06:51)Sure. So there’s a lot of obstacles to putting solar in an urban environment. You have plenty of sources of shade, tall buildings can lead to some pretty difficult engineering issues. You have a high demand for square footage and space on the roof. So the big thing is the bulkheads. Are they shading area where you want to put your modules? How much space is the bulkhead taking up in any mechanical equipment? Do you want the roof to be accessible to your tenants? So the main things for optimization from those points of view are to put your bulkheads in any equipment that has to be on the roof, your RTU or your ERV as far to the north as possible. Obviously, sometimes the geometry of the building kind of limits what you can do with your bulkhead, but as much as that as possible, you should do that. Eric: (07:37)If you can utilize as much as your hvac equipment as possible to get it off the roof and free up space for the PV, that’s great. And if you can’t get around these things or you’re limited on how much you can move stuff, creating a kind of uniform open area for the array and not putting your fans and odd configurations is really good because it’s nice to have a very regular, large area for your, for your array. If you want to maintain the space as an amenity space, another installation option is something more like a more structural steel support for your PV system, like a trellis or a big canopy above the roof. That’s going to add some significant costs and structural requirements for your building, but then you mai

Featuring Maureen Mahle Maureen Mahle is an engineer and specialist in high performance homes. Her background in sustainable design and construction includes piloting several LEED programs for the U.S. Green Building Council and certifying over 13,000 green homes in 10 states. Maureen is an advocate for connecting health to high performance homes, and is both a Fitwel Ambassador and a WELL AP. Under her leadership, SWA is a 6-time recipient of the Indoor airPLUS Leader Award. Read more As we continue to uncover the human health impacts associated with buildings – a space in which we spend 87% of our lives – it is important that we find new and innovative methods of construction to improve overall health and quality of life for occupants. On this episode of Buildings and Beyond, Robb sits down with SWA’s Managing Director of Sustainable Housing Services, Maureen Mahle, to shed light on the primary health issues found in buildings and discuss the various approaches, resources, and certifications designed to improve occupant health and well-being.  Episode Information & Resources COGfx Study 1: Indoor Environmental Quality – Illustrates how increasing fresh air and lowering VOC’s above and beyond code levels had a dramatic impact on cognitive function and productivity. COGfx Study 2: ‘Buildingnomics’ – looks at the totality of effects that occupants of green buildings experience on health and productivity. The study also found differences between certified and non-certified high-performance buildings. Center for Disease Control – website explains the Social Determinants of Health, based on work by the World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and research published in the New York academy of Sciences. The Second Leading Cause of Lung Cancer May Not be What You Expect – PartyWalls blogpost on radon. Green Building Certifications WELL Building Standard Fitwel Certification Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Enterprise Green Communities We Want to Hear From You! Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com About Buildings and Beyond Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com. Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello Episode Transcript Kelly: (00:06)welcome to buildings and beyond Robb: (00:09)the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment Kelly: (00:13)by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Robb: (00:18)I’m Robb Aldrich Kelly: (00:19)and I’m Kelly Westby. Robb: (00:21)This week I’m talking with Maureen Mahle, who’s the managing director of sustainable housing services here at Steven Winter associates or SWA as you’ll pRobbably hear us call it. She’s been here for at least 12 years, has been involved in green building programs since leed for homes came out and many programs since then. I believe I read, she has certified over 12,000 homes or housing units since she started here. This episode we’re focusing on health and green buildings, which is a big topic, an important topic, a topic around which there’s a lot of different advice, a lot of different programs, advising not necessarily the same things. it can be overwhelming to many. It is overwhelming to me at times, but you have to start somewhere. So that’s, that’s what we’re going to talk about. Here’s my interview. Robb: (01:17)We’re here to talk about buildings and health or green buildings and health, which is a huge topic. So we’re going to scratch the surface and do an overview. And of course, health is a huge part of green buildings. It’s one of the tenants. But there’s a lot of confusion. There’s a lot of misunderstanding. There’s a lot of, there are a lot of different programs that say a lot of different things. And I know you’ve given it quite a bit of thought. it’s a huge topic. But having you give us a primmer or an overview of some of the issues and what some of the programs are good for and not so good for, that would be great. Maureen: (01:58)Absolutely. So I guess I’ll start by saying I have absolutely no training and topics surrounding health whatsoever. I’m not a doctor. I have no medical background whatsoever. My mother was a nurse. That’s as close as I get. but in my role working on buildings and advising people who work on buildings, I actually have a lot of influence over human health as do all of us in this industry. So that’s kind of the base turn that got me interested in. This is starting from the place of: we’re not health experts and yet we have a big impact on health. Therefore, we have a duty to figure out some basic things and more importantly to start taking action. Even if we don’t have everything figured out. If we wait until we know the absolutes, we’re never going to get anything done. And we could potentially do more damage in the near term and in the longterm. Robb: (02:56)Gotcha. So code built buildings, what do codes do for us? Do codes give us any kind of basic level of health protection? Maureen: (03:08)codes get into ventilation, which is important, mostly focused only on new construction. There are very few codes that retroactively address ventilation and buildings and ventilation is what we’re doing to basically remove pollutants. Ventilation levels set by code are intended to be sort of minimally safe. And there is a difference as we’re starting to find out between minimally safe and optimally healthy. Right? So there is actually a pretty big gap there. I can throw it out right now- one of the pieces of research around this is the cog effects study. And we’ll link that in the show notes for this. But you know, long story short and summarizing, you know, very, very briefly, it’s sort of like if you double your ventilation, you might be twice as smart roughly. So that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about is the difference between surviving, which is what code is aimed at, and living your life to the fullest and sort of like being in peak operating condition as humans, we want our buildings to be in peak operating condition. Robb: (04:21)So not only just do no harm but actually make environments better, right? Can we make ourselves healthier? So this is much more a topic were thinking about now, recently, you know, certainly more than 10 years ago and certainly more than 30 years ago. But you know, buildings are different, buildings are getting tighter. Is that one of the main reasons why it’s a growing concern or people getting more paranoid? Maureen: (04:50)I think it’s a mix of factors. I think buildings are getting tighter. I think we’ve got more products from more places around the world than ever before. We’ve got more plastics, we’ve got more composites, we’ve got all kinds of stuff, some of which is touted to be healthy. But it may be evaluated for certain criteria or it may be touted as being green in one aspect, like because it contains post consumer recycled content, but it may not actually be healthy. Right? So we’ve got more products, we’ve got tighter buildings. We have people with more sensitivities and maybe more health conditions that they’re managing because we’ve had declining air quality, even outdoor air quality in places like the asthma corridor in the Bronx. We now have people that have environmental inflicted asthma and so then they’re going to be more sensitive to what’s inside their homes and their workplaces as well. Maureen: (05:43)Right. So it kind of all trickles down. So its that kind of combination things. I think also, we are paying more attention to health and buildings because we have more information. I think it’s incomplete. I think it’s a little bit scattered. But in general we’re starting to see bits and pieces of information come through that. Some of the things we were promoting as being really great or maybe not so great and that’s not really new, right? I mean, we’ve been down this path with asbestos and formaldehyde and lots of things. But now we start to get more information and as we do, you know, we’ve got a responsibility to follow through and utilize that information. I mean, one of the resources that I think is really pretty cool now, is if you ever see these warnings from California proposition 65 on products, you see it on Amazon, right. And be like, oh, this has got that warning. And that’s a requirement to disclose if you’re containing chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm in the state of California Robb: (06:51)Right. It’s always baffled me when I go and buy something- I recently I bought something on Amazon, I forget what it was- And it had that label on it. This product is known to cause cancer in the state of California. Maureen: (07:01)Yeah. But nowhere else. Anyways. Different standards. So we can use other, you know, metrics that maybe some of the more progressive entities have adopted and sort of extrapolate those back to ourselves, and say, okay, maybe I don’t have to know it as a building science person and not a medically trained person. Maybe I don’t have to know everything. Maybe I can adopt these other proxies to help me figure out my way through this whole health in buildings question. Robb: (07:31)Gotcha. But as you said, we know more and more, like we know now asbestos is bad, and it should be avoided. We know radon is bad. But I guess that list is kind of is kind of growing. Maureen: (07:43)Well, it is growing in some ways. In some ways I don’t Think that the basic list has changes. The Center for Disease Control and EPA and everyone has kind of agreed on these top risk factors, as human health is