Room Acoustics – Are They the Missing Piece in the Occupant Experience?
Oct 30, 2024
Many of us take good acoustics for granted. But it’s common for acoustic efforts to be the first thing cut from commercial projects—or not included in the design phase at all, according to Graham Waks, founder of Music City Acoustics. And when a space has bad acoustics, it can negatively impact the occupant experience.
Buildings + Beyond producer and audio guru Dylan Martello invited Graham on the podcast to talk about the science behind room acoustics, how they affect the occupants of a space, and the most effective ways to improve acoustics for several types of commercial spaces. Plus, we have a special introduction with Dylan and B+B host Robb Aldrich!
Host: Dylan Martello, Senior Building Systems Consultant at Steven Winter Associates
Guest Bios
Graham Waks is the founder of Music City Acoustics, a company known for providing top-tier acoustic treatment solutions for musicians, producers, and audio professionals. With over a decade of experience, Graham is passionate about helping clients achieve the best possible sound environments, whether in studios, offices, restaurants, or churches. Graham’s commitment to quality and innovation has made his company a trusted name for clients looking to improve their acoustic performance and sound quality.
Thank you to our episode sponsor, Passive House Accelerator!
Passive House Accelerator is an online community and media company dedicated to accelerating the transition to clean, resilient, zero-carbon buildings.
Every week, Passive House Accelerator produces new original content, including Passive House Accelerator LIVE! online educational events, Passive House Podcast episodes, articles about low-carbon building, video content, and a newsletter. In addition, it also publishes a magazine twice a year and hosts the acclaimed Reimagine Buildings online conference series.
Visit passivehouseaccelerator.com to subscribe to the newsletter, register for an upcoming event, and browse the latest podcast episodes, articles, and videos.
We Want to Hear From You!
Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com.
About Buildings + Beyond
Buildings + Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.
Buildings + 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.
Do We Need a Green Certification Program Just for Commercial Kitchens? (Hint… Yes)
Sep 17, 2024
Featuring
Chef Christopher Galarza
Christopher is a pioneering force in the culinary world, known for his unwavering commitment to sustainability and innovation in kitchen design. As the founder of Forward Dining Solutions LLC and co-founder of EcoChef, Chef Galarza has become a leading advocate for decarbonizing commercial kitchens and championing the Green Industrial Revolution within the foodservice industry. Read more
Chef Duke Gastiger (pictured with Monica Gastiger)
Duke and Monica bring specialized talents and passion to RE Farm Café at Windswept. Duke’s prior corporate life with Sheraton and Hyatt Hotels embraced training with master chefs from around the world, learning the essence and nuances of each of their cuisines. Read more
Host: Kelly Westby
Kelly leads the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team at SWA. She has a wide range of experience in building science, commissioning, and energy efficiency retrofitting. Kelly’s commissioning, energy code, and efficiency projects cover millions of square feet of commercial buildings along the East Coast. She also speaks at events and conferences, sharing her expertise on industry best practices.
Commercial kitchens are one of the most challenging spaces to electrify, but we need to take on this challenge in order to decarbonize restaurants, hotels, schools, hospitals, and other buildings with commercial kitchens. Is another green certification program the answer?
In this episode, Chefs Christopher Galarza and Duke Gastiger are back to dive into EcoChef—the first electric kitchen rating system and certification program with the goal to standardize how commercial kitchens are designed, built, and operated. They discuss the origin story of EcoChef, the structure of the program, the pilot project with Duke’s RE Farm Café, and why commercial kitchens need a dedicated certification program for electrification.
Special update: Congratulations to Chef Christopher for becoming a Certified Executive Chef (CEC), making him the first chef in history to earn this certification in an all-electric kitchen! Read more
Sponsor
Passive House Accelerator
Thank you to our episode sponsor, Passive House Accelerator!
Passive House Accelerator is an online community and media company dedicated to accelerating the transition to clean, resilient, zero-carbon buildings.
Every week, Passive House Accelerator produces new original content, including Passive House Accelerator LIVE! online educational events, Passive House Podcast episodes, articles about low-carbon building, video content, and a newsletter. In addition, it also publishes a magazine twice a year and hosts the acclaimed Reimagine Buildings online conference series.
Visit passivehouseaccelerator.com to subscribe to the newsletter, register for an upcoming event, and browse the latest podcast episodes, articles, and videos.
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.
It’s Getting Hot in Here! – Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Electric Kitchens
Sep 01, 2024
Featuring
Chef Christopher Galarza
Christopher is a pioneering force in the culinary world, known for his unwavering commitment to sustainability and innovation in kitchen design. As the founder of Forward Dining Solutions LLC and co-founder of EcoChef, Chef Galarza has become a leading advocate. Read more
Chef Duke Gastiger (pictured with Monica Gastiger)
Duke and Monica bring specialized talents and passion to RE Farm Café at Windswept. Duke’s prior corporate life with Sheraton and Hyatt Hotels embraced training with master chefs from around the world, learning the essence and nuances of each of their cuisines. With a strong entrepreneurial drive, Duke returned to his college town in 1985 to acquire The All-American Rathskeller. In 1987, Duke opened Spats Café and Speakeasy, a themed “prohibition era” eatery. Read more
Host: Kelly Westby
Kelly leads the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team at SWA. She has a wide range of experience in building science, commissioning, and energy efficiency retrofitting. Kelly’s commissioning, energy code, and efficiency projects cover millions of square feet of commercial buildings along the East Coast. She also speaks at events and conferences, sharing her expertise on industry best practices.
Remember when gas stoves became a political issue last year? While all that public debate was happening, there were chefs around the world embracing the concept of all-electric kitchens and getting past the learning curve to induction cooking.
We don’t hear about gas stoves in the news as much as we used to, but kitchen electrification will always be a hot topic here at Buildings + Beyond! In this episode, we invited Chef Christopher Galarza back to the podcast to talk about the progress being made to transform more commercial kitchens into efficient, safe, and climate-friendly spaces. Chris brought Duke Gastiger, who built a net zero, all-electric commercial kitchen at his farm restaurant, to join the conversation.
Keep listening: Our previous episode with Chef Christopher Galarza, It’s Time to 86 Fossil Fuels in Commercial Kitchens, is available here.
Coming soon: Look out for part two of this episode all about the EcoChef electric kitchen rating system and certification.
Thank you to our episode sponsor, Passive House Accelerator!
Passive House Accelerator is an online community and media company dedicated to accelerating the transition to clean, resilient, zero-carbon buildings.
Every week, Passive House Accelerator produces new original content, including Passive House Accelerator LIVE! online educational events, Passive House Podcast episodes, articles about low-carbon building, video content, and a newsletter. In addition, it also publishes a magazine twice a year and hosts the acclaimed Reimagine Buildings online conference series.
Visit passivehouseaccelerator.com to subscribe to the newsletter, register for an upcoming event, and browse the latest podcast episodes, articles, and videos.
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.
Career Diaries – What’s It Like Working As an Accessibility Consultant?
Jul 26, 2024
Featuring
Carlos Sevillano
Carlos is a Senior Accessibility Consultant at SWA focusing primarily on residential projects. His key responsibilities include conducting plan reviews, field inspections, and providing technical guidance to ensure compliance with federal, state, and local regulatory and building code requirements for accessible design and construction.
Jeff Heitert
Jeff is an Accessibility Consulting Director and a 15+ year veteran of the team at SWA. He has specialized expertise in the complex scoping and technical requirements of federal, state, and local regulations and building codes that require accessible design and construction. Jeff oversees quality control and consulting services for large multifamily and mixed-use projects throughout the country.
Jennifer Low
Jennifer is a Senior Accessibility Consultant at SWA. She provides accessibility compliance and consulting services through plan reviews, field inspections, due diligence and barrier removal surveys, remediation development, litigation consulting, technical assistance, and training with focus on healthcare.
Host: Kelly Westby
Kelly leads the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team at SWA. She has a wide range of experience in building science, commissioning, and energy efficiency retrofitting.
Kelly’s commissioning, energy code, and efficiency projects cover millions of square feet of commercial buildings along the East Coast. She also speaks at events and conferences, sharing her expertise on industry best practices.
Accessibility consultants work at the intersection of architecture and social justice. It’s much more than checking the boxes on accessibility requirements of laws and codes; it takes precision, dedication, and creativity to solve problems and remove physical barriers to access that have historically marginalized people with disabilities.
To mark the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, we invited three members of the accessibility team at Steven Winter Associates (SWA) on the Buildings + Beyond podcast. Combined, they have almost 40 years of experience as accessibility consultants! We hope you’re as inspired as we are by their wisdom (yes, wisdom; we talk a lot about this), lessons learned, and stories from the field.
Thank you to our episode sponsor, Passive House Accelerator!
Passive House Accelerator is an online community and media company dedicated to accelerating the transition to clean, resilient, zero-carbon buildings.
Every week, Passive House Accelerator produces new original content, including Passive House Accelerator LIVE! online educational events, Passive House Podcast episodes, articles about low-carbon building, video content, and a newsletter. In addition, it also publishes a magazine twice a year and hosts the acclaimed Reimagine Buildings online conference series.
Visit passivehouseaccelerator.com to subscribe to the newsletter, register for an upcoming event, and browse the latest podcast episodes, articles, and videos.
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.
Your Top 10 Passive House Questions, Answered – The Long-Awaited Part 2
Jun 28, 2024
Featuring
Lois Arena, Director of High-Performance Building Solutions at Steven Winter Associates
Lois possesses over 25 years of experience in the building science field and has extensive experience with new and existing buildings. Lois holds both US and International Passive House consultant certifications and is currently consulting on some of the largest and most difficult Passive House projects in the world.
She has co-authored and presented training programs about energy efficient building practices to professionals in all sectors of the building industry and is regularly invited to present at conferences and private firms around the world to discuss the benefits of and road blocks to Passive House adoption.
Dylan Martello, Senior Building Systems Consultant at Steven Winter Associates
Dylan focuses primarily on advanced energy modeling, Passive House design consulting, and building performance analysis. Dylan brings a keen understanding of the economic, social, and environmental implications that come with energy efficiency measures in advanced building design.
Dylan also serves as an integral part of the Buildings and Beyond podcast production team, providing sound engineering and editing for each episode.
On the very first episode of Buildings + Beyond, Passive House pioneer Lois Arena answered the most common questions asked about meeting the high-performance requirements of the Passive House standard. You loved the episode—it’s one of our most popular of all time—and we loved recording with Lois. So, 6 years later, we decided to record a highly anticipated follow-up episode.
Listen as host Robb Aldrich poses the same 10 questions from the original episode, and a few new ones, to Lois and Dylan Martello—who both work on first-of-their-kind, largescale Passive House projects at Steven Winter Associates. What answers have remained the same, and what has changed in the last 6 years?
Thank you to our episode sponsor, Passive House Accelerator!
Passive House Accelerator is an online community and media company dedicated to accelerating the transition to clean, resilient, zero-carbon buildings.
Every week, Passive House Accelerator produces new original content, including Passive House Accelerator LIVE! online educational events, Passive House Podcast episodes, articles about low-carbon building, video content, and a newsletter. In addition, it also publishes a magazine twice a year and hosts the acclaimed Reimagine Buildings online conference series.
Visit passivehouseaccelerator.com to subscribe to the newsletter, register for an upcoming event, and browse the latest podcast episodes, articles, and videos.
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.
Gayathri is a Principal Mechanical Engineer at Steven Winter Associates. For over 18 years, she has specialized in evaluating residential and multifamily buildings with an emphasis on high-performance construction and renewable energy systems.
Early in her career, Gayathri provided technical assistance to sustainability projects by performing energy modeling and conducting cost-benefit analyses of energy efficient measures in both new and existing residential construction. She leveraged that experience for her current role: providing consulting to federal, state, and local agencies, codes, and programs to develop emerging standards and procedures that involve energy efficiency and indoor air quality requirements. This includes the EPA’s ENERGY STAR® Multifamily New Construction Programs, where she has provided technical support since 2008, and more recently, their Indoor airPLUS program.
Gayathri is also an active contributor to various technical committees that share a goal of improving codes and standards. She currently is a voting member of the 2024 IECC Residential Consensus Committee and Chair of RESNET’s Standards Development Committee, SDC300.
The International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) or “model code” establishes the minimum requirements for building energy efficiency. The code is updated every three years, and for 2024, a new consensus-driven development process brought together diverse stakeholders to determine those requirements.
However, the International Code Council’s Board of Directors recently voted to go against consensus and remove mandatory provisions relating to building decarbonization from the 2024 draft.
In this episode, host Robb Aldrich interviews Gayathri Vijayakumar, Principal Mechanical Engineer at Steven Winter Associates and a voting member of the 2024 IECC Residential Consensus Committee, to find out… what happened?
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.
Choosing Electrification or Efficiency (When Both Aren’t Possible)
Mar 25, 2024
Featuring
Ryan Merkin
Ryan Merkin is Vice President of Business Development with BlocPower. He is an experienced leader with over 20 years in the building science and energy consulting industry. Ryan has a demonstrated history developing decarbonization projects for new builds and retrofits. He is skilled in the delivery of consulting services for low energy building design, electrification, engineering and retrofit studies, energy code adoption and compliance, DER strategies, solar design, smart building system integration, utility and incentive programs, and professional training.
Prior to joining BlocPower, Ryan was a Vice President and Director of Multifamily Energy Services for 13 years with Steven Winter Associates. Ryan is active in the New York metropolitan area engineering community as board member and former President of Association of Energy Engineers New York City Chapter.
Ryan received a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from University at Albany, State University of New York and Master of Science in Geosystems from MIT.
When is it the right call to improve the energy efficiency of existing building systems, or upgrade and electrify them?
Though electrification is important to reduce carbon emissions, electrifying buildings is not straightforward. Factors like cost, existing infrastructure, compliance needs (and we’ll say it again: cost!) can keep building owners from going all-electric.
In this episode, Buildings + Beyond co-host Robb Aldrich catches up with Ryan Merkin, Vice President of Business Development at BlocPower (and a SWA alum). They discuss the eight areas Ryan considers when deciding to focus on efficiency vs. electrification:
Building height
Planned capital expenditures (CapEx)
Current system condition and remaining useful life
Heating energy source: oil and electrical resistance
Existing systems: Individual/unitized vs. central
Packaged terminal ACs (PTACs) and through-wall sleeve ACs
Regulatory drivers (LL97, ESG, etc.) and incentives
Metering: who pays what now; who would pay in the future
Note: This episode was recorded in December 2023. Mentions of “next year” are referring to the year 2024.
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.
Mind the Gap – Addressing the Skills Gap in the Sustainable Building Industry
Feb 14, 2024
Featuring
Ellen Honigstock
Ellen is the Senior Director of Education at Urban Green Council. She oversees the development of Urban Green’s Public Programs and develops the curriculum for its signature programs, including Green Professional Training (GPRO) and Crushing the Energy Code.
Ellen has 28 years of experience as an architect and volunteered for Urban Green for several years before joining the staff. She previously served as the first Residential Green Building Advocate, working to increase green building and LEED for Homes certification in the New York residential marketplace, and as a committee chair of the Green Codes Task Force. Ellen is a co-founder of Solarize Brooklyn and Sustainable Kensington Windsor Terrace.
Kelly Westby
Kelly Westby leads the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team at SWA. She has a wide range of experience in building science, commissioning, and energy efficiency retrofitting.
The BODE team is focused on optimizing performance and reducing energy use and carbon emissions of building systems for new construction and existing buildings across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. The team offers benchmarking, capital planning, energy management, implementation, commissioning, research, program management, and policy advisory services. Kelly’s commissioning, energy code, and efficiency projects cover millions of square feet of commercial buildings along the East Coast. She also speaks at events and conferences, sharing her expertise on industry best practices.
Buildings are complicated. There’s a bigger learning curve than ever for the people who construct, operate, and manage high-performance buildings—and there’s more demand than ever for skilled workers across the sustainable building industry.
In this episode, Ellen Honigstock, Senior Director of Education at Urban Green Council, sits down with Kelly Westby, Managing Director of the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team at Steven Winter Associates. They chat about what it takes to effectively educate the workforce to ensure occupant comfort, energy and carbon reductions, sustainability, and the overall performance of a building.
This is a crossover episode! Go to the Building Tomorrow: Conversations with Climate Solvers podcast feed to hear Ellen interview Kelly about all-things building commissioning.
Episode Information & Resources
Crossover Episode
Listen to our crossover episode featuring Kelly Westby on Urban Green Council’s Building Tomorrow podcast:
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.
Healthy Materials 101 – A Realistic Approach to Creating Healthier Buildings with Jonsara Ruth
Dec 15, 2023
Featuring
Jonsara Ruth
Jonsara Ruth is Co-founder and Design Director of Healthy Materials Lab (HML) at Parsons School of Design, where she is an Associate Professor and Founding Director of the MFA Interior Design program.
At HML, Jonsara brings creative leadership to the goal of improving the health of underserved communities through the transformation of design and material practices. Read more
Guest Host: Sarah Nugent
Sarah Nugent is a Sustainability Director at SWA’s New York City office, within the Sustainable Building Services (SBS) group. She oversees building certifications for high-rise residential and a variety of commercial building project typologies.
Sarah’s professional knowledge helps guide architects, owners, developers, and building management staff on green and high-performance building and site design strategies, healthy design strategies, cost-effective building system operations, and energy-saving maintenance practices.
At the baseline, “healthy” materials should not have a negative impact on people living or working inside of a building. Beyond that, there are materials that have a low impact on people and the planet throughout their entire lifespan—and then there are materials that can have a net-positive impact, such as those that absorb carbon from our atmosphere.
Jonsara Ruth, Co-founder and Design Director of the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design, joins this episode of the Buildings + Beyond podcast to discuss the spectrum of materials and resources available. Jonsara chats with guest host Sarah Nugent about how to phase out toxic ingredients and select materials that are healthy and affordable.
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.
The Real Secret to Energy-Efficient Buildings? Operations & Maintenance Training
Aug 30, 2023
Featuring
Luis Aragon, Senior Building Systems Engineer on SWA’s Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team
Luis focuses on Passive Building commissioning as well as commissioning for energy code compliance. Luis also provides training for multifamily building operators on, ventilation, air sealing, hydronic heating and domestic hot water distribution.
Heather Nolen, Building Systems Director on SWA’s Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team
Heather focuses on using data to design long-term capital plans for energy conservation. She works with multifamily property owners and managers to evaluate, manage, and improve building energy consumption across their portfolios.
Host: Dylan Martello, Senior Building Systems Consultant on SWA’s Passive House team
Dylan has experience working on high-performance projects ranges from Passive House consulting on large scale multifamily, commercial, institutional projects; net zero consulting on mid-rise multifamily; and envelope commissioning on mid-sized commercial projects.
Over the lifespan of a building, operations and maintenance staff arguably have the biggest impact on system performance and energy efficiency. With the right training, staff can keep a building running as it was designed to run and “create the change” to reduce energy usage, reduce repairs, and upgrade vs. replace equipment.
So how do project teams create O&M training programs that achieve all this?
In this episode, producer and guest host Dylan Martello chats with Luis Aragon and Heather Nolen—two O&M training experts at SWA—about balancing in-person and digital education, accounting for every learning style, breaking down language barriers, sustaining the training for the long term, and much more.
The Passive House Network Conference 2023 is a hybrid event for builders, designers, and community members to connect, learn, and plan for a decarbonized future. Over 2.5 days and thirty sessions, attendees will reflect on how Passive House bolsters climate resiliency, environmental justice, and everyday health. Share your ambitions. Bridge the connections. Register now, join the conversation, and start building your Passive House Network today: phnconference.org
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.
Answering the Tough Questions About Energy Codes
Jul 07, 2023
Featuring
Gayathri Vijayakumar
Gayathri Vijayakumar is a Principal Mechanical Engineer at Steven Winter Associates, Inc, with over 18 years of experience supporting high-performance multifamily buildings. She graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a BS in Engineering Science and from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a MS in Mechanical Engineering and a Graduate Certificate in Energy Policy and Management. Gayathri currently provides technical support to the EPA’s Indoor airPLUS program and ENERGY STAR Multifamily New Construction programs. She currently is a voting member of the 2024 IECC Residential Consensus Committee and Chair of RESNET’s Standards Development Committee, SDC300.
Karla Butterfield
Ms. Butterfield is a Sustainability Director at Steven Winter Associates, Inc., working with residential buildings. Her expertise is in sustainable consulting services, program certification support and implementation of high-performance building technologies. With architects, developers, builders, and homeowners, she develops specific sustainability strategies for both new construction and renovations.
William Zoeller
As Director of the Building Enclosure Services team at Steven Winter Associates, Bill has managed projects ranging from masonry restoration of landmarked buildings and deep-energy retrofits of historic properties to new construction Passive House residential towers.
Dylan Martello
Dylan is a Senior Building Systems Consultant and Certified Passive House Designer with Steven Winter Associates, Inc. specializing in Passive House and Net Zero projects. Dylan works with project architects and engineers to assist in the design of extremely energy efficient buildings. His direct project experience on large-scale Passive House certified or pre-certified projects comprises a wide range of use types such as high rise multifamily, core and shell offices, hotels, and industrial facilities.
Host: Robb Aldrich
Robb focuses on building energy systems: researching new technologies, monitoring performance, and helping practitioners create better, healthier, more efficient buildings.
What happens when you put four sustainable building experts involved in energy code development in a room and ask them to bring their favorite—and sometimes, most controversial—topics for discussion? You end up with more questions than answers!
In this roundtable episode hosted by Robb Aldrich, our guests ask each other these tough questions related to our nation’s energy codes:
Performance Metrics: How can energy codes be simplified? Is energy use intensity (EUI) a viable alternate metric?
Gas Bans: If jurisdictions cannot ban gas, how can we put electrification in the energy code?
Embodied Carbon: How should embodied carbon accounting be incorporated into energy codes?
Robb’s Bonus Question #1: How are building inspectors dealing with complicated energy codes?
Robb’s Bonus Question #2: Should there be electric vehicle (EV) charging requirements in energy codes?
Our episode host, Robb Aldrich, has been researching, consulting, and providing training on heat pump technology for over 20 years. During that time, heat pumps have evolved to meet the demands of residential heating in cold climates—resulting in significant implications for decarbonization and electrification goals.
Robb is sharing practical applications, important considerations, and real-world examples of the good and the bad (and the sometimes ugly) in Air-Source Heat Pumps: Achieving Comfort and Efficiency in Cold Climates available exclusively through SWA Academy.
This user-paced training program features eight chapters with short video lessons that deep-dive into elements of inverter-driven air-source heat pump implementation, from pre-design to installation to operations and maintenance.
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.
Cost vs. Conservation vs. Comfort – Roundtable, Part 2
May 01, 2023
Featuring
Michelle DeCarlo
Michelle M. DeCarlo, PE, LEED AP BD+C, serves as an Associate Partner at Jaros, Baum & Bolles (JB&B). Since joining the firm in 2007, she has led the HVAC design for JB&B on a variety of projects, including the new core and shell office design for 30 Hudson Yards, the commercial office redevelopment of the landmarked Moynihan Train Hall, and The New Terminal One at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Michelle is also committed to the advancement of women in the industry. In 2018, she launched the JB&B Women’s Initiative, an in-house membership group whose mission is the empowerment of women to position them as leaders inside and outside the firm, and to promote the retention of women through leadership and professional development. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Commercial Real Estate for Women (CREW) of New York, currently serving as the President. She recently completed four years of service on the ASHRAE New York Board of Governors, serving as chairperson of its Women in ASHRAE Committee. Read more
Saeideh Kirby
Saeideh Kirby is the Senior Director leading Energy and Sustainability Services for multiple industry verticals within the Americas at JLL. In this role, she is responsible for the service delivery in the region and assisting more than 50 sustainability professionals in executing energy and sustainability programs for various clients to meet their sustainability goals. These programs include support in providing roadmaps and implementation towards carbon, energy, water, and waste goals through carbon and energy forecasting, benchmarking, energy conservation projects, energy procurement, alternative energy evaluation, investigation into new technologies, sustainable supply chain, and incorporating sustainability into the full lifecycle of facility management. Prior to joining JLL, Saeideh was senior energy project engineer at SourceOne and was responsible for conducting Cogen feasibility studies and design reviews for multiple clients based in New York.
Erin McElwee
As a Building Systems Consultant at SWA, Erin McElwee provides commissioning (Cx) services for NYC ECC code compliance, LEED Fundamental and Enhanced Cx, and Passive House projects. Erin assists teams with reviews of design drawings and project submittals, conducts commissioning tests on-site, verifies equipment specifications, and provides recommended corrective actions.
Host: Kelly Westby
Kelly Westby leads the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team at SWA. She has a wide range of experience in building science, commissioning, and energy efficiency retrofitting. The BODE team is focused on optimizing performance and reducing energy use and carbon emissions of building systems for new construction and existing buildings across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. The team offers benchmarking, capital planning, energy management, implementation, commissioning, research, program management, and policy advisory services. Kelly’s commissioning, energy code, and efficiency projects cover millions of square feet of commercial buildings along the East Coast. She also speaks at events and conferences, sharing her expertise on industry best practices.
The ideal building is cost-efficient, energy-efficient, and comfortable for its occupants. But executing all three of these elements to perfection can be complex and costly. Can there ever be a win-win-win across all three?
In part two of our roundtable episode with Michelle DeCarlo, Saeideh Kirby, Erin McElwee, and Buildings + Beyond host Kelly Westby, our guests discuss how to find a balance between meeting project objectives and creating sustainable and healthy buildings. They also share how they’ve seen the COVID-19 pandemic change project priorities and building operations.
Did you miss part one of this roundtable? Go to the previous episode to hear our guests’ moving discussion on gender equity in the building industry.
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.
Take Action: How Everyone Can Help Advance Gender Equity in the Building Industry – Roundtable, Part 1
Mar 30, 2023
Featuring
Michelle DeCarlo
Michelle M. DeCarlo, PE, LEED AP BD+C, serves as an Associate Partner at Jaros, Baum & Bolles (JB&B). Since joining the firm in 2007, she has led the HVAC design for JB&B on a variety of projects, including the new core and shell office design for 30 Hudson Yards, the commercial office redevelopment of the landmarked Moynihan Train Hall, and The New Terminal One at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Michelle is also committed to the advancement of women in the industry. In 2018, she launched the JB&B Women’s Initiative, an in-house membership group whose mission is the empowerment of women to position them as leaders inside and outside the firm, and to promote the retention of women through leadership and professional development. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Commercial Real Estate for Women (CREW) of New York, currently serving as the President. She recently completed four years of service on the ASHRAE New York Board of Governors, serving as chairperson of its Women in ASHRAE Committee. Read more
Saeideh Kirby
Saeideh Kirby is the Senior Director leading Energy and Sustainability Services for multiple industry verticals within the Americas at JLL. In this role, she is responsible for the service delivery in the region and assisting more than 50 sustainability professionals in executing energy and sustainability programs for various clients to meet their sustainability goals. These programs include support in providing roadmaps and implementation towards carbon, energy, water, and waste goals through carbon and energy forecasting, benchmarking, energy conservation projects, energy procurement, alternative energy evaluation, investigation into new technologies, sustainable supply chain, and incorporating sustainability into the full lifecycle of facility management. Prior to joining JLL, Saeideh was senior energy project engineer at SourceOne and was responsible for conducting Cogen feasibility studies and design reviews for multiple clients based in New York.
Erin McElwee
As a Building Systems Consultant at SWA, Erin McElwee provides commissioning (Cx) services for NYC ECC code compliance, LEED Fundamental and Enhanced Cx, and Passive House projects. Erin assists teams with reviews of design drawings and project submittals, conducts commissioning tests on-site, verifies equipment specifications, and provides recommended corrective actions.
Host: Kelly Westby
Kelly Westby leads the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency (BODE) team at SWA. She has a wide range of experience in building science, commissioning, and energy efficiency retrofitting. The BODE team is focused on optimizing performance and reducing energy use and carbon emissions of building systems for new construction and existing buildings across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast regions. The team offers benchmarking, capital planning, energy management, implementation, commissioning, research, program management, and policy advisory services. Kelly’s commissioning, energy code, and efficiency projects cover millions of square feet of commercial buildings along the East Coast. She also speaks at events and conferences, sharing her expertise on industry best practices.
To mark Women’s History Month, we wanted to get firsthand perspectives from women in the building industry. We invited Michelle DeCarlo of JB&B and Saeideh Kirby of JLL to join SWA’s Erin McElwee and Kelly Westby for a two-part episode tackling different topics—starting with gender equity.
In part one of their discussion, the group explores gender equity in male-dominated fields such as construction, HVAC, and engineering. They cover a range of topics, including microaggressions, implicit bias, authenticity in the workplace, and mentorship and sponsorship, and offer actionable takeaways for people of all gender identities to help advance gender equity across our industry.
We thank our guests for sharing their personal experiences!
Look out for part two of their discussion on balancing cost, conservation, and comfort in sustainable buildings.
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.
ENERGY STAR NextGen: 5 Requirements for Climate-Friendly Homes
Feb 16, 2023
Featuring
Asa Foss
Asa Foss joined EPA’s ENERGY STAR Residential Branch in 2020, where he’s managing ENERGY STAR NextGen, an operational decarbonization-focused new construction specification. He’s been in the residential efficiency industry since the early 2000s, including a decade at the U.S. Green Building Council where he was responsible for the development of the LEED for Homes rating systems. He renovated and lives in a designated-historic ENERGY STAR and LEED Platinum certified rowhouse in Washington, DC.
Elliot Seibert
Bio coming soon!
Building on the 25-year foundation of the ENERGY STAR Residential New Construction program, the EPA is gearing up to launch a new certification program for efficient single-family and multifamily homes: ENERGY STAR NextGen Certified Homes and Apartments. Based on initial energy and emissions modeling, ENERGY STAR NextGen certified homes will achieve an average of 47% greater carbon savings than homes built according to 2021 residential energy code.
In this episode, Robb chats with two members of EPA’s ENERGY STAR Residential Branch, Asa Foss and Elliot Seibert, about what home builders, raters, and buyers can expect from ENERGY STAR NextGen and its electric-forward—not all-electric—focus. They discuss each of the program’s requirements and the rationale and goals behind them.
Episode Information & Resources
The 5 NextGen Requirements for Climate-Friendly Homes:
Note: time stamps below in parenthesis
Highly energy-efficient construction (12:17)
ENERGY STAR certified heat pumps for space heating (16:47)
ENERGY STAR certified heat pump water heaters (22:38)
Induction cooktops and electric ovens (Yes, we address the elephant in the room—the gas stove.) (29:38)
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.
How Can We Convince More Homeowners to Make Energy-Efficiency Upgrades?
Jan 02, 2023
Featuring
Christine Liaukus, RA, CPHC
Christine Liaukus, RA, CPHC, is the Housing and Community Development Program Manager for the Center for Building Knowledge at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. At the Center, Christine’s research is focused on improving the energy performance of existing buildings during typical retrofit projects, most recently with Re-Side Right. Christine has developed training for various New Jersey Clean Energy programs through the NJ Clean Energy Learning Center and has taught high-performance building enclosure coursework at the Hillier College of Architecture and Design at NJIT. Prior to joining NJIT, Christine was a Project Architect with the New York firm Chris Benedict R.A. creating environmentally responsible affordable housing. Christine is a member of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association and was the first Certified Passive House Consultant in New Jersey.
Adam Stenftenagel
Adam Stenftenagel has been working in the green building industry since 2004. He co-owns four Boulder, Colorado-based businesses that focus on helping new and existing homes use net-zero energy, including Snugg Home and Radiant Labs. He is also co-founder and CEO at both of these companies. Adam focuses on keeping the businesses running efficiently as well as business development and sales. He specializes in building science, energy modeling, and cost-benefit analysis. Adam’s passion is helping to prevent runaway climate change. He also enjoys live music, gardening, and hiking.
The average homeowner is aware that energy efficiency is important in the fight against climate change. The people who are most passionate about energy conservation are making upgrades to their homes and setting a good example for their neighbors. But how can we get more homeowners excited about doing the work (and navigating the cost) to improve their home’s performance?
On this episode, Robb chats with Adam Stenftenagel and Christine Liaukus (a SWA alum!), two experts on improving existing buildings, about what it’ll take to reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions of single-family homes on a much larger scale than we are today. They discuss data, strategies, technologies, and of course, financing that can help get millions of homeowners on the path to net zero energy.
SWA Academy is the user-paced learning platform that gives organizations and project teams the technical knowledge they need to create energy efficient, sustainable, and accessible buildings.
Organizations enrolled in SWA Academy can build custom training programs with accredited courses on topics from building design and construction to operations and maintenance.
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.
Designing for Equity in the Built Environment with Victoria Lanteigne
Nov 15, 2022
Featuring
Victoria Lanteigne
Victoria Lanteigne has over 15 years of experience in improving the built environment through equity, inclusive design, and health and wellness.
Earlier in her career, Victoria joined SWA as a Senior Accessibility Consultant, collaborating with architects, developers, and other practitioners to improve the accessibility of buildings, and launched SWA’s inclusive design services. In 2020, Victoria joined the PhD in Design program at North Carolina State University, where she conducted extensive research to understand how design impacts the physical, mental, and emotional health of building occupants. Her doctoral research aims to develop a new industry framework for embedding equity in the design of the built environment.
This year, as Victoria nears the end of her PhD program, she rejoins SWA’s accessibility team as Principal of Research to lead a new equity research initiative—which will include the introduction of a new industry framework for embedding equity in building design and exploring outcomes.
There is a lot of work ahead of us to advance equity in the built environment. As more project teams aim to impact equity, there are overarching questions that need to be answered: What design strategies will advance equity in the built environment? And how do we make equity part of building performance?
In this episode, Alex chats with Victoria Lanteigne, Principal of Research at Steven Winter Associates (SWA), about her expertise in equity, health, and inclusive design. Victoria shares how, through her research, she hopes to build on the way we measure building performance—from outcomes focused on energy and resource efficiency to those that include aspects of human experiences, such as the health, wellbeing, and sense of belonging of all building occupants.
Send your feedback and questions to podcast@swinter.com
About Buildings and Beyond
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.
Construction Diaries Part 2: Tips for Young Professionals
Oct 01, 2022
Featuring
Dylan Martello
Dylan is a Senior Building Systems Consultant and Certified Passive House Designer with Steven Winter Associates, Inc. specializing in Passive House and Net Zero projects. Dylan works with project architects and engineers to assist in the design of extremely energy efficient buildings. His direct project experience on large-scale Passive House certified or pre-certified projects comprises a wide range of use types such as high rise multifamily, core and shell offices, hotels, and industrial facilities.
Jenny Powell
As a Building Systems Director at Steven Winter Associates, Jenny focuses on LEED Fundamental and Enhanced commissioning projects, as well as commissioning for energy code compliance.
Joe Andracchio
As a Principal Mechanical Engineer and Sustainability Consultant at Steven Winter Associates, Joseph manages both new and existing green building projects throughout the Mid-Atlantic, including LEED Homes and Multifamily Midrise, National Green Building Standard, Enterprise Green Communities, ENERGY STAR and multiple existing building incentive programs.
Michael Schmidt
Michael Schmidt is a Senior Building Systems Consultant with a focus on performance testing, field inspections, and verification of energy efficacy measures on projects pursuing Passive House certification. He consults with project teams throughout design and construction, with early involvement in plan reviews and later final testing to ensure actual performance meets design specifications. His Construction Management education, along with hands-on experience, allows him to collaborate and problem-solve with project teams. Michael is accredited in both the Passive House US (PHIUS) and International (PHI) standards.
Throughout the episode, the group provides some words of wisdom, including how to handle intimidation and animosity in the field, how to maximize time spent traveling from site to site, and more. Lastly, each guest ends the episode by sharing a piece of advice that they wish they had when they started their careers.
SWA is a proud sponsor of this year’s Green Building Showcase Awards Program & Celebration, the premier annual event celebrating the successes of the Massachusetts green building community. Hosted by Built Environment Plus – a membership-based nonprofit driving the sustainable and regenerative design, construction, and operations of the built environment – this year’s showcase will take place October 27th, 2022 at Harvard University’s Science & Engineering Complex – last year’s Green Building of the Year Award winner.
This is a terrific opportunity to support the important work of Built Environment Plus while engaging key practitioners, leaders, advisors, decision-makers, and other stakeholders advancing the sustainability of the built environment. Learn more about the event here.
“The P3 Higher Education Summit examines campus infrastructure challenges faced by colleges and universities nationwide, and how new approaches to procurement, risk, planning, and asset management are helping campus planners and facility managers deliver critical projects nationwide.
Join over 600 college and university representatives, developers, and design-build professionals for two days of project delivery discussions and networking. Check out P3HigherEducation.com to learn more and to register. Opportunities for sponsorship are still available.
Register with code SWINTER for $100 off your registration!
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.
Construction Diaries: Lessons Learned From SWA’s Inspection & Verification Experts
Aug 26, 2022
Featuring
Dylan Martello
Dylan is a Senior Building Systems Consultant and Certified Passive House Designer with Steven Winter Associates, Inc. specializing in Passive House and Net Zero projects. Dylan works with project architects and engineers to assist in the design of extremely energy efficient buildings. His direct project experience on large-scale Passive House certified or pre-certified projects comprises a wide range of use types such as high rise multifamily, core and shell offices, hotels, and industrial facilities.
Jenny Powell
As a Building Systems Director at Steven Winter Associates, Jenny focuses on LEED Fundamental and Enhanced commissioning projects, as well as commissioning for energy code compliance.
Joe Andracchio
As a Principal Mechanical Engineer and Sustainability Consultant at Steven Winter Associates, Joseph manages both new and existing green building projects throughout the Mid-Atlantic, including LEED Homes and Multifamily Midrise, National Green Building Standard, Enterprise Green Communities, ENERGY STAR and multiple existing building incentive programs.
Michael Schmidt
Michael Schmidt is a Senior Building Systems Consultant with a focus on performance testing, field inspections, and verification of energy efficacy measures on projects pursuing Passive House certification. He consults with project teams throughout design and construction, with early involvement in plan reviews and later final testing to ensure actual performance meets design specifications. His Construction Management education, along with hands-on experience, allows him to collaborate and problem-solve with project teams. Michael is accredited in both the Passive House US (PHIUS) and International (PHI) standards.
One of the main drivers behind a successful building project is third-party inspection and verification. This critical, yet often overlooked, step in the construction process is designed to help buildings achieve a desired quality of performance and can also help save project teams substantial time and money along the way.
That being said, the role of an inspector or verifier is not for the faint of heart. They are often scrutinized and even blamed for “slowing progress” following a construction intervention. In reality, these dedicated professionals are actually looking out for the project’s best interest and save time in the long-run by preventing costly repairs. Without them, building performance and occupant health and comfort could be compromised.
In this episode, we invited three inspection and verification professionals from Steven Winter Associates to shed light on the challenges they face while inspecting construction projects. We learn what they look for when they are on site and how they reach solutions with project teams when standards are not being met. This engaging roundtable discussion is a great reminder of just how valuable a third-party inspector can be.
Sponsor
“The P3 Higher Education Summit examines campus infrastructure challenges faced by colleges and universities nationwide, and how new approaches to procurement, risk, planning, and asset management are helping campus planners and facility managers deliver critical projects nationwide.
Join over 600 college and university representatives, developers, and design-build professionals for two days of project delivery discussions and networking. Check out P3HigherEducation.com to learn more and to register. Opportunities for sponsorship are still available.
Register with code SWINTER for $100 off your registration!
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.
Practicing What We Preach: Everyday Solutions for Living a Sustainable Lifestyle
Jul 20, 2022
Featuring
Robb Aldrich
Robb focuses on building energy systems: researching new technologies, monitoring performance, and helping practitioners create better, healthier, more efficient buildings.
Maureen Mahle
As Managing Director of the Sustainable Building Services team at Steven Winter Associates, Maureen leads a multi-faceted team dedicated to providing sustainable design and construction consulting for a variety of project types including community developments, residential, commercial, institutional, and mixed-use buildings.
Andrea Foss
As Sustainability Director at Steven Winter Associates and Washington, DC resident, Andrea leads a multi-faceted team dedicated to providing sustainable design and construction consulting for a variety of project types including community developments, residential and mixed-use buildings.
Gayathri Vijayakumar
Gayathri Vijayakumar is a Principal Mechanical Engineer at Steven Winter Associates, Inc, with over 18 years of experience supporting high-performance multifamily buildings. She graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with a BS in Engineering Science and from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a MS in Mechanical Engineering and a Graduate Certificate in Energy Policy and Management. Gayathri currently provides technical support to the EPA’s Indoor airPLUS program and ENERGY STAR Multifamily New Construction programs. She currently is a voting member of the 2024 IECC Residential Consensus Committee and Chair of RESNET’s Standards Development Committee, SDC300.
We talk a lot about sustainability at a large scale; this typically includes large building projects or grid-level issues, like energy affordability and access to renewables. But how about the small-scale? What type of sustainability initiatives are people passionate about in their everyday lives?
To answer this question, Robb assembled a group of sustainability professionals from Steven Winter Associates and asked them to share some best practices for living a more sustainable lifestyle. Each guest responds with one topic they are passionate about and explains how they turned a common challenge into a sustainable solution.
Here’s the breakdown of topics by guest:
Maureen Mahle – Eliminating combustion and going all-electric [0:03:25]
Andrea Foss – Water conservation in toilets [0:24:15]
Robb Aldrich – Walkability and proximity to transit [0:41:10]
Gayathri Vijayakumar – Duct sealing [0:59:00]
Episode Resources
Eliminating combustion and going all-electric:
Video – Samantha Bee’s take on cooking with gas (with RMI):
“The P3 Higher Education Summit examines campus infrastructure challenges faced by colleges and universities nationwide, and how new approaches to procurement, risk, planning, and asset management are helping campus planners and facility managers deliver critical projects nationwide.
Join over 600 college and university representatives, developers, and design-build professionals for two days of project delivery discussions and networking. Check out P3HigherEducation.com to learn more and to register. Opportunities for sponsorship are still available.
Register with code SWINTER for $100 off your registration!
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.
Charlotte’s Web of Building Electrification Strategies …with Charlotte Matthews
Jun 30, 2022
Featuring
Charlotte Matthews
Charlotte Matthews is the Head of Affordable Electrification at Google. Her career spans building design, construction management, real estate development and tech, always with the goal of finding scalable solutions to reduce the climate impact of buildings.
At Google, Charlotte leads a cross-functional team developing a product to help utilities address the competing pressures of energy affordability and transitioning homes from fossil fuels to clean electricity. Charlotte moved to Google from Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet startup focused on urban sustainability and affordability. Prior to that, Charlotte was the Vice President of Sustainability for Related Companies, a large owner-developer of mixed-use neighborhoods.
Charlotte taught for several years in Columbia University’s Masters in Real Estate Development program and holds a BSc in Environmental Science from Brown University.
Fun fact: Once upon a time, Charlotte Matthews worked for Steven Winter Associates as a Sustainability Consultant!
It’s not every day we get to interview someone with such a diverse background of project experiences. Whether it was working for an architect, developer, construction manager, or tech startup, our guest for this episode has leveraged her passion and expertise as a sustainability professional to come up with some pretty impressive solutions for buildings.
In this episode, Robb and Kelly chat with Charlotte Matthews, Head of Affordable Electrification at Google. Charlotte reflects on her experience working for different firms as a sustainability professional and shares some of the challenges she faced when attempting to improve the operational efficiency of buildings. Throughout the episode, the group discusses why buildings don’t perform as expected, the importance of benchmarking and normalizing, and the impact of dynamic energy pricing.
This episode marks our first ever video podcast! Check it out on SWA’s YouTube page and let us know what you think.
Watch us on YouTube!
We hope the video component brings our listeners closer to the conversation and provides a sneak peak into our lives as building science nerds podcasters. Let us know what you think!
“The P3 Higher Education Summit examines campus infrastructure challenges faced by colleges and universities nationwide, and how new approaches to procurement, risk, planning, and asset management are helping campus planners and facility managers deliver critical projects nationwide.
Join over 600 college and university representatives, developers, and design-build professionals for two days of project delivery discussions and networking. Check out P3HigherEducation.com to learn more and to register. Opportunities for sponsorship are still available.
Register with code SWINTER for $100 off your registration!
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.
(ENCORE) ‘All-Access’ with Peter Stratton
May 05, 2022
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.
** First released in 2018, ‘All-Access’ is the perfect episode for those interested in learning more about accessibility compliance, especially as it pertains to building design, construction, and ownership. Before we dive into the original episode, we learn about a new term called “Inclusive Design” and how it differs from “Universal Design”. **
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.
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.
Robb: the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment
Kelly: by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health.
Robb: I’m Robb Aldrich
Kelly: and I’m Kelly Westby.
Robb: 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: Pete thanks for being here.
Peter: Thanks for having me Robb.
Robb: 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: I’m back now though, I was investigating accessibility in Machu Picchu
Robb: 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: 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: Okay. And the term universal design I hear a lot is that kind of a above and beyond term?
Peter: 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: 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: 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: Okay. So when did it start, when did you start working and when did accessibility requirements come on the books?
Peter: 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: And that was new?
Peter: 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: And there wasn’t overlap? So this was, this was the legislation, not building code.
Peter: 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: Very cool. And is it mostly with developers we’re working with? I mean, what’s the stretch?
Peter: 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: 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: 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: 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: Were talking about nineties?
Peter: we’re talking early nineties, mid nineties. Now a lot has changed, more current additions of the building code. And I’m talking about the international building code way. When all these federal regulations came into play, we didn’t have the international building code. We had a number of different building codes like BOCA or the southern building code, that covered different jurisdictions across the country. Now, for the most part, we have the international building code. And it has chapter 11 accessibility in it.
Peter: And it has, you know, attempted to keep up with the requirements of federal law. There are some editions of the International Building Code, for example, that are approved by HUD as safe harbors for compliance with the design and construction requirements of the Fair Housing Amendments Act, a safe harbor is a document that you can turn to, that when you comply with that document from beginning to end, you essentially comply with the requirements of fair housing.
Robb: And so HUD will review a code and say, all right, this meets all our checklists?
Peter: That’s right. And HUD it has done that, but they stopped at the international building code 2006, and now we’re up to 2018. So Hud is sort of lagging, building codes have progressed.
Robb: And the accessibility requirements, the legislation also have progressed or evolved?
Peter: No, the fair housing amendments act has remained the same. The Americans with Disabilities Act has been updated and there had been criteria that have been updated. But additions of the international building code beyond 2006 have not been approved by HUD as safe harbors for compliance.
Robb: So presumably they didn’t backtrack on their accessibility measures?
Peter: Thats right. I think things have gotten better and the trend is sort of improved accessibility in the building codes for sure, but still not a HUD approved safe harbor. And it’s not that, you know, there’s nothing in the legal ease of the law that tells you that you’ve got to comply with a HUD approved safe harbor.
Robb: Thats just a service really to try to get accessibility into standard practice. Cause I mean developers, builders, have to deal with codes, architects, everybody has to deal with the codes. They know how to deal with the codes. And now you throw up a piece of legislation at them, and it’s like woah.
Peter: I think I would have believed I would have agreed with that statement 20 years ago. But today for an industry key stakeholder to say, “hey look, I’m a little confused at this law” or “I understand my building is not compliant, but you know, I get the building code I’m not really familiar with it.” I think a little bit too late for that. It’s been around for many, many, many, many years at this point. And so, you know, you try to learn and grow and I think what has changed from now to then is that the industry I think realizes now that accessibility really is its own sort of niche practice.
Robb: Right. You have to do it. That’s like efficiency. I mean codes didn’t use to address efficiency. It was, you know, structural safety, fire safety..
Peter: You’ve got to do it right. And you rely on the accessibility consultant just like you would rely on any specialty consultant. The acoustics consultant, right? The landscape consultant, the mechanical consultant, you know, the architect is not developing or designing mechanical systems and is not doing acoustics probably for the most part. So how can you expect an architect to essentially be paid what they’re paid and also understand all of the nuts and bolts of a federal regulation in addition to the building code? I think it’s just way too much.
Robb: Gotcha. So what are some of the nuts and bolts, I mean, what are some of the things that people fail to comply with? Some common things that just requires some extra thought or some extra planning?
Peter: Yeah things people fail to comply with that? That a great question. I think what trips people up and when I see people, I think for the most part, designers or architects and interior designers, speaking as one of those professionals. Yes. And just based on the experience, you know what I see every day. All of the codes, the federal laws, the state laws, local legislation, all have what’s called scoping criteria and technical criteria. So the scoping criteria is what needs to be accessible. For example, how many building entrances are required to be accessible, how many bathrooms are required to be accessible. And then you turn to technical criteria for direction on how to make an entrance accessible. The clear width of the door, you know, maximum opening pressure, maneuvering clearance on both sides, the hardware type, closing speed, all of that. The technical criteria I think are pretty simple. You know, you go to the criteria, you open the book and you follow the steps, the door has to provide a clear with of no less than 32 inches measuring between the face of the door and the opposing stop when the door is open, 90 degrees. That’s simple. I think it’s scoping criteria in terms of how many, how much, that sort of confuses architects and designers. And that’s where we see, I think, the mistakes being made. You know, the building code for example in New York City requires that all public entrances are accessible. Americans with disabilities act requires that 60% of public entrances are accessible. The fair housing amendments act requires that at least one primary entrance be accessible. So if you have a building that is subject to a number of federal requirements, which many are, in addition to building code, you’ve got different scoping requirements and you’ve got different technical requirements to comply with. So it’s understanding what to apply and sort of what governs what rule you’ve got to follow. And so it’s mostly the scoping information. That’s what trips designers up.
Robb: And its not necessarily getting the details right, You know, so something has to be a dimension of x and its dimension of x plus one inches
Peter: I want to say yes, but then again, when I think about it, you know, the devil’s in the details, it’s all about the details really. I think it’s the scoping criteria that just, if you don’t iron out the scoping criteria, how many and what, right at the onset, and you can continue to design the project very difficult to correct, you’ve got yourself in a hole. When it comes to the technical criteria, you know, bevels on thresholds, maximum threshold height, clear width at doors. There’s lots that we’d need to think about in order to meet the technical requirements. So to say that a 32 inch door needs to provide a clear width of 32 inches, does a 210 door work? Should you default to a 36 inch door because you have a different or an odd hinge on a 210 door, so the devil is in the details. Certainly.
Robb: So have the requirements, I don’t know if hinges is a good example, but has the legislation evolved to kind of make these requirements more practical, more buildable or, or I mean I think I’ve heard someone talk about like ranges and you know, used to mandate a dimension of x, now it’s a dimension of x plus or minus an inch or something to have some wiggle room
Peter: yes, the criteria have, the requirements have, definitely progressed, not as fast as the law itself, you know, so we’ve got technical standards that change and develop every so many years. A federal regulation does not do that. The law stays in place. The technical criteria changed over time. That said though, the Americans with Disabilities Act has recently been updated, but the fair housing amendments act has not been updated and either have other federal laws. So although the laws can change, they primarily stay the same, and it’s the technical criteria that change. So what was required by a technical standard in 1998 is very different than the same technical standard, which is now dated, latest one in 2009, 2017 coming onboard. So, there are committees that develop these criteria’s, you know, they also learn as we build over time.
Peter: And so one of the things that we often hear is, you know, is there any tolerance? you know, the requirement is 18 inches, a distance of 18 inches between the center line of a toilet and the adjacent side wall for example. It’s very tough to meet that hard line 18 and construction, right? Construction is not a perfect science. So the criteria have moved away from that hard line of 18 and now contemplate a range of between 16 and 18, which is much easier to comply with. Right. Much more builder friendly and much more practical. I’d say. And so that’s where we are with the criteria.
Robb: So with, with projects that go well, I mean that you’re involved in, I kind of assume it’s kind of a soup to nuts process being involved with designers early on and, and through construction and verifying after construction
Peter: So it runs the gamut. If we could have our wish of course it would be to be involved, at schematic design. So we can advise on the direction that the designer is going in terms of designing the units. Normally we provide two comprehensive reviews, but we don’t only stop at the architectural review, right. we’re reviewing all the plan sets, mechanical, electrical, plumbing and architectural. So it’s just not the spaces.
Robb: what on mechanical? What are you have to inspect mechanical drawings for?
Peter: So We’re looking, for example, for information on thermostats, which you usually find. We’re looking at height. Often times there are chase walls, which obstruct into maneuvering cones at doors, for example. It’s all the mechanical chases, plumbing chases, you know, there are a whole variety of things.
Robb: Are you saying mechanical engineers might draw ducks where they might interfere with somebody?
Peter: Sometimes, I think it’s more likely though that we might have a plumbing set that’s misaligned or that doesn’t align with the architectural set. So for example, in a bathtub, in a bathroom or a shower, we’ll see the architect has designed the control wall, whether operable parts to the shower and the top is. The plumbing set may have the same controls but on an opposing wall. And so we often find that the plan sets are not aligned.
Robb: Alright so They’re just trying to minimize their plumbing rounds, they’re trying to make it practical for them.
Peter: Right, well The architect put the controls on an exterior wall and then in the plumbing, they go from the exterior wall right to an interior wall. And so the building is now constructed with the plumbing on the interior wall because that’s the plumbing set. Cause they pull the plumbing set and that’s what they are building from. But there’s a reason why the architect put the plumbing controls on the exterior wall. Gotcha. And so when you bust stop plumbing controls or control locations, that’s very difficult to fix if sometimes not possible at all.
Robb: So, so people are doing better in general? I mean people are catching on?
New Speaker: I think people are doing better in general. Yes. You know, years ago it was difficult to convince a design team that they should have their plans reviewed and they should have construction inspected along the way during various stages of construction, which is what we do. But I think people have learned the hard way sometimes. As you know, sometimes the hard way. Yes. Certainly. I think what’s important to realize is that when we’re talking about, you know, designing and constructing multifamily housing, if the building is not built in compliance with the design and construction requirements of the fair housing amendments act, you are violating someone’s civil rights and to violate a building code is one thing to violate civil right is a different thing. And that’s why you hear about so much litigation that surrounds noncompliance with the Fair Housing Amendments Act. We used to hear years ago the developer say, we rely on the architect to get this right, they’re the design professional, why do I need to hire a separate accessibility consultant? But they have since learned that they probably shouldn’t rely only on the architect. There are certainly architects that are very great at it. But again it’s a very specialized field. it certainly is.
Robb: So if we were to talk again in five years, what do you think we’d be talking about? What would have changed?
Peter: Wow. Five years from now? I would say that based on the trend that we are seeing now, and you know, our group here at Steven Winter Associates has grown pretty significantly over a very short number of years. The work is certainly coming in at a good rate. I think that we might see in five years, probably less of an uptick in litigation. And hopefully that’s as a result of people retaining accessibility, the consultants that do work like us. Gatta give it the old Clark, Rob.
Robb: Yeah, absolutely. Getting it right the first time. And I’ve gone through the hard way. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that’s, I think you started out as a more on the litigation side and they’ve really tried to migrate more and more with builders and developers and designers to get it right.
Peter: You got, it definitely started on the litigation side, you know, and when we started, litigation was the only way, you know, to hurt someone in the pocket is the way to get them to learn. And so that was the sort of the press, in terms of enforcement at that time. And at that time, the model of course was cases that involved, the complaints against the industry- architects, developers, and, you know, we today, our model is to work on behalf of industry and to help industry navigate litigation should it make its way into litigation. And that’s what all of our litigation projects now involve, you know, helping industry navigate litigation. And I think that starting in litigation has enabled us to have a very keen sense of how decisions are made that surround particular issues. You know, what the court might sort of be lenient on, what the court might press, what happens in New York City versus same litigation outside of New York City. What happens in a jurisdiction when attorney Xyz is involved in the case versus the same type of litigation that doesn’t involve this particular attorney. And so we’ve learned that as a result of the business. I think that’s the value that we bring.
Robb: All right. Nice. Anything else? Any other big picture accessibility points?
Peter: pig picture, accessibility points? Uh, not that I can think of offhand, Rob, of course, we might need to do a better job in getting this particular office a little bit more accessible, but you know, this is radio and we can’t see that.
Robb: You could send me some notes so I’ll get right on it. Thanks Pete. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast And check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services. Do you improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings I production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Building Operations and Training with Jonathan Rodnite and Adam Romano
Apr 10, 2022
Featuring
Jonathan Rodnite
I am the Assistant Chief Engineer of 125 Park Avenue with 10 years of commercial and real estate experience. I started as a handyman in 2012 and my career goal is to become a Director of Engineering. My passion for this business has driven me to pursue additional classes at the Local 94 Training Center with the goal of becoming an instructor. I want to encourage the current and future generation of Local 94 engineers to elevate their performance with a deep understanding of operational efficiencies by way of hands on experience.
Adam Romano
Adam Romano is a Principle Building Systems Consultant with Steven Winter Associates. Adam possesses over 17 years’ experience in the building science field and has extensive experience with new and existing buildings. His work at SWA focuses on building performance analysis, conducting energy audits and commissioning, design and implementation of high-performance HVAC systems, and instructional design and training delivery.
Ever wonder who is responsible for ensuring the performance of a building? Yes, designers and contractors can have a significant impact during construction, but once the building is complete, it’s the building operators and maintenance staff that have the greatest influence on the operational efficiency of large buildings. As a result, these boots on the ground professionals play a critical role in our fight against climate change.
In this episode, Kelly chats with Jonathan Rodnite and Adam Romano, two engineers who represent two interconnected and vital practices of building operations—maintenance and training. Both Jonathan and Adam share their perspectives on the importance of operator training, provide advice to listeners who may be interested in joining the workforce, and recount their favorite stories from the field.
Recommended book from Jonathan – “How To Win Friends & Influence People” by Dale Carnegie
“It’s not only applicable to improving your career but great life advice as well” – Jonathan
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.
The Economics of Developing Sustainable Buildings with Christina McPike
Feb 03, 2022
Featuring
Christina McPike
Christina McPike is the Director of Energy & Sustainability at WinnCompanies, a Boston based, 50-year-old multifamily housing owner, developer, and manager. Since joining Winn’s Energy & Sustainability team in 2013, Ms. McPike has implemented over $50 million worth of energy efficiency upgrades across Winn’s portfolio. Under Ms. McPike’s leadership, WinnDevelopment successfully integrates high performance design in every project, from occupied moderate renovations to historic adaptive reuse projects to ground up new construction. Ms. McPike is a Lifetime member of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association. She holds an M.S. degree from Northeastern University and a B.A. from Boston College.
If you’re like us, you want to hear from someone who not only talks the talk but walks the walk. Our guest for this episode is the perfect example of this: she has the experience of a developer and the expertise of a sustainability guru – a perspective that is hard to find.
Christina McPike is the Director of Energy and Sustainability at WinnCompanies, a 50-year-old multifamily housing owner, developer, and manager. Christina provides an insightful look into the energy market, and shares the trends, incentives, and opportunities that have stemmed from recent carbon mandates for buildings. She also describes the details of one of Winn’s most ambitious projects – an all-electric deep energy retrofit in Boston – and discusses the programs her team leveraged that made the project economical.
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.
Venting About Ventilation, Heat Pumps, and Net Zero with the Buildings+Beyond Team
Jan 07, 2022
Featuring
Robb Aldrich
Robb focuses on building energy systems: researching new technologies, monitoring performance, and helping practitioners create better, healthier, more efficient buildings.
Kelly Westby
As Director of the Building Operations, Decarbonization, and Efficiency team at Steven Winter Associates, Kelly has worked with building owners, developers, contractors, and design teams to improve building performance throughout the east coast. She has a wide range of experience in building science, energy efficiency retrofits, commissioning, and building decarbonization.
Dylan Martello
Dylan is a Senior Building Systems Consultant and Certified Passive House Designer with Steven Winter Associates, Inc. specializing in Passive House and Net Zero projects. Dylan works with project architects and engineers to assist in the design of extremely energy efficient buildings. His direct project experience on large-scale Passive House certified or pre-certified projects comprises a wide range of use types such as high rise multifamily, core and shell offices, hotels, and industrial facilities.
Alex Mirabile
Alex Mirabile is a Marketing Coordinator at Steven Winter Associates (SWA) and a recent graduate from the University of New Hampshire. His responsibilities at SWA span a wide range of the company’s marketing efforts including social media management, event planning, and writing for external publications. During his time at UNH, Alex graduated with a B.S. in Environmental Conservation and Sustainability and served as a member of the New Hampshire Sustainable Energy Association (NHSEA).
Sometimes it’s good to vent. Well, if you ask a Passive House expert, it’s always good to vent. So, that’s exactly what we did for this episode.
Based on popular demand, the Buildings and Beyond team took a more informal approach to this month’s episode and gathered for a roundtable discussion. With a mix of backgrounds and expertise, we came to the table with a different topic and shared our thoughts, findings, and of course, did some venting…
Here are the topics we discussed:
Kelly – Ventilation [3:05]
Robb – Electrifying domestic water heating [18:45]
Dylan – All-electric commercial kitchens [35:00]
Alex – Backup power generation in a zero-carbon world [49:45]
The Passive House Network is a national 501(c)3 nonprofit, that provides Passive House education to building professionals across the United States, and supports a community of knowledge-sharing, in collaboration with regional and international Passive House organizations.
Formerly known as the North American Passive House Network (NAPHN) – this past year, in 2021 – NAPHN became simply The Passive House Network, or PHN, with a focus on reinforcing the connections between regional and global capacities.
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.
What Should a Degree in Sustainability Look Like? with Patrick Hossay
Dec 09, 2021
Featuring
Patrick Hossay, PhD
Patrick Hossay is Professor and founding Chair of the Sustainability department and Energy Studies program at Stockton University. He jokingly states that his eclectic training has made him ideally suited as a professor of sustainability, but not much else, with advanced degrees, training and experience in engineering, technology, political science, and history. He is the author of multiple books and articles in diverse fields, including social science, history, environmental science, and engineering; and has taught and conducted research in renewable energy, environmental policy, natural resource management, sustainable communities, and international development. He currently works and teaches in renewable energy, green buildings, automotive technology, green vehicle innovations, and sustainable design. Hossay has worked for more than two decades as a consultant on international development projects and municipal planning, and currently consults and advises regionally in the energy and design fields. He is also an experienced and licensed aircraft and automotive mechanic, and restores classic cars and motorcycles in his off time.
A degree in sustainability can mean many things. Sure, you can develop a focus, but how does an undergraduate program truly prepare you to become a professional in such a broad and complex topic? To learn more about what an undergraduate degree in sustainability should look like, we looked to Stockton University’s Patrick Hossay.
Patrick was recommended to us by various colleagues of ours who were fortunate enough to go through his sustainability program. Influenced by Patrick’s eclectic background, the program takes an interdisciplinary approach to education, requiring students to master a variety of topics that they may face as future sustainability professionals.
In addition to learning about Stockton’s unique degree program, Patrick and “Buildings and Beyond” host Robb take a trip down memory lane and share their experience as students. They also discuss the value of trades, which Patrick believes is being hampered by the growing belief that everyone “must” go to college.
Episode Information & Resources
About Stockton’s Sustainability Program
Stockton University’s Sustainability program offers BS and BA degrees that allow students to concentrate their studies in Renewable Energy, Agroecology, Environmental Policy or Sustainability Management, and gain hands-on practical training along with a broad interdisciplinary education.
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.
Designing the World’s First Passive House Car Dealership with Andrew Peel
Nov 04, 2021
Featuring
Andrew Peel
Andrew Peel is the Founder & Managing Principal of Peel Passive House Consulting. Andrew’s primary areas of expertise are in low-carbon buildings and renewable energy. His professional and academic experience ranges from consultancy, program management, authoring technical and non-technical articles, course and lecture delivery, and technical research. Andrew provides Passive House and sustainability consultancy, certification, and training services to the building sector. Prior to forging out on his own, Andrew worked in a variety of capacities in Europe. These included managing the innovative carbon-saving technologies scheme and the Energy Saving Trust’s Best Practice Helpline. He also managed and delivered Passive House, Code for Sustainable Homes, wind turbine development, and thermal modelling projects as well as organizing Passive House study tours. Further activities included contributing to the development of the UK government’s housing energy calculation methodology (SAP) and the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP). Read more
The Passive House standard has been applied to some extraordinary building projects to date. From single family and high-rise residential to industrial and commercial buildings, building professionals have adopted the Passive House approach to improve occupant health and comfort, and reduce energy use (in some cases up to 90%!). That’s why when we heard about the world’s first certified Passive House car dealership, we knew we found our next podcast guest.
On this episode, Kelly chats with Andrew Peel from Peel Passive House Consulting to discuss one of his favorite (and most challenging) projects to date: a Passive House-certified Subaru dealership in Alberta, Canada.
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.
The Role of Heat Pumps in Low-Moderate Income Homes with Jon Harrod
Oct 06, 2021
Featuring
Jon Harrod
Jon Harrod, Ph.D., is a contractor, author and electrification advocate. In 2006 he founded Snug Planet, an award-winning home performance company based in Ithaca NY. From its initial focus on energy audits and envelope improvements, Snug Planet has grown to offer whole-home solutions, including moisture management and HVAC upgrades. Snug Planet is an active participant in New York State residential programs serving low-income and market-rate customers. In early 2022, Snug Planet will be merging with Halco Energy, one of the largest home performance contractors in New York. Jon is certified by the Building Performance Institute as a Building Analyst, Envelope Professional, Heating Professional, and AC/Heat Pump Professional. Jon’s articles have appeared in Home Energy Magazine, Journal of Extension, Building Performance Journal; and ASHRAE Journal. He is a regular contributor to Green Building Advisor.
The electrification of buildings is considered to be a primary strategy for reducing carbon emissions and kicking fossil fuels. Luckily, due to advancements in technology and carefully developed best practices, heat pumps may be a driving force in helping us to achieve our all-electric goals. But when do heat pumps make sense? As we know, there’s no one-size-fits-all application.
On this episode, Robb chats with Jon Harrod about the feasibility of heat pumps in low-moderate income homes. John shares some important factors to consider when evaluating heat pumps, such as construction type, geographic location, project financing, and more.
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.
A Framework for Equity and Buildings with Kathryn Wright
Sep 16, 2021
Featuring
Kathryn Wright
Kathryn Wright joined USDN in February 2020 as the Programs Director for Building Energy. In her role, Kathryn oversees the network’s strategic direction and innovation work in the built environment. Prior to USDN, Kathryn led Cadmus’ Sustainable Communities and Organizations practice. In this role, she focused on helping local and state governments plan and implement greenhouse gas reduction and resilience strategies. Illustrative work includes leading stakeholder engagement for the development and refinement of performance requirements for Boston’s disclosure ordinance, preparing research to support the City of Cambridge’s roadmap for resilient and equitable renewable thermal deployment across its community and serving as the Project Director for Massachusetts’ 2030 Climate Plan and 2050 Roadmap. Prior to Cadmus, Kathryn held a fellowship at the Center for Business and Environment at Yale and the Connecticut Green Bank focused on helping cities and towns increase distributed solar deployment. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the New Buildings Institute. She holds Bachelors degrees from the University of Pittsburgh in Marketing and Environmental Science and a Masters from Yale in Environmental Management. Read more
As building professionals and policymakers, it is our responsibility to integrate equity into our work. But how do we ensure equity is being addressed in a comprehensive manner? Fortunately, the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) has developed a framework for local government decision makers to serve as a guide for ensuring equity in the built environment.
On this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with USDN’s Program Director for Building Energy, Kathryn Wright. Kathryn summarizes some of the concepts and practices highlighted in the framework and explains how her personal experiences drove her to improve equity in buildings.
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.
(ENCORE) Why is Kitchen Ventilation So Important? With Dr. Iain Walker from LBNL
Aug 03, 2021
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
We first released this episode in April 2019. Since then, our topic of discussion with Iain has only become more relevant. We recently caught up with Iain and have some updates to share, which are reflected in the resources below and at the end of the episode. Enjoy!
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.
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.
Robb: (00:00) It’s summer 2021. And we have a couple of new guests lined up for our August episode, but scheduling and vacations just didn’t work out. So we are posting an episode from a couple of years ago where Kelly talked with Iain Walker about kitchen ventilation. We all really liked this episode and it’s really relevant to anyone who cooks or lives with someone who cooks. We reached out to Iain about any new developments on this front and I’ll recap what he had to say at the end and the outro. And we also have some new links in the show notes for more information. So here’s Kelly’s conversation with Iain Walker.
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 hood, you’ll see this sort of metal grate and so it might stop some of the grease getting circulated your kitchen, But for the other stuff, it doesn’t do much. So first of all, you need to have something that vents to outside. If it’s just blowing back and greasing your forehead, then I’m ambivalent about whether you use it or not. It’s totally up to you. But I don’t think it’s doing very much. So As long as vents to outside, the first thing is to turn it on. And even the very worst hood is going to be better than not using it. So even if you think you have a bad one, try using it. The next thing is, if we’re talking now about a cooktop that’s up against the wall with a hood above it also mounted on the wall, they always do better at capturing from the burners at the back than the front. So if you can cook on the back burners it’s going to be way better. Of course, that’s also the most awkward way to cook. And so most people cook on the front burners for convenience. And so it’s always gonna be a personal tradeoff, but certainly using the back burners is going to be better for your range hood for getting it to to capture what’s on the cooktop. So even if you do nothing in your kitchen, you can at least turn it on and cook on the back burners. And, and that’s, that’s a big step forward.
Kelly: (08:18) Awesome. That’s great. That’s great advice. And then I guess taking the next step, if I’ve maybe convinced my partner that we should decide to renovate our kitchen and we maybe have some renovation budget now, what should we look at or what should we talk to our builder about?
Iain: (08:36) So here you’re talking about how do I pick my new range hood effectively? And there’s a couple of things you can do, that when you’re browsing through catalogs or you’re at the hardware store looking at these things. One is to simply look at the physical geometry of the hood. And the key thing is, does it come out far enough from the wall to cover all the burners? And basically the further out from the wall it comes, the more coverage it has generally speaking, the better it will perform. And this is just a simple sort of common sense exercise. If you imagine the hot air and the hot balloon that’s coming off your cooking it, it basically is going upwards. And if the hood doesn’t come out and cover that part of the cooktop, you can imagine that sort of hot air and plume and all the moisture and everything, it just goes in the kitchen and doesn’t get captured. It’s sort of a straightforward geometry thing. So if you can pick one that’s larger that that covers more of the cooktop area, that’s better. The other thing you’re deciding is what height to mount it at and you might think, well, the lower I get the better. Right? But that’s not always true. There’s sort of a range of mounting heights where we get reasonable performance. But you’re often going to be restricted by the cabinets that you choose also. And there are stock cabinet sizes that kind of limit your options there if you’re remodeling. But we usually want to aim for a height above the cooktop of something like 24 to 30 inches, if you will. That’s sort of measuring to the bottom of the hood. And it turns out that most modern kitchens with typical cabinetry, they’re going to have something in that sort of range.
Iain: (10:31) If you’re using a microwave device, though, that that’s kind of different. The ones with the built in microwave tend to be mounted lower, for starters, and some of that simply because they are physically deeper top to bottom, right. If you’re mounting them under the same cabinet in your kitchen, it comes down lower. They also tend to not stick out very far and that means that they don’t have the greatest performance, honestly. And also they tend to suck air not just from underneath where the cooking is happening, but they often have vents around the top and the sides. And that’s what I would call more like general kitchen ventilation. So they are exhausting air but it’s from the kitchen, It’s not from directly over the cooking, So they’re less effective in that sense. So these microwave devices, sure you free up some counter space, but they are less effective as exhaust hoods for, for your cooking. Although I realize the popular in people liked them. So I would not say never install one, but you should understand that it’s not going to be quite as good as one that doesn’t have a microwave stuck in it.
Kelly: (11:35) Just consider your alternatives in that case.
New Speaker: (11:38) Right. And the last thing is that there are some ratings for hoods that are put out by an organization called the home ventilating institute or HVI and anyone could go to HVI.org and look at their ratings. And one of the key aspects of the ratings is to look at the the sound level, how noisy they are. Because in our research we found that as you can imagine, if a range hood is too noisy, people use it less particularly in a, in a modern kitchen, which has no wall between you and the dining room or living room. Like most modern homes are this open plan layout and the ferociously loud range hood, you can’t use it if you’re trying to watch television or the family’s trying to eat and have a conversation or something. It doesn’t work. Right. So you can try and look for quieter hoods. And in the future, those ratings are going to become a bit more advanced. And what they’re going to do is they’re going to start including something that we’re probably going to talk about for a couple of minutes here, which is something called capture efficiency, which is a rating for how well the cooking contaminants are captured and exhausted by the device. That’s not available yet. But a year from now when you’re shopping you should be able to pick a higher capture efficiency rated device also for exhausting your kitchen.
Kelly: (12:59) Great. And can you dive into that a little bit? You’ve been doing some research on what the capture efficiency is of current range hoods. What does that look like from what you’ve seen in the market now?
Iain: (13:13) Sure. So maybe I should define what we mean by capture efficiency first. Basically what capture efficiency is about is, when you emitting stuff from your cooking, what fraction of that get sucked into the range hood and blown directly to outside? So a poor range might say it only captures a third of all those cooking contaminants and it’s capture efficiency would be 33% or about a third. A very good range hood might capture 80 or 90%. So almost all of the cooking contaminants get sucked into the range hood and blown outside. And so capture efficiency is that rating that says how much of what I’m emitting from my cooking gets blown to outside. And we’ve done lots of experiments both in the laboratory at LBNL and also going out to people’s homes and testing, and there’s a huge range of performance for capture efficiency. And I touched on some of this earlier. It depends a bit on the geometry. You know, the physical dimensions of the hood in terms of how well it actually covers the cooktop. But as you listeners might imagine, often you have a switch that that changes the fan speed on your hood. And as you increase the fan speed, more and more air flows through it, the capture efficiency goes up. So you get the best capture efficiency at the highest flow rate. Unfortunately, that also tends to be the noisiest way to operate it. So there’s going to be a trade off in your kitchen, about how much noise can I stand. Generally the higher speed, the higher the airflow, the greater the noise and the better you will capture things. And at lower speeds, maybe you can still carry on a conversation, but it’s not capturing so well. And we have developed basically a standardized test method for this that is going to be adopted by HVI and other organizations so that everybody tests the same way. So that, you know, we standardize on things like what is the heat output of the burner that you’re looking at, and what method do you use to measure this capture efficiency and we’re using a tracer gas system for doing this. But it’s all in a very standardized, very controlled way. So all the test labs will get the same result if they test the same device in the same way. It’s all been engineered out to be very, very consistent. And theres several other test labs in the country that have been trying out this test method and also some European test labs also because we think that this way of rating for capture efficiency will probably find its way into international standards as well as being used here in the U.S.
Kelly: (16:03) That’s great. So you’re working on that now. But can you talk a little bit about some of the other things that we can look for? You know, if I’m going to buy my range hood tomorrow, you spoke about noise and flow rate. What would you prescribe if I was going out and looking to pick something tomorrow?
Iain: (16:25) If you’re picking something tomorrow, there’s sort of the minimum flow rate below which the devices don’t work particularly well. And some minimum flow rates are actually put into ventilation standards. For example, the U.S. National standard for ventilation says that the minimum flow rate should be 100 cubic feet per minute as a minimum flow rate. So if you’re looking at the flows that you’re going to get for your range hood you want to at least beat that minimum. Of course that’s the minimum, you can always do better. And if it was me picking a flow, I’d want to have at least 150, maybe 200 cfm as sort of the minimum flow rating that I would operate at. It’s a little complicated by the fact that almost all range of type of switch that lets you change the speed and change the flow, right? And on the very lowest flow, they might not be having that 100 cfm, but you probably get that on the medium. And then on the high flow rate you get up to 150 or 200 for a typical device. So you know, there’s always going to be a range of flows at the, at the more extreme end though for high end kitchens we see devices that are essentially looking at look like they should be in a commercial kitchen. Whether air flows are several CFM, maybe six, 700 cubic feet per minute. So like five times or six times what the minimum is. And that, that all seems like, hey, that should be awesome, right? Because now I’m going to get really good capture efficiency and all that sort of stuff, which could be true. But you pay a price in terms of noise for a start.These tend to be noisy to move all that air and the fact that all the air has to come into your house somewhere else, right? All the air that goes out comes in somewhere. And at the very high flow rates, that can be a difficult thing to manage for your home, and you can easily run into comfort issues. For example, if you lived somewhere cold and it’s winter time, all that extra cold air coming in has to be heated, which is, you know, going to cost you some energy. And if you have what we call makeup air, which has a deliberate duct to bring that air in, you have to be careful about where that air comes in. Because if you don’t heat it up in the winter, you get a horrible cold draft on people, so these very high end, very fancy higher flow devices bring a whole world of problems with them that currently the industry is not dealing with very well I would say. And it’s important when you’re picking these things to be aware that it’s not so simple as buying the biggest thing you can and turning it on, there are other consequences that we have to deal with when we do that, but that’s only for these very large, very high end devices. For your more typical thing that you might put in your kitchen, those higher air flows are less of a concern because they simply don’t move that much air.
Kelly: (19:22) Right. Compared to the overall building size?
Iain: (19:24) correct, yes. Well it’s not so much building size. It has to do with things like if you are living a very energy efficient home, they tend to be what we call very airtight homes. In other words, they don’t have very many leaks in the building to let air in or out. And if you have one of these very big exhaust fans, often they will actually move a lot less air than they say, cause it’s simply so hard to suck the air in through the very tight shell of the home. And sometimes we also have concerns about what about if you have a water heater in your house that takes its combustion air from your home? So this is not a sealed off unit. It’s not outside or in a garage or anything, It’s actually in the home with you, and that there are plenty of homes that have this, right. If you exhaust too much, you might pull the exhaust from the water heater into the house with you. So, you know, all of those combustion products that I talked about from the cooking, from your water heater, are coming in the house, which is, you know, water vapor and particles and, and carbon dioxide.All sorts of stuff. So there are some issues that we do have to think about if we install very, very large exhaust systems in homes that have what we call these natural draft combustion applIainces in the home with them. I will say though that there are tests you can do to make sure that those devices are not overpowering the ability of your say water heater to draft properly. Organizations like the building performance institute and others have got, you know, test test protocols to, to evaluate this sort of thing. But, but again, I would argue for keeping your life simple and not buying a gigantic hood with a lot of flow, and going with something more moderate.
Kelly: (21:23) Right. Yeah. And actually it’s interesting anecdotally obviously, but I’m up in Vermont this week and we have a lot of fireplaces and we actually had a situation the other night where the fireplace was running and somebody went into the bathroom and turned the fan on that’s integrated with the light switch. And there was a series of circumstances that made it such that we back drafted from the, the fireplace and smoke kind of came into the room.
Iain: (21:59) Yes, it’s, it’s a real issue and it can happen and we should avoid it if we can. And again, I think this is an argument for using a more moderate airflow for your kitchen range hood if you can, and I realized that sometimes these are lifestyle decisions, not building science decisions and who am I to decide I can only, I can only advise people to avoid bad situations.
Kelly: (22:24) Right. Of course. It’s one perspective of the whole construction game.
Iain: (22:29) Well, I mean this is often the case when we talk about people’s homes is that a lot of the things in a home are inter-linked in these ways, right? The exhaust from the kitchen does great things to get rid of the contaminants in the kitchen, but we have to make sure we’re not messing up the home somewhere else.
Kelly: (22:48) Right. That’s an excellent point. Thinking about that everything that you’re doing in the home as a full system. And what’s the impact on the whole system?
Iain: (22:57) That’s right. Your house is a system is sort of a something we often say.
Kelly: (23:01) And and were the building doctors or something
Iain: (23:06) Possibly. And as any good doctor, we always have to firstly do no harm, right? We have to make sure that the things we do don’t end up making things worse. Right? But it’s a, it’s important thing but, but, but generally for most circumstances, you’re a moderately sized kitchen exhaust hood is not going to create very many problems in your home unless, and I s as I say, there are exceptions, but you know, some of this is becoming less and less important. This might be aside, but it’s certainly with thinking about, that most high-performance homes these days, they don’t have these gas fueled applIainces that are actually using the air from the house. They’re either using what we call sealed combustion and most high efficiency furnaces. They’re taking their combustion air from outside through its own little duct.
Iain: (23:58) It gets burned and then the flume goes back outside again. And that furnace isn’t communicating with your home in any way. And so it doesn’t really matter very much if you depressurize the house was an exhaust fan because that furnace is not communicating with the home. Or if you have a, an all electric home with say, heat pumps for heating and cooling and for hot water, then again, you don’t have to worry about it. But, but, but you crazy folks that want to burn wood in a fireplace. I mean there are solutions there too. I mean, again, in a high performance home, a good idea is to have what we call her a sealed fireplace. Where the fireplace is taking its combustion air from outside burning the word and then the, yeah, the smoke and everything goes back outside again and it’s not communicating with your home. And often these things will have, they have a, you know, a nice glass front on them so you can see the flames and the warmth comes through. But you couldn’t reach out your hand and touch the flames. But older homes, you know, like the one I live in, I don’t have that. I just have an open fireplace because I live in California so I can’t use it very often. But you know, you take your chances.
Kelly: (25:10) Yeah, those are great points. Circling us back to the kitchen a little bit and cause I think that this is actually of interest to a lot of people. And not exactly kitchen hood exhaust but the cooker itself. So can you talk a little bit about our cooktop options and what your thoughts are on those?
Iain: (25:29) Definitely. So, so they broadly fall into three categories if you want to do some cooking, right. There is a gas burner. There’s what we call an electric resistance element. That’s usually the spiral thing. You can see that glows red hot. And the third one is what’s called an induction cooktop where there’s nothing that gets hot and instead an induction field is induced in your metallic Cook Pot and the pot is heated directly rather than having gas be burned or a hot spiral element. And they are quite a bit different in terms of what happens when you turn them on. And the gas cooking is the one that produces the most contaminants because when you burn natural gas, you get a lot of water vapor which you need to control. There are also lots of particles generated, which are a health concern, oxides of nitrogen that again are a health concern and possibly some other volatile organic compounds that come from the combustion process. And so there’s more contaminants produced the gas cooking than the other ways. So the hot electric element is sort of halfway in between it. We’re not burning anything anymore. So we don’t actually produce any water vapor or oxides of nitrogen, but you never can get those heating elements so clean that they don’t admit some particles, and the particle emission is not as high as burning the natural gas, but there’s still plenty of small particles emitted when you use electric cooking. And finally the induction cooktop because effectively there isn’t something that’s super duper hot. You need heat to volatilize things to create the particles, it creates by far the least particles. It doesn’t create any water vapor, no oxides of nitrogen. So if you’re looking to cook in a healthy way that isn’t healthy because the food you’re cooking is healthy, but because you’re not putting contaminants in the air, an induction cooked up is definitely the way to go in all our testing and testing that other people have done, Induction cooking is definitely the cleanest. There is one other thing to think about though, and that is the oven and we don’t really have induction ovens per se, right? They usually either electric or gas and again, you sort of have the same breakdown where gas is going to produce the most particles and so on and, and the electric less so. They, they can be a little trickier when we’re thinking about venting. When we talk about the capture efficiency for hoods, we’re just looking at what happens on the cooktop. We’ve not looked at including in the rating what happens from the oven. And some of that is because the way the ovens are vented depends on a lot on the particular construction of the oven you’re using or the range that you’re using and where the hot air comes out. Sometimes it’s at the back, sometimes at the front, sometimes it’s a bit of both. And so it was sort of hard to standardize a way to think about capturing from the oven. But even if you’re not using the cooktop and you’re baking some bread or something, it’s still a good idea to turn on your exhaust hood because you’re still getting contaminants emitted into your kitchen. Maybe not as much as a very, very hot stir fry. Right? But they’re still there and you should still vent them. And maybe you just, you just leave it on low or something and do that. So it’s, it’s an important point to notice that, you know, when you’re cooking in the oven, things get emitted too, and the last thing I’ll say about this is sometimes in very, very fancy high end kitchens, you might have multiple ovens and maybe you have a cooktop with an oven underneath it with a hood over it. But on the wall next to it is a second oven. Well it’s not underneath the range hood anymore, but that’s okay because once again, turning your range hood on, it’s also ventilating the whole kitchen. Right. And it’s stopping the pollutants from traveling from your kitchen to other places in the home because as you exhaust out of the kitchen, the air has to come from somewhere and that airflow into the kitchen tends to control the transport of these contaminants around your house. And so even if what you’re doing isn’t directly under the hood, when you turn on the hood, you’re still sucking air out of the kitchen and ventilating the kitchen and moving those contaminants. It’s not as efficient as it is when it’s directly over the cook top, but it’s still something that’s worthwhile. And indeed, there are many other kitchen ventilation approaches that don’t use a range with per se. Right. Sometimes there’s just a fan in the wall or a fan in the ceiling that exhausts the whole room. And again, they work, they’re just not as efficient as a range hood and in order to get to the same levels of contaminants in the kitchen, if you just generally ventilating in the kitchen, you have to ventilate a lot more than if it’s just the range hood, and so those are less effective but it’s not like it has zero effect.
Kelly: (30:52) Right. Great Point. Yeah. So thank you. There’s a lot of key takeaways here. I would say some of my top ones are number one, use your exhaust fan. Number two, vent it to the outside directly. And my number three is I should get an induction stove so I can make a bacon cheeseburger and call it healthy cooking.
Iain: (31:21) I wouldn’t, I’m not sure I’m going to agree completely with your point number three about whether what you’re eating is healthy, but in terms of what you were emitting and what you’re breathing. It might be slightly healthier. And, you know, I’m not against gas cooking, I cook with gas myself, right. But I use my range at a lot. And I understand that, that there are people that have, they love to cook and they have an affinity for using gas and I’m never going to tell them to not do it right. But I’m gonna tell them, you know, the air in your kitchen is going to have less contaminants if you use the induction, I mean I think my next cooktop will be induction even though I like to cook a lot.
Kelly: (32:03) All right, good to know. So, we like to ask this, if we have you back on the podcast in five years, maybe 10 years, what will we be talking about then? Besides how awesome your induction cooktop is
Iain: (32:20) I think we’ll be talking about a couple of things. I think that the design of range hoods is going to get better. And by that I mean we’ll get the same amount of the contaminants captured and exhausted from the kitchen at a lower air flow. And I like that because it means it’ll be quieter, which people are much more likely to use their hoods. And it means that if we move less air that’s less air we have to heat up or cool down, you know, that goes in and out of the house. And so that’s going to be something that I think we’re gonna see the range of manufacturers looking into. The next thing is, is, is automation, which is, you know, we made this point about range, that it only works if it’s turned on right. But once we have got good designs that capture well and arent noisy because they move less air or else theyre better aerodynamic designs, then I think we can move down the path of let’s automate these devices so they will sense that you’re cooking and turn on automatically and they’re likely to turn on at, at a low airflow and there’ll be a switch that you as the cook can still use. Like if you, if you start to burn something, you could turn it on to high. Right. But they’re gonna automatically operate. So it’s not dependent on, on the cook to turn it on. It’s going to be automatic. And the automation is an extension of, there are some high end hoods out now that have what I’ll call an emergency switch in them. If they get very, very hot, they’re intended to detect a cooktop fire and go into high speed. It’s a safety thing. And those controls strategies are going to get adapted to be more sensitive and use some different ways of sensing the cooking, not just the temperature of the air, but maybe some infrared sensing and things like that. And we’re gonna automate range hoods and I, and I think that sort of performance improvement and automation are going to be the two big changes that we see in sometime in the next five years. These things are going to become relatively mainstream.
Kelly: (34:25) Okay. That sounds great. You did mention three things at first, do you have a third or are we going to have to wait and see?
Iain: (34:34) There is a third one and this is something that may be a bit of a stretch and that is that there are some applications where people would like to recirculate. And the reason why I was gonna say it is third and then then I changed my mind is that I understand that with these devices you could certainly put in a good particle filter to move the particles. You could put some active charcoal carbon filters in there to remove some of the vcs, but youre still gonna have a hard time with removing the water vapor. Right. And that’s always gonna be an issue if you cook a lot, you know, and you don’t want condensation and we don’t want higher moisture levels in our homes. And it also has the issue of, it’s really relying on the homeowner to regularly change out all those filters. And from what we know from how people use their homes in particular, looking at how often people change the filters in the heating and cooling systems, we’re pretty sure we can’t rely on people to do that. So this, this is a third option and it’s being investigated mostly for like Super Duper, super tight homes where they want to keep the heat in. If you’re familiar with the, the passive house system where houses are very, very airtight and they are doing an amazing job of controlling all the heat flows. In the winter, they want to keep the cooking heat in the house as heat because they don’t want to turn on the heating system. And so they would like to have recirculating systems that allow them to do that. But I think there’s still, you know, a couple of really serious issues with those where I would be comfortable in recommending them. So they could be the third thing, and there’s certainly a bunch of work being done right now on how do we improve the filtration of these things. How good a filter do we need? And so on. But like I said, they have a couple of key drawbacks, which is they don’t remove the moisture and they do require a lot of maintenance. That means that- I won’t say they’re terrible, I’m just not their biggest fan.
Kelly: (36:41) Right. That sounds great. So maybe we’ll put that on the 10 year horizon and we’ll check what they’ve got going on then
Iain: (36:49) Maybe we’ll see. I just always prefer simpler things because they’re harder to break. Right. And you know, you want to buy something that’s gonna work for at least 10 years. And so the idea of, you know, robust things that don’t require you to maintain them all the time seem like they’re much, much more likely to be working in 10 years.
Kelly: (37:11) That’s an excellent point and I think it is a good end note. So I want to thank you so much for your time today and for coming on the podcast and coordinating this remote recording with our team. Thank you so much Iain.
Iain: (37:27) Well thank you Kelly. I’m happy to talk about these things as you can probably tell.
Kelly: (37:31) Great. We’ll have you back on soon.
Iain: (37:35) All right. Thanks, Kelly.
Robb: Thanks for listening and thanks to Iain and Kelly. I mentioned at the start that I reached out to Iain about new developments on this front in the, you know, two, two and a half years since we recorded this episode. And he gave me a few interesting notes. One is that there really is growing interest in induction cooking both from a safety perspective and an electrification perspective for reducing CO2 emissions in homes. Also some new research shows that cooking with nonstick pans results in lower emissions, lower particulate emissions than with other cookware. California is considering codes that require higher ventilation for gas than for electric cooking, and this code may also include capture efficiency for range hoods. As Iain mentioned, there is an ASTM standard out there for assessing capture efficiency and range hoods, but this hasn’t yet caught on, if codes start to require it even as an option hopefully we should start to see some rated products. That’d be really cool and last but not least stay tuned for more on automatic raincoats that automatically operate when you start cooking. Iain had mentioned that there’s a lot of product development happening on this front. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven Winter associates check us out at swinter.com. That’s S-winter.com. Swinter.Com/Podcast is where the podcast episode lives and where the show notes live. Check out that page for some of the links I mentioned here, check out our careers page. If you’re interested in opportunities, we’re focused on making buildings better on all fronts, more healthy, efficient, accessible, resilient, affordable. The list goes on and on. We have offices in Washington, DC, Manhattan, Connecticut, and Boston. I counted 18 openings today on our careers page in most, if not all of our offices. So check that out if you’re interested and thanks to the podcast team here, Kelly Westby, of course, who did this interview, Heather Breslin, Jayd Alvarez, Alex Mirabile, Dylan Martello, and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks very much.
The Devil’s in the Details: Common Accessibility Oversights with Peter Stratton
Jul 06, 2021
Featuring
Peter Stratton
Peter Stratton is the Managing Director of Accessibility Services at Steven Winter Associates. He has nearly 30 years of experience working with project teams to design and construct buildings to comply with laws and regulations governing accessible design and construction, improving the lives of ALL people occupying those buildings. Under Peter’s leadership, the accessibility team provides services to public and private sector clients nationwide that are designed to ensure compliance with the accessible design and construction requirements of federal, state, and local laws and building codes.
With all of the moving parts during the design and construction of a building project, one wrong move can compromise accessibility compliance. Unintentional oversights are commonplace when project teams don’t realize the importance of accessibility compliance and how it can make or break a project’s success. In the end, the devil’s in the details.
On this episode, we welcome back SWA’s Managing Director of Accessibility Services, Peter Stratton. Peter describes the top ten oversights made by project teams during the design and construction phases that typically lead to noncompliance with accessibility requirements. Learn why they happen, and how they can be identified and avoided in your project!
Follow along with Peter’s list of accessibility oversights below:
Design stage
Appropriate details are not referenced on the floor plans
The appropriate level of detail is not provided on the plan set
Plan sets are not coordinated
Designs do not incorporate tolerance
Plan sets include details copied from past projects
Construction stage
Trades don’t follow the plans
Not considering finished dimensions during rough-in
Specifications/products are not coordinated with the details
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.
Intro: (00:05) Welcome to buildings and beyond the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. I’m Robb Aldrich and I’m Kelly Westby.
Robb: (00:17) We had a few requests for a podcast episode focused on accessibility and really focused on what goes wrong. What are the common screw ups when trying to make buildings accessible. We reached out to Peter Stratton here at Steven Winter Associates. Who’s in charge of our accessibility group. He chatted to folks on his team and came up with a list of about 10 things. And this list was well, maybe different than what some people expected. It wasn’t a list of clearances or slopes that often get screwed up. It was a list about the process of design and construction. What often goes wrong in this process. And really, I think this is a lot more interesting and probably way more useful. Overall, he came up with about five things that go wrong in the design stage and five things that go wrong in the construction stage. And your list starts with details. The first thing on your list was details are provided by the designers, but they’re not referenced in the floor plans.
Peter: (01:32) That’s right. And that’s a big one. And when I do these kinds of presentations, we always sort of launch the presentation with exactly this topic. And before we get into it, the more common oversights that are made in design, we’ll discuss five, but as you might know, there are many more than five. And we’ll talk about pretty much the most common that we see, it’s not uncommon that architects include at the top of the plan set generic details. When we see generic details provided at the top of the plans, that it sort of informs us. And I think right at the jump, we’ve really got to take a look at the plan set to confirm that the generic details that are often included at the top of the plan set actually fit the context of the design.
Peter: (02:37) And when they don’t, that’s when we get into problems. So, often an architect, a designer might reference the technical criteria or the accessibility requirements of a local code and sort of copy and paste details, the criteria, for example, into the plan set. And so, we might receive a plan set for a multifamily residential development. And up at the top of the plan set are sort of these generic bathroom details, which are perfectly compliant. But then, when we sort of dig into the plan set and take a look at the design, we realize that we can’t align those generic details with the actual design. And it would be unrealistic to expect that a contractor would design a project off a generic detail when what they’re actually working on is sort of later on in the plan set very unrelated to those generic details.
Robb: (03:49) So, yeah, it seems like they didn’t really do their due diligence and designing.
Peter: (03:59) It could be that they didn’t do their due diligence, but it also could be that there was good intention. But the process of design really sort of doesn’t align with the good intention. We’ve got to do a little bit more than just copy and paste generic details up at the plan set. I think one of the first things to do is to ensure that those details included at the top of the plants that are not generic, that they actually fit the context of the design.
Robb: (04:33) Okay, how about an example? I mean, clearances or ramps or so.
Peter: (04:40) Yeah, all of the above. We often see elevations, for example, that include dimensions for the installation of grab bar reinforcement in bathrooms. When we take a look at the bathrooms in the plan set, you know, elevation a included in the generic detail that shows the elevation, for example, of the grab bar reinforcement for the later installation of the grab bar on the side wall next to the toilet, doesn’t align with the sidewall that is shown in the context of the design. And so, another example of a generic detail might be, often in the plan set, we see a generic detail for a U shaped kitchen, a generic detail for a galley style kitchen, but the kitchens in the floor plans are not U shape or galley. And so that’s a really good example of something that’s pretty common.
Robb: (05:56) Okay. Interesting. And next on your list is, the appropriate level of detail is not provided at all. Is this where a designer just doesn’t know or doesn’t try?
Peter: (06:13) It’s interesting and that pans out a whole host of different ways. I think when it comes to accessibility compliance, the level of detail and the scrutiny is so much more intense than we might imagine. It’s often unrealistic almost to expect that an architect or a designer, as a matter of normal course, would over detail a plan set to ensure that compliance is met. So, we do see what the architect might think is an appropriate level of detail, but we understand that when the design translates into the field, that the detail just isn’t enough. And so, for example, we often see, you know, partitioned details and threshold details, but the details don’t include what we need to see to ensure that the threshold, when installed, is compliant in the field. Sometimes the detailed doesn’t include a specification. So, it may include the height of a threshold, but what’s missing is the slope of the bevel on either side of the threshold, which is an important component of compliance when it comes to thresholds. So, we often want to see a higher level of detail in the plan set, but we also understand that may not be realistic, but it’s important to provide and to ensure that compliance is achieved in the field.
Robb: (07:59) And that’s why you get brought in, I assume, when an architect just doesn’t have all that knowledge of all those details, the nitty gritty.
Peter: (08:08) Right. We have to focus on the pinch points. We know the common busts in the field, and so we’re reviewing plan sets with the result in mind. In other words, we might identify the detail and think, well, looks good in the plan set, and we understand the design, but we’ve got to include some added dimensions to ensure that what’s constructed in the field is actually constructed in the correct way.
Peter: (08:39) We don’t typically get pushback. It’s appreciated I think that we have that knowledge, and can sort of transfer that knowledge to the client.
Robb: (08:54) So for this bullet point, which was that the appropriate level of detail is just not provided in the plans, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have a clueless designer. It’s just that the level of detail is so deep that it’s…
Robb: (09:15) The next one, I can appreciate, plan sets are not coordinated. So the architect may know all the right details and the architectural drawings may look perfect, but the MEP may or may not, or others may not.
Peter: (09:32) That’s right. And I think that it really comes down to communication. Communication among the team. It’s not uncommon to see a set of architecturals that include compliant design. So, we will see that the control wall at the bathtub is correct. When plans, well, when the architecture set is not aligned, for example, in this case with the plumbing set, the plumbing may show the control on a wall that is different from the architectural set. And so, you know, the plumbing shops are going to be done from the plumbing plans and the engineer or the contractor who’s working on plumbing is going to look at the plumbing shops, and if they’re not coordinated, the result can be a major bust in the field. In fact, in our experience, we have come up against projects where the architecturals are perfectly compliant and the case of the location of the control wall at a bathtub. And then when we arrived in the field, the control wall had changed somewhere in the design process, but only in the architectural set, it was not modified and corrected in the plumbing set.
Robb: (11:07) One wall was thicker and there wasn’t enough clearance?
Peter: (11:10) Well, the location of the controls was on a completely different wall, which can really affect compliance in a negative way.
Robb: (11:21) Yeah. And as a mechanical engineer, there’s tension between architects and engineers, as you’re familiar. And this is just one added flavor of that tension, I guess.
Peter: (11:38) Similarly, in that bucket of plans sets that are not coordinated, it’s not uncommon that certain things happen in the field that aren’t addressed in the plants. We may see key fob locations or door fobs; I don’t know, I always get that wrong. You know, that little thing that you wave at the door so it opens? Yep. We’ll see, they are added on exit doors, fire, exit doors. So, adding a fob on a fire exit door makes that door an entrance. We might see security cameras installed, not addressed in the plan set, not part of the design, happens later on, and depending on where they are installed, how far they project from walls, they can violate some of the requirements. And some of the criteria that speak to protruding objects. Intercoms might be installed later on, and we assess for operable parts.
Peter: (12:59) And so if we don’t have the opportunity to take a look at these things that are all part of the process, all part of the final product, but somewhere along the way, as a result of the communication, the accessibility consultant, for example, may not have been looped in. And so, everything that happens in design and construction really should involve communication with someone who knows accessibility, and it might not be an accessibility consultant. It might very well be the architect. So always some level of review is needed when it comes to the installation of things.
Robb: (13:44) Interior design often happens later.
Peter: (13:46) And another example and a really good one, often things happen or the interior is modified, or the interior design side is produced perhaps at a later time, may not have been part of the review. And so, we then troubleshoot these missteps in the field, which has its own level of problem, you know, problems associated with, with troubleshooting in the field. And you know, the interior design often drives the project. And so, the interior design set is very important. That is part of the review. It’s sort of critical.
Robb: (14:44) How about external? Like how about the bridge between inside and outside with landscape?
Peter: (14:54) Yep. When a project includes everything, which is an architectural civil landscape interior MEP, all of those trades and sets affect compliance of the final product. So, it’s important that a review not only include a review of the architecturals, which you might think, you know, that might be the only thing that an accessibility consultant might want to take a look at, which is not correct. Your design team should have all of the different sets, coordinated and reviewed into your exterior.
Robb: (15:36) Yeah, that’s a big one. Coordination between the whole design team as well.
Peter: (15:43) And it’s tricky, especially when you have a design architect, the executive architect, tons of design managers, tons of construction managers. Yeah, no, it becomes, a very big thing to manage and organize.
Robb: (16:05) That’s their job too, on all aspects. The accessibility piece is one of the key pieces. Right?
Robb: (16:18) So, this was interesting to me next on your list that designs do not incorporate tolerance. Does that just mean that designers are leaving no room for error? Or what does that mean?
Peter: (16:31) Yeah, that is what that means. And it’s not uncommon for example, that we’ll see a ramp slope designed to one in 12, which is the maximum slope permitted for a ramp. We would recommend that the designers consider reducing the slope of a ramp to less than 8.3, three or less than the maximum, to allow tolerance in the field. We never want to design to the max or to the min – shooting from mid range is always best if we can do it, but working some level of tolerance into the design is key.
Robb: (17:21) That makes tons of sense. Height. Like height of switches, height of…
Peter: (17:29) That’s right. So, switch heights, let’s just talk in general – unobstructed forward reach in the more recent criteria, the maximum height above the finished floor, 48 inches. Now, if we specify 48 inches and show that dimension right at the light switch, chances are in the field without working in some tolerance, there’s a high level of certainty that designing to the max will result in non-compliance in the field. So, in the case of a light switch, for example, we recommend that design teams consider specifying 48 inches to the top of the electrical box. In that case, when we specify top of the electrical box, high degree of certainty, that the switch itself will be less than 48 inches. Okay. So that’s an example of working in tolerance.
Robb: (18:51) Cool, cool. And one of the issues that comes up during design more is copying and pasting details from previous projects, I believe, right?
Peter: (19:03) So, copying and pasting details from previous projects means we may be working on a commercial project in New York city. Okay. For example, we went through the review process and we submitted recommendations and eventually the plans are compliant. Well, the same design team now designs a residential project in Florida, and they have submitted that residential project in Florida for review. And we see that they copy and pasted the details from a commercial project in New York city that may have received some amount of federal funding on different overlays that apply to that commercial project in New York city that do not translate to a residential project in Florida. And so, that copy and pasting of the information would result in a design that may not be compliant. As you know, depending on where a project is constructed, there are different requirements that apply. Building codes change based on jurisdiction, funding triggers, for example, federal funding on our project will trigger an overlay of an additional accessibility requirement. A residential project is different than commercial project, so on and so forth. So, we really need to detail based on the jurisdiction, the project type and the various overlays of requirements.
Robb: (20:59) Yep. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, copying and pasting is so common in all the trades, you know, I look at mechanicals and I see copy and paste errors all the time. So, yeah, that makes sense. It doesn’t surprise me that this is a challenge.
Peter: (21:19) That’s right. Those are some of the more common oversights made in design. Of course we can talk for hours and hours about the rest that we see, but those are the more common ones.
Robb: (21:35) So, before we move on to the kind of construction phase, when you get brought on by a design team, are you able to mitigate these issue pretty well?
Peter: (21:53) Yes we can. Our level of involvement changes based on how we are contracted. We may work for the developer. We may work directly for the architect. We may work for a city agency. That contractual relationship really does affect how much we can affect the entirety of the design. We may not be able to affect the civil design as much as we’d like, if we’re contracted, let’s say with the architect directly, but contracting with the developer gives us sort of a greater level of control over the project. So, it varies. But, we do focus on everything that I just mentioned of course, and more.
Robb: (22:57) Cool. Cool. So on the construction side, top of the list did not surprise me. Trades don’t follow the plans. In many cases, I think that, back in the day, how long ago was back in the day, uh, 10 years ago, maybe, the focus on accessibility compliance, I think was much less than it is today
Peter: (23:05). I think project teams understand today that accessibility compliance really does drive the project. Everything that happens in design and everything that happens on construction will affect accessibility compliance. And so, we see more of a focus on it today. Not as much as we’d liked though, but I think it’s getting better. And so what do we mean when we say that trades may not follow the plans? We review design and we’ve gotten, let’s say electrical to be perfectly compliant and elect requirements for the location of electrical outlets, which can be very complex.
Peter: (24:21) And so we’ve worked with the designer to achieve a compliant design. Now the design is finished and we move into construction. Well, the electrical contractor involved in the job can be very knowledgeable or not so knowledgeable. And knowledge varies, right? So, if a contractor was not knowledgeable or doesn’t understand that accessibility drives the project, or hasn’t been trained or informed, it could be that the electrical contractor will install the electrical as they have been over the last 30 years without understanding that the installation of electrical is critical and changes depending on a lot of things. And so we’ve got to drive the trades to the plans. We want to incorporate training of the trades. If that’s possible to do, it’s always a key to closing the gap on compliance in the field. And you know, that’s not something that we want to troubleshoot in the field, right?
Robb: (25:42) Yeah. I mean, it’s such a range. I didn’t want to sound harsh on trades. I mean, there are some mechanical contractors who I just kind of want to follow around for weeks just watching what they do. They’re so knowledgeable. I learned so much. And then there’s others that do what they’ve done for decades, regardless. They don’t want to hear anything else.
Peter:
It’s a whole gamut, and it’s not only electrical as you know. One of the more common things that we see, and it involves the plumbing side of things, bathroom walls are required to be reinforced. Let’s say for the later installation of grab bars, when it comes to residential, some residential projects are required to have grab bars installed at the time of the design and construction. When it comes to commercial or non-residential projects, grab bars are required to be installed at the time of design and construction. We inspect in the field for the location of the grab bar reinforcing. And so, we’ve nailed it down because we’re coming in and we’re taking a look during framing. What we find sometimes is that the plumbing contractor is installing mixing valves or installing plumbing at showers or bathtubs and installs the plumbing smack in the middle of the grab bar reinforcing, which is a problem because you cannot install grab bars in the area of the reinforcing anymore. And so that’s an example of communication. You know, the plumbing contractor needs to understand that reinforcing cannot be removed and they have to understand how to install the plumbing accordingly.
Robb: (27:39) Yeah. Makes sense. Related to that, next on your list, and it can be plumbing, can be electrical, can be HVAC, can be a lot of different things, when roughing things in, people aren’t taking into account levels of the finished material.
Peter: (28:02) That’s right, levels of finished material, It’s not uncommon that a design, is going to include stud to stud dimensioning without, you know, when compliance is measured at, we always say between finished material or at the finished material, finished wall, for example, not stud to stud.
Robb: (28:23) So next on your list, the specific products or specifications that are not coordinated with the details.
Peter: (28:33) Right. And so how does that pan out.
Robb: (28:36) Yeah, I’m not sure exactly what you meant by that.
Peter: (28:42) We may have reviewed a design and, you know, the title of the category specifications slash products, not coordinated with the details. You know, like I mentioned, at the onset, it sort of pans out in a number of ways, let’s say handrail, the design of handrails, we have reviewed exterior accessible routes, ramps, stairs, walks, we’ve reviewed handrail details, height, radius, elevation, cross-section so on and so forth. Compliance is achieved. Now the project is being constructed. The hand rail contractor is onsite welding hand rails onsite, but does not coordinate that activity with the plants. And so, you may have seen on handrails on ramps or sloped surfaces, there are extensions beyond the top and the bottom of the sloped surface, handrail, extensions, horizontal extensions, which are important. There are specific criteria that apply to those extensions. For example, 12 inch horizontal extension, the 12 inches must be level with the landing surface and the 12 inch horizontal extension cannot include the radius of the handrail return.
Peter: (30:21) And so the detail is very specific, but welding those extensions on site often results in noncompliant extensions, just because the contractor just didn’t coordinate that action or that effort with the plan set. It could also be that we reviewed details of a threshold or even threshold specifications. The plan set is compliant. Now we go out into the field and a contractor says, I worked on a project in the past that was accessible or ADA compliant. I’m doing air quotes, ADA compliant. And so, in that project, we used this threshold. And so, they purchase thresholds based on what they think is compliant based on a past project when they actually were not compliant because they were not reviewed. And so, installation occurs. We get out in the field, the threshold that we see is not what we reviewed, or the contractor says, it’s sloped on both sides. It’s ADA compliant. It’s what we’ve used in the past. And so yeah. Often problems.
Robb: (31:43) Yeah. I mean the plans don’t usually get into the specific threshold product they use, or do they?
Peter: (31:57) They can, you will see specified thresholds specs on plant sets, you will see them submitted separately, and you might see details in the plan set.
Robb: (32:10) So there may or may not be a submittal phase for that threshold product that may or may not have gotten missed or gotten caught. Okay. gotcha.
Peter: (32:19) Yes. And thresholds, as you can imagine, are the one thing you’ve got to get, right. Start there. And one of the things that’s very apparent, what can be very apparent when someone is snooping around your project trying to identify problems.
Robb: (32:44) Oh I see. So that’s a thing.
Peter: (32:48) That can be a thing. And as you can imagine, a high unbeveled threshold is easy to see with the naked eye. You don’t need to get down on the floor and measure the height or, you know, to see that it doesn’t have a sloped edge.
Robb: (33:09) Okay. Interesting. Yeah that’s an important one. Interesting. So, things change during projects.
Peter: (33:15) Things change. Things constantly change on projects.
Robb: (33:24) Yeah. exchange orders, quote of value engineering. And also now, this is one you put on the list, product availability is a big issue, especially now after COVID where availaility is an issue for anything and everything. So when things change during the course of construction, those don’t always get checked?
Peter: (33:46) They often don’t get checked. And as I mentioned, everything that happens, accessibility drives the project. If something changes, accessibility is affected. And, you know, I make that statement very confidently, you know, it could be that it changes unrelated to accessibility, but it’s important to communicate with whomever is working on the compliance side of things. It’s important to communicate that a change has been made. Let’s take a look to see if accessibility is affected. We’ve specified a refrigerator. The plans were reviewed the clearance between the face of the refrigerator and the opposing countertop is perfectly compliant, but the project team can’t get the refrigerator because of the delay. The refrigerators won’t be in for months, project team decides we can’t wait for months, we’re going to change the refrigerator. And so, they changed the refrigerator, but don’t have that reviewed. And what gets installed is a deeper refrigerator that affects that compliant clearance negatively. We want to take a look at everything that changes, especially the value engineering.
Robb: (35:24) Yeah. And you mentioned floor, changing the floor height, going from a hardwood floor to, what was your example? Vinyl. Much thinner.
Peter: (35:33) I experienced that situation in the building that I live in. The project was designed with ceramic tile and hallways. During the process of construction, ceramic tile changed to vinyl tile in some areas. Changing to vinyl tile, which in my case my building was much thinner than the ceramic tile, effected level changes below thresholds at all the entry doors.
Robb: (36:09) Okay. Yeah. So we’d have to change the threshold or we’d have to do something to bring it back in. Yeah.
Peter: (36:15) One thing leads to the other, leads to the next, on and on, and it becomes a very expensive fix.
Robb: (36:25) Yeah, makes sense. And last but not least on your list, things are not always square and level in the real world.
Peter: (36:39) Yeah. So, we understand construction is not a perfect science and there will be things that occur during construction that don’t perfectly align with what was designed, which is why we need to build tolerance into the design first. And when we do, we sort of reduce what happens in the field when designs don’t incorporate tolerance. And level, keeping things as level as possible is critical. Again, that pans out in a number of ways. Contractors often measure heights like countertop height at the wall, but when countertops are installed, we are really taking a look, for the most part, at the height of the front edge of the countertop, which is 25 and a half inches away from the wall. If the slab sort of transitions from the wall to the center of the room and slopes, that can affect the height of the front edge of the countertop in that case. Maneuvering clearance at doors is required to be perfectly level and no more than 2% max slope for the entirety of the maneuvering clearance.
Peter: (38:26) Slabs, if the level is not controlled, and the slab slopes too much, then that throws off the compliance of the maneuvering clearance at a door, for example. And leveling, interestingly enough, how we measure level is important. For the most part slopes of floor surfaces, ground surfaces are measured with a two foot digital level, not a four foot non-digital contractors level. Although interestingly enough, the criteria doesn’t specify the tool required. It has become commonplace to use a two foot digital level. The department of justice uses a two foot digital level when they investigate properties. Okay. The department of housing and urban development uses a two foot digital level. And the thinking is that a two foot level is closer to the width of a wheelchair than a four foot level. And so we’ll pick up convex concave and that sort of non-compliant slope that a wheelchair will pick up as it travels along the road.
Robb: (39:55) These are really well, I would think mostly, these are really subtle effects. But going back to your previous point, if you don’t really include any tolerances in your designs, I can see where very subtle, kind of minor changes could actually become a deal-breaker.
Peter: (40:17) You know, it’s subtle Robb, but it’s, it’s really important and it’s critical and it’s important to nail down. And it’s not often that we do, but when we have the opportunity to hear from someone who experiences life in a compliant project, you begin to understand, you know, how life-changing the details are.
Robb: (40:51) Okay. That’s cool. Yeah, it must be gratifying to hear from people where it really makes a difference.
Peter: (40:58) It’s not often that we do Robb, but we have. And you know, that’s when it makes it all worth it as far as I’m concerned.
Robb: (41:11) Cool. So, looking ahead, those were your list of some of the most common, snafoos. Are our design and construction teams getting better if we talk again and in five or 10 years, do you think we’ll be talking about the same issues. Do you think there are some things that will really become pretty well understood?
Peter: (41:32) I think they are getting better, Robb. Why are they getting better? I think that, you know, the design of construction industry is very well aware of the importance of accessibility at this stage of the game. I think that the codes that the design teams are working with are better aligned with federal laws, and criteria referenced by federal laws, are very closely aligned now with the criteria reference by building codes, which is very important. To speak to compliance with the fair housing amendments act, when it comes to the design and construction of multi-family residential projects, HUD has now approved effective March 8th, 2021, additional HUD approved safe harbors for compliance with the design and construction requirements of the fair housing amendments act. And those additional safe harbors include the recent additions of the international building code, which is critical.
Robb: (42:58) Yeah. So things are just getting more aligned it sounds like.
Peter: (43:03) Things are getting more aligned. We are seeing improvements. But you know, I think personal opinion, that an architect really can’t be expected to incorporate the level of detail that’s required to ensure that a project is designed in compliance with requirements. I think it really will always be a separate consultant that is retained by the project team, just like the acoustical consultant, just like the landscape consultant, the accessibility consultant is just as critical to ensure that projects comply in the end.
Robb: (43:56) Are you seeing design firms develop or get that expertise in-house more or not yet?
Peter: (44:04) I think that the designers and the architects themselves are getting much better at compliance. But I don’t see firms retaining or developing in-house compliance shops. They certainly may have employees that they may rely on to review designs to ensure that they are compliant. But whether that employee just does accessibility every day, day in, day out, I doubt it. But improvements are being made, certainly.
Robb: (44:47) Awesome. Yeah. Thanks Peter. I have a much better feel for, well, I have much better feel for how things can get screwed up, and therefore a better feel for how not to screw it up.
Thanks to Peter. He was on the podcast three years ago talking about some background and history of accessibility and accessibility requirements. This is not my wheelhouse. I really learned a lot from both episodes. So go back and check that one out if this was an interesting topic. Buildings and Beyond is produced by Steven Winter Associates, you can find us at swinter.com. That’s swinter.com. We are focused on making better buildings by making buildings more accessible, healthier, more sustainable, efficient, resilient, comfortable, affordable, etc. It’s a long list. It goes on and on. swinter.com/podcast is where you go to find the show notes and other episodes. And check out our careers page. If you are looking for opportunities, we have openings in most, if not all, of our offices, Washington, D.C., Manhattan, Norwalk, Connecticut, and Boston, Massachusetts. I counted 19 openings today, late June, 2021. People are starting to filter back into all our offices now after COVID, or at least after COVID has eased a bit, which is pretty nice. Thanks to the podcast team here. Heather Breslin, Alex Mirabile, Dylan Martello, Jayd Alvarez, and Kelly Westby. I’m Robb Aldrich. Thank you for listening.
Healthy Buildings, Healthy Humans with Sarah Nugent
Jun 10, 2021
Featuring
Sarah Nugent, LEED AP, WELL AP
Sarah Nugent is a Sustainability Director at Steven Winter Associates on our Sustainable Building Services team. She oversees certification program management for commercial buildings, and helps guide project teams on green and high-performance building and site design strategies, cost-effective building system operation, and energy-saving maintenance practices. She has extensive project experience with LEED® Building Design + Construction, Interior Design + Construction, Neighborhood Development, and LEED for Cities and Communities Rating Systems, as well as the Collaborative for High-Performance Schools, the NYC SCA’s Green School Guidelines, the IWBI’s WELL® Building Standard and the Center for Active Design’s Fitwel® Building Standard.
We think a lot about high-performance buildings – but what about the high-performance humans in those buildings?
As the future of office-dwelling is on everyone’s mind, there are a lot of questions surrounding how buildings can help or hinder human health and wellbeing. Tenants may be wondering what questions to ask building owners and building owners may be curious about what steps to take and which of the various healthy building toolkits to employ.
In this episode, Kelly chats with Sarah, Sustainability Director at SWA, about the intersection of health, wellness, and sustainability – or the “triple bottom line” in buildings, and why projects need to take a proactive, holistic approach to all three.
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.
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.
Kelly: (00:22) Sarah Nugent helps architects, owners, developers, and building management staff implement a healthy, sustainable, and high performance building strategies on their new construction projects. She has experience with LEED, WELL and Fitwel rating systems. All of which we reference throughout our discussion today, she works on projects from high rise, residential to commercial offices, as well as various other space types, including firehouses and museums. Sarah and I have spoken a few times over the past 18 months about how we make sure that the discussion about health in buildings includes, but is not limited to viral transmission. As we increase office presence this summer and into the fall, can we encourage everyone to think about health holistically? So in this episode, we get into a broad overview of healthy building concepts and the programs that promote them. To start out, Sarah lays the groundwork for what these elements are.
Sarah: (01:19) So when you take a step back for all of the different kind of toolkits within healthy buildings certifications, that’s, you know, my background, is in certification programs, be it LEED, WELL, Fitwel, you know, all of these different rating systems, they all kind of focus on kind of their foundations of healthy building, right? That’s also part of public health schools guidelines, you know, the Harvard School of Public Health for example, has nine foundations of healthy buildings, air quality and ventilation, kind of again, main foundations, main backbones, thermal health, moisture, dust and pest, safety and and security, water quality, noise, and lighting and views.
Kelly: (02:04) If you already feel overwhelmed, it’s okay. You’re not alone. Sarah highlighted some of the ways the industry has progressed over the last few years
Sarah: (02:14) In the beginning of LEED version four, people were really nervous about how the material category was changing. You might remember that where all of the building product disclosure and optimization credits, you know, instead of you looking at recycled content, they looked at these disclosure credits and we were really nervous about them. We just didn’t really see, we didn’t know, well, the market wasn’t there yet. We just really weren’t sure. And now looking back, those credits, like those related to disclosures, which can be both environmental disclosures or health disclosures, it’s ubiquitous. If you aren’t disclosing, you’re not on par with your competitors. In terms of the materials disclosures. So say for example Sherwin-Williams, every paint has disclosures, every single paint in their entire line, right. It’s mainstream manufacturers that are doing these things that we just didn’t know if they would catch up and they really have. And so that’s looking back, we were very nervous in the beginning of LEED v4, cause it was just such a wholesale change and that’s actually been something that all of our projects succeed in just by, you know, being a little thoughtful of course, like during specification period, but I think that that really is the, the mainstream coming into our sector. Right. Disclosures and
Kelly: (03:46) Transparency?
Sarah: (03:46) Exactly. People want to know what’s going in their building. They want, you know, I do think some of that has to do, you might remember a few years ago when that, like there was that rumor about like Chinese created gypsum board that had formaldehyde in it. Right. And, and I do think that there was a big shift in the manufacturer’s perspective because of that. I do. I really do.
Kelly: (04:11) And of course, the global pandemic. Sarah and I talked about the questions that have been on the general population’s mind and in your local news stories, like..
Sarah: (04:23) The air changes Per hour in an MTA train car
Kelly: (04:26) The general population now has a vocabulary around ventilation and filtration and Merv 13, and can at least ask about the indoor air quality in their children’s schools or in their offices. And this knowledge is making a difference.
Sarah: (04:41) So I had recently saw a statistic that Fitwel’s increase in registrations was like over 200% in the past 12 months. Yeah. They’ve really skyrocketed in terms of their interest and people out registering projects, which is excellent. And again, they’re the center for active design oversees the Fitwel program, but it was created with the GSA and the CDC.
Kelly: (05:06) And of course all of these programs are responding directly to this heightened awareness…
Sarah: (05:13) All of these major programs LEED, WELL, and Fitwel created response programs to COVID. So they all came out with ways in which buildings could react because at the time there wasn’t really great federal guidance. So they, they said, you know, these are the strategies, like the 20 strategies we would recommend that you implement and that you might have seen the Lady Gaga advertisements for the WELL health safety rating. Yeah. So that’s that program. So for, for re-entry, you know, going back into the building, and saying that you’ve been third party verified that you’re building, you know, implemented these strategies.
Kelly: (05:52) So what we’re asking the audience today and the industry is to consider how can we build on this momentum, the poll of early adopters and the increased knowledge of the general public to take a holistic approach to building health. Sarah explains what this would look like in an ideal world.
Sarah: (06:11) So my like pie in the sky perfect project would be when we, you know, it’s concept design or schematic design, you know, bring us on as early as possible. And we talk about all these different health metrics alongside the environmental and energy sustainability metrics. Right. That’s my absolute, you know, that would be like the perfect cherry project, right. Because they shouldn’t be after thoughts because it shouldn’t be when the building is getting turned over it that you start thinking about how to implement these strategies. Right. It should be when you are kicking off your project, how are the people who are using this building going to feel right? How are they actually going to be experiencing the building?
Kelly: (06:53) But of course the large majority of existing buildings or new construction projects, aren’t starting there, they’re sort of minimally, minimally code compliant, which is actually, you can be less than code compliant because it’s whatever somebody actually enforces in the field. Right. So whatever’s enforced in the field that kind of minimally code compliant and that’s like the standard building. And so the question is, is that what tenants are going to be asking for in the future? And especially kind of in that office space right now, like there are risks associated with holding an office portfolio right now. And how are you setting yourselves apart from your competition?
Sarah: (07:36) It’s a great point because, you know, as re-entry starts happening, I mean, our New York city office is talking about going back for the first time in June, right? Like we’ve been out of the office since March of 2020. Phase one, who knows how many people, but right. So that the future of the office is definitely something that’s on everyone’s radar, how dense, right? Like how dense and office is going to be, what the ventilation rates and filtration rates of that space will be? I mean, I do hope that post COVID some of these strategies, or most of these strategies are still maintained. Right.
Kelly: (08:10) And so I asked Sarah about where people are trying to get started and where should they get started? People are often looking for a checklist. Right. And in some ways we’ve talked about before people try to look for an equity checklist and then they’re like, okay, I did the equity checklist, so now I’m equitable. And then they put that aside and then they go on with their lives, which is not really working
Sarah: (08:35) Nor the point of those checklists
Kelly: (08:38) So in what ways do you think the checklist style is working for health and wellness? And in what ways do you think some clients maybe are missing something because they want it to be too prescriptive or, or is that actually the way to go about it for health?
Sarah: (08:58) I honestly think that it’s the way to go about it. I do. I do. Because as we’ve, as we’ve discussed, there are so many different elements of health. Right. And so, again, like for so long, we were really focused on just ventilation or just filtration, but there’s so much more. But I think it can be overwhelming. Similarly with when LEED was first created. Right. Like it was overwhelming. People didn’t really know where to begin. So the checklist allows, or these checklist based programs allow you to at least start somewhere. Right. It doesn’t matter exactly where, but at least you’re getting your feet wet. So that’s how, that’s how I see it. And again, like you don’t, you would never need to get certified, but it allows you to say, okay, well, what are we even doing? You know, like what are we actually even implementing in our building? We don’t necessarily need to go through the whole process, but, you know, are we even responding to this topic, you know, of safety and security? Like what are we doing for an emergency situation? Or do we even have a Legionnaires’ plan, you know, for our, for our water systems, they might not. Right. So that’s, that’s also, that’s a precondition for the WELL program is to have a Legionnaires’ safety plan. So it’s things to, you know, to, to really prevent the transmission from the, in the first place, you know? And so I think that that is definitely why it’s a great place to start.
Kelly: (10:17) That’s a good point. Not everybody has 30 years to do the research themselves.
Sarah: (10:21) Exactly. And, you know, like LEED too they lean on ASHRAE and they lean on the EPA and all of these other organizations and institutions to, to do the research and you cull from those institutions. Right. And then it’s just a toolkit in your toolbox. That’s, that’s how I think of all of the, all of the systems. Yeah.
Kelly (10:42) That’s great. So you’ve referenced all of them in this, but give us kind of the basic overview, kind of each one, why you might push a client in one direction versus another, or any other things you think people should consider.
Sarah: (10:55) So again, with the background of LEED for new construction, commercial in mind, not residential, anything like that. So I would still say that LEED is the best way to, to start your foray into any of this, because it does touch upon all of them in at least an introductory way. And then you can get deeper, right? So you can still have the sustainability aspects with energy and water reduction and things of that nature, transportation while ensuring that your ventilation is designed correctly, you have the right filtration and you’re you know, if you were to pursue the low emitting material categories then you would be able to have that healthier aspect, to not bring in potential carcinogenic materials. So that’s, you know, just any LEED program while still have all those parameters with the Fitwel program, I would say because it is federally created because it’s connected with the CDC, it a great way for people who are really interested in health, but might not have the upfront capital to install a lot of like more technically or technologically connected items. So, you know, just like the barrier to entry of Fiwel I would say is lower. It still has many, again, these like these 12, most of the there’s different versions of Fitwell based on, you know, you’re building typology or you a community, things of that nature. So there’s still 12 categories related to health based on these seven health impact categories. So you’re still getting a good holistic view of health, but I would say in terms of implementation, you can use it for a new construction project or an existing project. But I think it kind of had existing buildings in mind when it was created, you know, you can implement it with policies and procedures, things of that nature rather than having to overhaul like your air handler or things like that. And then I would say the WELL building standard is pretty technically rigorous in terms of water quality, air quality testing. There’s, I want to say 180 points that you can choose from. They also have, I believe 12 categories, it’s air, water, nourishment, light movement, thermal comfort, sound, materials, mind community. So it’s a lot, you know, it’s very robust.
Kelly: (13:28) And they’re more testing based, right? You have to actually, you know, it’s not enough to make a plan.
Sarah: (13:33) Correct. Yeah, exactly. It’s not just, you know, I said that I did it, here’s my documentation. The GBCI will go in and do the performance testing, or, you know, you have a testing go in and do the testing to verify that you actually installed low VOC products or that your quality is actually, you know, the PM two point fives are actually below this specific level. Right. Like they will go in and verify all of that. And that is kind of their proof in the pudding. Right. That they that’s why they are so strict, but they also just have a lot of like features related to monitoring, you know, like having permanent air quality monitors or permanent water quality monitors, other credits related to you know, like having your air handler turn off when your windows are up and things like that are more expensive, you know, just it’s going to be pricey, but you know that it’s going to be a healthier building if you do implement them. So I would say it’s, it’s definitely it’s a commitment. Yeah. It’s an investment. It’s definitely an investment. Yeah.
Kelly: (14:31) What do you think, what of the healthy building standards that you think is important is really lagging behind? Like what do you think people haven’t really caught on or really isn’t considered like normal construction practice right now, that probably should be?
Sarah: (14:48) Interesting question. Maybe sound. Acoustics. I’m going to say it’s acoustics because there’s, you know, LEED, WELL, Fitwel, they all have items related to acoustics, but it’s yeah. I would say that’s not mainstream at all. You know, maybe between between units in like the corridor. But you know, like in old buildings, I’m sure we’ve all lived in an old building and like the unit above us, you know, they’re bowling or something up there. And so I think that that’s definitely an afterthought. Yeah. And I know you guys have seen how like triple pane windows. Yes. They’re great for thermal performance and the envelope performance, but a co-benefit for sure is the acoustical performance of your triple pane window, right?
Kelly: (15:48) Yeah. And it’s interesting, cause I’ve seen spaces where they are required to have the higher performance windows because it’s over a train or something like that. I had one, one building that I lived in, in the city that had, it was amazing how the, how good the windows worked in terms of sound attention. It’s wild.
Sarah: (16:08) Yeah. Yeah. I was in one of the newer NYU Langone hospital buildings a few years ago and there was a hella pad outside and they have triple pane windows and you couldn’t hear the hella pad at all. It was really impressive. Yeah. I would say that. Yeah. Or nourishment too. I mean nourishment, but that’s not really construction. Yeah. I would say those two.
Kelly: (16:34) Yeah. And acoustics is interesting, it came up at a commissioning training on acoustical commissioning. So how are we testing spaces to make sure that they’re meeting acoustical requirements, e specially if you’re in a performing arts space or a museum or a you know even a hotel conference center. So I think there are certain scenarios in which we realize it’s important, but there are still are, you know, designs that aren’t thought holistic.
Sarah: (17:09) And that’s still based on what the program of that space is, you know, if it’s a performance space. Right. But yeah, I think in a commercial application, let’s say, you know, going back to an office building or to a residential building, I just don’t know if it’s as ubiquitous. Or the NRC rating might get specified, but does, how does it actually get implemented and tested? That’s interesting about commission acoustical commissioning.
Kelly: (17:39) Yeah, you know, I’m always a fan of making sure that it actually gets installed properly. It’s one thing to show the arrow on the drawings that say the air is moving this way, but it’s quite another to make sure that it is. Which is why I, like, I definitely like the idea of, well, in terms of making sure that things are getting tested, but of course it’s a risk for people, you know, it’s one thing to follow an item and say that I, you know, I, I installed this specific thing, but it’s another thing to install and hope for the best.
Sarah: (18:14) And acoustical is another topic that, another item that gets tested in WELL, that’s a great point. Yeah. Yeah.
Kelly: (18:20) What is the main thing that you want the audience to take away from this discussion?
Sarah: (18:26) I would say one thing we didn’t discuss really is this, this intersection of health, wellness, sustainability. Yeah. You know, the triple bottom line, right. People, planet, profit or ESG, that can be kind of seen in those different ways. I would say what I would want folks to get out of this conversation is about not having health be an afterthought. Is really implementing healthy strategies at the get-go and not, not reactive, being proactive about, about that. Right? Like you said, with the the WELL health safety rating or the Fitwell viral response module, they were responding to an event, right? Like it’s a reaction to a need, but the need we know is people get sick, right. Or people are stressed out and people need that mental support. So I would say for every building operator or developer, you know, thinking about every building from a health and wellness perspective in alignment with sustainability, and that would be, that’d be the dream.
Kelly: (19:42) In the episode today, we took a high level approach to the discussion. So I encourage you to take a look at all the great content in the shownotes atswinter.com/podcasts. For example, Sarah brought up noise as something that might be a lingering behind, but according to Harvard school of public health, nine foundations of a healthy building, which is a curation of prior research, they outline some alarming connections between noise and health noise. Exposure can exacerbate the risk of cardiovascular disease noise in a classroom from outdoor sources can impair children’s speech, concentration and reading comprehension. And in a recent survey of 1200 senior executives and non-executive employees, they found that 53% of employees report that ambient noise reduces their work satisfaction and productivity. And don’t forget to check out our other episodes where we dive in deeper on healthy building materials, moisture with Kristoff Irwin kitchen ventilation, with Ian Walker. And of course, Maureen Mahle’s episode, our buildings, our health buildings. And beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe our world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable, or inclusive as it needs to be. We continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. If you want to join us in our mission, please visit Swinter.com/careers. We are always looking for new employees. A big shout out to our production team, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin, and my cohost Rob Aldrich. We thank you for listening and we will see you next time.
Incorporating Home and Community in Senior Housing with Valerie Mutterperl
May 04, 2021
Featuring
Valerie Mutterperl, AIA, LEED AP
Valerie is an Associate Principal with more than twenty years of experience in senior living and other large-scale projects. Since joining Perkins Eastman, Valerie has been involved in a variety of projects across the spectrum of senior living design, including affordable housing, skilled care, and assisted and independent living, either as stand-alone projects or as part of a life plan community. Drawing on her experience with multifaceted and complex projects, Valerie is able to create positive design outcomes for clients that meet the highest standards.
What role do designers, providers, and policymakers play in making senior living communities more vibrant and supportive for older adult residents? How do these spaces enhance the experience of those living, working, and visiting the residence?
In this month’s episode we chat with Valerie Mutterperl about her experience in senior living design, and the importance of community within senior living. With a growing aging population, and more families seeking senior housing solutions, these conversations are more important than ever.
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.
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.
Robb: (00:21) In this episode, I spoke with Valerie Mutterperl who’s an architect with Perkins Eastman based in New York. And she specializes in senior living facilities, many types of senior living facilities, which we’ll get into a little bit. She explained really well I thought, how she got interested in architecture, architecture in general and senior living in particular.
Valerie: (00:44) I mean, the reason I went into architecture is because I felt how spaces made me feel. I was aware about how spaces made me feel, and I wanted to be able to help shape that experience for other people, whether it was senior living or a school or an office building. And so taking the ideas of natural light or comfort or scale, what’s the scale of a space? Do I feel really small in this space or do I feel, you know, is it the right size for me? Does it make me feel uncomfortable because of the proportions of the room or is the ceiling height, you know, intentionally large because I’m supposed to feel odd by the space and, and wander, or is this just my living room and I want to be comfortable in it. So I think, you know, thinking about those ideas as an architect and thinking about how to translate those ideas into somebody’s home. And I’m not talking about a private family home because we’re talking about senior living communities, talking about buildings that can often be quite big, but they have to function as somebody’s home. So how do you translate those proportions and the scale and the feeling of a home into a building, which is a community.
Robb: (02:16) As you’ll probably be able to tell from my questions, this is not an area where I have a lot of experience or expertise, but Valerie clearly does, she is clearly an expert in this area. And I really appreciated her very thoughtful answers to my somewhat naive questions before we get into it. Here’s a quick announcement from Dylan about NESEA’s upcoming building energy conference.
Speaker 1: (02:42) Hello everyone. This is Dylan Martello co-producer of buildings and beyond and a passive house consultant here at Steven winter associates. I just wanted to let you all know about my upcoming session on May 7th at the building energy Boston conference. I will be speaking with my colleague, Nicole Ceci about de-carbonizing domestic water heating in multifamily buildings. You can also catch some other great presentations from industry experts, including sessions by Lois Arena and Lauren Hildebrand of SWA. The conference, which is happening virtually from May 5th to May 7th is presented by the Northeast sustainable energy association, or NESEA. NESEA has become a staple for professionals and practitioners in the fields of high performance, building energy efficiency and renewable energy visit nesea.org. That’s N E S E A.org for more info. We hope to see you there.
Robb: (03:38) My first question is, do you focus primarily or only on senior housing or is it, is this just one of your areas of expertise?
Valerie: (03:50) So good question. I primarily focus on senior living at Perkins Eastman. I have been fortunate enough to work in many different practice areas throughout my career. However, when I joined Perkins Eastman, that became sort of my specialty focus and it’s a great practice area because it encompasses so many things that people don’t think about. It encompasses master planning often. There can be healthcare components, there can be all sorts of educational components or residential living. So it, it gives one the ability to poke their fingers into lots of different places, always keeps things interesting and exciting. And it’s it’s actually been a practice area that I’ve I’ve had throughout my career, no matter what firm I’ve been with. So it’s really, and it’s changed. So it’s exciting.
Robb: (04:51) Yeah. How did you first get involved or interested in it? Was that accidental?
Valerie: (04:58) Yeah, when you’re a junior right out of grad school, you work on whatever they throw your way. And the first project I worked on actually was a nursing home out in Jersey city, it had a particular mission to serve residents of the blind and it was a religious organization. So they preferenced taking residents in that had visual impairment in one shape or form. And the original project I went with my, my boss at the time because the administrator wanted to redo the beauty shop and that turned into a whole two additions to their existing building because it became evident that to provide the level of care that they were interested in providing that their facility was very outdated. For instance, they had four bedded rooms with residents, no private bathrooms. Those are things that can’t do code wise, nor would you want to do them because of just the wellness of the residents and their mental and physical wellbeing and sort of their sense of, of being in a home rather than being in an institution. So there are many parts of senior living. It’s a continuum of care, which ranges all the way from residential for very independent, you know, 55 plus age restricted communities. I’m sure you see them popping up all over the place near where you live. Through, you know, assisted living where people maybe need some, some help with activities of daily living is what we call them. ADL’s, maybe pill reminders, maybe help getting dressed, but can mostly live independently. Through some of the more clinical settings like nursing care or hospice care end of life care. So it’s a continuum and senior living encompasses the broad range of all these things, which could be separate individual pieces, or they could be co located together.
Robb: (07:11) And the term senior living versus senior housing, is one preferred? Or do you prefer one?
Valerie: (07:18) It’s an interesting question. We have in the senior living practice been talking about, is that the right name for this practice area anymore? Does it need a more modern name in the same way that providers changed from continuing care retirement communities to life plan communities? Do we need a name change? So I don’t know that they are not the same. I don’t know that they’re not synonymous senior housing sounds friendlier to the consumer as well as I think to the children of the potential consumers. So I think that’s an important, important idea and distinction of who our senior living providers marketing too. It’s not just the seniors, but it’s their children too.
Robb: (08:17) Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Okay.
Valerie: (08:21) Right. Nobody wants to put mom and dad in an institution. You know, they want to partner with mom and dad and have them live, not warehouse them, live someplace that they can live life to their fullest, whatever that may be for them.
Robb: (08:43) Yeah. You sent me some background and this is something, this is an area where I haven’t had much experience at all. And if I have, I was probably just in doing blower door tests or consulting about filtration or ventilation, something like that. But you sent me some background material, which I perused and it was really interesting. And really as a designer, I think that the thing that struck me after reading through the material that you sent was just the deliberately trying to make connections or maintain connections of different kinds with the people living in senior housing, or these senior living facilities or whatever people ended up calling them. And just maintaining connections on, on a few different layers. And I think the first one that jumped out to me was, which is kind of obvious, was just connection with the natural world, connection without outdoors, biophilic design. Is that something that your clients ask for specifically, or is that something you usually try to try to push into a project into the design?
Valerie: (09:50) I don’t, I can’t recall a client being that specific. There’s a handful that actually know the term biophilia. But it’s a term that we often introduce to take clients beyond the baseline of what you were just talking about, the blower door test and sustainability, you know, most clients today are savvy enough to be able to talk about LEED certification and other sustainable practices in terms of the basis of design, solar orientation, energy consumption, and things like that. I think biophilia is kind of the next step though, when you’re talking qualitatively about the spaces. I mean, not, not just the thermal comfort of the space, because we’ve built a good building that’s well-insulated and can be naturally ventilated and cooled and heated enough in the winter. But talking about a space that has a certain orientation to a view that’s important bringing natural light. And so that there’s wonder, you know, by being able to see a deer walking outside, or maybe you’re in an urban environment and seeing the traffic going by, or the kids going to school or you’re across from a school and you can see them out at lunchtime playing. I think being, being able to bring that environment indoors is also really important for people to understand the time of day and those cues that you get from light from dark. So it seems like it should be a no brainer and inherent in design, just in terms of creating a space and a place that has a connection to your surroundings. But I think it’s important also to have those conversations with clients and make that a priority on the design list so that spaces can benefit from the outside. And, and there’s evidence that, that residents who have that connection are happier and healthier. I mean, I think that goes for all of us in our homes, right. The room that I like to be in the most is the one that’s brightest during the day.
Robb: (12:14) Yep. Yeah. I have my coffee every morning in front of a glass sliding glass door. I can watch the birds at the bird feeder. Are there different strategies within senior living facilities for this than other types of buildings you think, or is it just a lot of it is similar as far as the biophilia?
Valerie: (12:38) I think it’s similar. I think that there are maybe some considerations or ameliorating factors to take into consideration such as for instance, if a senior is often seated, you know, what is the sill height for that person so that they can get a good view out your view out of a window standing is very different than your view seated. I think also in terms of which way that view is looking and sun glare, potential sun glare versus shade, creating an overhang, creating the architecture so that you don’t get that glare. And it becomes a place where a person can sit by a window and, and be outside and have that connection to nature is also really important. It’s better for the building. It’s better for the person, but I think in addition, looking for opportunities, not just within the building, but for people to go out and engage with nature and have those experiences is equally important, having a garden or having, having a space where they can sit outside, which maybe had a generous overhang or a pergola or something like that, so that you can not just visually see things from inside, but be outdoors.
Robb: (14:08) Yup. And maybe it goes right along with it, like connection to the community. Something that seems obvious. But when I was going through the material that you sent, I thought of my, my uncle who lives in, I think you would call it independent living facility. So it’s an apartment. It’s not assisted living. It’s not nursing, but there’s common meals and such, but that facility is it’s, it’s very much separate, you know, it’s, it’s back on its own plot of land set back from the road, not part of a town or village or anything it’s, it’s feels very, it feels pretty secluded to me. And I think there’s a sidewalk, there are some paths where he could walk a quarter to a Dunkin Donuts or something, but I mean, that’s, that’s where the land was. There are probably advantages actually to being somewhat set back from a busy road. But as a designer, what do you think about in trying to kind of maintain not seclusion, but more integration with the community.
Valerie: (15:15) Yeah. That’s a big topic with a lot of layers to peel back. I mean, look, honestly, the ideal scenario is when you have a client and they’re looking for a piece of property that they would engage us early enough, that we could really delve into some of that, but oftentimes your clients come to you with an idea or a parcel of land that they’ve purchased. I think traditionally many of these senior living communities have been located where there’s a lot of, a lot of space to build in general. Right. and so, so, and people can spread out and the cost of building is, is less than in an urban dense environment. But I think also that comes with advantages and disadvantages. The discussion there is about creating community in this, in this place that you’re building. Right. So how do you create a community amongst the residents that are all going to move in to the independent living community? And oftentimes that’s through commons, which has social functions, wellness functions, you know, aquatics or a gym or a multipurpose room or auditorium, where there can be educational programs for them to engage with. And the residents usually band together and create their own sorts of gardening clubs and all sorts of things. And that, that really comes out of the people that are living there and what their interests are. But there are a lot of providers, depending on their location that have also looked to extend their reach into the greater surrounding community, rather than having their independent living community kind of be an Island of themselves. So creating a place where residents can come in from the outside community and engage in those services or creating partnerships, for instance, with community centers or gyms or things like that, where their residents can go and take advantage of those things too. And that’s great for providers because number one, it broadens their reach. It offers them an opportunity for brand recognition for maybe some seniors that are living at home that are thinking about maybe making a move at some point. So I think, you know, there, there’s, there’s lots of opportunities there for different synergies. The urban community, I think, is something a little bit different because it offers seniors an opportunity to live in an urban environment where they can really just get out, right? There’s retail right there, there’s arts, there’s entertainment. But as a designer, both as an architect that thinks about individual buildings, but also the larger urban fabric, I think it’s incumbent upon us as designers and policy makers, that if people are going to be in these urban centers or potentially age in place in their apartments, to create communities that are friendlier for seniors in terms of transportation network, or, you know, safe walking paths that are level that can be navigated by a wheelchair. And that really benefits everybody, right? It benefits not just seniors, but potentially other people with disabilities, young families with baby carriages. So thinking about our urban environment and how that can be transformed to create more opportunities for seniors to live there in their existing community, or maybe it’s a new community for them rather than going and moving to a whole other community. I think it talks to choice. People need choice in where they’re going to live and where they want to age.
Robb: (19:26) That’s a great point. Yeah. I mean, it’s all, it’s all connected.
Valerie: (19:31) Yeah I mean, what did 2020 show us? You know, it showed, showed us when we were all in quarantine, how much, how much we needed to be connected. You know, we had to be clever as a society in terms of creating connections over the past year in terms of zoom and all sorts of other technologies. But I think it also highlighted how isolating it can be for people living by themselves how, how much they need to be with other people. And, and most Americans I’d say almost, you know, 75% of them don’t think about going to a community like this because to them staying in their home is a sign of independence. But during COVID, I think it made people reassess that independence, because if they were part of a community, a senior living community, they might’ve had easier access to services. Not had to worry about grocery shopping because they, you know, would have been on campus dining and things like that. So although I think telemedicine and telehealth, it was a real COVID was a real boon for that. I think it sort of highlighted how difficult it could be and how isolating it is to live by themselves
Robb: (20:57) In your practice, were there some key where there’s some surprises or key takeaways from COVID as to how you’ll do things, you may do things differently moving forward?
Valerie: (21:07) Yeah. I think that there was a lot of focus around dining in particular communal events, even within senior living communities, there was a sense of isolation of residents needing to be within their own apartments or their own rooms, depending how, you know, how big their space was and think communal activity and dining became a thing of the past for a while as it did for all of us, nobody went to a restaurant for the longest time. So in terms of laying out dining spaces, how to decrease density, all these things have real implications for providers in terms of staffing. The less dense it is, the more seating you need, things like that. And I don’t know if that will really be here to stay. But certainly this whole idea of, of room service, I think became a greater, a greater push an idea. And it made us think about, and, and packaged delivery. I mean, we all started ordering from Amazon and other places and not going to stores. So I think this whole idea of delivering services and products to people’s apartment front door made us think about, does there need to be some sort of extra vestibule that can become a repository for a tray for packages, so to provide for contactless delivery also thinking about access to the outdoors, right. Do you have grounds to walk on if you’re not leaving your apartment, do you have a balcony that you can go out on and is it a meaningful balcony or does it need to be something like a Juliet balcony that you can, you know, open big doors and have that sense of being outside?
Robb: (23:17) Yeah. Another topic was connection to family. And again, in the background material that you sent me, there were some examples of multi-generational housing. Is that something you’re seeing a fair bit of as a, I guess, a deliberate alternative to senior living? I hadn’t considered that.
Valerie: (23:42) I would say I have seen it as a prevalent living option. I think it’s something we talk about a lot. I think it’s something that we see as a trend that adult children think about with with their families, with their parents, you know, is there a space for mom and dad, is that space in the house? Is it a small house? You know, one of these accessory dwelling units that I can place on my property. I think there are more examples of co-housing not, which are not necessarily intergenerational, but co-housing models where residents that are like-minded can coalesce around a community and share and responsibilities, be it cooking or gardening or maintenance or something of that sort. The intergenerational idea, I think has stronger legs and more practical, real life examples of communities that maybe located in places that are near a school near a daycare where seniors can be tutors for the kids, or, you know, there’s, there’s some opportunity for interaction on that level as opposed to the family level.
Robb: (25:22) So if it’s not deliberate multi-generational or inter-generational housing, allowing better connection to families. So when families come visit their parents or grandparents, that it’s fun that it’s easy. I don’t know a playground for the grandkids or something?
Valerie: (25:40) Absolutely. I mean, we talk about that often on all of our projects, you know, it could be something like I have one project where we included a wii and mostly it was for the residents as part of their fitness room, but certainly something that you could do with the grandkids when they come over as a fun thing to do, we have other projects that particular project did not have a lot of walkable grounds on the piece of property that it was located on. But we have other projects where there are very gracious amounts of gardens and grounds and there’s playground equipment, or oftentimes there could be a pickle ball court or a tennis court for the residents. So there are opportunities for kids, adult, kids, and the residents to engage at that level. I think creating spaces that are not just in and grandpa’s apartment for instance, are really, really important. Nobody, nobody goes to visit grandma and grandpa and sits in their bedroom. For instance, if they have, you know, a studio apartment, you, you know, you go to their house and you have to have space for private and for, and for public entertaining in a way.
Robb: (27:06) Yeah. Yeah. And friends too, I guess. Yeah. Friends, family, just being a nice place to visit is certainly very much part of the design process.
Valerie: (27:17) And I think that all of these communal spaces, it’s really an extension of your house, right. Or your apartment. It’s the, it’s the whole idea of I’m a single person, or maybe I still have my partner in life and we’re downsizing from a larger space, but it’s not just a transaction. That’s physical necessarily. It’s a transaction that involves thoughtful engagement with a community, right, there there’s dining spaces, there’s living spaces, there’s media spaces. There could be a painter’s studio. There could be there’s often wellness spaces, which could be individualized personal spaces, like a spa, or it could be a pool or a fitness room, but it could also be doctor’s offices where doctors come in. So, you know, it’s like an extension of a larger community, but also an extension of your house and all the different types of spaces that you might have in your house.
Robb: (28:27) Yeah. It’s a different way of thinking. Cool. So one thing that you mentioned to me when we first spoke, which was an element of diversity and all different kinds of diversity, and the one that I think kind of caught me the most was income diversity or difference in wealth because a lot of the senior housing or senior living, a lot of these facilities are pretty pricey. And so, so what can you do? Actually, two questions kind of, are your clients interested in, in reaching a wide range of income or wealth? People are living on savings probably largely. And how can you address it? How can you be more inclusive in design of facilities?
Valerie: (29:25) Yeah, that’s a really tough one that I think we were struggling with a bit. It’s not just the designer that can answer that one. It’s sort of the providers and also the policy, quite frankly, I think as designers, part of what we can do to affect that is look at the types of spaces that we’re designing. The cheapest space to build is repetitive space. So is it modular design or if it’s not modular design, is there a way of having a, a building block that’s a bad analogy, but having a building block that, you know, if you repeated a number of times, there’s an economy of scale to how you build it, or the types of, of finishes and other materials that you’re using. Because if the cost of construction comes down, then the overall project costs comes down and potentially you can create a more affordable product. So I think it’s really difficult. It’s one that our firm is, is grappling with as are many other firms to create, to, to look at and create an affordable product. But I think we also see that there’s a need and many providers see that there’s a need for this middle market affordable market, because not everybody can pay for the luxury community and live in that because of a certain income level.
Robb: (31:08) Yeah, yeah. Or mixed, is it possible to design mixed? I don’t know, mixed income without segregating people of different income levels or different wealth.
Valerie: (31:31) I think there are communities that have, can have different levels of, of product where some of the higher end product can offset more affordable product. I’m thinking of a community right now. That’s looking to build these very luxurious apartments as a way of offsetting, not necessarily more affordable apartments, but services, affordable services that they push out into the greater community. That’s one way. So it’s not necessarily, it could be about providing a variety of housing types in one location, but it could also be about having a housing type that allows you to push services into the community so that people can, you know, get visiting nurse kinds of services and other things like that, or running an adult daycare program for people, you know, seniors that potentially are living at home with their adult children who need to go to work, but they need a place for their, for their mom or dad or whoever it is to be during the day.
Robb: (32:52) That’s cool. Yeah. More community connection. That’s pretty neat.
Valerie: (32:56) Absolutely.
Robb: (33:00) I think the last kind of connectivity piece or question I had on my list was workforce connections. And this is something that I had never thought of before, but, you know, for the people that work at these at these communities I’m sure it varies all over the place, but you know medical, medical staff and cleaning and food service and, and administration. If it’s not just a nine to five, you know, I got to go in and clock in eight hours or whatever for the people that work there. If there are more amenities for people at work, like, you know, a daycare I think you mentioned, to make the employees part of the community also. That seems like something as a designer might be something a designer kind of can affect, but also maybe kind of challenging depending on the client or the facility.
Valerie: (34:09) So I recently listened to a podcast that had a few thoughts in there that stuck with me as a designer. And one of them was about organizational change and organizations being able to take, take the leap and be innovative that it’s not just necessarily creating opportunity within architecture and design, but it’s your client and your partner that has to be willing to take that leap as well. So we talk a lot about with our clients, for instance, employees, spaces, staff spaces, you know, when we’re laying out a building and we spoke about biophilia and access to natural light, right? Clearly all of the living spaces get natural light, clearly all of the public amenities spaces, the lobby and the, you know, the dining room and the living room all get access to light. And it’s oftentimes those back of house spaces, which unfortunately employee space falls into, oftentimes that kind of gets shoved in the corners of the building that maybe are less attractive and don’t have access to those spaces. So I think, you know, as designers being thoughtful about those spaces and where employees get to spend their time and giving them also access to light, which is really important for every organization, I would say, but oftentimes some of our clients that may have unionized workforces, it’s really important to them to keep their employees. I mean, it’s important to keep every employee happy, but there may be other ameliorating factors that need to be taken into consideration to keep employee satisfaction. I think at a base level, everybody, you know, wants to get compensated well, be that in salary or benefits or, you know, giving them access to meals. I know there’s a lot of financial companies that when we actually were in the office would bring lunch through because it kept their employees happy and it also kept them working through their lunch hour instead of going out and getting something to eat. So I think those are, are considerations that can be made. And, and certainly if you have a provider that is willing to think about providing space within their, within their community, within their facility, for things like daycare, or maybe, maybe it’s even an education room that they can bring in service in those things all contribute to a happy employee, an employee that feels like they’re valued an employee that feels like they can, you know, that there’s room for growth and within their organization. So
Robb: (36:58) Does it get into other aspects of design that kind of integrate employees into the community? So it’s not just like a staff resident divide? I don’t know if that’s something you think about,
Valerie: (37:14) Some of that I think is, is about the organization and how, how they want to provide services. I mean, certainly within a nursing home setting, for instance, a traditional nursing home setting, I should say, we oftentimes look to put care at the center, or not of the center, but integrate it into where residents are spending time during the day in an activity space or a living space. Because you don’t want residents in their rooms all day. That that goes back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of isolation. And you want residents to have a social experience, not just a living experience. So I think that’s one way, but there, but there are other other providers that are interested in creating small house models, which oftentimes are more expensive to staff and can potentially take more space. Although we have looked at adapting that idea into more urban environments, which would put the caregiver at the center of just what, it sounds like a small house. So a smaller grouping of residents that live together in a house like setting, right? So you have a cluster of rooms around a dining space and a living space and maybe an activity space, but that caregiver is not just a caregiver. That caregiver is also helping with meal preparation with the residents potentially is helping with you know, housekeeping and maintenance. That’s a different model that some providers have adapted and that creates different kind of design challenges or design opportunities I should say.
Robb: (39:09) Yeah, man. So that leads into, I guess, a question and you’ve, which we’ve touched on before now, but all of these elements of a little higher quality, more connected senior living, how much of the demand comes from clients versus how much of it are you bringing to the table and I’m sure it ranges all over the map. I mean, do you see a shift with clients who are maybe more and more thinking in the direction of biophilia or quality spaces for workforce or any of the things that we’ve been talking about? Or is it you just trying to wedge in as much as much quality as you can within, within their scope, within their desire?
Valerie: (40:11) I think it’s I think there’s a wide range and a lot of, a lot of factors, you know, sometimes you get a client that’s really forward-thinking and, and as a designer, I mean, it’s always a partnership between, between the architect and the rest of the design team because, you know, MEP and sustainability and lighting, all of those things are, are equally as important as, as the architect. It takes all of us to do it. So I think it’s really a partnership between your client and your design team and you push each other and propel each other forward. I think there’s also projects that, that start and the, the client has a specific idea of what they want. And there’s an opportunity that the design team sees and you have the ability to, to push that, that client or that organization forward. And they end up in a place that they hadn’t intended. I mean, the reason I went into architecture is because I felt how spaces made me feel. I was aware about how spaces made me feel, and I wanted to be able to help shape that experience for other people, whether it was senior living or a school or an office building. And so taking the ideas of natural light or comfort or scale, what’s the scale of a space? Do I feel really small in this space or do I feel, you know, is it the right size for me, is the ceiling height? Does it make me feel uncomfortable because of the proportions of the room or is the ceiling height, you know, intentionally large because I’m supposed to feel odd by the space and wonder, or is this just my living room and I want to be comfortable in it. So I think, you know, thinking about those ideas as an architect and thinking about how, how to translate those ideas into somebody’s home. And I’m not talking about a private family home, because we’re talking about senior living communities talking about buildings that can often be quite big, but they have to functions as somebody’s home. So how do you translate those proportions and the scale and the feeling of a home into a building, which is a community. So, you know, I think, I think there are projects that come along that you have to push those ideas and sort of infiltrate them throughout whatever the other project goals may be.
Robb: (43:20) Gotcha. Yeah. You obviously have given a lot of thought to this.
Valerie: (43:27) I’ve had a lot of time to practice.
Robb: (43:33) If we were to talk again in five or 10 years, what do you think, or what do you hope we’d be talking about? What kind of changes do you foresee or would like to see?
Valerie: (43:45) Wow, I don’t think I was prepared for that question. It’s a good question though. What would I hope to see in five to 10 years? I think I earnestly hope that there is a greater focus and I’m not just saying this because I’m talking with Steven Winter on buildings as consumers of the environment. So a focus on creating, not just healthier buildings, cause I think we’ve gotten more savvy about that, but creating buildings that are, are good stewards of the environment, it’s definitely something that I think is more on the minds of more people. You see it more in the news, not just in industry news, but you know, regular consumer news. So I think, I think that would be important. And I, and I do hope that in five or 10 years that we can have a better conversation about the middle market and the affordable market and see what kinds of inroads we, we may be able to make on that front.
Robb: (45:09) Yeah. Well, we will check in with you in five to 10 years and see how we see how we’ve done. Thanks again to Valerie. I really enjoyed our conversation really interesting to me for folks looking to dig a little deeper into this topic. Valerie sent quite a few links to good resources, many on Perkins Eastman’s website. These links are in our show notes, go to www.swinter.com/podcast. That’s S W I N T E R.com/podcast. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. We are working to make buildings better, healthier, more accessible, resilient, sustainable efficient. If you do this kind of stuff, maybe check out our careers page. That’s on swinter.com. I counted 18 openings today when I took a look ranging from summer internships to senior positions and most, if not all of our offices, New York city, Connecticut, DC, and Boston. Thanks to the podcast team here. Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello, Jayd Alvarez, Heather Breslin, Alex Mirabile and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thank you very much.
Building Comradery with Steven Winter
Apr 20, 2021
Featuring
Steven Winter, FAIA
Steven Winter is the founder and chairman of Steven Winter Associates, Inc. He has been at the forefront of the sustainable/green building movement since its inception, helping lead the U.S. Green Building Council organization as Chairman with the launch of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) program and Greenbuild. Steven is still a current Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, where he serves on the sustainable buildings steering industry.
Comradery [käm-ˌra-d(ə-)rē] noun1 A feeling of friendliness, goodwill, and familiarity among the people in a group.
At SWA, comradery is etched into our company principles – friendliness and community have been key parts of SWA’s business since the company was born. At the end of the day, we are all trying to make the world a more sustainable and equitable place. But what is the value in having close working relationships with colleagues, clients, and even competitors?
In this episode, we sit down with Steven Winter (yes, THE Steven Winter), to talk about comradery – both within SWA and the industry as a whole, and how it has helped us remain successful through day-to-day operations, major company transitions, and even a global pandemic.
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.
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 (00:22): In this episode, I talked with Steven Winter, the one and only. We’ve been talking about having Steven on for quite a while, and we asked him if there was a topic that he really wanted to talk about. He started our company, Steven winter associates, back in 1972. He’s been at this quite awhile. He’s seen a lot of trends and fads in the building industry, and he’s a pretty good prognosticator, but he didn’t want to talk about any of that. He wanted to talk about people, about comradery and community in the workplace. So this episode is pretty different than others we’ve done before. Before we get into it, here’s a quick announcement from Dylan about NESEA’s upcoming building energy conference.
Dylan (01:08): Hello everyone. This is Dylan Martello, co-producer of buildings and beyond, and a passive house consultant here at Steven winter associates. I just wanted to let you all know about my upcoming session on May 7th at the Building Energy Boston conference. I will be speaking with my colleague, Nicole Ceci about de-carbonizing domestic water heating in multifamily buildings. You can also catch some other great presentations from industry experts, including sessions by Lois Arena and Lauren Hildebrand of SWA. The conference, which is happening virtually from May 5th to may 7th, is presented by the Northeast sustainable energy association, or NESEA. NESEA has become a staple for professionals and practitioners in the fields of high-performance building, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. Visit NESEA.org. That’s N E S E A.org, for more info. We hope to see you there.
Robb (02:02): There’s no question that COVID inspired Steven’s choice of a topic for this episode.
Steven (02:08): It totally is because of COVID.
Robb (02:11): Throughout our conversations, Steven refers a few times to our company principles. A few years ago because the company has kept growing steadily, It was determined that it would behoove us to formalize principles that guide our work and guide our company. I’ll mention them very briefly here: be visionary, take ownership, think holistically, improve the built environment, and last but not least –
Steven (02:41): Foster comradery, or camaraderie – engage with one another to build community. And, and this, this is an important part of our foundation and it’s something we have been practicing, but it’s nebulous thing that’s out there, that lives out there. And I thought it was, it might be something worth spending a few minutes talking about.
Robb (03:10): Has that been really part of your thinking going way back? I mean, starting the company, building the company, just good relationships with colleagues?
Steven (03:21): It’s always been that way. We’ve always been from day one. I, and the staff, which were just one or two to start with and then grew over time, we’ve always been friends in addition to being colleagues.
Robb (03:38): So does it happen automatically? I mean, over the years, how much thought do you give when you’re hiring, when you’re recruiting? Do you pick people based on, you know, I think I’d really like this person, like to work with this person, like to hang out with this person, can you pick people? Is that something that you can judge when you’re, when you’re hiring, when you’re building a team?
Steven (04:05): Well current HR policy may not agree with this, but, but the simplest answer is yes. Part of the evaluation of an individual, when I was hiring people, I was doing the interviewing, did include an element of their character that was based on how likable they are. I liked you when we were interviewing, and it seems to me that if I found you likable, clients would find you likable. And, and in my experience, companies, potential clients, they don’t hire us only for the technical capabilities that we have, they hire us as people, they hire us because of the people we are and who we are as individuals and characters.
Robb (05:07): And how about clients? I mean, we’ve all worked with all kinds of clients over the years. Some you love to work with, some you dread just making a simple phone call. It’s like, Oh my God, I got to talk to this person again. Do you pick clients based on good working relationships?
Steven (05:26): There’s no question about it. Not only the one-on-one business relationship, where we’re undertaking contractual work, but also business relationships at trade shows and conferences. There’s the socializing aspect of those gatherings leads to closer and closer ties and relationships with those individuals even with competitors.
Robb (05:59): Yeah I had a hard time getting excited for virtual conferences, and I think, you know, some of this is your influence. When I started working for you, I’d go to conferences. And I just go to all the sessions. If there was a session happening, I was sitting in the seat watching, you know, listening to whoever is talking. Now I might go to one or two sessions, and I’m on the trade show. And you know, I’m talking to, I’m talking to vendors, I’m talking to people, I’m talking to colleagues, I’m talking to competitors, like you say. And that, to me, I think you’ve taught me is the, that’s the value, not only do you develop business relationships and generate business, but that’s how I learn. I learned way more, just talking to people on the trade show, trade show floor, then sitting in a seat in a session.
Steven (06:50): The NESEA conferences that we went to for, you know, decades, is a case in point. You and I were both at those things and look at the relationships that have come out of that. We’ve hired people as a result of those relationships. We’ve gotten our CEO. And you couldn’t do that virtually, but there’s an element of comradery that resulted in those hirings and in those businesses won and lost. It does stem in some measurable part to the fact that we are comrades with those people that we mix with.
Robb (07:37): One of the other things that I was chewing on was that so many people that work at SWA are almost uniformly pretty passionate about buildings, about certain aspects of buildings, good buildings, resilient, accessible, healthy, et cetera. I think that contributes to the community, to the comradery, do you agree? And even if you don’t agree, how do you find people? How do you attract people that really are interested? And I would say passionate, a lot of us are pretty passionate about our work.
Steven (08:18): So, okay. A lot of people out there in the world are passionate about their work. In our shop, they’re also passionate about, about their work. That’s cool. That’s good. They’re passionate about the work, but comradery means going one step further, that they are collaborating in their passion, that they are like holding hands, intellectually, in pursuing their passion. And at the same time, they are being friendly to each other, supportive to each other, planning things with each other, that are social as well as business oriented. So it’s passion plus. Passion for the work, plus a feeling of collegiality or friendliness towards one another. That’s the camaraderie part.
Robb (09:14): But I don’t think they go together to a certain degree?
Steven (09:19): Well, well, maybe in our shop, I hope that happens, but you can have a dysfunctional company where individuals hate their job and they’re not passionate about their profession, but they have fun together. Right. They have camaraderie.
Robb (09:39): Well, maybe they have comradery after work, but not during work.
Steven (09:43): Oh, maybe not, but okay. Let’s agree to disagree. I, I don’t think that necessarily passion for a professional pursuit necessarily equates to comradery with each other. You know, we can talk about that. Like the three of us have been out socially, we’ve been at events where it’s a birthday party for someone in the office or we have empathy for each other when bad things happen and support for each other. But that has, doesn’t tie into the fact that you and you and I passionate about the work that we do. It’s sorta maybe kind of relates, but it’s not a one-to-one relationship.
Robb (10:45): Okay. That’s interesting. When I started, I was, and I remain just really so appreciative of just amazing expertise that we have at Steven winter associates, you know, technical expertise, people know about buildings. It’s, it’s phenomenal. And it used to be, if I ever wanted to know before, before COVID, when I could walk down the hall and ask people, if I had a question about buildings, I’d walk down the hall and ask somebody about it. You know, I wouldn’t Google it. I’d walk down the hall and ask somebody about whatever I was interested in. And, and I, it occurs to me it’s certainly, you know, shared interests, shared passions certainly doesn’t equate to comradery, for sure. I mean, you can have people that are in the same field that absolutely despise each other, we’ve all read, you know Tesla Edison kind of thing, or, you know, something extreme like that. But like, like an example, like I’ve asked so many people when I’m doing home improvements to my own home I’ll ask experts in our shop about installation details or things like that. And not only do we have like, leaders in the field, but people that are just genuinely happy to help, just friendly and happy to help, it seems like it, it seems like it, it goes together.
Steven (12:20): Yeah. The happy to help part, as I say, it fits into the comradery part. But just remember the definition that I’m, I’m trying to come back to is that comradery is a feeling of friendliness, Goodwill, and familiarity among people in a group that doesn’t mean like top of their profession. It doesn’t mean really smart. It means, you know, friendly, you know, comrades.
Robb (12:54): Buddies. I get it. All right. It’s interesting. I was thinking that shared interests and passions can lead to increased comradery, but it sounds like you, you don’t see that bigger connection.
Steven (13:10): I, you know, we can go back to the framers of the constitution. I was not there when the August group met to determine what our company principles should be, but they came up with fostering camaraderie and, and how they built on that, how they determined, what that would be is, is something I’m not privy to, that the wording they came up with was engage with one another to build community. And our community is our company. And, and I, I guess, but the, but the excellence, the, the, the shared excellence doesn’t sort of equate, I don’t think.
Robb (13:56): Okay. Interesting. Okay.
Steven (13:59): Can I, can I share with you some examples?
Robb (14:02): Yeah, absolutely. Please.
Steven (14:04): We used to have company picnics. We still have company picnics when we were small enough to fit every employee and his, or her family into one yard. And that was, that was on a Saturday. It was not on company time. No one got paid to be there. And, and they, they did it willingly. They, they went willingly and they, they shared good times. And they that was comradeship. That was, that was that was camaraderie. They go to each other’s weddings. They go camping and climbing and kayaking with each other. They take vacation trips together and we have the occasional union amongst consenting couples here. And that’s, that’s the that’s that familial, familial family type support, and, and reinforcement of each other at the personal level. Within the context of being members of the same company. And I have to tell you what it does do, it results in trust of each other. It, it it means that people will go the extra mile for each other. It, it means that they, they become lifelong friends. We have more alumni friends than we do staff by a factor of 20 or 30. Because those relationships that have been built are ongoing, that they’ve been established and built, and they’re ongoing.
Robb (15:54): So is it, I mean, in your view, is this element of comradery? I mean, the examples you gave were kind of extracurricular. But not, not during work, not during, not nine to five.
Steven (16:10): So those were examples that were, that were extracurricular. It’s true. In the nine to five context, there’s not that much time available for comradery to take place.
Robb (16:28): I disagree with that. Well, I mean, just, just this just great working relationships. I mean, just if you have, if you build trust and you have great relationships, and I think shared interests and passions can be a strong element in, in some relationships, you know, working together to, to meet a deadline, to get a proposal out, to bring the pieces of a project together. There are so many times where I’ve worked so closely with, with folks at SWA to, to put the pieces of projects together in a, in a really concerted focused manner that, that it doesn’t always work seamlessly, but, they want to see it. They want to make it happen. they’re not just putting in, you know, putting in the hours, we have really kind of committed people. And I think part of that is part of that is being professional and doing what they are getting paid for. But part of it is just supporting each other supporting coworkers.
Steven (17:45): I, I agree that that is camaraderie that, that counts as camaraderie I don’t think that the, the excellence, however, does tie-in. I mean, anyway, look, we’re, we’re counting gnats on the back of an elephant here.
Robb (18:04): Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, so this, this will be a stretch, but one thing that I wanted to bring up, and one of the other other podcasts team folks brought up was, was I think maybe even during my interview with you quite a while ago, you told me, you know, you give people plenty of rope. If they’re interested in something, if they have a passion to do projects, you know, you give them the bandwidth to go out, get clients, get projects, do the work, plenty of leeway to, to pursue, to pursue interests, to pursue passions based on what you just said. I think you think that’s pretty distinct from an element of comradery, but, but I was thinking about it, like with this podcast, you know, when, when we, I had been chewing about putting together a podcast for a year or two, and there was just something in the back of my head, I listened to quite a few podcasts. And I know we have some fantastic folks here that could talk very intelligently about some pretty important topics. So I remember, I think it was, we after playing volleyball, we have a company volleyball team, or we had before COVID and we were grabbing a beer after a volleyball game and Heather Breslin and Dylan Martello. And I, I don’t know who said it, but it turns out we, all of us and Alex may even have been there. It’s like, we should, we should do a podcast. And the other one’s like, yes, I’ve been thinking the same thing for two or three years. And so this is, I mean, this is an idea that maybe came out of, came out of comradeship. And that’s something that is still going. And that was, you know, we were given the leeway to pursue these interests as a team working together. I, I think, and who knows, who knows what’ll happen to it in the future, but, but it seems, I don’t know, they, they don’t seem distinct to me. There’s it seems like there’s a lot of, a lot of overlap, at least.
Steven (20:17): All right. I, I’m not gonna disagree with you. Even though I do it’s it’s the, the part that I wanted to focus on in these discussions was the, the part that was not necessarily a passion for the work at the achieving of excellence in the work it was the fact that, that the individuals support each other and nourish each other so that they can continue their professional lives. It’s a subtle difference, I guess, you know if we weren’t friends, the company wouldn’t survive as well as it has. If we, if we weren’t comrades, we wouldn’t get work done as well as we do.
Robb (21:17): Can you give some examples of when comradeship enabled better work projects, getting done better buildings, bringing work in?
Steven (21:33): Well, let’s talk about the actual evolution of the company ownership. You know, the company has gone through an ownership transition, and, and I’m gonna suggest a few things, but the essence is that the ownership transition that has taken place and is continuing to take place would not be possible with, without the level of comradery that we have in the company, because without individuals who trust each other and collaborate with each other and support each other, you can’t have the shared ownership and transition of ownership in a company from the get-go. There was trust in the establishment of the shareholders agreement. There was trust in the individuals determining that they wanted to become shareholders and co-share holders with their colleagues. And there’s continuing trust as the ownership. And the leadership has, has changed, has been transferred. Without people supporting each other, trusting each other, collaborating with each other, the transition that is now in place could not have happened. And without it would not have succeeded. Look around at our competitors and like-minded companies, so many of them have failed during transition. So many of them have not been able to carry out a transition and partly it’s because the individuals did not trust or they were not buddies with each other.
Robb (23:34): So how about, I mean, so as far as the longevity, corporate longevity, point taken for companies of kind of our size and type. What about comradery itself among other companies? Is that something you have any idea of? I mean, it’s, it’s really hard to gauge from outside the company.
Steven (24:01): Well, we’ve hired people from Aaron Cranson’s office. We know that people from many the companies that we either teamed with or competed with or whatever, and, and it was clear just in informal discussions that there, it just wasn’t there to the extent, extent that we had it.
Robb (24:22): So you’ve, you’ve gotten that feedback. We hire people that used to be somewhere, and they say, I like the people here better than where I was.
Steven (24:34): Take a poll around our existing staff. You’ll hear it all over again.
Robb (24:38): Interesting. Interesting. So do you have a feeling for how that relates to like longevity and turnover? I mean, certainly I’ve been here again 21 years. I haven’t switched jobs in awhile but certainly people have come and gone while I’ve been here, but there’s a lot of people that have been here for quite a while. And I don’t have an idea of how that compares to other, other firms to other companies. Do you, do you have a sense?
Steven (25:10): And our HR guru Roisin has looked into it. And apparently our retention rate is not much different than other firms. And it seems that in the early years of their careers, individuals don’t really want to stay for a long, long time at any one company necessarily, they would like to explore what else is out there? What am I missing? And, so when people have been here within the first say five years since after graduating school, a lot of them leave just to explore what’s out there, some come back, but most of the departures have been for individuals, either wanting to go to a different part of the country or wanting to explore different types of businesses or different types of professions. Once people have been here a significant period of time, let’s say 10 to 15 years, then they’re more likely to, to be like long long-term. I don’t want to use the word lifers.
Robb (26:26): I’ve heard it. I’ve heard it used. So, so is that so when you say 10 to 15 years, do you mean, do you meanthey’re kind of 10 to 15 years into their career or like 10 to 15 years after graduation?
Steven (26:42): And they join or stay for that long or join after that period of time, they tend to say, okay, you know, I found my place in life. This is good. And, and when they do find that place in life, they tend to contribute more. They building they’re like long-term nest.
Robb (27:04): Yeah. Yeah. I certainly had quite a few jobs in different fields before I started here. But yeah, not everybody there there’s people that have been here 15 years, who this is their first job out of college.
Steven (27:19): Yeah. Our CEO for one.
Robb (27:23): Exactly. He’s he gets mentioned a couple of times. So switching gears a little bit, where we have been doing some work, we’ve been focusing more on DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion inclusiveness. And thinking about this is, is pretty new to me. I think it’s probably pretty new to a lot of us. I think about thermodynamics all day, I don’t think about building community so much. But the focus on deliberately being inclusive and welcoming of everybody into the community, into the workplace community, into camaraderie. We’ve talked a little bit earlier about, you know, when you’re interviewing, you try to gauge whether you’d enjoy working with people. But you don’t interview everybody. And, you know not everybody certainly makes the judgment calls like that, or doesn’t do it correctly. How do you foster comradery when people, you know, when people are here, people you’re meeting for the first time, who you may or may not have interviewed, do you have examples of where SWA folks really were kind of deliberately welcoming and effective in new ways, in different ways? Have you done anything along these lines?
Steven (28:59): No, I have not Robb, but, you know, ever since we’ve gone through the eye-opening experiences of DEI awareness and Keisha, the consultant, has been very helpful in making us be aware and be informed, as a result of that, people have, have become more aware of the differences that different people have in terms of everything, religion, race, background, origin, age, everything, and open their arms to getting to know them much better. So it’s being aware of other people’s station in life and being accepting of this station in life, leads to a stronger cohesive friendliness that, that maybe was not quite as strong before.
Robb (30:08): Yeah. It’s always a work in progress, I guess, but, but it’s, it’s really interesting to me. I mean, it’s a whole new way of thinking and I’m still working on it, for sure. So before COVID, I mean, we, we are, we’re a firm with three different, well, four offices with a fledgling Boston office. And you know, several business groups, eight different groups with different admin groups before COVID. How do you think we did as far as kind of bridging offices, bridging geography, bridging groups, so that company-wide, there was a sense of community and camaraderie rather than within the, you know, the dozen people who you work directly with day to day,
Steven (31:03): It was always difficult. And, and those ones who were more remote bore the brunt of it more than others, like Washington always felt like it was a stepchild. Not that not that people forgot about Washington, but there were too many things going on in New York and Connecticut that often Washington was the last thing to be addressed. And, and we did all sorts of things to try to fix it. We tried infusing camaraderie. We had an office meeting that everyone came to, including a social event at the end of the office meeting that people came to. And those parties went on for, for many, many hours. And it was a clear indication that people loved and, and craved that kind of contact.
Robb (31:58): Other than kind of, I think twice a year, we used to get, you know, we used to get together twice a year.
Steven (32:05): Right. And that’s all we could do. Everything else was try to visit when you can try to talk when you can try to engage in collaboration, across the telephone or the computer as often as you can. Yeah. But that’s the way it happens with multi offices.
Robb (32:26): Yeah. I, I found that, and this is something that I could do more of just, you know, trying to organize webinars or just meetings, or just chat sessions to discuss a topic. And it’s interesting now with COVID, everybody’s remote nobody’s with anybody. For, for the large part. I actually go to the office once or twice a week, but, you know, in some ways, you know, I see people on video meetings, I see people from DC more often than I used to because we’re doing visit video meetings so often, which is good. I guess it’s good. I guess it’s makes me a little ashamed that I didn’t do so much before, but, that’s another question. I mean, after COVID, what do you see happening after COVID? Have we learned ways to do this better to bridge divides in our departments or our office locations? Because, you know, personally, I think nothing’s, nothing’s as good as a face-to-face meeting. I go to the office once or twice a week here. We’re talking in the early spring of 2021. Things still are certainly not wide open yet. We’ll see what happens. But, you know, I go into the office a couple times a week, and even if there’s only a half dozen people at the office, just seeing and talking face to face with those half a dozen people is really nice.
Steven (33:58): I know it’s contact. Yeah.
Robb (34:01): And both professionally and, and just personally, you know, I’ll, I’ll walk down the hall and I asked Zoeller a question about insulation, you know, rather than Googling it or looking it up. So I guess, do you think that things will change after COVID? Have we learned ways to tie the community together a little bit more?
Steven (34:27): So just for example, here we are at 125 people give or take, if in three years or five years, it’s 200, 250 people in four or five offices, get your arms around that, you know, people are not going to see each other very often. I mean, if we were IBM, people would never see each other, you know, what everyone seems to hope is that we’ll be small enough where we can maintain the, the camaraderie, the contact the knowing of each other individually yet still have the, the size and the muscle to be able to be a force in the industry and to offer good careers for all the, all the, all the professionals in the company.
Robb (35:26): Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s a great point. And I, I thought about that. I thought about this when we were kind of, preparing for this, this conversation, but you is, is a close workplace community. Does it only happen in small companies?
Steven (35:45): I don’t know the large companies, but I don’t think so. I think the comradery more likely to happen in small companies in big companies. There’s not quite the same amount of loyalty is more concerned about money. You know, individuals wanting to make more money and not necessarily wanting to be everyone’s best friend and, and in a smaller company, the comradery is more likely to be a good breeding ground.
Robb (36:15): So it sounds like you’re hopeful that the company will grow and that when it grows, it will be able to maintain the community and camaraderie that we have had today. But you don’t know how that’s going to happen. I see why you wanted to talk about this topic, Steven.
Steven (36:39): No, I I’m there to provide moral support and the gray hair and the, and the sense of history, but the dynamics of it has to come from the individuals themselves. We can take that horse to water, but we can’t make it drink.
Robb (37:01): One more quick question post COVID, you know, people everybody’s been working remotely, a lot of people may want to continue to working remotely. Do you have thoughts on that, on what that will do?
Steven (37:13): Well, that that’s, that’s gonna make the social part of it more, more difficult, because there’s less opportunity to have a lunch or after dinner social hour. But I, I think people are social animals and they want to get to know they colleagues better. And there’s been such, such great results from the comradery that has taken place, all the different forms of socializing that I, I don’t see how it won’t continue. It’ll be more and more disparate groups, but definitely more groups. And, and you know, it’s part of our principal. And so it’ll be up to management to make sure that it’s enforced.
Robb (38:04): So that leads me into another thought, you know, I appreciate it. I’ve been with the company long enough that I definitely appreciate the comradery. I have very great friends that I’ve worked with for years. I love the company. I love lots of people here. No argument that there has been great comradery at SWA. But as we grow, it seems to be we’re recognizing we’re camaraderie is really important for us, but are we switching into mandating comradery? And that seems like like, Whoa, that’s jarring to me. It’s like, that’s not kind of how it works. So I know in our company print principles, it is foster comradery. It’s not mandate comraderies. Right. But, but I could still see it kinda rubbing people the wrong way a little bit. You will be friendly. You will be friends with your colleagues. It’s kinda creepy.
Steven (39:17): I agree with you if it’s forced or if there’s this, this fake friendliness, then, then that could turn around and bite us. But, but I think it requires probably from the more senior people than the, the junior people. It requires going a little bit more out of our way to, to be fair. For example, every new hire, the day they’re hired, I send them a personal note thanking them for joining the company, wishing them luck and looking forward to talking, spending time with them is also a policy that, that manages is supposed to have lunch with you and junior employees on some sort of a frequency basis. And so that was, those are not forced. That’s not forced labor, it’s just paying attention and, and reaching out, reaching out some of the group managers have, have taken conducted boat tours and picnics and events. That’s not, it’s not that they didn’t want to do it. It’s a fun thing. And they do it and, and gladly, and it’s those kinds of reaching out, potluck lunches, the baking contest, which you win every year. They’re all, they’re all small pieces of the, of that puzzle of, of, of of reaching out to try to accomplish comradery.
Robb (40:56): All right. Fostering it, foster if you will. Yeah. Yeah.
Steven (41:00): Is that a fosters that you’re drinking?
Robb (41:02): No, this is a Bissell Brothers Luxe. One of my favorite beers. Absolutely delicious. We’ll see if that makes the cut in the find the podcast podcast audio. Well, this has been great, Steven. And I, I had I had a list of topics and questions and I, you know, you inspired several others. I think I’ve gotten through all my, do you have any, any other thoughts on this?
Steven (41:35): No. I was gonna maybe touch on some of the cross team collaboration that’s taken place, but you actually did touch on that. The cross selling, the multi-team assignments and that, that collaboration where these days, and I see all the proposals that go out, I see the list of them as they go out. I don’t read the proposals, but I see who writes them and, and the amount of money. And so on. More and more of those proposals have, have included sections from multiple teams, five or six teams, each contributing to a part of that proposal. And that, that addresses the sort of going for greatness, professional aspect of it. But there’s got to be a lot of teamwork and friendship in order to get those proposals to be to be kind of in sync with each other and, and to blend with each other. And that’s, that’s a, that’s a massive accomplishment by, by the teams.
Robb (42:44): That is really encouraging. Yeah. And as you say, that’s more professional and business than personal feelings, but this brings us back to where we were a while ago. I think they go together. I think people, people sharing passion and interests can reinforce relationships and camaraderie. Certainly not always.
Steven (43:11): All right. I agree. I give up.
Robb (43:16): Cool. Excellent. Thank you very much. Thank you to Steven. He mentioned a baking contest that I win every year. That’s overstated. I only win cookie contests, and we haven’t even had them every year. We’ve only had a few. I have won all of them, but you know, it hasn’t been every year. Maureen is the one to beat on the pie front. And yes, this was a happy hour conversation, we were enjoying a beer during this conversation. Do we always drink during these podcasts? No, no one, no one can prove that. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. Our website is swinter.com, S W I N T E r.com. Check out swinter.com/podcast. That’s where you can find all the episodes and show notes and check out our careers page. If you are looking for opportunities, we are definitely looking for help. I just looked at our careers page and counted 15 positions, all, certainly most, if not, all of our groups are looking for people at this point. Thank you, Steven. It was a really good conversation. COVID has probably made everyone think about relationships a little bit. I have always appreciated my coworkers here at SWA. Fantastic and brilliant people. I’m pretty lucky to be here, but COVID, and, and also this conversation has, has made me appreciate folks even more so, thanks to all of my colleagues and a big thanks to the podcast team here, Alex, Mirabile, Heather Breslin, Jayd Alvarez, Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello, and I’m Robb aldrige. Thank you again.
Electrification Nation with Laura Tajima
Mar 03, 2021
Featuring
Laura Tajima
Laura Tajima works across many of Building Electrification Institute’s cities overseeing and implementing projects to advance equitable building electrification. Laura was previously with the NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, where she worked on policies and programs to decarbonize buildings and often led the office’s technical analysis and research. Laura has a Master of Science in Sustainability Management from Columbia University.
Cities across North America are paving the way for wide-spread building electrification. Although there are many benefits associated with going all-electric, there are also many barriers that stand in the way.
Building Electrification Institute acts as resource for cities in their equitable transition to building electrification through education, training, and program support. They work with 11 different cities, providing them with the necessary “tools in their toolbox” to ensure their buildings are as energy efficient, healthy, equitable, and cost effective as they need to be.
In this episode, our host Robb and guest Laura talk about electrification strategies, costs, and the importance of policy as it relates to building electrification and climate goals in cities.
An organization focused on racial and economic justice, including working on the challenges and opportunities that building electrification presents for low-income communities.
National non-profit working to create high-road local economies, including developing programs and initiatives around building electrification, training, and transitioning the workforce.
A project to develop actionable and equitable roadmaps with 11 leading cities. This page includes resources, case studies, and videos featuring the work of cities and community partners.
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.
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.
Robb (00:22): In this episode, I spoke with Laura Tajima at the building electrification Institute or BEI. Bei supports cities around the country that are trying to electrify their building stock. Back in 2019, my co-host Kelly interviewed Lori Kerr about climate policy in cities and building electrification was one of three or four key pathways that cities need to pursue to reach their climate goals. As electricity gets cleaner and cleaner, moving away from fossil fuels and towards efficient heat pumps can make a lot of sense. Laura herself lives in Colorado, but BEI works all across the country. One of my first questions was where exactly they’re working now.
Laura (01:15): Yeah. So right now we’re working in about three different regions. So we work in the East coast – New York city being one of them, Burlington, Boston, Washington, DC. We were in the Rocky mountain area. So salt Lake city, Denver, and Boulder. And then we have some California cities as well, too. San Jose, LA, Berkeley.
Robb (01:39): So I kind of put Laura on the spot for that question to list all the cities that we’re working with. And she realized later on that she forgot to list to Philadelphia. So you can add Philadelphia to the list. Laura herself started out working in international affairs and education. She went back to grad school for sustainability management and she got her first taste of meaningful climate policy work at the New York city mayor’s office.
Laura (02:07): I started working with the New York city mayor’s office of sustainability initially as like, you know, an intern and loved that idea of the big thinking, you know, being really ambitious, but also kind of having the connection to, you know, local people, local issues, being able to really kind of impact policy that that could change how people are building buildings, change how people are operating them. You know, thinking about programs and supportive trainings and education to kind of help people understand these concepts as well, too. So it was really invigorating and exciting to kind of work on the policies, policy component of things really understanding kind of the, the breadth by which you can really impact the future.
Robb (02:57): Cool. One of the big initiatives that some cities have played with, which certainly gets lots of press, even in mainstream press, is, is gas bans, natural gas bans. You said you work with Berkeley and Berkeley was, was one of the cities that maybe kicked that off. Can you talk about how, how those work or how cities came about to kind of do something that seems pretty draconian to a lot of people?
Laura (03:28): Gas bans often kind of get a lot of misconceptions around it. I think that, you know, a lot of people think that this means that, Oh, you know, the city is coming in and gonna take away my gas stove that I’ve been, you know, working with for the last year 20 years. You know, I think that `we see cities kind of leading in this concept is, is really around, you know, requiring electrification where it makes the most sense. So this does make sense in new construction today. I think that we see that building electrification in new construction can be built less expensive compared to a mixed fuel building. And, you know, can have that really tight envelope in order to make sense for building electrification. And also people are becoming more and more aware of the impacts of gas particularly on health, particularly from cooking. And so, you know, as a result we’ve seen kind of these really strong examples of people leading with building electrification in new construction. I mean, we see this of course in areas like New York city. But we also see in places like, you know, salt Lake city and there’s this awesome organization called Pragmatists for clean air, and they are making all of their plan sites, review process, you know, open source, they’re sharing their costs, they’re sharing their data. So we’ve seen kind of that works in new construction, that building electrification works in new construction. I think as a result, you know, the cities are kind of saying this is a win-win, you know, people get a better home. People get cooling, people get, you know, cleaner cooking, cleaner appliances. This is lower cost to build. Why are we not saying you should go all electric in new construction? And so that’s what we’re seeing. You know, we’re seeing cities that are either saying we’re going to outright require it in certain buildings. We’re seeing cities saying we’re going to require it for, you know heating and cooling and hot water, but maybe, you know, they’re going to allow exceptions for cooking or gas fireplaces. Sometimes they’re allowing exceptions for that as well too. But we’re really seeing that kind of saying this just makes sense. And we just need to make sure that we are, we are going in that direction, our buildings that we’re building today that are going to be around for however many years in the future are kind of the best, the cleanest, the most cost-effective as well as the healthiest.
Robb (05:56): So on the gas bans, were all the gas bans that different cities have had enacted or thought about really just for new construction?
Laura (06:07): Yes. I think that those that have passed to my knowledge, have all been really kind of focused on requiring a level of of electric within new construction buildings. I don’t believe that any of them have considered major renovations, but, but i could be wrong on that one. If it is, it would be only looking at major renovations. I think that there is a little bit of difference with like the gas moratoriums that we saw in New York that were more driven from the gas utility side, rather than like the city local government side. I believe that did have an impact on existing buildings. But that really came out of kind of a constraint on the supply side, while the local governments in their terms of their policies mostly are really much really focusing on requiring all electric to some extent, as I said, in, in new construction.
Robb (07:03): Okay. All right. And, you got into this a little bit, Are, are they differentiating? I mean, I’m with you, for say single family, new construction, single family homes, anything, but all electric just doesn’t make sense to me anymore, but when you get into restaurants or, you know, places with commercial kitchens with big intense thermal loads you know, Berkeley and Brookline, Massachusetts are the two kind of that come to mind for me. Did they put in exceptions for, for say kitchens for restaurants, or was it much more a kind of blanket ban?
Laura (07:47): Brookline actually did a fair bit of stakeholder engagement as I’ve heard with the restaurant industry. And they brought up real concerns about having electric alternatives for some of their, you know, restaurant specialty kind of type of cooking. And so that they allowed commercial cooking and might’ve even allowed residential cooking to be gas in terms of their requirements around all electric. So there’s definitely different flavors if you will, of all electric requirements. And that’s why I keep on saying like, there there’s that variety, you know, some are saying this is only going to be residential. Some are saying, we’re going to allow for residential cooking. We’re going to allow for gas fireplaces, we’re going to allow for you know, domestic hot water in multi-family buildings. So again, I think that there are nuances to these and that’s what I think that is often missed a little bit within the press that you know, I think that the local governments, they work closely with their stakeholders. They are kind of the closest government that understands their, their constituents. So, you know, a lot of times that while they do want to be aggressive and ambitious with our goals, they also of course want something practical. So, you know, they, they try to kind of really balance that out. And, and so they’re not going to try to kind of put something forward that is completely impractical often. So, so again, I think those exceptions do really exist when, when they’re considering these types of policies.
Robb (09:20): Cool. Cool. And what else on the new construction side, what, what kind of innovative strategies have you seen people try that either have worked, or you’re really interested to see how well they work other than something, you know, press grabbing headlines like gas bans?
Laura (09:40): As I mentioned, it kind of is this, this cycle, I would say where there are pilot projects that you can really kind of highlight and demonstrate, and this might be through, you know, buildings of excellence type of you know, marketing and awareness and awards. It might be also education around kind of the health impacts of gas appliances as well, too. And we’ve seen different kind of organizations and partnerships with health groups and other local like community groups in order to kind of help bring out that messaging around the health impacts. You know, and then of course we’ve seen really kind of some, some leading developers, as I mentioned lead in terms of showing kind of how that they can do it and showing the data showing the analysis that goes behind it. And so I think that that pilot project kind of component has been really successful and sharing kind of information has been really successful. And now we’re seeing people transition into that, that requirements. You know, I think that, that there are kind of the requirements of saying how you can build, but there’s also kind of the I guess, financial components as well, too. And so, you know, are some places such as, as Seattle is looking at kind of how do we tax the, the oil that is being used for heating and hot water in order to kind of use that as a financial driver for people to kind of continue to looking at electrification but also using that funding to really make sure that it’s going to, you know, low-income housing to kind of support electrification there, where again, it has often the biggest impact and health and safety, but I will say that, you know, part of this is also kind of making sure that these local governments have all of these tools in their toolbox. And what we’ve seen across the country is actually this growing number. And I believe it’s up to 10 right now of state ballot measures or state legislation that actually would prohibit any kind of all electric requirement in local governments. Started with Arizona. It passed super quick in Arizona, but now we’re seeing across the country it was introduced in Colorado, it’s in Utah. I believe it was introduced in Mississippi, a number of them that are happening oftentimes of really similar language. So there’s kind of some, some questions about, you know, oil and gas kind of industries behind a lot of these components and influence state legislatures, but this would restrict the local governments ability to kind of pass these really ambitious policies that I mentioned really impact and improve the lives of the people living in these buildings. So that is something that I think that, that as, you said, like, you know, the gas ban press kind of gets wider as local governments get more ambitious. What they’re also going to be experiencing is this backlash, particularly from the oil and gas industry. And so now local governments are trying to figure out how to band together, how to get op-eds in there, how to kind of change the conversation in order to galvanize against kind of these, you know, immediate impacts of, of these, these gas ban prohibition legislation that’s happening at the state level.
Robb (12:58): Wow. So something to stay tuned to probably there. Interesting, well, all the gas bands and the really all electric requirements are really focused on new construction. In my experience, existing buildings are much different and larger challenge. What, what are you seeing on that front? If anything
Laura (13:24): Existing buildings are definitely more challenging. Retrofits of any kind are hard in existing buildings compared to new construction. And of course building electrification is no exception. And it has, of course, these additional layers of complexities. As I mentioned, kind of that cycle of like pilot projects, education, outreach, marketing, and then kind of requirements, I would still, I would say that for the most part, existing buildings are kind of still in that kind of line of how do we make sure that there’s more examples out there today of this being done successfully of this having real impacts on the tenants and residents in these buildings? So we have to scale that, right? We have to kind of understand the underlying challenges of workforce, of costs of education and awareness. You know, I think that, that this of course comes in a few different flavors, you know, I think that we see Denver as a, a leader in a lot of these things, they were actually able to pass a sales tax ballot last year that actually will provide, I believe it’s 20 to $40 million annually for climate initiatives, which is, is going to be critical. But I think that there’s other kind of components too. And it’s kind of thinking about you know, are there other financing opportunities, utility-led financing opportunities, which we’re working in Boulder with exploring. I think that, you know, also of course the workforce is a component as well too, and we’re thinking that in terms of actually Berkeley and San Jose, understanding kind of what does the local supply chain look like in San Jose and Berkeley, you know, where are these contractors coming from, where is kind of the challenge in terms of the supply chain? So the cities are really trying to figure out kind of what are those training projects linked to demand projects that can make sure that people are coming in and being trained and able to take advantage of the economic opportunities that are coming from you know, incentive projects or programs or things like that. So I think that that is a big you know, focus as well, too on the workforce. You know, I think that what we are looking at is saying, and this might be, you know, a component of different programs that we’re looking at in different cities. How can we have certain kinds of workforce training requirements within these demand generating programs and demand generating kind of incentives? So if this is the kind of training requirements, or if these are requirements around labor standards, to make sure that these are good paying jobs or having, making sure that these jobs are going to people who are most in need of it and you know, minority and women owned businesses, you know, how can we include that within kind of this overarching program in order to make sure that people are able to install these well. And these are kind of an equitable transition that we’re looking at.
Robb (16:12): Yeah. Workforce is in, in parts of the East coast where I work mostly. I mean, there’s just a shortage of contractors, even, you know, you know, during COVID unemployment is a big, is a big deal, but there’s still a shortage of good HVAC contractors. And because of that, their prices are going up. So, you know, electrifying buildings switching from a fuel burning equipment to electric equipment is getting more and more expensive. One of the reasons is just that, you know, supply and demand for the contractors who know how to do it. So yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. I’m not surprised you’re saying that consistently around the country,
Laura (16:54): You know, we asked people to kind of how they hire and they say, honestly, we looked through the other competitors and that’s where we have to like, get the trained, experienced talent. And I think that that is not sustainable for anyone. You know, we need to kind of have that pipeline going in. And if that is a bit of like the education and awareness, that these are really good paying jobs you know, these have good benefits for you as well, too. And then if it’s also kind of, of course, including additional training, the training, that’s necessarily, as we think about like more, I guess, complicated you know, high tech kind of equipment that people have to understand. That’s of course the other component as well.
Robb (17:37): Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the really puzzling things to me, which I, I haven’t seen a good solution to is, and lots of natural gas is still cheaper to operate, to heat a building, to heat hot water, natural gas is less expensive than heat pumps. And that’s just the way that the pricing works. Right now, in many areas. In new construction, you can mitigate that by just, you know, making the load so low that just, you know, investing in the infrastructure for gas for another utility just doesn’t make sense, but in existing buildings, especially in, where it really frustrates me and others is, is on low low-income low and moderate income folks. You know, there’s push to not leave these low and moderate income people behind, but also moving them off natural gas onto heat pumps could increase their operating costs. And it’s it’s a head scratcher. Have you seen really clever ways to address that, to think about that?
Laura (18:52): I think the operating cost is as much if not higher of a concern as the upfront cost, right? The upfront cost, you can understand how to use like incentive and financing to possibly drive that lower. The operating costs are, are definitely challenging. And in no way, do we want to be increasing the operating cost, particularly low income residents because as we know a lot, so many of them are energy burden today. So I think that there’s a couple of, of techniques, I guess, what we’ve seen you know, one is the commitment to ensure that the operating costs are lower. And I know that sounds really lofty. But we’ve seen this in, in California, and I know that California is sometimes a higher example to pull from, particularly for the colder East coast, but just kind of as an example, there’s the California low income weatherization program, the LIWA program, and they have a commitment to make sure that the operating costs don’t increase. And they’ve had a number of multi-family electrification projects in which they’re benchmarking the information, they’re including solar, they’re including energy efficiency as well. And they are benchmarking to make sure that post retrofit, the operating costs are going lower. And if it’s not, if they’re higher operating costs for the residents, then they’re going to be committed to going back and making sure that there are ways to kind of drive down the cost with a combination of, again, solar more efficient operation or energy efficiency. So I think that that’s like one example. I think that another example is looking at at rate design which I’m definitely not an expert expert on, but, you know, exploring about, you know, are there heat pump rates, are there electric heating rates that people can think about in terms of implementing that would actually help. Yeah.
Robb (20:38): Even for folks who may have plenty of money you know, residential, commercial, institutional, there’s just a lot of inertia. I have a building it’s not efficient. I heat with gas. I can afford it. I don’t want the hassle of doing anything. I suspect that’s a huge slug of the building stock out there. Do you, have you seen strategies on that front that, that work?
Laura (21:05): We completely recognize that we have an uphill climb on this there’s misconceptions around electric heating. Everyone thinks about electric resistance heating. Say, I don’t want that. You know, I guess inertia is the right way to capture that. There’s only so far that voluntary programs can go, right, in talking and go out these great incentives and programs and workforce and training and education and all of that. There, there is so far that that goes right. It really comes down at some point to put in requirements. And we have seen these kind of through building performance standards or, you know, the New York city local law 97 2.0, if you will. That started in New York city and DC, St. Louis passed it this past year. We’re seeing this in at least, you know, five to 10 other cities being developed currently, and States as well, these building performance standards, which kind of, of course put this cap on how much carbon or energy you can emit with certain target dates, usually going out to about 2050 or so. And if you’re above that cap, you know, you pay a penalty or you have to figure out how to get below that cap. This is kind of, I think, where we see the biggest kind of step forward around existing buildings, because you’re right, like there’s so much inertia. And, and to some extent there has to be a long term vision of saying, this is where you have to be eventually to allow for that time of saying, how do I transition my building? How do I wait for the kind of the end of equipment life to kind of transition those to higher, efficient electric options. And that hopefully kind of will direct kind of the industry a little bit past that at inertia to say, I don’t want to do this, but, but maybe I have to do this. So I’m going to figure out how to do it by, you know, whatever timeline it, that local government sets. So, you know, I think that for the building performance standard, which again has been really taking off, I think across the country, in terms of local policies, kind of having that long-term vision, that long-term requirement, I think that having some clarity about saying, you know, this is an all electric requirement, or this is like a fairly electric requirement, if you will, you know, to have that certainty to kind of point to in the long term I think will really help kind of in terms of driving people towards that, you know, voluntary programs can’t do. Though saying that, voluntary programs are, are critical in these next five, 10 years, especially to kind of help people get there.
Robb (23:46): It’s impressive to me to see that, that these are being enacted. I mean, I think it takes a lot of political will to to get something like that, moving, you know, not just new construction standards, not just building codes, but yeah, this building was built eight years ago, it has to meet some standards now it’s yeah, it’s very different.
Laura (24:13): Yeah. I mean, they are re I completely agree. They require a lot of, political will a lot of commitment from the city. A lot of stakeholder engagement, you know, we are seeing these taking, you know, a year or more to develop, oftentimes because of the number of different types of stakeholders that, of course they’re involved in existing building have to be included, listen to feedback incorporated having that real kind of creation process with them in order to develop a policy that people will get behind that people think is, is reasonable. That people think is also ambitious. So it does, it’s a huge lift, but I do think, you know, this is basically putting a line in the sand of saying, this is how we envision our buildings by 2050 or 2040 or whatever we have to start getting there in a real way.
Robb (25:03): So if people want to find out more about you about what you’re up to, or what their cities or States might be up to, where, where can they find out more info?
Laura (25:17): Sure. So we have really exciting website, as a five-person team, you all kind of, kind of roll up your sleeves and help with. So I I’m actually in the current process of updating it, it’s very exciting. So it’s Beicities.org. It has both all of our cities, as well as a summary of the work that we’re doing with our cities. And it also includes some example resources that we’ve been actually developing. So these can be like customer economic analyses our market segmentation, so that cities have a better understanding of the buildings in their in their area, analyses on the supply chain educational presentations and things like that. So that’s all all on our website or will be on our website shortly.
Robb (25:59): Cool. Yeah. We’ll put links to, certainly to your website and any other resources you think might be really relevant. We can put those links in the show, in the show notes.
Laura (26:10): Great. Yeah. This has been really exciting. Yeah. What we need is more people to kind of understand that this is a massive challenge, right? This is going to be really hard. But this is where we have to go. And I think that what we need is just more and more people to be maybe excited by that challenge, not, not deferred by that challenge, but willing to kind of really roll up their sleeves and trying to figure out how to overcome some of them. Because, you know, we’re not, we’re not completely naïve. We know how hard this is, and we know how hard is to especially consider how to do this equitably. And so, you know, we just want more partners, more people in the mix more people from different kinds of experiences and backgrounds in the mix to kind of help figure out the solutions over them, because this is where we’re going to have to go eventually. And it’s just a matter of time.
Robb (27:06): Thanks for listening. And thanks again to Laura. BEI’s website is Beicities.org. That’ll be in our show notes, obviously with lots of other interesting links and other stuff. And if you’re interested in climate and climate policy in cities, check out Kelly’s interview with Lori Kerr from 2019, that was a good one re-listen. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. We are focused on better buildings, healthier buildings, more sustainable buildings, more accessible, efficient, resilient, comfortable, better all around, really check us out @ swinter.com. That’s S w I N T E r.com. This is swinter.com/podcast is where our show notes live and links to the other episodes and check out our careers page. If you’re looking for opportunities, we have postings now for all our offices, Boston, Connecticut, Manhattan, and DC. Thanks again to Laura and thanks to the team here at SWA, Kelly Westby, Heather Breslin, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks.
It’s Time to 86 Fossil Fuels in Commercial Kitchens with Chris Galarza
Feb 05, 2021
Featuring
Chef Christopher Galarza
Chef Christopher Galarza is the Owner and Culinary Sustainability Consultant at Forward Dining Solutions, LLC. Chris founded his company in hopes to educate the world about the electrification of kitchen systems and alternative cooking technologies, and to push sustainable cooking practices into the mainstream consciousness. Chris sits on the Advisory Board for Pittsburgh Technical College’s Culinary Program, is a Member of La Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, and currently is working with Interface Engineering on a project for Microsoft! Read more
Imagine this: you’re a chef or cook in a high-stress commercial kitchen setting. You’re making split second decisions with little breathing room, and each quick decision can get you cut or burned. On top of that, you’re in over 100-degree heat, breathing in toxic air from your gas stovetop.
This is an experience Chris Galarza could relate to, from working as a professional chef in various commercial settings. After making the switch to an all-electric kitchen utilizing induction equipment at Chatham University’s Eden Hall campus (the world’s first fully self-sustained university campus), he witnessed the positive difference in the physical and mental health of himself and his staff. He now advocates for electric cooking being a much healthier, safer, cost-effective, and energy-efficient option.
In this episode, Kelly and Chris talk through some electric-kitchen-myth-busting, and ultimately answer the question “is moving away from gas and fire in the kitchen really that radical an idea or does it just make perfect sense?”
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.
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.
Chris (00:23): I may not be the person that changes the world, but I hope to inspire the person that can.
Kelly (00:29): That was chef Chris Galarza. I happened across Chris virtually after my colleague, Karla and his friend, Rachelle Boucher at Kitchens to Life presented a cooking demonstration for residential induction cooking. Seeing Chris’s impressive background and passion for sustainable food prep, I knew we had to have him on the podcast. Chef Chris is a culinary sustainability consultant and the owner of Foward Dining Solutions. Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in culinary management by age 23, Chris was acting chef at Monterey Bay fish grotto. The number one seafood restaurant in Pittsburgh. He has been opening sous chef for off the hook. The catering chef for Carnegie Mellon university and was chosen over thousands as one of 12 culinary apprentices at the prestigious Green Briar resort. Chris then helped create and lead the kitchen at Chatham university’s Eden hall campus.
Chris (01:23): Which is the first fully self-sustained university campus in the world. And it has one of America’s first, all electric kitchens, boasting induction ranges, electric flat tops, electric ovens, steamers, tilt skillets. You think it, you name it. We got it. We had a farm that had 30 plus acres in cultivation. We tapped our own trees for maple syrup, raised our own bees and trout, our own orchard mushrooms. We did everything we could, and it was a culinary playground If you will.
Kelly (02:02): Chris is now dedicated to creating sustainable culinary playgrounds for other chefs across the country, but he wasn’t always so focused on sustainability.
Chris (02:12): My journey through sustainability, kind of the seeds were planted in culinary school when my professor, her name was Sally Fry. And I say her name because she was the one that even brought up the term sustainability, what it means, how important it is. And I thought it was a, it was a cool thing as like a fad, like, okay, cool. That’s really cool. Trying to give back to the earth. I get it. And then when I got to Chatham university, I really fell in love with the concepts, with what it took to be sustainable, how important it was. You know, I developed my own definition of sustainability. Like what it meant to me. And to me, sustainability is to give back to the earth as much as you take from it. And right now that’s not happening. So I tried to try to use up the ingredients as best I could try to compost everything we could. If something was deemed trash, try to find another life for it. And from there just embracing the electric kitchen, which at first I was hesitant about. And now, I mean, obviously it’s inspired me to create my own consulting company where, you know, although we consult on any, any number of projects on regular gas kitchens, I really love to consult and push people towards the electric kitchens. There’s no real experts out there on the commercial sense. So I’m hoping to help nudge the culinary landscape in that direction. And what also helped inspired this, I guess, business is that I’ve had people reach out and ask me questions about what it takes to run an electric kitchen. What is an electric kitchen? How do you work in this space that really is foreign to the Americans. And then through research, finding out that most of the world is already on board. So I started seeing a gap in knowledge where American chefs are behind their European, Australian and Asian counterparts because they’re using these technologies that they’ve had it for over a decade, almost two decades in some, in some places. And at some point like American chefs are going to start becoming less desired where we once were the gold standard. So it was a combination of all those things that helped lead me to the path where this is important.
Kelly (04:42): That’s awesome. That’s a great sentiment. And I love what you mentioned about using up everything you can in the kitchen. I think it speaks to sustainability in a different way, but it’s definitely the angle that I personally have felt attracted me to sustainability. You know, why are we wasting so many things? How can we cut waste? So I’d love if you could give everybody an example, just to see us in your chef hat, a little bit of where you reused sort of something that other people thought was, was waste.
Chris (05:14): So I’ll go real quick to when, when I used to teach kids, I used to teach a bunch of high school kids who would come through once a year to the campus. And we would have this one day where they were going to the garden, they’d pick all the produce, they’d bring it to me. I’d clean it and make sure it’s all ready to go. And I would teach them a three hour course in how to identify fresh fish, how to break down fresh fish and what to do with it. So we would break down this fish, you would have this carcass and most people would just throw away. What I did was I made a, I made a fish stock. And then while they were, you know, while we were going through the class, the fish stock was going, I took their vegetable scraps that would also thrown away toss that into the fish stock. While the fish stock was continuing to simmer, we cooked their meal, they’d sit down and eat, I’d at that point, have them collect their scraps, bring it up. We would discuss what you can do with the fish stock. We can just have them smell it, look at it, identify the characteristics of a good stock and then have them taste it and how bland it could be possibilities of what, of what it could be. And then we would strain it and it make soup with it. So in that one, three hour class, I’d show them how to take this, this animal who for all intensive purposes died and we’re lucky enough to receive those nutrients. And it’s incumbent on us to make sure that that animal has the utmost respect and is used to the fullest extent of our ability. So we were able to eat its flesh. We were able to make a broth from their bones, instead of throwing out the leftovers, turning into soup and having another meal with it. So that fish sustained us for two, three different meals. And that’s kinda like the best example of using up these ingredients that will be tossed away. Other things we’ve done is pickled pineapple stems or pineapple cores rather it pickles. It pickles fantastic, you wouldn’t think so, but it breaks down the, the fiberous core. It has an amazing crunch. It’s sweet. It’s acidic. It’s fantastic. And then from there we’ve also turned like carrot peels and, you know, leftover stuff from like near par soup production and we grind that up and pickle that, and then we’d have, you know, a relish. Yeah. So there’s a million things you can do with with food.
Kelly (07:46): Yeah, that’s so great. I always feel guilty throwing things away. So I recently we made Apple peel chips and they were absolutely delicious. So you’ve definitely inspired me. I never knew what to do with pineapple cores. So there you go.
Chris (08:00): I’ve also made a salmon crackers from salmon skin. That was a lot of fun. You take the skin, dehydrate it, you fry it. And, and really about 400 degrees Fahrenheit and it puffs up like a cracker.
Kelly (08:13): Nice. All of those sound delicious. And I think when people think of you know, sustainability, that would be perfectly aligned with chefs, it would be kind of using all of the ingredients. Not that everybody does, but of course, it’s more cost-effective for you. But one thing that I think that the sustainability industry has always maybe touted as kind of oppositional with the culinary industry is the electric kitchen. So just like you talked about, the induction stove top and can you get a little bit more into your experience with that? What was your hesitation? What was your, what was your perception of it before you started working at Chatham? And then how did you come to kind of learn to use it, to to use it with your staff, you know, to make the same quality or maybe even better food in some ways?
Chris (09:09): Sure. Yeah. So going into Chatham, my perception of electric cooking was what we all think of initially is those coils that take forever to get hot. That just don’t, it takes forever to cook food. It slows down everything, things burn it’s, it’s just a terrible, terrible piece of equipment. It’s God awful. I remember getting into apartments when I was a kid and being like ugh electric, and that wasn’t even cooking. It was just so bad that like I knew, and, you know, I knew a little bit about induction because of, you know, being in the industry you’d come across, like the bake shop would have a little induction, you know, hob that you would plug in and take it wherever you, wherever you want. But it was never something that like we used continuously or we use religiously. It was just a novel thing that you can just take anywhere you want instead of having butane or anything like that. And that was cool. But that, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea what it does, how fast it does. So I was like, okay, well, you know, never one to shy away from a challenge. I said, all right, well, we’re going to make this happen. We’re going to figure out what we can do. And you know, not a problem, whenever it gets installed, we’re going to get trained on it anyway. So we’re all good. So the kitchen gets built. We go into the kitchen, talking to the rep, he’s trying to show us how it works. She’s like, all right, here’s a knob, turn it on and turn off and make sure your pans are magnetic. I’m okay. Is there anything else you need to know? And he said, this he’s like, Hey man, I just sell it. I don’t know how this stuff works. Really. You know, you figure it out you’re the expert. I was like, great. And that was the notion we got from every one of our vendors on every one of the pieces of equipment. You turn it on, you use it. What else do you want? I don’t really know. Like I just sell it. So that was the first big hurdle, is how do we learn to work with it? And we learned to work with it fast because you know, I’m supposed to be leading this kitchen. And none of my staff is really classically trained or anything like that. So we’re like, okay, I need to figure it out and act like, I know what I’m doing.
Kelly (11:19): Fake it till you make it.
Chris (11:20): Yeah. Right. So first thing I realized is how fast the induction unit works. So our instinct is to get in the kitchen, put our pan on the burner, crank it on high, and then, you know, go do what we had to do while the pan gets hot so we can start cooking. And so that’s exactly what I did. I get in the kitchen, get a big pot going, oil, put some garlic in there, crank it on high, turn around, before I can grab my onions, I turn back around and it’s completely burnt. Like black, not even like Brown, it’s black. And I was like, Oh, wow, that really fast. And then we started doing some tests whenever we had downtime. How fast is the boil water? How fast does this work? How fast does this work? Is this okay? Is this not okay? And we started to piece together do’s and don’ts while using induction, we started kind of dispelling our own myths that we had come up with. You know, while we were imagining what this induction kitchen was going to be, because when we got in there, it was August of 2015, and the kitchen didn’t get built until, well we didn’t move until April of 2016. So we had some time to just kind of imagine what it would be, do some research. And we kinda were all apprehensive. And then after working with it for a little bit, we realized that this is definitely superior to what we were doing, but I’d stay late and, you know, practice different things and, you know, just observe what the staff were doing. And then we would kind of get together a lunchtime, talk about it. And then from there we kind of just taught each other how to, how it works. And then I would start training them on things I’ve read and things I saw. And over the time we just made it work. And then over the time we just fell in love with it, to the point where that we would go help another account and It would almost feel snobbish walking in like, “Oh, you’re still using gas?” Because we will put the pan on and crank it on high and it would take so much longer to get hot so we can start cooking what we need to cook. It was kind of like when you’re used to driving a Ferrari and then you’ve got to drive a Honda civic, like that’s how it felt.
Kelly (13:44): Yeah. And that was one thing in in Karla and Rachelle’s demonstration, and she calls herself an electric kitchen super fan, which maybe you would call yourself as well.
New Speaker (13:59): Oh for sure. and Rachelle is Awesome.
Kelly (14:00): Yeah. It’s so good that, that, it’s such a, it’s a small community of people electric kitchen, super fans across the country. That’s very fun.
Chris (14:08): Yeah. So Rachelle and I, just through talking, we realized that, like, she and I are two peas in a pod. We love this stuff to the degree. She’s an expert in residential equipment. And I’ve never been a personal chef outside of what I did for president Sheresh at Carnegie Mellon, but I prep everything in my own kitchen and bring it up and just we’d warm it up. So I know everything there is to know about commercial cooking. And if you put me into trying to talk about appliances for residential, wouldn’t know what’s going on and vice versa. So we’ve been, we’ve been kind of like trying to build each other up because there’s no one else doing what we’re doing. So I love that woman to death.
Kelly (14:55): That’s great. Yeah. And I watched the episode she did with, with Karla from our office. And she had a demonstration with boiling water and talked a little bit about you can’t turn the pot on and then turn around and do your chopping, and then throw the thing in you. You have to turn it on right when you’re ready to use it. Cause it goes up so quick, you turn your garlic into waste. Usually, you know, there’s this sense of the chef’s world and everything so hot and it’s a little bit dangerous and and things are flying and things are on fire. And in this situation, it’s a lot less hot in the kitchen. And there’s a few other reasons why it’s actually a little bit better in a lot of ways for your staff. And that’s something that you’ve been thoughtful about in terms of sustainability of of your staff and turnover.
Chris (15:50): Yeah. There is significant dangers in working in a professional kitchen that I didn’t notice until we switched over. So there’s a significant concentration of carbon monoxide inside a traditional kitchen, it can exceed 200 parts per million. If you’re outdoors, you’re at two and a half parts per million at most, if it reaches a certain point that it’s like the federal standards is like nine parts per million is maximum. After that everyone’s indoors. There’s something wrong in the kitchen, we exceed 200 parts per million that is incredibly dangerous. And we do that day in and day out 12, 14, 16, 18 hours a day. You know, that’s, that’s dangerous, you know, with these flames accidents happen, I’ve seen towels catch on fire, aprons, catch on fire. There’s a risk there that you wouldn’t have. And then as you mentioned it is also incredibly hot.
Chris (16:49): You have this ambient heat because what’s happening is you are trying to force these these slabs of metal to get hot by throwing fire at it until it decides to accept that thermal energy and get hot. But what happens to the flame? What happens to that heat that wasn’t accepted by the pan? It gets wicks off the sides and goes into the atmosphere. It goes into the kitchen, goes into your space, and then you become incredibly hot. I’ve been in kitchens where I checked my thermometer and it’s reading 130 degrees in my pocket, you know, in my arm pocket. You know, we’ve been in this might be TMI, but there’ll be, there’ll be moments where we would be in, in the rush. We get to the rush. We all go upstairs to try to like cool down. You know, some of us would even throw up and then go back down to work because it would be so hot. Your body can’t, can’t handle it for too long. And that’s the environment that most chefs work in, that that’s the reality.
Kelly (17:47): And that they assume they HAVE to work in because that’s their trade.
Chris (17:50): And then when i got to Chatham, this electric kitchen, here comes winter. Never really worried about it. I’ve worked in kitchens where I’d be in a beanie during winter, because why not? You’re comfortable. And we’re all in winter coats and gloves while we’re working, because it’s working so efficiently, we’re cold. We’d have to figure out ways to keep the kitchen warmer. That’s how stark the differences. We’ve actually had data from my kitchen. I’m looking to pull that up now where the ambient temperature never reached above 72 degrees. That’s the hottest it got. And that was in September. When we’re talking about eliminating waste, when we’re talking about nothing gets thrown out, that includes our heat. So the heat that comes off of the pan that, that comes off of the food, that goes into the hood systems gets captured, gets mixed with a food grade, propylene glycol. And that’s what warms the building. So yeah, so don’t even throw away our heat.
Kelly (18:49): That’s amazing. And I think that speaks to, you know, you, weren’t just looking at your components within the kitchen itself and obviously who had an all electric kitchen, but you were brought in, as the chef were brought into the discussions with the building engineer and operators and occupants to talk about how can we look at this holistically? And I remember you mentioning being brought into discussions with the engineering team about how much energy you energy the kitchen was using and what you could do together to work together, to reduce it.
Chris (19:27): Yeah. So we would talk on on a weekly basis on how much water we were using, the energy we were using comparatively to the solar energy that we were creating. We would have these discussions on how much water is being used in the kitchen. We’d use about 1500 gallons a week, when things were slow how to get that number down, what we were doing to curtail that, what our practices were, and we realized some pitfalls in how we were working. So most kitchens, you would go and grab something out of the freezer, thaw it out under cold water. And we’d realize that when we do that, we’d add X amount of water into the system because we also cleaned our own water. So if we’re just dumping water into the system, one is diluting the microorganisms that we’re using to help clean our water. And two, we have nowhere to store that water or get rid of that water. So we had to be really strategic in how we worked which is another hurdle that we had. And this isn’t, you know, average. We were probably, I don’t know of any kitchen that does it. I don’t know of any chef that knows water and energy consumption that they had. And those are the conversations that we had on a weekly basis over the years fine tuning it. And it was a whole other world. You know, you go to culinary school, you have these dreams of being a chef working for, you know, whoever it is you admire and that you never realized that like, you’re going to be mostly in an office. And at some point probably talking to somebody about water and energy, but it was, it was exciting to learn all this stuff. I was just in this bubble and I was just enjoying and soaking as much of it up as possible. It was just so much knowledge in that place. And so much knowledge in this world that we’re living in with, with people who are discussing sustainability, people who are awake to the fact that the way things were needs to be changed, needs to be adapted, needs to be updated, you know?
Kelly (21:31): Yeah, absolutely. And I think we’ve talked about this. There’s a sense in, you know, in the culinary industry at similar, probably to the sense that I get from, or that we get that we run into sometimes from the construction industry of you know, we’ve been doing it this way for 25 years or 50 years, and why would we change it now? Like if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
Chris (21:59): Oh, I’m so tired of people saying that.
Kelly (22:02): Yeah, exactly.
Chris (22:04): Yeah. People are stuck in that, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it. The problem with that is people who think that way, never look to see if there’s something that could be done better, right? I’ve never talked to somebody who said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it who actually actively looks at their base of operations and tries to figure out what’s the most efficient way to run things. If there’s any technology out there to make them more efficient, make them more cost-effective. No, I’ve never seen anyone do that. Esssentially what they’re saying is this is the way I do it because I’m comfortable doing it. I don’t care about anything else. I’m just comfortable doing it this way. And that may work for some people in some industries. But when you are producing food, when you are in charge of a large group of people, you know, and you are watching them sit in this uncomfortably, hot kitchen, breathing in methane day in and day out. And you realize that, because most chefs don’t realize that, you’re like, why am I putting my chefs in this death pit, to take it a little bit extreme, because there can be, there’s a much better way out there. And as, as a business owner, you’re always looking for a way to, to kind of, you know, pinch a penny. And If I come to you and I say, Hey, I can save you so much money on your, on your overhead simply by switching your equipment from gas to electric, you will now increase how much food you could put out at any given time, because the equipment now works faster, your chefs are now more comfortable in the kitchen, therefore you have less conflict which could potentially mean that you have lower turnover. You are now not paying as much in your utilities because on average an electric kitchen runs at 50%, the efficiency of a gas kitchen, which means if you’re paying a hundred dollars, for instance, say, you’re paying a thousand dollars for your, for your gas bill. You’re not paying $500 for your electric bill. You know, that’s, that’s kinda like what, they’re, what, what they’re saying. It costs a lot less money to run, and you will now no longer have to buy harsh chemicals to clean, hot soapy water, cleans everything. You, you essentially reduce the overall time of cleaning, which means your employees are now leaving early. And if I tell you that you can save all this money immediately, why wouldn’t you do it? Yeah. The people who say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. When they’re presented with these facts, that’s when the real answer or the real reason comes out. I don’t like that. That’s not the way we do things. That’s not the way I’ve done things. And that’s really what it comes down to is that people are uncomfortable with change.
Kelly (24:53): Yeah. Maybe that is broken actually. You know, when we take a step back that that is a major problem. And so thinking about, can we provide holistic solutions that check a lot of different boxes? And we’ve talked about this too. You know, employee engagement is something that’s very critical in the in the consulting world. It’s obviously very critical for you. I’m curious from your staff at Chatham or, or in your experience, do you have any anecdotal evidence or, or otherwise about turnover or retention rates with relation to you know, comfort in a kitchen?
Chris (25:34): Well, so that’s twofold. So as far as like my own turnover, we had low turnover. I mean, we were a small campus and I had staff that was there from most of my tenure there. I was there for five years and I probably had to hire maybe five or six new people over the time that I was there. We had people who wanted to stay because it was a laid back environment. It was a comfortable environment. People got along. And I think that a lot to do with thermal comfort in the kitchen. And actually ASHRAE came out with a study that went to tackle this, this exact question, thermal comfort in the commercial kitchen. And they have the number of kitchens that are in the what they would call like the optimal zone is far fewer than the kitchens that are beyond that. And they studied it over the winter months and in summer months and they, and they broke it down through cooking preparation and dishwashing, and you’d be surprised at how many kitchens go beyond hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And it’s just, it’s an uncomfortable environment. You know, I often say like, it takes a certain kind of crazy to enjoy what we do, because you are put into a hellish landscape, it’s usually a high stress environment, fast paced environment and there’s little room for air. You’re working with fire and sharp knives, and it’s all happening in breakneck speed. You gotta make these split second decisions that can either cause you to get burned or cut all in an effort to feed another human being and to enjoy that you gotta be crazy, right? I mean, I enjoy it, but like, it’s a unique environment that most people would not understand or want to be a part of. It’s it’s just tough. And if this technology that’s coming out, this induction technology that’s in America that we are able to harness right now can make the environment easier. Imagine how much more we could do if we are able to keep our staff comfortable. Do you think, you know, arguments would break out as much? Probably not. People are more comfortable, they’re more relaxed. There’s, there’s a number of different factors that are changed just by switching out a single piece of equipment. I’ve never came across anything in the kitchen that by making one change can lead to a cascade of positive effects.
Kelly (28:30): Thinking about kind of that triple bottom line, there are benefits immediately in terms of cost reduction. And there are benefits in terms of employee turnover, which is a cost reduction and, and health and wellness of your staff and and something that’s good for the environment as well. And that actually, obviously from the folks, generally listening to this podcast, the all electric movement is is sort of an obvious path forward, but thinking about thermal comfort in in most office spaces and things like that, I think people are talking about a little bit more now. But that’s so interesting in terms of, you know, when you have a space that’s very uncomfortable, how does that impact the interaction between human beings in the space? That is definitely something that I haven’t thought a lot about. So that’s really interesting.
Chris (29:23): I’ve, I’ve joked with friends. Like I want somebody to do a study on the effects, on mental health from a traditional kitchen to an all electric space and seeing what the implications are, because it takes a toll on you to work in a place like that. And then to turn around and go to another place in the same environment, doing the same thing that you love, except that it’s much more comfortable. It’s much safer. I feel like it’s got to be a stark difference. I know it’s helped me a lot. I used to be, you know, a traditional chef, right. The hothead, and now I’m a completely different person. I’m much more relaxed.
Kelly (30:04): We’ll have to check with your wife about that.
Chris (30:07): That’s part two of the podcast.
Kelly (30:10): That’ll be part 2. So Chris, we talked about some of the benefits of electric cooktops. You don’t have that carbon monoxide that you get from gas burning, but obviously there’s still particulates and other emissions that come off just from heating up oil and cooking itself, and that needs to be exhausted. I know you have a sophisticated hood system. Can you tell us a little bit about that hood system and then kind of the economics of that for you and where you saw savings potentially over the long term?
Chris (30:43): Absolutely. So, yeah, so we, we had a Holton Marvel hood system and what was unique about that hood system that it had all these sensors, these little tiny pinprick holes that would just blow out air all the time. And there was a whole control panel with touchscreen. It just, it seemed like it was insane. But after really working with it, you get to realize the, the genius that went behind the creation of that system. So let’s start with the pinpricks. So the pinpricks around that are constantly blowing air. What that does is it creates a more efficient, positive and negative pressure to help more efficiently pull any grease, any smoke, any, any heat from the area immediately out. And it knows to do that because it turns on and off based on our own usage. So it knows to do that, because it has these little sensors that are constantly scanning the cooktop. So in a sense, is the temperature going up? It knows, okay, theyre going to be doing something let’s kick on the hood system accordingly. And then it starts to suck up what we’re doing, like we’re seeing this piece of salmon. Once the internal duct work reaches, whatever we deemed the temperature range to be say, 70 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s when it really turned on and got everything out of there. From there, once everything was gone from the space, it turned itself off. And that was it. So what happened beyond that is that it kept sucking it up. And instead of expelling it out into the atmosphere, it captured that heat captured that a waste, if you will mixed it with a food grade propylene glycol as I discussed, sent down to the, to the, to the tanks where we then had the 55 degrees Fahrenheit propylene glycol coming up from the geothermal wells, and then we would run the warmed propylene glycol over that pipe and bringing that up to 72 degrees Fahrenheit and all that was really cool.
Chris (32:57): And what was, to me, the thing that like made it like go from cool to essential was that we spent $300,000 on that system and a comparable system, a traditional hood system would cost a hundred thousand dollars. Why that’s important is that because we were projected to pay it off in 14 months through energy efficiency alone. So just by not using it as much, because it knew when to turn itself on and off, we were supposed to pay it off in a little over a year. The reality of the situation was that we paid it off in nine months. Wow. So this piece of equipment that costs over a quarter million dollars, we paid off in nine months just because we weren’t working it. And for those listeners who don’t understand how hood system works, first chef walks in say, it’s five, 6:00 AM. They turn on all the lights to turn on the hood system and it stays on until the last person leaves, so continuously. And if you have a 24 hour operation, your hood systems stay on for 24 hours, seven days a week nonstop. With this technology, What we’re able to do is if you walk away from it, the hood system stops. So you are not paying for that energy. You’re not paying for the machine being used, which means the machine’s not working nonstop. You’re not replacing parts as much. You’re not paying for all that energy, you’re saving money and that’s how we’re able to pay it off. So people use the price tag a lot of times for this technology to say why they shouldn’t do it again. People who don’t like change, tend to find all sorts of excuses as to why they shouldn’t get it. But in reality, they’re just that they’re baseless. And it sounds harsh to say, but it’s true.
Kelly (34:34): Yeah. And absolutely. And I think once you once you see the results for yourself, it becomes much more obvious that that was the right choice, right? Circling us back to the induction cooktops for induction. I know a lot of people are resistant to it. We kind of, we briefly mentioned some of that resistance earlier and some of the myths that maybe you’ve busted over time. So I know we all have a love of Myth Busters. So let’s jump into that a little bit. What kind of some of the things, you know, people talk about all the time, like well, I’m going to have to replace all of the pots and pans and everything to work with an induction stove. What have you found?
Chris (35:25): So what have I found? I found that that’s more than often true, and that’s not a negative. So you have to make sure that your pots and pans are magnetic. So yeah. They tend to cost a little bit more, but again, the return is where is where you really see the benefits. So traditional pans, a lot of people get the cheap pans or, you know, when you put it on these flames over time, they start to work. They start to not sit flat, they start to teeter over a bit. And then eventually, have this black soot that gets built up over time as carbon on the outside of the pan. After a while you throw out the pan buy a new one. What I’ve found is that that usually happens anywhere between two to five years. You just get all new pants. It just, it is what it is. It’s, it’s cost of doing business. But I found with induction is again, after using it for five years, I have my exact same set of pants, no warping, no carbon, no needing to replace them. They’re pristine, they’re brand new. And cost of those pans essentially paid for themselves because in the time I’ve had those pants, I would have had to replace them at least once by now.
Kelly (36:44): Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a great point that I hadn’t heard before. You know, you do have to replace some, if not all of them in the beginning, but that they’ll last longer once you do just based on the type.
Chris (36:55): And if you’re not sure, grab a magnet, toss it on there. If it sticks, you’re good to go. Cast iron is an incredible partner to work with when using induction. It is heavy. It retains heat. It’s magnetic. You can toss it in the oven, you can put it on whatever you want. It works fantastic. So if you use primarily cast iron, then you don’t have to do anything. Your pans are already set for induction. If you’re using aluminum or, or, you know, things like that, you’re not, you’re going to need to replace them.
Kelly (37:30): Great. And you talked a little bit about the surface. When we spoke before I know people have concerns about, okay, what happens there may be used to previous kind of electric cooktops where the service would, would crack pretty regularly. Obviously that would be a big issue with an induction system. I know, you know, there’s you had mentioned things getting thrown and towels catching on fire. And so I assume things are pretty crazy in, in the commercial kitchen. How has the cooktop fared kind of through all of that?
Chris (38:07): So and I actually put this into my presentation that I do when I speak with architectural and engineering firms and prospective clients. Is that when you think of the glass top, you’re thinking glass that you have in your home or you’re thinking tempered glass. The problem is that those aren’t true temper glass over time will, will crack or warp. What induction units use is a tempered ceramic glass, which is significantly stronger and more resistant to warping. I have had giant stock pots on my stove top for, you know, days on end, not a crack, not a scratch. I slip sliding pots and pans around to make room for what I need to do again. No problem. They’re very strong. They won’t warp, and I can send you a picture of my, the actual, the actual glass top that I have. It is not a scratch on it. They’re very, very durable. You’d have to take a sledgehammer to it. If you want to crack it, I’ve had other people ask you know, what’s the point you can’t Sautee on it. You know induction cooking exaggerates speed. Let’s jump into that a little bit. So the first one is you can’t sauté on induction because once you take the pan off of the unit, it is no longer connected to the heat. Also chefs love to preheat their pants for sautéing first off. Absolutely true. When you take the pan off, you’re no longer connected to the heat. Just like when you take the pan off the flame, you’re no longer touching the flame, pan still hot. Also chefs love to preheat their pans for sautéing because fire doesn’t get the pan hot enough, fast enough. Induction does. So there’s no need to preheat. And I actually have a video up on YouTube where I have a cold pan. I take a thermometer to it’s reading in the sixties. I toss, you know peppers in it. I turn it on to high in literally 10 seconds. It’s sautéing. So, yeah, and then there’s definitely linked to that. So there’s also people say that induction cooking is exaggerating, it doesn’t get hot as fast. And it’s, it’s all a bunch of marketing BS. Again, I have another video online where I put a pot of water on crank it on high in about 30 seconds a minute. It’s already simmering getting ready to go into a roaring boil. When I’ve had I had the Pennsylvania legislature out to campus, we were doing a tour and I was explaining how the technology works. I put a pot of ice on cranked it on high. And as I was talking to them, explaining how it worked about this is from ice in about four minutes or so it melted in and it was boiling. And I feel like I’m a little bit remiss. I just realized that we were talking about induction and all that stuff, and I really prope never rly explained what induction is all about. So do you mind if I explain that real fast for your listeners? So in the way induction works is if you think about a piece of, if you think about your microwave at home, it uses these tiny little waves to, to oscillate mater molecules in your food at such a high rate of speed that it creates heat from the inside, out, cooking your food. What we’re doing with induction is we’re using electromagnetic current to oscillate the Ferris molecules in the pan to essentially make the pan that the heating element. And that’s essentially induction in a nutshell, it, the beauty of induction is that, you know, when you’re using gas, when you turn it on high, everything around that surface is now hot. With induction, what only gets hot is the pan and what the pain is touching. So you put your hand all around it and it doesn’t, it’s not hot at all. And because of how the tempered ceramic glass is, is made it cools down very quickly.
Kelly (41:55): Yeah, absolutely. And that actually brings me to an interesting photo that sticks in my mind from Rachelle again to go back to that is she has a plastic squirt bottle right next to a pan that’s on, on an induction stove. And I, and I thought to myself in the past, I’ve definitely taken, you know, bread out of a plastic bag or something. And then it starts to burn from, and, you know, God knows what’s coming off coming out of that plastic burning inside my house. So thinking about safety, especially for clumsy people like me you know, putting things close to that, obviously the pan will still be hot, so be careful.
Chris (42:42): But because of the way that metal is, you know, the reason metal is such a great conductor is that those the molecules are lined up in a linear structure. So energy can flow through it with ease, which is why it conducts electricity very well, which is why it gets hot very well, which is also why it gets cool very quickly.
Kelly (43:03): So you’ve gone from chef to electrical engineer and a chemist
Chris (43:09): Yeah, I wear many hats. What’s, what’s fascinated me and kept, kept my love for food alive is actually the science of cooking. I find that much more fascinating than actually cooking. Obviously I love cooking. That’s my first love. Don’t tell my wife that, but what I love about cooking is understanding the chemical processes that are happening. What’s what’s happening the thermal, like from taking a piece of chicken from raw to cooked, there’s so much going on in that, in that span. Theres a whole nother world. If you look past the actual food itself you know, people talk about molecular gastronomy, which is if you ever see those, you know, chefs making like caviar out of whatever that term got coined for those things, but really molecular gastronomy is a study of like, what happens to food like during the cooking phase. So from its raw state to its cooked state, and that’s what I’ve fallen in love with. It’s true molecular gastronomy. And when you’re talking about induction, it allows you to look beyond the food and now look at the equipment and understand what’s happening and how you can maximize the equipment to make it work for you and make it, and I’ll make your kitchen much more efficient.
Kelly (44:28): Yeah. I was interested to see that the Atlantic ran an article all about electric kitchens and, and pros and cons. And talking about proper ventilation of kitchens, you don’t normally see our nerdy information and kind of a major publication and New York times talking about it. And so they talked a little bit, there was a chef that said induction is okay, but you can’t, you can’t do wok cooking in, in an induction stove. And that was one thing that you mentioned. So that was the, the myth I wanted to circle back to and end on, especially for folks maybe who have just read that article and are left wondering.
Chris (45:09): I appreciate you bringing that up. They were absolutely right a few years ago. The problem with that is that these companies want to get into America. So they are going to make any advancements that they can to get into this market. So when chefs say it’s not good for wok cooking, guess what they created induction woks. So now, instead of having a flat surface, it’s a surface that fits perfectly a wok. So now you can have that wok hay, which walk hay essentially is this level of heat that you reach when you’re cooking with woks, where the bottom is the hottest. And as you go up to the top, you have different levels of temperature. So you can build your dishes up that way. So if you ever see someone working with a walk, they’ll start cooking in the center and then start pushing the food up to the side because it has various different temperatures that they can finish up those ingredients as they’re doing whatever they’re doing down on the bottom. But yeah, so they have that and if there’s anything else that people are coming up with to say that it doesn’t work well for that, these companies are going to fix that. But yeah, we’re working with a company with the Microsoft project that I’m a part of that created a wok just for them specifically for their food, for their kitchen and design, they’ve tested it and they loved it. And I was one of the things that was instrumental in having them go towards a hundred percent induction.
Kelly (46:36): And that’s excellent for looping us back to your story a little bit. So you were a chef at Chatham and then you started to convert to this consultant role. So tell us a little bit about how you made that transition.
Chris (46:50): So how this happened was completely by accident. So I was working, it was September of 2018 I believe that Microsoft reached out and I talked to their chefs, their chief sustainability officer and they asked like, Hey we’re working with an engineering company that coincidentally also built your campus, but they’ve been pushing us to do this electric cooking. And we did a little bit of digging and found you. And we wanted to kinda, you know, ask you your opinion, you know, unbiased. They said, we’re not on board, but we kind of want unbiased opinion. So we’re going around to just find out what is the truth about this stuff? And is it, and is it worth it? So I had a conversation with them was about one hour I shared with them, you know, everything I’ve been sharing with you guys, how much, how much we love it, how much I fall in love with the equipment, how much it’s changed my life for the better personally, like I’ve, it’s changed my outlook on how I view this world. But regardless of that, like when working with it share with them, you know, serial number, model numbers, who made what pictures of what everything was, what we do with it, samples of menus, everything. And we talked about it for about an hour and they said, okay, thank you very much. I appreciate it. And that was it. I didn’t hear from them at all. And then you know, we go on Thanksgiving break. I come back and like Monday or Tuesday after Thanksgiving I get a call or I get an email from Hormoz Janssens from, from, from interface engineering. And he wanted to thank me for the Microsoft conversation. I said, sure. Yeah. He’s like, yeah, I heard that there was a chat between you and Katie Ross at Microsoft and the team about induction. And I want to thank you because one, one hour conversation with you, they’ve committed to going all electric.
Chris (48:50): I said, that’s fantastic news. Thank you. And he’s like, well, you don’t understand. We’ve been trying for three years to get them to do this. And you talked for them for one hour. I was like, okay. He’s like, would you be interested in consulting for us for other projects? We have Stanford university. We have, LinkedIn’s been interested. We have a bunch of different places that have been interested. And the problem with that is that they’ll say, okay, you’re thinking about pushing us towards electric. Can you get me an expert to talk to so we can talk through our concerns. And he’s like, the problem is there is no expert to talk to. So, you know, you are in the right place at the right time, would you like to do this? And I said, absolutely. You know, it’s something that I enjoy talking about and I enjoy educating. So let’s do this. So I, I created Forward Dining Solutions, where, you know, it was essentially my own little consulting firm just to help out, you know, Interface. And, you know, at some point maybe I’ll do something with it. And, you know, I started thinking about a lot more, January rolls around and I get the ball rolling on this. June, I get, you know, my EIN number and everything. I’m like, wow, I really do have a business. This is crazy. And a week before my 30th birthday, I get that contract for the Microsoft project. I sign it, I send it in and I’m like, wow, I’m officially in business. And after that, I’m like, this is what I want to do. Like, I had so much fun talking with Microsoft, talking with interface, we’ve been doing, you know these presentations at NBBJ and WRNs, you know, and like other places like that and getting people all excited. And every time we go do one of these presentations it’s always kind of shocking because I’ll talk to, you know, whoever is our contact. And then me and Steve gross, who’s the the associate principal and senior energy analyst at, at interface. He and I will go in, he’s like, Hey man, like, this is crazy. Like this, this is a huge group. We’re doing it for like 300 people. I’m like, okay, cool. He’s like, and then the person would come in and say, Hey, just so you know the owners of the company essentially are going to be here. They really want her to do this. They’re all excited. And they’ll say, this is by far the largest group we’ve ever had. And it consistently happens everywhere we go, which isn’t toot my own horn and say, Oh, they’re excited to talk about stuff that I’m taught that like, I’m passionate about. No, it’s to say that this movement, this conversation on induction cooking, on kitchen electrification is a huge topic. It’s something that people are struggling with with their own accounts. That like, this is the best way forward, but people don’t want to do because there’s no nothing proven out there. So I’m excited to help bring people on board and show people that this stuff really works. And I’m excited to be on the ground floor to do it. It’s just, I get really jazzed up about it. So I’m hoping that, you know, I can do this full-time I can do this and really make a change. I’ve reached out to other podcasts. We’re going to be just trying to get the word out, because this is a topic that isn’t going anywhere. San Francisco starting June 1st, there will be no gas allowed in new construction period. Berkeley has done it. Oakland has done it. San Jose has done it. There’s talks about changing legislation in Massachusetts. So they, so they can pass these laws to ban gas. This is coming, there’s no stopping it. The exciting part is, do you want to be against it and really slow things down? Or do you want to be able to really steer these policies, steer this technology where it ought to be? Do you want to be part of the people who are being responsible? Not for just the environment, but what is best for our industry. And that’s where I want to be. You know, I want to, like, I sit on the advisory board for Pittsburgh Technical College. And I talk to these chefs, these young chefs about what’s out there. And, you know, I talk to them about what they want to do. And I hear, I want to go, you know, to France and work, you know, for a few Michelin star restaurants and bounce around. And after working at the Green Briar, you know, for that caliber of cooking, I can tell you that when you get there, they’ll give you one day of training. You know, they’ll say, here’s, here’s the material, study it, you come in, someone will walk you through the kitchen, how the station works after that, you’re on your own. And if they have to train you on menu and everything like that on how everything works day to day, where things are, and now they have to teach you about how the equipment works, you’re not going to be a candidate for them because they don’t wanna have to teach you the basic stuff of how does induction work. They don’t have time for that. There’s a reason theyre the best in the world. And it’s not because they’re, hand-holding everybody. So I’m seeing these chefs who want to go to these places around the world. And I’m thinking to myself, they need to be aware of what’s out there and it can’t be burning garlic. So all these things are bouncing around in my head. And I’m just wondering, I hope I can make it. I hope I can make an impact. I hope I can make a dent in what’s going on out there because there’s so much riding on this. Not just, not the company, but electric cooking in general. I really do think that that’s, that’s the, the biggest piece. If we can get that hammered into, to America, that this is like not radical, it’s a sensible change then. I really do think we can make a huge difference.
Kelly (54:49): Yeah, that’s incredible. We had a great conversation about where the industry is. And when we have you back on the podcast in five years, what will we be talking about then? So you spoke to a couple of things, but what do you think we’ll be talking about in five years?
Chris (55:03): Ooh, great question. We’ll be laughing about how insane it was to work in a hundred plus degree kitchens, sweating bullets in the middle of winter. And what we’re going to be excited about is the new wave of technology coming out.
Kelly (55:23): Yeah, absolutely. That’s an excellent point. And I think thinking about translating our conversation from this can’t happen to, how can we make this happen, is going to be just so liberating in terms of how we can solve our future problems, whether they’re from employee engagement, from, you know, de-carbonization of the country or, or from our own personal health perspective, how can we change the conversation from, we can’t do this to, how can we make this happen? Thanks so much for coming on the podcast today, Chris.
Chris (56:01): Absolutely. Thank you so much. I had a blast.
Kelly (56:05): Me too. Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. To learn more about sustainable commercial kitchens. Check out our show notes at swinter.com/podcasts. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe our world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable, or inclusive as it needs to be. We continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. If you want to join us in our mission visit, swinter.com/careers. A big shout out to our production team, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin, and my cohost Robb Aldrich. We thank you for listening and we will see you next time.
Farm-to-Shelter Building with Andrew Linn
Jan 05, 2021
Featuring
Andrew Linn
Andrew Linn founded bld.us with Jack Becker in Washington, DC in 2013. bld.us integrates traditional construction methods with new technologies and organic materials ideally suited to the Mid-Atlantic region to create an architecture of accommodation. Based in Historic Anacostia, bld.us seeks opportunities in economies–of scale, of scope, of density, of means, and of materials. Andrew has 16 years of experience in the Architecture industry, and has been a lecturer at University of Maryland’s School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation since 2017. Read more
We’ve all heard of “farm-to-table” in the context of our food, but what about “farm-to-shelter” in the context of our homes? As we try to become more conscious about the food we eat and the clothes we wear, we must also consider the materials we use when constructing our homes. While many acknowledge the need for better materials in buildings, very few modern day designers have successfully completed a project that consists of healthy and sustainable materials from top to bottom.
Andrew Linn and his partner Jack Becker of bld.us are doing just that. They started by building their own sustainable (and compostable) structure – the Grass House – located in Washington, DC. This project holds a special place in our hearts, because we worked as the sustainability consultants for the house. In this episode, Robb talks with Andrew about the materials he employs in his projects, and their positive sustainability and health impacts.
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.
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 Rob Aldrich.
Kelly (00:18): And I’m Kelly Westby.
Robb (00:21): In this episode, I spoke with Andrew Linn, who is an architect based in Washington, DC. We talked about sustainable materials and products he uses quite a bit. And we talk specifically about the Grass House project, which is actually his office in Washington. As you’ll hear Andrew is really a believer in many of the products he uses, which is very cool. We often try to avoid too much discussion of specific products on this podcast, but that is not the case in this episode. A quick disclaimer, this isn’t necessarily an endorsement by Steven winter associates, these are Andrew’s opinions, but I really enjoyed talking with him and I learned quite a bit. We’ll provide some links in the show notes for folks who want to dig deeper. I also wanted to mention a couple of podcasts we had – a two-parter we had back in the summer of 2019, where we interviewed Charlie Stevenson. We talked more in depth about sustainable materials. So if that’s an interest, you might want to check those out. Here’s my conversation with Andrew.
Andrew (01:29): I have always wanted to be an architect. I grew up wanting to be an architect and I worked for some of the best offices I could imagine working for when I was in school. And when I left school, I realized that even those offices were hampered by the material pallets that they were able to work with. And so my college best friend and I set out to find a healthy building material palette. So we moved to DC where we felt like there was already an appreciation for the landscape and for the materials that come from the landscape, there was also and is in DC, a an awareness of an attention to code and regulations and designing for those most in need. So we felt like DC was the place to to build our practice. So we moved to DC, founded, bld.us and began looking at the materials that were available to us, although not always the most popular, that were the healthiest for the environment and for the users of the buildings
Robb (02:48): I just realized your URL, your website, the URL is great. It’s bld.us. And you, you say ‘build us,’ that’s how you say it.
Andrew (03:00): Yup, like a proper Roman name,
Robb (03:04): BLD is your, is the initials of your firm? Is that isn’t that right?
Andrew (03:12): We began as Becker Linn design, my name is Andrew Linn and my partner is Jack Becker. So we began as Becker Linn designed, but we’ve begun just referring to ourselves as bld.us Both in website and a name because we like the ethos that it promotes. We’re about building community. We’re about building using American domestically sourced products. So bld.us is a really nice idea to strive for.
Robb (03:45): I see. Very easy to remember URL. So when we were talking about doing this podcast a week or two ago, you used a term that I don’t know that I’d ever heard before, which was farm to shelter. I’ll farm to table. This is farm to shelter. Is that something that you coined that something you’ve been thinking about for awhile?
Andrew (04:12): I hope I haven’t coined it, but I haven’t heard it much. So it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case. You know, half of the TV that I find that’s available has something to do with cooking. And even if it’s not a cooking show, they find a way to bring it in. And people are very interested in where their food is coming from, how it’s getting to them, who’s taking it out of the ground and how they’re being compensated for taking it out of the ground. That same attention and awareness has gone into the clothing that we drape around ourselves. And it only seems logical that that type of of awareness would also extend into the built environment. So there are different ways of tracking the health of a building like the living, building challenge and like the well rating systems. But they’re very challenging. We’ve tried to work within those requirements and in DC middle-class housing, it’s really not feasible without subsidy of some sort. So we’ve been looking for a farm to shelter, material palette that is affordable to the middle class that doesn’t require a whole bunch of soft costs, sunk into applying for different ratings and different certification systems. And we’re just looking to bring affordable, healthy housing to the people that need it, and who are reliant on Home Depot and Lowe’s. And nothing Home Depot and Lowe’s, they are getting with the program almost quicker than many of our clients.
Robb (06:04): Yeah, it was kind of interesting for me to hear that, that term, just using local sustainable materials, the farm to shelter, we’ve all heard farm to table. It was, it was a pretty clever term. I thought. So the project that we started talking with you about, and Steven winter associates worked with you a little bit on it is is called grass house. And is it your office? Is it your primary workspace studio space?
Andrew (06:43): Yes, it is.
Robb (06:44): Okay. And it’s, it’s an outbuilding. Could you describe what it is, where it is?
Andrew (06:51): Yeah, so the grass house is basically a compostable accessory structure built behind an 1892 queen Anne Victorian house at the foot of the Frederick Douglas House in the Anacostia historic district. So this is East of the Anacostia river. It’s the only historic district in ward seven and eight of DC. Even though there are a few others that deserve to be historic districts. But that’s where we work from. We do a lot of work there. It is a place that has a pretty diverse, eclectic set of styles within its historic district. But that’s within a time span of about the 1880s to the 1910s. So we’re working within that vernacular and trying to design and build a building that is as healthy as possible. We ended up with a LEED platinum rating on it and is as sort of affordable or at least speaks to different affordable moves so that we could use it as a showcase and bring in different potential clients and different people who were interested in it, different neighbors so that they could see possibilities. So we have a fun stair. We have a fun window detail, we have a fun bathroom countertop detail. And we usually tell our clients that they could pick one or two of those details to really play with in their house. But in addition, where we’re trying to showcase as many different, healthy building materials and natural finishes as possible.
Robb (08:39): Yeah. So folks can go to BLD dot U.S. And there are pictures there, which are, which is pretty cool. The first thing I noticed when I looked at the pictures was this is a very small building. What was it like a 250 square foot footprint or something like that?
Andrew (08:58): Correct. And for that reason, we went down and we dug out a basement, which in general, we’re not typically fond of, but we wanted to maximize the square footage that we were able to have, but we wanted to keep the overall massing as small as we could.
Robb (09:17): So you used a term a couple of minutes ago. I think you said it’s a compostable structure, which I understand, but does that term have great optics? The first thought is, Hmm, it’s gonna rot quickly. Do you run into resistance with that, with that phrasing? Does it test well?
Andrew (09:43): I mean, the people that I’m quote unquote testing it with are very into the idea because we quickly explain that the techniques that you use to build the building require you know, attention to detail and you pull the wood or compostable material up off the ground a little bit, and you protect it with big overhanging eaves and use a nice breathable rain screen system so that the whole building can breath. When you approach a building trying to find the places where it will fail which are almost always related to water or moisture in some way, when you approach the design with that as your priority, the fact that the materials that you produce it with are compostable, it isn’t an issue. So at the grass house, we have slate and copper roof, you know, you’re not going to find a more durable roof than ours. We have big overhanging eaves. We have a breathable exterior cladding system. We have a concrete base that comes up two and sometimes three feet up, up off the ground, so that all of our bamboo and wood framing system is away from rain. And we collect all the water that you know, falls off of our roof and we harvest it in a cistern. So when you have control over the water, or at least when you have respect for the water that is trying to degrade your building, you’re able to make the building out of healthier materials.
Robb (11:23): So you mentioned bamboo, and that’s where the name grass house comes from. I believe, maybe I assumed that, but I believe that’s where that came from. Can you talk about the wall system a little bit?
Andrew (11:37): Yes. I’d love to. I love BamCore. I’m one of their biggest fans. BamCore is essentially the mass grass to mass timber. So it is a lighter weight version of the same principles that are being applied in mass timber. And as many of us have come to realize, mass timber doesn’t have great implications for the single family and low rise residential markets, but BamCore does. And that’s exactly where BamCore is at its best. So Bamcore has been refining this panel system, and what the panels allow us to do is build without studs. And that gives us continuous insulation cavities, which gives us incredibly high performing wall systems that allow us to contain either the hot or the cold air that we’re creating. So we’re able to input very little energy into heating or cooling a BamCore house. You’re able to reach passive standards almost effortlessly because you’re removing all of the standard thermal bridges which is what exterior insulation envelopes attempt to do, And do, but bamcore does it in a, in a more integral more high performing way.
Robb (12:59): I don’t have any firsthand experience with this product, but it’s a panelized approach. So like all the walls come on a truck or a pallet, or a couple of pallets, all cut in the right dimensions and labeled, and you piece it together on site pretty quickly, I imagine?
Andrew (13:22): Very quickly and a real benefit of bamcore over other systems like sip systems or pre-manufactured systems is that these are panels that you and I could lift. And I don’t know what you look like, and I know that you could and I could lift them because it’s essentially a piece of drywall. So you’re able to remove drywall, you’re able to remove studs, you’re able to remove OSB sheathing, and you have these packets of precut wall panel delivered to the site. You pop them up off the truck and up onto the site almost like an Ikea structure. They used to have you screw them in, and now you’re just nailing them in. So very simple and very simple to take apart, you know, someday in the future. These panels are unbelievably durable. They they’re made from bamboo, which is in some cases as strong as, you know, different types of metal, stronger than different types of metal. And that allows for the panels to have sheer strength to them. They’re Bulletproof. They perform extremely well in hurricanes. The makeup of these walls and these wall sections allows you to have thinner or larger wall cavities. So these, these walls are just as high performing and cost-saving as they in Florida as they are in Vermont.
Robb (14:55): We can put some links in the show notes, because, I mean, I talked to you, you described the system a little bit, but I didn’t get a full picture until I looked at some pictures and as the podcast is only audio, we can certainly link to it, because it was pretty cool. I didn’t get a full picture of how all the pieces went together until I went to the website. And it seems like a lot less material. Cause my understanding is they are trying to grow bamboo domestically, but they are not yet. So a lot of this, a lot of the material gets shipped a long way, but there’s much, much less material. It looks like. Is that a big piece that goes into it being a carbon winner?
Andrew (15:36): It’s a huge piece. There’s less material, there’s less material waste, and bamboo is the best carbon sequestering organic material that exists. So the more bamboo we can use, the better. Bamboo, unlike wood retains the carbon that it sequesters even while it’s being harvested, because it gets clipped like grass, not mowed, not clear cut, but clipped. And so a clean bamboo Grove is healthier and taking out calms that are ready to be harvested, makes very clean bamboo Grove. So the more bamboo we can use, the more bamboo we can plant and store in the built environment the, the more carbon we’re going to be able to sequester. So even though right now bamcore is bringing bamboo in from places like central America and South America, which are still relatively close given that we get doug fir from Washington state or Oregon. They’re working on creating a domestic supply of bamboo, but there’s already so much bamboo around the world that we just need to find more ways to use it in the built environment
Robb (16:57): And insulation. You can use any insulation with this panel system, but you went with wool, which again, I don’t have any firsthand experience with. Not mineral wool, but like sheep’s wool, is that, is this the first time you’d used it? Or is this one of your kind of go-to materials?
Andrew (17:14): It has become a go-to material since working on the grass house, because we, we love working with it so much. It, it doesn’t out perform other materials more than the other healthy materials that we’re looking at. So bamcore is exceptional compared to wood stud framing, wool is exceptional compared to fiberglass, but being able to touch wool, it feels so good. It feels good to stuff it in the house. It feels good to know that you can breathe it, that sheep’s wool absorbs VOC that are in the air, but does not produce any, it expands over time. It wants to return to the state that it was in when it was on the sheep. So those cavities, you know, are going to be full and they’re not going to have any sagging spaces.
Robb (18:09): Oh it expands over time?
Andrew (18:13): It expands over time. Every piece of wool that comes off of a sheep, it grows in a certain way on that sheep. And then we pack it into a bag and we send it to a construction site and then we pack it into a wall cavity and it wants to return to that, the shape that it was in when it was on the sheep.
Robb (18:32): Okay. Kind of elastic. I mean, I certainly have wool clothes that do not expand over time. They do the opposite, but it’s a different, different thing we’re talking about.
Andrew (18:43): Yeah. That wool has been processed and it’s been cleaned in a different way and it’s been strung out into yarn and then it’s been, you know, sewn into a textile or a fabric. And here it’s, it’s, it’s being cleaned and treated with an anti pesticide in as simple and sort of light of a way as possible, almost like when you’re making a pastry and you’re trying to handle the dough as little as possible so that you can keep the air in the dough that that’s the way that they, they treat this wool.
Robb (19:19): And here again, it’s, I don’t have any experience with it, but it seems that raising livestock for an insulation material would be pretty carbon intensive, but I assume you or somebody has crunched the numbers and found otherwise, is that accurate?
Andrew (19:37): That’s well, that’s accurate when you think that the alternatives are recycled denim that has already gone through some pretty awful, you know pieces of life or, or not recycled and just denim, which will sag in the wall, cavities you know, fiberglass is not produced in a great way, mineral wool, which is invaluable in cities and certain applications, has a pretty bad reputation in the communities that it’s produced in. So it’s not like there are great alternatives out there. There are certainly nice ways of raising sheep that, that are good to the sheep, good to the ground. And, and in some areas that we’re working in people are advocating for livestock rather than maintenance of grounds, large-scale grounds using lawn mowers and things like that. So you know, there are, there are trade-offs but the, the way that the wool performs is exceptional, the material that I could see that could enhance the use of wool would be mycelium.
Andrew (20:50): And I know that Ecovative is working on, and has always thought about different ways that they could use their mycelium product, which is the roots of mushrooms in the built environment, because then we could really be growing our insulation. But sheep’s wool is an incredible performer. There’s an abundance of it right now. A lot of the wool that’s produced is not acceptable to textile manufacturers, and there isn’t really a use for it. There isn’t a market for secondhand or third hand wool in the U S yet, but if people start asking for it, then I think it would be a great solution to stuff that into wall cavities, bamcore wall cavities.
Robb (21:33): Cool. So in the roof, you had to go more conventional, I think you said you had to use foam, is that right?
Andrew (21:42): We are insulating our roof with foam. Yes. And that’s so that we can have a pretty small roof cavity. We had a 20 foot height maximum because we’re an alley house and we wanted to fit two stories in. so it’s a, it’s a relatively tight insulated cavity, but it allowed us by staying tight there, it allowed us to vent and insulate on the top above the decking, but below the actual roofing. So we were roofing with slate and that sits on top of a black locust sort of raft of eaves and timber members that hold pieces of exterior insulation. And that sits on top of this unvented roof cavity.
Robb (22:29): So, I mean, is there any reason other than kind of R-value per inch? Is there any reason you could not use wool in the roof?
Andrew (22:38): No. Wool would be exceptional and they’re making wool in bats. They’re making wool as loose fill, so it can be sprayed in blown in which would be a perfect application for a roof for an attic. I would love to only use wool and cork and my mycelium as my installation materials for the rest of my career. And I think it’s amazing that we could be you know, having house stuffings with our clients and their families with sheep’s wool in the same way that communities used to do roof raisings or things like that, just so that they know that what used to be the toxic poisonous phase of the construction period when you’re stuffing your walls with fiberglass or foam is now a thing that the whole family can participate in because it’s so healthy.
Robb (23:34): We’ll see if we get any comments about calling fiberglass toxic.
Andrew (23:39): Well, it is not something that anyone wants to breathe in. That’s for sure. And the fact pregnant women, aren’t supposed to be around construction sites during certain phases. Like we would like for our compostable houses to be able to be built with, with pregnant women as their GCs, you know, it’s unacceptable for, for our buildings to be poisonous for a certain phase. And to assume that they’re going to just air out, that’s how, that’s, how we feel about that.
Robb (24:10): So talk about the siding a little bit, and again, I encourage people to go, go to BLD.Us, to take, take a look at some pictures. The siding is pretty cool and the whole siding assembly.
Andrew (24:23): Thanks. The cladding is produced by Resawn timber company. They are a very cool Pennsylvania based company. That’s doing research into different methods of finishing wood. Sometimes the charred wood using the Japanese technique. Sometimes they’re mixing that with certain stains and oils and finishes. They’re using a lot of wire brushing and they have these really cool assembly lines that are sort of pizza pizza oven style, but they, you know char in two different temperatures and wire brush into and staying in one and they’re able to get these pretty nice finishes. So we, we have a very simple product from them. It’s Atlantic Cedar. We worked with them to source Atlantic white Cedar, which they hadn’t done before. It’s it was considered sort of too shabby before. And now it seems like there’s a demand on their website for Atlantic Cedar, because it’s more local than red Cedar, or even the Cyprus that comes from the Southeast. So we have a really nice black Cedar siding, and that is sitting on furring strips that are at diagonals because our cladding is at vertical. So we wanted to pull our cladding off of the main building structure using the fern strips. And, and those diagonal furring strips are crossing at our corners. So sort of like how stone is coined. We’re pointing our furring strips at the corner.
Robb (26:02): Cool. And yeah, you used a lot of other local materials, I think mainly wood for interior finishes? And I think there was a bench detail that looked pretty cool on the stairway, like you mentioned, was, was a very cool design element. How much of it came from you deliberately going out to find something to do what you wanted to do and how much of it was, Hey, I have a great source for black locust or Willow or Walnut, or how did, how did, how did those pieces come together?
Andrew (26:45): So we’re trying to put together the ideal healthy building palette for the mid Atlantic and certain of these materials just perform better in certain applications than others. And that’s the case, whether it’s bamboo or Willow or wood and the different subspecies of each of those. So Willow is great for interior guardrails and screens. And so that’s why we wanted to use Willow for our three different interior guardrails. And we took different strategies as to how those were designed and built so that we could learn ourselves. And so that we could show clients what’s possible. We knew that on our exterior, we wanted to use black locus because it is a very local, very abundant wood that performs just as well, if not better than mahogany and epay and all these other tropical species. So if we’re going to be importing bamboo, we want to do it for the right reasons. If we don’t need to import wood, because we have this other tree that’s everywhere and just not use that much, we’re going to use that. So all of our exterior wood, all the big members in the roof and the bench and the sort of pergola over the front door, that’s all black locust. And we loved working with it. It’s kind of a fussy wood. It, it moves and it, it turns a little bit, but if you can sort of brace it with itself. So we’re kind of making little weaves out of it, then it locks into place. And it just it’s, it, it wears over time really well. It doesn’t, it’s not impacted by water. And, and we expect it to be just fine for 50 years or so. On the interior we’re finding uses for a few different trees that we knew we needed to take down in the neighborhoods. So seven blocks away from the grass house. There were a few trees hanging over a commercially rented parking lot where food trucks are parked. And those trees were only being held up by some grapevines that were like huge and, and holding them back. And so we felt those trees, one was a Mulberry and one was a Walnut, and we use the Mulberry for all of our handrails and on the stairs and a few other interior details. And we use the Walnut for our beautiful stair slabs. The Walnut was basically purple. So it was, it was great. And we used one of its big branches as our handrail up on the second floor. And we use some leftover wood for the bathroom countertop and the toilet seat, and we really, it, we used it like a Buffalo.
Robb (29:49): Cool. Yeah. So I’m just thinking about all, about the panelization for the walls, for the main, you know, the systems in the home. And I think, you know, in talking with you earlier, panelization is a a pretty strong interest. On the other end of the spectrum, though, it’s just kind of this custom details using local trees, which it’s kind of entirely different than standardization and panelization, but they seem pretty complimentary. Can you talk about your goals? How far you want to panelize versus customized?
Andrew (30:37): Yes. And it’s a great question. And you can kind of think of it like the Tesla cyber truck, which is, you know, rolling off the factory assembly line with as few pieces as possible versus a really high end sports car that has hand detailed hand on details, handmade details. We don’t, and bamcore doesn’t want to take anyone out of business or, or take laborers off the site. I should say we don’t want to remove work and remove workers. We want to be able to build more affordable housing because there’s a shortage of affordable housing in a healthier way. And so if we can redirect the labors of the workers away from places like painting walls, and we know that painters have higher rates of cancer because they’re interacting with paint all day long. If we can take them away from painting because we’re charring and finding other ways to finish our interior wood panels instead of drywall then we can redirect them and have them working on some of these nice handcrafted details using wood. And we can have more of a carpenter like industry like we used to have a hundred years ago when chestnuts were popular and when houses were hand-built and when craftsmanship was appreciated by people. And you can see it in the food industry that craftsmanship and quality and materiality has become very important so much so that these companies like McDonald’s and, you know, the, the big, fast food chains are having to become their version of farm to table. So we’re hoping that construction can tend away from the materials that we are left with after world war two and tend towards the materials that make sense for the health of the inhabitants and the health of the planet.
Robb (32:48): So if we talk again in five or 10 years, what do you think we’ll be talking about? So what systems here do you think will become standardized? What new do you think we’ll start seeing more and more of down the pipe a few years?
Andrew (33:08): Yeah. So I think that bamcore is ideally suited for producing housing in large quantity. So, you know, ideally it’s not subdivision tracks, ideally it’s denser housing than that, so that we’re not having to eat up the entire landscape, but if it is subdivision tracks, if a developer is going to do that, then I hope that they’re building with bamcore. Not because they want to be green, but because they know that they can market the energy savings to their customers. And that will allow that and an acceptance in cities of bamcore in the low rise residential sector, which I think will come more naturally, I hope will lead to bamcore having a real impact in bamboo having a real impact on the framing systems of of low rise residential all across the country. I think sheep’s wool is going to be sold on the shelves of one of these big hardware stores in the next five years, if not, probably much sooner than that. I think cork cladding has exceptional potential right now. There’s a need to put cork into use across the world because there’s all these cork plantations around the Mediterranean that are no longer supplying wine bottles with cork because they’ve turned to metal and cork is a fantastic exterior insulation material, which is now required by code and can double as a cladding system. So bark is a, is another great exterior cladding material. But bark has a little more boutique, a little a little less performative in that it’s not insulating, and cork is, is just exceptional at it. So I hope that the popularity of cork as an insulative material as a cladding material, as a flooring material will start to come back because it was very popular in the U S before world war II. And before the foam industries were required by the needs of a war. So yeah and if those, if those three major products, bamboo, wool and cork are finding their way into more intelligent uses of wood, then I think we have a really a really bright material palette for everyone to get their hands on.
Robb (35:43): Well, thank you. Thank you, this has been a great conversation.
Andrew (35:48): Of course, thanks for having me,
Robb (35:52): You for listening and thanks to Andrew. Check out the show notes for links to some of the info we talked about buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. We’re focused on making buildings better, more sustainable, more healthy, also accessibility efficiency, resiliency, comfort. Check us out @ swinter.com. swinter.com/podcast is where the show notes live and check out our careers page. If you’re looking for opportunities, we have positions posted for all of our offices, Boston, Connecticut, Manhattan, and Washington, DC. Thanks again to Andrew and thanks to the podcast team here at SWA Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Heather Breslin, Alex Mirabile, Kelly Westby, and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks.
Designing for Inclusion with Victoria Lanteigne
Dec 02, 2020
Featuring
Victoria Lanteigne, MPP, WELL AP
Victoria Lanteigne is a Universal Design subject matter expert with over 15 years of experience leading inclusive design initiatives. She is passionate about elevating the connection between Universal Design and high-performance building initiatives, including sustainability and health, and has spoken on this topic at Greenbuild, the AIA National Convention, and Design DC, among others. Victoria is a WELL AP and WELL Faculty member and has served as a WELL Community Concept Advisor since 2017. She has a BA from Michigan State University, a Master of Public Policy from the George Washington University, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Design from North Carolina State University.
Disability inclusion in the built environment is extremely important. But, it shouldn’t end there. How do we ensure that we are being truly inclusive of all types of people, taking into account a wider diversity of backgrounds, orientations, and abilities? The answer is Universal Design.
On this episode of Building’s + Beyond, Robb chats with former SWA employee and Universal Design expert, Victoria Lanteigne. Victoria has devoted her career to the advancement of Universal Design, educating herself and others on the concept and its limitless applications. In her interview, she discusses trends, tactics, and examples from the field, and challenges practitioners to re-think their definition of the word, design.
Episode Information & Resources
Articles written by Victoria on Universal and Inclusive Design:
Human Rights Watch – SWA Project including Universal Design consulting services
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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.
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.
Robb (00:21): In this episode, I spoke with Victoria Lanteigne, and we talked about universal design, really how universal design might improve equity and inclusion in the built environment. Here’s Victoria saying a little bit about her background.
Victoria (00:39): So I have been working in the field of accessibility and universal design for quite some time. I’d say about 15 years, and I come to this field with a little bit of a different background or perspective. I actually have a background in public policy and I started off my career working in disability policy with a civil rights organization, specifically working to lead a consortium of multifamily housing developers to provide guidance on federal accessibility regulations, as well as state and local accessibility codes. And I learned very quickly that the federal laws that we have in place are really addressing accessibility from a pretty minimal standpoint. So almost looking at inclusion and accessibility from a bare minimum. So I became really interested in universal design as a tool and a methodology to go above and beyond what was required by our federal laws and codes.
Robb (01:43): We talked about the roots of universal design being in accessibility or disability inclusion, but many people, and certainly Victoria among them, have lofty goals for universal design. Victoria just started a PhD program at North Carolina state university. And her goal there is to research how universal design can improve equity and inclusion beyond just disability inclusion. Universal design can be a big topic and we started discussing some basic definitions, but we quickly got into how those definitions are evolving.
Victoria (02:23): There’s a lot of schools of thought around universal design. For me, I, I do of course acknowledge the origin and the roots universal design has with disability inclusion. You know, initially it was defined as a an effort to create products and spaces to be usable by the greatest number of people possible regardless of age ability or individual status. So even in its origin, universal design was really focused on comprehensive inclusion, but when we looked at universal design and practice, it was often centered on disability inclusion. And I think that’s really important. And I always like to take a minute to acknowledge how important disability inclusion is and why it’s so important. You know, when we look at the number of people living with disabilities worldwide, the number is 15%, here in the U S we have 61 million Americans living with disabilities. And if we hone in on that number, one in four adults today is living with some form of disability. So yeah, the numbers are really quite staggering and the numbers are only increasing. And I think it’s really looking at the fact that we have a broad definition of disability. So the Americans with disabilities act defines disability as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity. When you have such a broad definition, we are of course talking about mobility and sensory disabilities, but we’re also expanding this to look at intellectual disabilities, cognitive disabilities, mental and emotional health. So things like anxiety, depression are all considered to be disabilities under the law. And as this definition of disability broadens, there are more people identifying as living with a disability. And some of that stigma is going away, which it should be, and that’s important, but universal design, you know, as you were saying, is very different from accessible design in the sense that it allowed this space to address disability from a more comprehensive approach, as opposed to focusing on the bare minimum structural compliance piece of accommodating wheelchair users, which is largely what our laws are centered around.
Robb (05:03): Yeah. And I think that’s a lot of what people think. That’s what I used to think. You know, accessibility means, you know, ramps and turning radiuses and, you know, things like that. I read the links that you sent me, some articles which we’ll link to in the show notes. And I went through and just kind of tried to pick out all the different types of ability inclusion. First of all, it’s not just physical, and it’s many types of physical, but like you were saying emotional sensory, which I guess sensory is a subset of physical, but vision and auditory and mental and neuro-diversity. And I think you mentioned nerve diversity refers to people on the autism spectrum primarily. And so this is so much more than just people and wheelchair access. It’s, it’s so much more, which I think is lost on quite a few people.
Victoria (06:04): I agree. And I think this is really the, the heart of how accessible design differs from universal design. And for those of us that are either practitioners or we look at these two concepts from a policy lens, whatever brings you to focus on these different design strategies, we understand kind of the nuance difference, but it’s hard for those that may not be working in close to this on a daily basis. But to me, accessible design is really talking about compliance. It’s that piece around our federal laws, building codes. It’s very prescriptive in nature. You know, we’re talking about an inch here, a quarter inch there, a bevel, you know, things that are not a lot of room for tolerance. There’s a very low design opportunity. So, you know, you either follow it and you comply or you don’t. And again, that accessible piece is largely based on accommodating mobility disabilities. So I often like to think about accessible design is what we must have. It’s the baseline bare minimum. And on the other side, we have universal design, which is not regulated. And because of that, the guidance can be very limited and or conflicting. We’ve got a lot of decentralized places where universal design guidance comes from, but on the flip side, universal design is not prescriptive. So there’s a huge opportunity for how to implement universal design. What universal design can look like in practice, and this is really where the opportunity to become inclusive of, of disability, but then inclusive beyond disability as well. So I like to look at universal design is what we could have as opposed to what we must have. It’s a design goal, it’s a strategy. And it, it takes a lot of collaboration and innovation to really get it, get it right to where it could be. I’m looking at universal design as a tool to explore how we can bring more equity into design and by doing so, how we can advance equity through the design of the built environment. And, you know, when we think about the origin of universal design being rooted in disability inclusion, we also can look to more contemporary definitions of universal design. One that I particularly subscribe to is a process enables and empowers a diverse population by improving human performance, health, and wellness and social participation. So this is a definition that comes from the idea center out of the university of Buffalo. And when we think about these goals around universal design, that center on performance, health, social participation, these goals mirror a lot of the goals that building performance initiatives have around sustainability around healthy buildings. So this really begins to position universal design in a way that can begin to address aspects of civil rights issues across the board, further kind of digging deeper into this definition. The university of Buffalo Idea center came out with eight goals around universal design. And around these goals, we have a lot of opportunity to begin to build out design strategies that start to address equity. And as a couple of examples, you know, some of the goals are, are talking about things that maybe already are part of universal design, so comfort and body fit things like ergonomics, right? Size and space shapes, clear floor space, but can we take it beyond that to start thinking about visual ergonomics, audio ergonomics, physical ergonomics. So really thinking about that next step understanding and awareness are two additional goals. So here wayfinding and spaces become critical perceptible information as well. So having information that is understandable from multiple aspects. So again, thinking about the fact that we might come to a problem from different experiences and with different ways of solving that problem. And as an example, in our prep call, we were talking about Ikea directions, right? Love them or hate them, they’re kind of like this example of, of universal design in a way, because the man with the hammer is going to be the man with the hammer, no matter what country you’re in. Right. and so that ability to kind of pick up and look at those directions and find them to be user intuitive is, is an example of that. But then let’s think about how we can build on that even more. So can we have the same definitions be available on an audio recording so that somebody that has vision can listen to that on an audio tape? Can we have the manual that also has tasks broken out based on children’s involvement and parents involvement to get, you know, the whole family involved? Can we think about ways that make this experience even more inclusive depending on who’s approaching the problem and the different ways that you have to solve a problem?
Robb (12:20): I recently helped some some friends colleagues who were moving into a new home, I helped them move in and they asked me to assemble some of their kitchen cabinets. And I haven’t felt so incompetent in a long time. I was stymied by putting together all these cabinets by all the instructions. There’s no text anywhere in the instructions and I appreciate that’s to be language neutral. But I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it. One fitting had three holes and I didn’t realize it had three holes and I used two of the holes, but I was supposed to use a different one of the hole. And it wasn’t clear to me from looking at the pictures, it was an attempt to be certainly more inclusive, but I found it infuriating.
Robb (13:20): And I guess it’s a question in my mind. I mean, we’re, we’re talking about being inclusive of all these different people with disabilities and also beyond disabilities, you know age and gender and religion and language, do you have to start sacrificing? Can you please everybody, well, maybe not necessarily, but is there, is there a give and take, do you see kind of sacrifices with, you know, certain elements, and is it kind of a balancing act for designers or consultants or people implementing these strategies?
Victoria (14:00): I look at universal design as a design strategy. So it’s not a template it’s never going to be the same across every project. I think what we need to move more towards is a collaborative approach to creating spaces that reflect the context and environment that that project is based in. I think it’s about really thinking about the users who’s using the space, what’s the function of the space and how can we kind of go through and accommodate as strategically as we can, the different ways that people will be impacted by an experiencing this space. So I think it’s different with every project. And I think this is where the challenge with universal design can come. It’s not about more, is always better. It’s really about choosing your strategy around inclusion,
Robb (15:16): And it’s not, it’s not prescriptive, like you said. It’s not kind of checking boxes. It’s really trying to be mindful and maybe artful in being as inclusive as possible.
Victoria (15:27): That’s exactly right. And so thinking about creating a community center in maybe an underserved area, that approach to inclusion is going to be very different than embedding universal design in an international airport. Right. So I think that, and I think that’s okay. And I think that’s how it should be. I think that when we have guiding principles that are built out in a way that provokes thought and innovation from designers and their collaborators, that’s what we really want. That’s the space that we want to get to with universal design. So not, you must implement this in every situation. It’s, Hey, have you thought about how you’re going to account for cultural diversity in this project? Here are some options. This is what’s worked, figure out together how that can best be reflected in your project.
Robb (16:36): So is that kind of, part of the research that you’re planning, is to evaluate strategies or approaches how well they work in different situations?
Victoria (16:52): A little bit. Yeah. I mean, I say this I’m kind of laughing because I’m what seven weeks into my first semester. So it’ll be really interesting to revisit this three years from now and see how aligned I am with where I say I’m going to be. But, you know, going back to the gaps that exist around universal design, there are a lot of them, primarily as one that you’ve mentioned, which is people associate universal design with disability inclusion. And I think that that should always remain. I always want to be very clear about that. That should always remain a central tenant of universal design. However, how can we continue to hold that space for disability inclusion and use universal as a framework to start addressing equity and design for equity in a more broad manner. And so what I would like to do through my research is a kind of a gigantic literature review of all of the universal design guidelines, strategies, legislation that exists across the world and find out where we are. Who’s practicing universal design from the standpoint of disability inclusion, who’s pushing the envelope. Where are those pushes coming from? Are they coming from practitioners? Are they coming from academia? Are they coming from case studies, legislators, who’s really holding space for universal design in different ways. And then how can we identify indicators within the built environment that will help practitioners understand what designing for equity looks like and what that means? Because from my research, at least, you know, we do have building standards that exist that talk about equity and that address equity. I think we’ve made a lot of stride. I also think a lot of what exists is focused on programming, affordability, operations. There’s not a lot that really talks about design strategies. And so what I’m really interested in doing is pulling out what those indicators are, how we measure, how design of the built environment impacts equity and putting that in some kind of manner or format to be helpful for practitioners to do this implementation.
Robb (19:47): Yeah. Like just a relatable framework or context.
Victoria (19:52): That’s exactly right. Some of these avenues might look at gender and gender identity and how the built environment addresses gender as an example, all gender restrooms, right? So this is an example of a restroom that serves the same purpose for everyone, regardless of your gender identity. And so thinking about about strategies like that, that can start to really look at full, comprehensive inclusion.
Robb (20:27): Would that freak some people out or be off-putting? I think maybe, depending on how you do it
Victoria (20:35): I mean, it will. I think that whenever we’re talking about a topic of inclusion, equity, there will be some supporters and advocates and will be some that pushback. That’s just the political nature of this type of conversation. And so I think the goal is to create spaces that again are not solely accommodating to a specific population, but it’s creating flexible, usable spaces that are inclusive of all. And so, as an example, creating an all gendered restroom that has privacy, you know, partitions, or here in DC, we see a lot of kind of the individual single user restrooms that have you know, door that you can close for full privacy. And then in the common area is like a hand-washing station. So it does offer a level of privacy and quite honestly, I mean, people don’t even think twice about it.
Robb (21:43): Yeah. I’m thinking of college. I’m thinking in some dorms in college, it was just everybody on the floor just decided they didn’t care. Anybody could use any of the bathrooms. So it was non-gendered and then other dorms, some people did care. And then, you know, you had to walk down the hall to the, to the men’s room or the women’s room.
Victoria (22:01): Yeah. I think that’s an example of not having it embedded as a design strategy. So that’s, that’s the backing into inclusion. That’s not putting inclusion in as part of the onset strategy. And as a great example, we were, I was just speaking about this, you know, some of the office buildings here in DC, the organizations that have more of like this ethos around inclusion and equity, a lot of them are creating all gender non-gendered restrooms and, you know, rather than do it thoughtfully, they pick the restroom. That’s the least used on some obscure floor. They put a sign up that says, you know, it’s handwritten and it’s like all gender restrooms. Well, that’s not, that’s not a universal design strategy. Right. That’s, that’s taking the easy way out. And that is not what we, that’s what we cannot be doing moving forward.
Victoria (23:08): And on that note, we’ve seen a lot of, particularly when I was working with Steven winter associates and working on Peter’s team, we had clients that were interested in pursuing universal design because somebody was joining the organization that had a disability. Right. So that was the motivator. It was like, Oh, no, we’re not accessible. We’re not ready for this. Can you come in and can you kind of help us prepare any motivation to incorporate inclusion is welcome and it’s certainly supported, and we want to support that, yet it’s still not the same as embedding universal design at the onset as part of that design strategy. And that comes as early as concept development. You know, I mean, teams that I’ve worked with, I tell them, bring me, bring me along on the interview. Right. Let’s talk about this and embed it with the client’s vision of this space. So those are two very different approaches.
Robb (24:19): Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. How about wayfinding? I mean, wayfinding is a big deal, certainly for disability inclusion for visual or language. Are there strategies to be more inclusive beyond disability inclusion for, for wayfinding?
Victoria (24:46): Absolutely. Wayfinding, I think is a huge component of universal design. It’s also just a lot of universal design or just really smart design strategies. So you see a lot of overlap and I think that’s that’s okay. And wayfinding is, is something that I find endlessly fascinating. And in fact, I have a good friend, who’s a wayfinding strategist, and she always says, it’s frustrating because when I’ve done my job well, nobody knows that I’ve done my job, right. And it’s this element of having these really smart strategies embedded in the way users navigate space. And so this is incredibly important for people with disabilities. It’s also incredibly important in general, for anyone navigating this space, good wayfinding reduces anxiety. It reduces you know, kind of the stress of navigating spaces that may otherwise be stressful. So it’s used really artfully in public transportation and airports, places that are high volume and high stress, wayfinding becomes critical. It’s also really important when, you know, we’re thinking of serving a global or international population where English, let’s say in the U S English might not be someone’s primary language. So how we have symbols or images that will relay the information that’s relevant and important to relay so way finding becomes just incredibly important, I think for everyone. And that’s why it’s a great example of universal design.
Robb (26:34): Gotcha. Yeah, that’s true. Reducing stress, reducing anxiety. We’ve all been racing for connections or just, you know, lost in a train station trying to find the right platform. Yeah. It’s it’s no fun.
Victoria (26:53): I still never understand how the A,C and E go to different stops on the New York subway. Like why and how do I know which one’s going, where I don’t get it, It’s very stressful.
Robb (27:13): Until you know it until you know what you’re doing. Yeah, yeah. I can, I can totally see that. Absolutely. Gosh, any other kind of cool examples for universal design beyond disability inclusion?
Victoria (27:28): Yeah. The one one more I’ll mention, and again, this relates to the eight goals of, of universal design that came out of the idea center is cultural appropriateness. And I think there is so much room here to start thinking about how we address culture and cultural identity through the built environment, you know, particularly again, I, I mentioned really understanding the context that your project is is within, but then also this opportunity to really when it, when it fits to bring in the community as part of this approach to, to co-design or participatory design. And in, in my opinion, and I may be biased because I’m a non-designer, but I do believe that in order to get equity, right, we have to have an interdisciplinary approach. And that means having designers, architects, maybe policy makers, community activists, community members, the list goes on and on. We can’t expect to tackle such a broad and important topic like equity within one discipline. And so here’s really where this is asking, I think a lot of the way designers and architects work, which is we have to have more people weighing in on the design process. And that is something I’m really excited about continuing to build out through, through my work with project teams.
Robb (29:19): Cool. Yeah. So I guess looking ahead big picture, looking down the road, what is your end goal? You know, universal design, isn’t prescriptive by its very nature, so codes or standards for universal design seem like they wouldn’t apply. So I guess, is it just a raised awareness? Is it just better examples? In five or 10 years, what would you like to see happening as, as more regular practice for design of all types of buildings or spaces or communities?
Victoria (30:11): Sure. Yeah, I think, I mean, beyond the goal of getting through this PhD program in one piece and really coming out of it with solidified research around what designing for equity means in a tangible manner. So beyond that, I really want to bring this research back to both practitioners, but also to policy makers. My goal is not to codify universal design. I don’t think that will work. And I don’t think that is aligned with the spirit and intent of this methodology, right? I think rather it’s raising awareness and really using universal design as a framework to talk about how we can bring more equity into design, and then thinking about how we develop legislation that supports the exploration of how we can continue to do this in a more consistent manner. And by that, I mean, can we get some legislation passed? That requires us to look at how we address the design process to incorporate equity and inclusion as an example, and you know, other countries are doing this, it should be no surprise that the U S is a little bit behind on this, but, you know, we’ve got Norway which has committed to achieving universal design by 2025. In Europe, the the council on European initiatives have signed on to advance universal design. And so these are steps that governments have taken not to codify universal design, but to show support and to, to begin to earmark budgets, to begin to have the conversation. And each of these governments are working on building out what a universal design approach means within, within their jurisdiction and how that can be implemented. So certainly here in the U S that would be a goal. I think probably it would be more realistic to start with a1 local jurisdiction. New York city itself has been quite active around universal design. It’s really, probably one of the, the city has probably one of the most comprehensive set of documents that guide practitioners around universal design, which is really exciting. So it’s not required by law, but the government agencies in New York city have developed these types of standards and guidelines. So we’re seeing some movement but I’d like to see more.
Robb (33:13): Yeah. What could legislation do to, I guess, require universal design, which by its nature is not standardized or prescriptive?
Victoria (33:25): A lot of universities are doing this. A lot of universities will have within their building code or, you know, design and construction mandate, whatever they are calling it. They will have a requirement to comply with universal design principles, and then they will have the seven principles of universal design that kind of are these high level governing, you know, ways of thinking about design. So flexible use intuitive perceptible information size and fit these very general concepts. So that is a way that universal design can be kind of mandated, but the act of implementing it is left to the design team. And I think, again, it’s about raising that awareness around strategies that exist and thinking about it in an innovative way, that makes sense for your project within the context that it’s in. And I feel like there’s just so much room to grow with universal design, where we are going to be a week from now is going to be a completely different space 10 or 15 years from now, but we have to start somewhere.
Robb (34:54): Yeah that’s that makes sense. That makes sense. It’s my engineer brain wants some hard and fast things, but even, even just requiring consideration or even some kind of documentation that look, you’ve considered this, how have you considered universal design in this project? That in and of itself can be very, can be very useful.
Victoria (35:23): Well, you know so the WELL building standard version two has now a feature focused on accessibility and universal design and LEED version four, as I’m sure, you know, has the social equity pilot credits that has an inclusive design credit, right? So we’re seeing this connect with building performance measures, which is really exciting. I think that’s critical that we’re understanding the link between inclusion and building performance. And so, you know, and I worked very closely with the folks at international well building Institute, I actually was involved with developing that feature. So the question that they ask me a lot is how, okay, the project team wants to know how they would know if they did universal design. And then, and then the second, the second question is how do they know if somebody is a universal design expert, right. And, you know, there are rating systems around universal design. I think that’s probably a strong word for what exists. There, there are a few that, that are kind of just becoming to gain popularity on the market. In my opinion, they don’t really stretch universal design to these other aspects of inclusion. So it lies mostly in disability inclusion again, which is important. So I am really interested in seeing how that could expand. And, and that is a challenge. So I think awareness is key here that, you know, it would be my, my dream to go in and speak with a group of architects. And for them to understand that there is no right or wrong way to implement universal design. It’s not either you did it, or you didn’t, it’s really about thinking and problem solving and using the built environment to support human performance, regardless of your ability or background, you know, who you identify or how you identify. And for that, I think we’ve got a long way to go.
Robb (37:50): Yeah. Yeah. I agree, the ball is rolling, I think, and it’ll be interesting to check in in a few years and see where we’ve come on this.
Victoria (38:02): Yeah. If you would’ve asked me two years ago, if I would be in a PhD program researching this, I would have laughed and maybe said no way, I’m done learning. But yeah, I, I mean, I have such a conviction that design and the built environment can impact aspects of equity. And so I really want to work at drawing out what those aspects are, putting some parameters around them and getting it back into the hands of practitioners.
Robb (38:34): Awesome. Good luck.
Kelly (38:36): Thank you. I’ll need that.
Robb (38:41): Thanks to Victoria. She sent us several links for more information. So certainly check those out on our show notes page, if you are so inclined switcher.com/podcasts, that’s S, winter.com/podcast buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates, where we are focused on making buildings better accessibility and universal design are certainly among the services we offer also efficiency, healthy buildings, sustainable buildings, resilient buildings. Check us out swinter.com and please check out our careers page. If you are looking for three, or you have openings in all of our offices New York, DC, Connecticut, and Boston. Thanks again to Victoria. And thanks to the podcast team here at SWA Heather Breslin. Alex Mirabile, Jayd Alvarez. Dylan Martello Kelly Westby, and I, Robb Aldrich. Thanks.
Solar Panels or Asthma? Equity and the Built Environment with Jeremy Hays
Nov 06, 2020
Featuring
Jeremy Hays
Jeremy is a Principal at Upright Consulting Services, Strategic Partner at Kapwa Consulting, and the former Executive Director of Green For All, a national nonprofit he helped found in 2008. His consulting practice draws on years of experience working with diverse stakeholders to design and implement equitable models of economic and workforce development in the environmental sector. In his nonprofit career, Jeremy worked with scores of cities and communities across the country to pioneer inclusive approaches to creating shared prosperity and healthy communities.
Jeremy is passionate about translating commitments to racial equity and sustainability into measurable outcomes and increased capacity for change agents in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.
Social equity is key to the work that we do in the built environment. Far too often, marginalized communities receive more of the burdens and less of the benefits of 21st century living – especially when it comes to housing. As an industry, it is our responsibility to address these disparities and come up with solutions that are inclusive of all people. But first, we wanted to grow our own understanding of the issues and hear what others are doing to prioritize social equity in the built environment.
Our guest for this month’s episode of Buildings + Beyond is Jeremy Hays. Jeremy has a wealth of knowledge, experience, and perspective that stems from a combination of social and environmental justice. We learn about how cities are incorporating equity into their sustainability plans, why diversity of perspectives can create better solutions, and how actively thinking about equity can help the transition to a green economy.
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.
Kelly (00:00:05): Welcome to buildings and beyond.
Robb (00:00:08): The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment.
Kelly (00:00:12): By focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.
Robb (00:00:17): I’m Rob Aldrich,
Kelly (00:00:18): And I’m Kelly Westby. Do you get solar panels or do you get asthma? My guest, Jeremy Hayes uses this question to highlight how communities with more people of color and more people with lower income receive more of the burdens and less of the benefits. Jeremy discusses, how the approach we take to climate change policy needs to include equity at its core, or we will inadvertently perpetuate the systems of inequity that are in place today. And when we work together, we can create bolder policy that addresses these issues holistically. Jeremy is the Principal at upright consulting services. His consulting practice draws on years of experience working with diverse stakeholders to design and implement equitable models of economic and workforce development in the environmental sector. We had a great conversation, so I’m just going to dive right in. So thank you, Jeremy, for being on the podcast with us today.
Jeremy (00:01:17): Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kelly (00:01:20): And we’d love for the audience to get a little bit more about your background in getting into getting into this space. So how did you get into this line of work, kind of your equity consulting work that you do now?
Jeremy (00:01:34): Well, you know, I’ve been working at the intersection of equity, sustainability and economic development for most of my career and I kind of fell into it if I’m totally honest, I started off you know, being quite concerned about equity issues. I grew up poor and lived in both public housing and subsidized affordable housing. And as I got to be older teenager, I was kind of angry about that and, you know, looking for ways to you know, make some change in the world. I didn’t use those terms, but I found community organizing and that was really healthy outlet for, you know, thinking about how to change some of the things that I had been frustrated with growing up. And so I really started off as an organizer thinking broadly about how to bring about positive change for low-income communities and communities of color. I’m white, but I grew up in low-income neighborhoods that were predominantly people of color. And then, you know, I, as I was sort of rounding out high school and getting into organizing and going into college, I just kind of fell into the environmental movement. It was certainly aligned with the values that I grew up with in my family, but it came about because the organizations that I was involved in had people that were, that were really concerned about the environment and that’s what they wanted to work on. And so I have always kind of been working in the environmental movement and trying to connect it to broader issues of racial and economic justice.
Kelly (00:02:54): That’s great. And what is the difference between sort of environmental justice movement and the kind of equity and the environment kind of space that you’re in now?
Jeremy (00:03:09): Well, ultimately, I’m not sure there’s huge difference or that there should be. I think the movements towards these concepts came from different places and kind of caught on, and people are using slightly different language in different places, but there are a lot of similarities, you know, the environmental justice movement was really born out of historically marginalized and disproportionately impacted communities, mostly communities of color that were saying, you know, why do we get all the burdens and none of the benefits of 21st century living, you know, all the toxic waste and the bad air et cetera. And we’re really fighting to correct the conditions that brought about, you know, increased rates of asthma poor living conditions, et cetera, in, in communities of color, where they were bearing the brunt of these environmental hazards. I think in cities, and I work mostly with local government and city government, and cities started talking about sustainability before they started talking about environmental justice. So cities were beginning to work with this concept of, we want to do something for the environment, we want to be sustainable. We want to be thinking about a clean future. We want to do something about climate change. And in some cities they’ve connected that in a traditional sense of sustainable development to concerns about economic development and social equity, but it really took the environmental justice movement pushing hard on cities and the federal government and others to be recognized and to start to weave concerns about environmental justice into, into policy. And, and I think one of the things that is interesting about the moment that we’re in now is that cities and the people that work with cities are starting to really come around and adopt at least principles of environmental justice and trying to center some of those concerns in the way that they think about sustainability and policy-making. Probably still not enough as we would ultimately like. But there has been a lot of movement at least over the past 20 years that I’ve been kind of watching this stuff.
Kelly (00:05:06): Yeah. And taking a step maybe a little bit back, actually. How do you define equity?
Jeremy (00:05:13): Well, that’s a great question. And you know, one of the things that that we do is that is work hard with people that we’re working with to come up with their, you know, particular definitions of equity that work for them and their organization. So one of the things we say is that, you know, there’s not a cookie cutter approach here. This is a complicated issue and people really need to get into it and sort of coming up with an understanding of what equity is and what it means to your organization, to your city, and understanding what the inequities are and what the historical systems are that brought those about. That’s all part of the process of doing equity work. So while there’s no single definition that’s in use everywhere, there are some definitions that and some elements of definitions that are becoming increasingly common in, in cities and in some of the organizations that work with. And actually the one that I that I use the most often comes from a colleague of mine often consulting partner, Desiree Williams Raji, who is the founder and principal at a group called Kapwa consulting. She was an equity strategies manager for the city of Portland, Oregon for a long time, and has worked through the urban sustainability directors network to help other cities really think about how to center equity in their sustainability work. And she has this great definition that she borrowed or kind of adapted from the environmental justice movement and other work that was happening in the field and is built on that. And the way that she describes it is this, there are three kinds of dimensions of equity that we need to be aware of when we’re thinking about this work. One is procedural equity, which is a fair and equitable process. So this is about voice and participation in decision-making. You know, what we hear from communities and organizations that are advocating is, you know, “nothing about us without us,” this idea that if communities aren’t at the table making decisions, they’re likely on the menu. So that’s procedural equity and it’s about having that voice and inclusion in the process, especially and most importantly from communities that have been historically excluded from the decision-making processes and that bear a disproportionate negative impacts that received sort of more, that burdens less of the benefits of some of those policies. So that’s a procedural equity frame. Yeah. A lot of good work around that. And that’s why we talk about community engagement and community outreach and partnership as being part of that. Another dimension, the second of three, that Desiree uses in her work with cities is to say, there’s also this concept of distributional equity, and we need to be thinking about what do you get at the end of the day, right? The burdens and benefits and how those are distributed. Distributional equity is about impacts and about outcomes. So questions around distributional equity, are The policy goes into place. What do you get? You get asthma, or do you get some solar panels? You know, do you get a bill reduction you know, or do you get a longer commute to work, right? Like, how are the benefits, the resources with any given decision sort of distributed equitably and important within that concept is understanding what the current conditions of inequity are. Because equity is not fairness. I think most people have seen this popular image, right, where that often there are people trying to look over a tall fence and, you know, everybody gets the same size box and that doesn’t work. And so you have to actually kind of distribute resources with attention to where there are deficits and disparity.
Jeremy (00:08:27): The third concept with equity that we’d like to use is recognizing that you can have a great process. You can have people come together and do a great process, include lots of voices. And then you can actually design a policy and implement it in a way that really is attentive to distributing benefits of that policy to people who need them most and addressing historical wrongs. But if you don’t change the actual structures, the systems, the institutions, and the way that they function over time, you’re always going to be playing catch up. And so the third dimension is structural equity or what Desiree calls intergenerational equity, because this is about changing the decision-making and accountability structures within institutions, so that they’re defending and extending equity gains over time. Sometimes I say, if we do structural equity, right, we could wash out all the good people from an institution, like all the folks who did all the training and learned and did all the hard work and made all the policies. We could take them out and replace them with brand new people. And the decision making and accountability structures in that organization would still help us take care of people that have been wronged in the past, and that are suffering today. So those are some of the other concepts that we work with, but that, that simple breakdown has been so helpful for cities and for other organizations that are working on equity issues, in large part because it is a complex issue and the word gets thrown around a lot. And one of the things that we noticed is we can go into a room with, you know, a dozen different people back in the days when we used to get to go into a room with a dozen different people. And we can all be talking about equity and saying the word equity, but we might all be meaning slightly different things. And so really getting into it and starting to break it down and take it apart and be really clear about what we mean is really important.
Kelly (00:10:09): Right, absolutely. And you actually had talked about a couple of different definitions of equity and one that really resonated with me was about outcomes. I don’t remember exactly what it was. I don’t know if you remember off the top of your head.
Jeremy (00:10:24): Yeah. In your outcomes. No, that’s exactly right. Yeah, one of the, one of the things that we say is when we do equity right, I mean, equity means that your identity no longer determines your outcomes, right? Like if we live in a world that’s racially equitable, right. We won’t see disparities between these different racial groups. I mean, the fact that, you know, African-American women are three times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. You know, you can dive into the research there, but ultimately what it comes down to is the reason for that is because they’re black and they live in a society that in which the game is sort of tilted against black women. And so that shows up in the data as much more likely to die in childbirth. And we see these disparities over and over again, when income on incarceration rates on health outcomes, et cetera.
Jeremy (00:11:14): And that’s what we’re working with. We’re really trying to understand, well, what are the systems that produce those disparate outcomes and how do we begin to change them? And that concept of systems is another important piece of equity definitions. There’s a lot of really important work that needs to happen everywhere in America to address people’s understanding and sensitivity to different cultures and people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to unpack and take apart individual bias, implicit bias, and we could do all that work and we could still be perpetuating inequities because of the way that different systems have sort of worked over time to create disadvantage and disparity for people of color and women and LGBTQ and disabled people and others. And so what we’re really trying to figure out is like, what are those systems? And one of the concepts, again thatmy colleague Desiree uses is let’s talk about broken systems, not about broken people, right? Like, let’s think about this, not as like there’s a deficit among this group of people, but really to dive into that and try to understand, well, why is that? And how did we get there and how can we change it over the longterm going forward?
Kelly (00:12:23): Yeah, absolutely. You’ve spoken before about how there’s an inherent link between progress in sustainability, in a city and progress and equity and linking them together, we can actually create bolder policy. Do you have some examples for that?
Jeremy (00:12:44): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that point is just so evident. I mean, I feel like it’s been evident for a while, but it’s becoming so much more clear as cities are increasingly understanding because of black lives matters and other movements. And I think you know, every generation gets smarter and more aware of the dangers and the pain associated with racial inequities and are set on doing something about that, that we’re just seeing more and more how focusing on racial equity is woven throughout all the priorities that we have across society. And sustainability is the place where that in many ways has always been part of the foundational concepts of sustainability or sustainable development. And yet we’ve sort of had to play catch up on that third E you know, a lot of cities have been really good on, you know, the three E’s of sustainability, our environment, you know, economy and equity. And cities kind of started a lot of them with sustainability departments and thinking about the environment and making lots of progress on reducing carbon emissions, and then started saying like, Oh, you know, we might be able to create some jobs and sort of tilt our economic development strategy towards this huge amount of work that we have to do to take our cities towards carbon neutrality or carbon zero and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And then kind of, you know, coming along behind for many years was this equity that was saying like, wait, we should also make sure that we are correcting historic disparities, that we’re building in opportunity for people who have been left out previously. And that this future that we’re talking about building, this healthy and sustainable future, is available to all is shared by all. And importantly is built by everyone is, you know, draws on the genius and perspectives of everybody within our community. And so that has really thankfully finally is coming to the fore in, in a lot of places. And what we see is that when we’re more holistic about our climate policies and we include equity dimensions and economic opportunity dimensions in them, we get a bunch of benefits. Some of those are that we get, you know, smarter policy and we can talk about that in a little bit, but one of the main benefits off the bat is we get broader constituencies of support for the types of climate policies that many in like the environmental movement or the mainstream, you know, green movement have been pushing for, for a long time. And I do have this example from my home city in Portland, Oregon, where Portland’s been a very progressive place on climate issues for a long time and has developed climate action plans is one of the early cities to develop climate action plans.
Jeremy (00:15:11): And was also one of the early cities to start thinking about equity in climate action plans because of the work of the Bureau of planning and sustainability and people like Desiree Williams Raji, and others that work there. But, but like a lot of cities, Portland couldn’t really come up with with the amount of money to invest in making a climate action plan real, like we have these lofty goals about making our city carbon neutral you know, and having super efficient buildings and electric transportation and other things, but it takes resources to get there. And it takes the involvement of a broad community to be able to support the types of policies that are actually gonna make that stuff real and take it off of the plan that’s on the shelf and put it into practice. And what we saw recently was that as the city started talking more about equity and started engaging directly with communities of color and listening to environmental justice advocates and beginning to share information back and forth and develop better relationships of trust and understanding there was increasing capacity in recognition of the opportunity to change policy, to serve the needs of community color. And when I say that I’m talking about that that recognition came from communities of color. And what we saw in Portland was that communities of color came together and created a ballot initiative that said, we want all these things. We want healthy cities, low carbon emissions. We know the climate change problems are going to hit our communities hardest and earliest. We think that there should be investment in getting to the place where it’s a clean energy, low carbon city that includes communities of color and has them sort of in the front of the line to be implementing and benefiting from these changes. And so those communities put together a ballot initiative that suggested a small tax on big box retailers, so large businesses that operated nationally, but had a presence in Portland and took that to the ballot and ran a campaign and ended up passing that with 65% of the vote really overwhelming support for that.
Jeremy (00:17:17): And what’s impressive there is that I don’t think the city of Portland or even the environmental organizations in Portland would have ever been able to get that done on their own, but once communities of color were in the lead, and they were talking about the benefits to communities these other ways in terms of jobs and economic opportunity in terms of better health outcomes, in terms of, you know, better learning opportunities and career pathways and connecting that to these investments in clean energy and low carbon infrastructure, et cetera. That’s when we saw that there was a much broader coalition of support for bold climate action, and we were able to get it done. And I think that’s a great example of sort of what’s beginning to take place around the country.
Kelly (00:18:00): Yeah. And I think it’s such a great example because I think it speaks to this idea of a diversity of perspectives creates more holistic solutions, and like thinking holistically about the problem, we can create win-win wins. Even though I think sometimes we have, especially maybe these days we have kind of a scarcity mindset sometimes. You know, if something wins, then somebody else loses. If there’s time for sustainability, maybe we don’t have time for equity, but actually kind of when we focus on or when we kind of bring people together with different perspectives, we can actually create a solution that can benefit everybody.
Jeremy (00:18:41): Yeah, you’re so right about that. Kelly and the Portland clean energy fund is the name of that ballot initiative, by the way, it’s the Portland the clean energy and community benefits fund and your listeners can check it out and look online. And there’s a coalition that came together around that, that, that tells a story of, you know, sort of how they thought about this and how they put it in place. But I want to be clear, this is this fund that passed on the ballot and is being implemented now, and it’s implemented so that there’s money that’s raised, and there’s a community taskforce that is very intimately involved in how those dollars are invested in reaching our climate equity goals here in the city of Portland. The price tag, the number on that, it’s between 40 and $60 million per year, that that initiative is putting together and investing in our climate equity future here in Portland. That is an enormous amount of money when we think about all of the climate action plans and cities around the country that have come up with brilliant ideas and sort of put them on paper for the longterm, but don’t have anywhere near to, you know, 40 to $60 million to invest in making those plans real much less, 40 to $60 million a year. And it was really both the courage and the genius of a really diverse set of people coming together, rooted in communities of color and the priorities of communities of color that made that possible. You know, that made it possible to say, I believe we can do this. I believe we can dream big. I believe we can put together the coalition that’s needed to pass this over the objections of these, you know, large national chains who don’t want to pay like a 1% business license fee is what is what where the money comes from. And so it’s really impressive to see what’s possible when we do put equity at the center lead with equity, we’re able to make much more progress than we’ve been able to make when it’s just the people that wake up in the morning, thinking about carbon emission reductions that are, that are going out to design an advocate for policy.
Kelly (00:20:31): Right. Absolutely. And I feel like that is also a beautiful example of what you said before, which I don’t know if everybody caught, but I think that this is such an amazing thing to just put in your mind of, “do you get asthma or do you get solar panels, ” right? This is how do allocate resources to not just say okay, you don’t get the bad stuff, but how can we give some of the good things to the communities that have been disadvantaged in the past?
Jeremy (00:20:58): Yes. And you know, this is increasingly becoming a priority for cities. And so I find myself a lot talking to cities and the organizations that work with cities and advise cities around climate and sustainability. And just trying to remind them that the landscape is shifting. You know, in some cities, climate has been a top issue for a while. In other cities, it’s never sort of risen to the top of the list. But I was recently involved in an initiative that went out and identified a couple dozen cities to help advance their climate priorities and said, you know, you look like you’re doing a great job, we’re gonna put in some energy and some resources and help you meet your climate goals. We’re really happy to be working with you. And when the leaders of that initiative went to the mayors to sort of alert them to their generosity and the support that they were going to be kicking in, the majority of those mayors said, that is great. I’m really glad to hear it. And what, what have you got on equity? Because I’ve got constituencies that are talking to me about affordability, you know, crisis and homes, and that are, you know, talking to me about that lack of good paying jobs. And they’re talking to me about how much time people working, people are spending away from their families and these long commutes and expensive, you know, paying for gas. And so what are you going to do about that? Because that’s what I’m, you know, dealing with sort of front and center, right? Like that my next election may hinge on how well I address those issues and I want to do something on climate, but I really benefit if we can tie our climate priorities to the priorities of these communities that are, you know, sort of getting sick of being at the back of the line, you know, suffering under these disproportionate outcomes and tired of getting ignored. And we’ve seen a lot of that pop up around police violence recently with the black lives matter movement. But inside of that, and alongside of that, there are communities that have been organizing for a long time to say, we want the future to include us. We want the future to correct these historic wrongs. And if you’re talking about a clean energy, zero carbon climate future, that sounds great. Let’s see how we’re in that. Let’s sit down and talk about how our priorities get folded into and centered in that work. And so you’re seeing a lot of cities now that are putting out, you know, RFPs for traditional energy stuff or partnering with organizations or hiring for positions within the sustainability department that are looking for expertise on equity, on racial equity, on economic opportunity. And I’m thinking about really how to, how to address these systems head on.
Kelly (00:23:26): Yeah. And you’ve mentioned, I know we’ve, we’ve brought up equity sort of generally, but solving for racial equity lots of other items follow and that things get better for everyone. Actually, if we think about racial equity, even though obviously we have to look at a lot of different lines, but I know that’s why things do come back to to that.
Jeremy (00:23:51): That’s right. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up Kelly. That’s one of those additional core principles that we talk about when we, when we help cities and, and help organizations think through their equity definitions, we talk about those three dimensions of equity, the process, the actual outcomes and the longterm structures and institutions and how all of those need to kind of be thought about and then ultimately work together. And then we have these principles, you know, think about systems. And one of those principles is lead with race. So when we’re doing equity work in cities where we’re focused on leading with race, the government Alliance for race and equity, Gare, great organization that is made up of cities and counties around the country that are, that are taking a proactive approach to racial equity. They point this out in their materials really well and have some research that says we need to lead with race for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is, is that it’s a difficult conversation for most Americans, most white Americans in particular. And that if we aren’t really explicit and leading with a conversation about racial inequity or racial disparity and, and measures to address racial equity, head-on, it tends not to be picked up. Like when we say, Oh, we’ll get around to that later. Or, you know, like we’re talking about equity, you know, in general, we still see the disproportionate outcomes for people of color in the country. So it’s important to lead with race. Because it doesn’t have a history of getting addressed unless we’re really explicit about it and putting it at the fore. But one of the things that we’ve also learned is that we lead with race because it’s where most of the disparities, it’s kind of the strongest variable, right? When you look across a bunch of different identity groups and look at sort of asthma rates or economic opportunity or other things, race keeps coming up as the strongest determinant of your future, right? So people from the same economic backgrounds that are racially different actually end up, this was, you know, this was one of the key findings of this seminal study on toxic waste and race that dr. Bob Bullard did back in the nineties. He said, you’re, you’re more likely to live next to a toxic waste site if you’re a person of color that regardless of income, right? So it’s information like that, that shows us this is really important. And what we found is when we address race, when we solve for racial disparity, things get better for everybody. So we try to point out that leading with race doesn’t mean only talking about race or, you know, not focusing on the disparities that women and veterans and disabled and LGBTQ folks also face in the economy and in society.
Kelly (00:26:19): And I’ll jump in quickly there because I was actually called out on this podcast earlier, we had the commissioner for the mayor’s office for people with disabilities and we try to use the person first language. So people with disabilities, that was just something that that came up on our podcast earlier.
Jeremy (00:26:36): That’s important. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Kelly (00:26:39): Yeah. And I think even just having those, having that thought, I can tell from the way that you talk about it, definitely thinking about these concerns, people first, something that struck me earlier that you had said about, you know, don’t talk about broken people. Like these are people that are living in the, within these systems that are broken and how do we solve those systems? You know, there’s nothing wrong with the people within them. So I think you definitely speak to that in your work.
Jeremy (00:27:04): Yeah. It’s really an important concept or we get you know, we get a lot of stuff that just doesn’t work. One of the examples that’s come up in my work a lot has been, you know, focusing on economic opportunity in the green economy. And so we’ve talked about, you know, green jobs and I worked with a national non-profit organization called green for all, but that helped sort of really think about like, what are the opportunities in a green economy and in a low carbon economy to create jobs and opportunities for people of color at risk youth and others that have kind of been left out over time. And one of the things that we saw early in our work was that there was a, almost a an immediate default to, well, we need more job training programs, right? We need more education programs and job training programs for these disconnected youth and people of color or formerly incarcerated, right? Folks who have real barriers to employment. And there was this kind of instinct that if we just filled the deficits among, you know, certain people, like got them the education and the support and the services that they needed, which they need, right. Folks have barriers to employment because they’ve been dealing with these systems for so long, that that everything would be okay. And what we found out is like we could train up a lot of people and give them all kinds of skills and all kinds of ready. And we see people, you know, just incredible people doing really heroic work in terms of learning new skills and picking up, you know, new careers and hustling and hustling. And still, we don’t see the situation changed because we haven’t addressed this larger issue of exclusion within the broader economy, right. And access, especially to good paying jobs and, you know, jobs with prevailing wage and, and you know, benefits and other things.
Jeremy (00:28:47): And so that’s where, you know, it’s just so important that we don’t let ourselves default into thinking about like, Oh, we have to, you know, fill these gaps in these individuals. We need to fill gaps in the system that are allowing people to fall through the cracks and focus there. And part of that work is helping people out with what they need getting what they need. But if we just do that and we don’t focus on, what’s been keeping them down or what put them in that situation in the first place, then we just, aren’t going to make much progress.
Kelly (00:29:13): Yeah. That’s an excellent point. Do you have other examples? We talked about Portland, other examples of where climate policy like the city engaged really with disadvantaged communities directly, and they were able to come up with sort of creative and impactful solutions together?
Jeremy (00:29:31): Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for asking that. It’s good to get to the specifics there. This is happening all over the place. And it’s really impressive to see that these relationships are being built and that cities are increasingly prioritizing conversations with historically marginalized communities and communities of color and disproportionately impacted. And we’re starting to see that really show up in policies and changes. So I’ve got a couple of examples where I want to point this out and kind of drill down a little bit. So recently Denver, Colorado went through a a process to come up with a pretty comprehensive proposal for climate change action in the city. And to put that on the ballot and to attach a proposed tax or a couple of different revenue mechanisms that would allow the city to pay for these things that the city wanted to do around, around climate change. And as part of developing that, that overall vision for what’s, what’s going to happen in the city of Denver, they put together a real diverse stakeholder task force, right? It was called the Denver climate action task force. And, they met over a series of public meetings and this, you know, included, you know, members of city council and business leaders and community leaders from communities of color and, and labor and et cetera. And then that stakeholder group also held some public conversations and went out and they, you know, you can look at their report and see all the ways in which they tried to tap into the genius and perspective and hear the concerns and priorities of impacted communities. And what we saw come out of that was pretty impressive to me. I’ve been looking at climate plans and cities for a long time and this one is impressive for a couple of reasons. One is, it makes very clear, right at the beginning that this climate plan should have equity at the center of it. So there’s a, there’s a, a statement and something very early on that says, you know, the task force is committed to making Denver a more equitable city and recognizing some of those historical situations that have, have created where they’re at. Their definition of equity says equity means addressing broken systems, connected to racial injustice and historical inequity. And then they get right down into the details. So in the final recommendations and the plan that’s going to the ballot with a proposal to raise some revenue from the people at Denver to take them into this climate, you know, low carbon future and address climate change. And in the building section in particular, they have this language in the plan that says, you know, climate work in buildings must be done in a way that enhances quality of life reduces energy consumption and eliminates household energy burden on low income household. Every solution outlined below must be implemented with these following things in line. So they have a lot of the types of things that we’re used to seeing in terms of energy efficiency programs, clean energy programs incentives, you know, regulation supports financing. But what they do is they wrap around this this idea that these programs should not increase costs on vulnerable low-income households, right? We should be thinking about how to make households more affordable at the same time that we’re upgrading them, we should create opportunities for people of color and native Americans to work in the clean economy, include occupant comfort and health throughout, and ensure that policies don’t compromise low-income tenants or put risk on communities relative to displacement. So these things are important for a couple of reasons. I mean, we’re, we’re beginning to see how the city is sending a signal to the marketplace and to others that work on building energy policy, how these are going to be priorities and how we’re all going to have to bring our collective genius to sort of figuring this stuff out, right. It’s like another piece of the puzzle. It’s how do we reduce emissions and also increase equity at the same time? And that just takes, you know, some hard work and some figuring that out. But one of the things that there, I think that they’re referencing here is that this is important because this is what the people of Denver want. Right. And if we’re going to raise the money and build the political consensus, that it’s time to do something about climate change, this is what the actions have to look like. Right. And I think that’s that’s pretty significant. We see this happen in other places too, you know, Washington DC recently developed and passed a building performance standard. And a lot of cities are moving towards this of having done their energy benchmarking and developed incentive programs to help buildings reduce their energy use. They’re now starting to say, we really want you on a pathway towards bringing your energy consumption or energy use intensity down to a certain level on a certain timeline. And in, in Washington DC, there was deep engagement with the affordable housing community and the folks that work with folks that are living in affordable housing and are dependent on that housing for stability, community stability, and access to economic opportunity, et cetera. And they worked back and forth. And we see now in the development of the compliance pathways and alternative compliance pathways and the implementation of that building performance standard, we see attention to and respect for the concerns and priorities of the affordable housing community. But we also see, and I think this is really important, that those folks aren’t going to be left behind, you know, that we’re not going to lock away potential carbon emission reductions or energy savings, because we just say, well, we can’t figure out how to serve those communities with the best energy efficiency technology. So we’ll just like, you know, maybe they don’t have to do it right. And that happens a lot In the work, or it has happened a lot in the work. And so one of the other benefits of doing equity work is that we’re much more certain that we’re going to bring everybody along. If we kind of put the folks that need the most help and might be have the most barriers to making the changes that are needed to make across society. If we put those folks right in the center of our thinking about how to drive this change, you know, sometimes we focus on that low hanging fruit, and what ends up happening is like, we get all used to picking low hanging fruit. We never like, you know, think about building ladders or other things. And that the rest of that fruit just stays up in the tree, you know, and we never get back to it cause it’s not low hanging, we’ve built ourselves around this low-hanging fruit. And I think part of what equity is saying is, you know, let’s do the hard stuff first. Like we’re good enough. We can figure that out. And you know, the low-hanging fruit may, may still be there and there’s a tension there and we need to work that out over time, but you’re starting to see it in policies like in that building performance standard in, in Washington DC.
Kelly (00:35:50): Yeah. And I think you had spoke to this before, too, that there’s an analogy to the the sort of anti-racist movement. If you, if you’re not thinking about equity in your policy, because the systems are obviously already in place to make to the, you know, the systems and structures are already in place to, to make things unequal, if you’re not actively thinking about it, then you’re just playing into the systems that already exist and you’re going to perpetuate it.
Jeremy (00:36:19): Yeah, that’s right. I think that’s a really important concept, you know, recognizing that it’s not just about our intentions or kind of like what we believe or think about other people, you know, prejudice and bias are really important to identify and to root out, but at a certain point, these systems are in place and they’re operating. And if we don’t kind of bring equity to the, to the forefront of our minds, we end up inadvertently reinforcing, reinforcing those systems. Ibram X. Kendi has a best-selling book out now called you know, how to be an anti-racist. And one of the foundational concepts in that book is you’re either anti-racist or you’re, or you’re very much not, right. Like when you’re participating in a system that is a system that is creating benefits for some people and burdens for other people and historically excluding and marginalizing some people and giving voice and power to other people. If you’re not actively taking apart that system, you’re inevitably reinforcing it just by participating in it and kind of going along with it. So that’s one of the concepts that we work with is saying like, look, we’re not, name-calling, we’re just trying to point out that this stuff doesn’t happen all by itself. You know, and important for all of us to take a very proactive approach to thinking about what this looks like. I mean, one example I’d like to give from my own upbringing when I first started getting into energy efficiency and incentive work I was looking at the kind of incentives and how dollars were spent and looking at total resource costs with utility you know, the ways in which utility dollars were meant to change consumer behavior and move us towards greater energy efficiency. And I was looking at the ways some of those dollars were spent and it’s like, Oh, I see you get rebates for energy star refrigerators. And, you know, that’s good. You want people to have energy star refrigerators. But the thought that occurred to me was like, you know, when I was growing up, we got our refrigerator out of the want ads. Like we got a used refrigerator from somewhere, cause it was cheap. Like we didn’t buy a brand new refrigerator. And even if we did, like, I’m not sure between, you know, my single mom and hustling to school and daycare and everything else that we would have filled out all this paperwork and gotten it in the mail just right to get, you know, $500 back on a really expensive refrigerator. So to me, I, you know, I had these questions about what what’s happening here, like who, who is benefiting from our investments in energy efficiency when they all sort of take on this shape and flavor. Now, I think we’re doing really well in recent of, of being aware of that and really thinking about how to deliver benefits to folks that need them most, and that are least likely to participate in most likely to get, get locked out. But that concept that you, that you brought up, you know, you’re either, you’re the part of the problem or you’re part of the solution, you know, that, that old concept, I think it, it yeah, it has, it has some merit.
Kelly (00:38:56): Yeah. And there was an LA times article about UCLA researchers looked into where the, where those dollars were going and it was looking at a policy. I’m actually curious your thoughts on that. It was looking at where electricity was consumed the most and definitely high consumption in the wealthier areas. So sort of wealthier folks may be getting more access to the energy itself. And then getting more funding through these rebate programs, these rebate programs that they looked at were related to, I believe electric vehicles and solar panels. And you had mentioned something the other day about, you know, is it equitable to put EV charging stations everywhere? Or is there another framework we need to see? Do people in different locations need access to a low carbon alternatives in different ways?
Jeremy (00:39:59): Yeah, I think, well, I think that report is great and the write up in LA times is good. So I’m glad you’re going to share that. And this sort of goes to just thinking about like, what is our framework for thinking about what our climate future should look like for understanding what the problems are that we have now and understanding the roots of those problems or that the history of how those problems came to be. And I think the question around EV charging stations is, you know, not so much, should they be everywhere or not? They ultimately should, or we need to electrify transportation and think about smart ways to do that. But sometimes when we’re introducing one of the other principles of equity, which I hadn’t mentioned here, so we’ve got those three dimensions and then principles, like, you know, it’s about the systems and lead with race. One of the other principles that we work with is that equity work is accountable to impacted communities, right? And part of what that means is that communities that have been disproportionately impacted and historically marginalized, they’re the ones that get to define what the equity priorities are, because otherwise we get strange outcomes, right? We get confusion when, you know, sort of historically privileged people are designing policy and they’re saying, Oh yeah, we’re going to do equity. And I know what that means. I’m, you know, putting EV chargers out in the world. So equity means like everybody gets an EV charger and maybe in the long, I mean, certainly in the long run, it’s important that we all have access to low carbon transportation, but if you’re have a limited amount of dollars to invest in solutions and in meeting community needs, it’s incumbent on us, especially with an equity framework, to ask what are the priorities in this community and how do those priorities align with our climate objectives?
Jeremy (00:41:41): So one of the things that we know when we go out and talk to folks in low-income communities of color and sort of ask people like, you know, how’s it going? You know, what’s going on with you? Like, where does it hurt? You know, where’s the pain today. We usually get some version of, you know, the rent’s too high, my paycheck’s too low, right? Like that, that’s where I’m feeling the most pain. And you know, there’s also health issues and, you know, lots of issues, right. But I don’t have access to an EV charger isn’t as high on the list of some of those other things, which doesn’t mean we can’t put if you chargers into communities, but the question is how do we put EV chargers everywhere in a way that addresses that rent’s too high paychecks too low? Like, can we get folks, you know, manufacturing, these EV chargers and, and being a part of installing them, you know, can we get folks that are part of the installation process and building that infrastructure that are bringing home good money from good jobs? There’s some great work that’s happening in Los Angeles. Actually, there’s a there’s a local EV charger manufacturer in the Los Angeles area. That’s done some installations, Dodger stadium and elsewhere that is focused just exactly on this, on engaging people from communities of color in the business end of manufacturing and installing these. And you know, what happens when that’s happening, when people are having their highest priority concerns being addressed by climate actions and climate solutions, they tend to be a lot more for them. You know, some of the rap on EV chargers is, you know, that’s yuppy catnip, and here comes the gentrification. Once you see one of those go in the neighborhood, you know, things are changing and, and, you know, it’s not gonna be too long before you get moved out. But in neighborhoods where people have participated in, you know, the economic benefits of electric vehicle infrastructure, the attitude is really different about the benefits of that and what it means for the communities that it’s going into. So I think that’s one of the important points that we we’ve tried to make around this concept of doing equity work means listening to impacted communities, understanding those priorities and finding elegant and thoughtful way to, to come up with win-win solutions. Right?
Kelly (00:43:48): Yeah, absolutely. We actually did another episode too on kind of workforce development with some folks that work on specialized training for high school students, local high school students in New York city. There’s was along the lines of technology and building and controls, but yeah. How do we connect people to the jobs that are created by the policy that we’re making, that’s benefiting everyone.
Jeremy (00:44:14): Yeah. That’s so important. And also making sure that the policies kind of have connection points, right. Again, like not always, you know, not relying on supply side solutions in the labor market. Like, well, if we just train these people and develop them, which has to be done, and it’s really important and has helped lots of people improve their lives and, and find new and exciting ways to kind of live out their own hopes and dreams around a green future. But again, if those people are just working and getting trained, right, or those programs are working in training, you know, at risk youth or high school youth or whatever, and there’s not something on the other side that says, Hey, we’re the city we’re spending money on this, you know, energy efficiency program, or we’re going to upgrade all of the buildings in the city, or Chicago just led an RFP for people to supply electricity to the city that’ll help them meet their goals of a hundred percent renewable electricity in the next several years. And what Chicago did was they were very clear. Like we want people to come in and help us meet our goal of having renewable energy. But part of our goal for having renewable energy is that there are also economic benefits that that energy is produced locally. And that the component pieces that go into this are benefiting people in the Chicago region, that there are specific opportunities for minority owned businesses and people who have been left out of economic opportunity, especially in the green sector to be a part of this. And so that really helps. And the city of Chicago is saying what’s important to us about the way that we spend this money is not only the carbon emission reductions in the clean energy, but the way that we get there. And that the way that we get there includes people of color includes racial equity, includes opportunity for young people and workers and businesses in the city of Chicago that are struggling right now, and that need prevailing wage jobs, you know, living wage jobs and business opportunities. And we’re trying to create a future that includes both of those. And you’re just starting to see that more and more across the board in cities.
Kelly (00:46:11): Yeah, absolutely. And so is there a role that, you know, we have as building scientists, experts, consultants, you know, maybe architects or engineers or developers that are listening, is there a role kind of would you say this is more on the policy level or is there sort of a building by building role as well?
Jeremy (00:46:33): I think both. And I think those things hopefully are related, you know, I hope that people that are designing policy or talking to engineers and architects and contractors and others that are making these solutions real because that, you know, we’ve all seen policy, that’s not connected to the practice. It doesn’t look right. It doesn’t work right. So I think good policy people are listening and, and there are a couple of roles that I think are important for kind of the building scientists and consultants and experts that are working on sustainability and green buildings. You know, I keep talking about these principles and maybe we should lay them out for your reader somewhere, but you know, one of the other principles of equity work and there are just five, I’m not hiding the ball here. I just didn’t want it to lay it all out. So there’s just three dimensions, then it kind of five pillars. There’s this principle of power, you know, that doing equity work is a lot about understanding power and sort of who has power and who doesn’t. And in particular like how power operates in systems. And one of the things that we know about power is that it’s often invisible. It’s not always explicit. You know, there are ways in which people have influence and shape outcomes in ways that aren’t always clear. And so part of our work that we all need to do is to say, well, where do I really have influence? You know, where do I have the ability to kind of set the agenda? One of the things that Desiree talks about the definition of power, she borrowed this. I wish I could remember the person that she heard it from is, you know, power is the ability to define what’s real. I think that might be Glenn Harris, the founder of of an organization called the Center for Social Inclusion used to work in the city of Seattle, but power is the ability to find what’s real right. To say, like what matters and what doesn’t what’s on the agenda or in the analysis and what isn’t, what’s sort of like outside the scope, right? So building scientists have a lot of power to say, I know you asked me to look at this, right. But I know you care about this. I’ve read your climate action plan. I know what your priorities are. We do this all the time in subtle ways, right? We have our ideas about, you know, the best way to achieve this or leaning in that way and others. And so recognizing that we also have the ability to ask some questions and to bring things into the scope and just say like, well, I see that your climate action plan says that you want to be doing these things in a way that, you know, benefits historically disadvantaged communities. Like here are a couple of ideas I have about that. How do you want to bring this in? Or even just to ask, what are your priorities in this project, you know, for, for how we think about racial equity in, you know, scoping this, building it out, designing it. There’s also ways in which continuing to ask questions all the way down to just the simple level of doing the work, right. So, which is not simple, but I’m talking more like on the contractor end. So if we’re going into a building and I’m proposing a set of upgrades and we’re bringing on a contractor to perform those upgrades, one of the questions that we might ask the contractor is where do you hire your people from, you know, or would you be interested in meeting some training providers that work with the, you know, people in this neighborhood that have barriers to employment?
Jeremy (00:49:39): You know, maybe just a little introduction between some of the folks at the community organizations that are working to help people with economic self-sufficiency and career pathways, a conversation between them and the kind of support that they’re giving their job trainees and you, and learning about your organization and the kinds of jobs that you may have coming online, you know, this year, maybe because of the money we’re spending on this building, or, you know, in the future, those types of things can be powerful as well. We all need to just start looking for opportunities to kind of, you know, change the system a little bit. And sometimes the system is as simple as, well, you know, I’m a contractor and when I need another person, I just go on Craigslist because, you know, I can usually find somebody that has some construction experience that’s out of work and, you know, hire them up there. And saying well, maybe, maybe, you know, you could hire from this program, which, you know, really you know, does a good job of training folks and reaches into these communities that have been historically excluded. And that could be part of the way that we think about success in this project. So I think there’s a lot of opportunities for folks that are working on the project, but it starts with just getting comfortable with these terms and concepts. You know, I’ve been doing this work for a long time and I can talk passionately about it, cause I’ve been running my mouth about it for years and race and racial equity are difficult conversations for people to have. And so, you know, reading that book, talking to your partner about it, talking to your boss about it, doing the Brown bag, lunch, you know, asking tough questions, being okay with not having the answers. You know, this is not easy stuff. In some ways, fixing racial inequity in America makes the problem of climate change, look like, you know, a cakewalk, right? Like all we got to do is like reduce carbon emissions and we know where they come from already. And like, you know, we have some technologies that would actually reduce them, like no problem. like picking apart all the ways in which our various systems have been built over time and layered on top of each other to create real suffering amongst some communities and, and sort of outsized opportunity and benefit and privilege in others that’s going to take some work. And so just being up for the challenge is, is a big part of what, what all of us can do.
Kelly (00:51:47): Yeah. And one of the things that I’m hearing you say is, it’s a process. There’s no equity checklist that you can just check the bunch of boxes. This is a process and a mindset shift. And we have to be looking at things in different ways, kind of like the idea of universal design that we’ve covered before in this podcast as well. It’s just, you know, how can we look at things a little bit differently? How can we ask a little bit different questions? And how can we bring different people to the table?
Jeremy (00:52:18): Absolutely. It is. I just couldn’t have said it better. It is absolutely a way of thinking and a mind shift. Right. And it is absolutely not a checklist. In fact, interestingly, one of the things that we’ve noticed, so racial equity in cities, you know, we, we started formalizing this practice in a lot of cities in Seattle was way out ahead of this. They had a thing called the racial race and social justice initiative in Seattle, which did some great work and has influenced some of the national approach in cities and sustainability departments. And one of the early tools that we developed was this racial equity toolkit or the racial equity lens. Right. And it was essentially a set of questions that we wanted to remind project managers and policy designers to think through that simply asks like, well, you know, who’s going to be impacted by this and what kind of racial or ethnic groups were going to be impacted and, you know, what are some potential unforeseen consequences and what are the issues that they’re suffering with right now already?
Jeremy (00:53:14): Like where, where are the people that are going to be impacted sort of situated on the broader landscape? Are there disparities? Do they have voice in this process or have they in the past? So a whole lot of questions that were designed to just help us think about race a little bit, but what we found out that started happening, I owe this observation again by a consulting partner, Desiree Williams Raji at Kapwa consulting, you know, what she noticed is that in the busy lives of, you know, project managers and advocates and associates, what would happen is people would grab that racial equity lens or that racial equity toolkit off the shelf, and they would run through it and just like answer the questions. Okay. Yep. Answer that question, answer that, you know, like done and pulled it up and put it back on the desk and move on with the project. And it’s like, that’s not the point. And so nowadays what we’re doing is we’re saying, well, no, I’m not going to give you the set of questions. You’re going to come up with the questions. What do you think are the important questions to be asking in order to understand the ways in which inequity might be at play here and how your project would play into that and how it could actually help mitigate and correct those systems? And what we find is when people, you know, do that work, that extra work of kind of working through and generating the questions themselves, it starts to result in the type of mind shift that people need to bring into their work every day. You know, every decision, every interaction like it just, you know, it takes time, it’s a skillset, but you’re right. Total mindshift.
Kelly (00:54:31): Yeah. And that definitely reminds me of, you know, lots of LEED checklists discussions of, well, I checked the boxes, so we’re sustainable now.
Jeremy (00:54:42): Checklists are helpful, you know, checklists the save lives in hospitals and there’s a place for them. But sometimes, really, really complex problems. It’s a, it’s a both, and, you know, we know checklists, but we can’t just rely on the checklist. You know, you still gotta do your deeper, you know, analysis and diagnostics, and you still have to train yourself to be observant about what’s going on and to see things that you, you hadn’t been trained to see before. Right. And that’s, and that’s really hard. And one of the core skills is being open to asking questions and not having the answers, which I think is harder for people from some disciplines than others. Some of us have been trained that we, you know, we need to have the answers and questions that go unanswered or are not good. And actually in this work, sometimes, you know, sitting with the right question for a while produces profound results down the road. When, you know, we, we sort of come to see things in a different way because we’ve been sitting with a question that’s been hard to answer for a while. And that’s, and that’s where the change is really happening.
Kelly (00:55:38): Yeah, absolutely. I’ve read it was a leadership book, but it said, you know, there’s no growth without feeling uncomfortable.
Jeremy (00:55:50): That’s going to be true around this work for sure. And that’s part of the reason we have to be so explicit about it. Cause honestly, like, you know, a lot of folks would rather not do this work, you know, and a lot of white people in particular would just rather not think about it and you know, there’s all this guilt and fragility and you know, other stuff that gets in the way, and then people of color are dealing with all of the pressures of actually living in a world that is, you know, the scales are tilted and the playing field is not level and you’re excluded and you’ve got personal microaggressions going on. And so, you know, people of color don’t want to be like having to educate white folks are leading on the development of the overall equity strategy or just be the ones that are constantly bringing it up. Like that’s not their job. So yeah, this is like, it’s, it’s hard stuff and it is uncomfortable. But again, like the more that we sort of say, well, that’s the thing I can do. I can lean into that discomfort a little bit. You know, I can, I can be a little more courageous about bringing these questions up and trying to center race and equity in the work that we do, even though right now, I don’t really see how it all fits in and I feel clumsy and I feel awkward and I’m afraid I’m going to get judged. You know, like just trying to, you know, bring enough enough sort of steadiness and courage to, to be a part of this change that’s sweeping America right now. And, you know, we all need to know to get in on this we’re 50 years past the civil rights movement and 400 years of slavery. And like, you know, it’s time to make this stuff happen. And the climate movement talks about the future. And I think the people that work in the climate movement are some of the most visionary people in America. And we need all of us to have a vision that includes, you know, practical things that we can do on, on racial equity and, and having that be at the center of this, the work that we do in the future we see for ourselves.
Kelly (00:57:36): Wow. That was a good call to action. Speaking of the future, we like to ask everyone, when we have you back on the podcast in five years what do you think we’ll be talking about then?
Jeremy (00:57:49): Ooh, boy, that’s a good question. I the future is hard to see, especially in 2020, you know.
Kelly (00:58:00): Right. Five years, talk about 5 days…
Jeremy (00:58:02): Yeah. You know, I really hope that we are certainly well past sort of whether, you know, we should be centering racial equity in our climate work and in our economic development efforts. And I, I hope that we’re also sort of past the the, the early stages of like, well, how do you do that? And how do you get situated for that? And, you know, I hope that what we’re doing is we’re talking about the amazing examples that we’re seeing, of you know, what really works like in that we’re learning all the time about ways that we are correcting this system. And that we’re, you know, we’re just simply, you know, centering health and happiness and opportunity and, and a sense of, you know, wellbeing and peace for everyone. And that that’s really part of the way that we’re measuring success. And so that our conversations in five years, or maybe, you know, they’re inclusive of like, what do we do about carbon emission reductions and what do we do about disproportionate rates of asthma? And what do we do about deep racialized economic disparities, or what do they look like? But that we’re also talking about, you know, what’s the latest solution that is really centering this wellbeing, right? And this opportunity and this, you know, this vibrant participation in American life what does that look like? And, and how can we build on that? You know, that we’ve sort of brought these things together. And that we’ve, I don’t know what the language will be, but I’m interested to hear, like, what is the language that we’ll be using to measure our success and to talk about who we want to be as a society, as a culture going forward. Because I don’t think that, you know, in some ways, like we need to talk about reducing carbon emissions and we need to talk about correcting racial disparities, but we’re, we’re about so much more than that. Right? And so in some ways like that stuff is just trying to correct the broken systems that have gotten us into this place of, you know, danger and despair sometimes. And I hope in five years, we’re feeling like we’re solving those problems. And we’re, we’re really thinking hard about, you know, the, the upside of our collective work and energy and, you know, putting our genius towards, towards solutions that you know, that are, that are really happy that aren’t just fixing broken stuff that are actually like taking us into the future that we want to have.
Kelly (01:00:26): Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast today, Jeremy.
Jeremy (01:00:29): Absolutely. Kelly, thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
Kelly (01:00:35): Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond to learn more about the intersection between sustainability equity and economic development. Check out our show notes at swinter.com/podcasts. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe that our world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable, or inclusive as it needs to be. We continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. If you want to join us on our mission, visit swinter.com/Careers. Thank you. And we’ll see you next time.
‘Back to the Basics’ of Affordable Housing with Les Bluestone
Oct 06, 2020
Featuring
Les Bluestone, Co-Founder, Blue Sea Development
Les Bluestone has been developing, building, and managing affordable housing for 40 years. His firm, Blue Sea Development, developed and built NYC’s first affordable Energy Star certified home, it’s first three affordable LEED Platinum multifamily buildings, and the country’s first building certified under the Partnership for a Healthier America’s Active Design Verified program. As former Board Chair of Habitat for Humanity NYC, Les was appointed to and presently serves on the NYC Workforce Development Board, is a founding board member of the Center for Active Design, and a member of NYSERDA’s Green Jobs/Green NY Advisory Board. His passion and focus is on improving people’s lives through housing and on making sustainable, healthy lives possible for people who need it most, but can afford it least.
In a city as crowded and expensive as New York City, there is a growing need for access to safe and affordable housing. With this demand comes great innovation, as well as roadblocks and challenges between construction, financing, and policy.
In this month’s Buildings + Beyond episode, Robb sits down with Les Bluestone, co-founder of Blue Sea Development. Les has been leading the way in affordable, green building in New York City since the 80’s. He gives us a brief history lesson on affordable housing in NYC, and provides us with his outlook of what development and construction will look like in 5 years and beyond.
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.
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.
Robb (00:22): In this episode, I spoke with Les Bluestone with Blue Sea Development. Les has been a developer in and around New York city for about 40 years focused on housing and really mostly affordable housing. I’ve worked with Les on a few projects going back like 20 years. But before this interview, I hadn’t talked with him much about the history of affordable housing going way back, his history and really how affordable housing has changed over the decades. It really was quite interesting. A lot has changed in the past 40 years, as you might imagine – much for the better, but not everything according to Les, which we’ll get into. So we talk a little bit about the history of affordable housing. Also challenges unique to affordable housing as compared to market rate construction and where he thinks we should be headed in the future. Here’s my conversation with Les Bluestone.
Les (01:26): When I started out in this business, I was in a family business and we were doing market rate and then in the early eighties, things were slowing down or looked like things were going to slow down. And the city was just forming this entity called the New York city housing partnership. And they were trying to find market rate developers to do affordable housing. The theory being is that the city had just come out of its near bankruptcy state in the late mid seventies. So the city had this huge quantity of in REM properties that they had taken back during that period. And so they had all the land, the developers had all the know-how and someone, Kathy Wilde, was the woman who started the housing partnership, had the idea that, you know, if you could partner the city and private developers together that you would get production, like hadn’t been before. Up until that point, you know, anything that was developed as affordable housing for the most part was done by the federal government.
Robb (02:41): Ah, okay. Interesting. And was New York kind of a leader in that regard or were other, were other places doing it?
Les (02:47): No. New York was definitely the leader. Yeah. we gave lots of tours and lots of seminars to people from all over the country that you came to to what it was all about and how it worked. So, yeah, it was, it was a, it was a great program. It really was a huge success success. And it got modified over time, you know, it became so successful that the city decided that that it shouldn’t be run by a not-for-profit, it should be run by them and they kind of took over the program. The concept.
Robb (03:27): So I guess then, or now what are the big differences between market rate and affordable development?
Les (03:36): Well, back then the differences were pretty huge. As I said, most all affordable housing or anything that was subsidized was built by the federal government and in New York city, you can, you can spot those buildings a mile away. They were all built during this more or less the same period. And you know, eight by eight brick was a common material that they use. They had a formula about the mechanicals and they had a formula about the exterior and the windows. And so when you walk into these buildings, they look very similar, even though they may have been, you know, designed by different architects, they had they had specs that they had to go by. Whereas the market rate, it was pretty much whatever was going on at the time for better or for worse. You know, when, when there was a, a lot of competition the bar got raised and, and, and in terms of the quality of the units you know, amenities and finishes, that sort of thing that really kind of went up and down with the market.
Robb (04:50): Okay. And now, have you shifted really pretty exclusively to affordable now? Or you still do a mix?
Les (05:01): No, we haven’t done anything conventional in many, many years. Everything for decades we’ve done is affordable.
Robb (05:13): Okay. Yeah. So I mean that this program in the right around 1980, I guess, was the start and never looked back?
Les (05:23): No, I do look back, you know, government can be kind of a bear to deal with at times. And, you know, the thought of buying a piece of land building, what you want to build, how you want to build it without having everybody in the world, you know, involved in it is kind of a nice thought, you know, a little public housing Kalanick, so to speak. So it would be, it would be nice to get back to that, I think in time to time. But, I have to say that, you know, nothing special, but I do see the need for people to have their first homes and to have safe homes and affordable homes. So that’s kind of, that’s kind of in my fabric.
Robb (06:13): Gotcha. Did you do a mix of ownership and rental?
Les (06:17): Yeah. We do both.
Robb (06:19): Okay. Cool. And I mean, obviously, you know, codes and standards have evolved for conventional buildings a lot, but what are the extra hoops you need to jump through when you’re doing affordable? Or I guess it depends where the funding’s coming from.
Les (06:37): Right, exactly. Yeah. Well, I have to say though, the housing partnership, when it initially started, it was really just about getting the units out there. As many units as we could, because there were such a crisis. There still is, but there was back then too, and not a whole lot of attention was paid to mechanical systems in energy efficiency. But those were the eighties that was not really high on everyone’s radar, but, back then the, the, the world was a very different place. There was a huge boom going on in real estate where everybody with a shovel was a developer. And so the quality was all over the place. There were lots of people that got into it that shouldn’t have gotten into it for lots of reasons. And there were people that were in it that are still in it now and doing the right thing. But the city the city’s involvement and by virtue of the fact that the projects were city owned land, they came with city or, and, or state subsidy. So they had the money and they were issued by RFP. So, so for a developer to, to get the project, you know, we had to put together something that was gonna, you know, make our project look better than maybe the 10 or 20 other projects that were submitted for that particular site. So there were lots of ways to do it but what it created was a competition amongst the developers and, and it ended up raising the bar slowly. It raised it on market forces. And then after a while the city started putting in its own requirements into, into the RFP. So they raised the bar, you know statutorily.
Robb (08:41): Okay. and that’s still the case?
Les (08:45): Yeah. Yeah. That’s that’s still the case very much the case. In fact, maybe a little too much the case now. You know, building housing is, you know, it’s, it’s a process, it’s basically a math equation. It’s a math problem. Here’s your land cost, here are your construction costs here are your operational costs, and you have to put all those numbers together and come out to a place where it works. When those numbers start to get skewed, either by market forces, you know, such shortages of material or huge increases or lack of labor, you know, then what happens is in order to build that same unit, that city has to come up with more money, or you have to reduce the costs some other way. So you’re constantly moving these equations. But, there’s been a big push now to sustainability and energy efficiency in the eyes of the city. And rightly so. However, you know, the rub is that, is it better to have a hundred units at the absolute premium standard in efficiency and sustainability, or to have 200 units that’s maybe at, you know, 60 or 70 or 80% of that gold standard.
Robb (10:16): So I’ve heard that before, like, you know, do we need to build affordable housing? Does it need to be the best? Does it need to be passive house? Does it need to be LEED platinum? The margins I have heard, like are more in the 5% range. Like, do we need, do we need to spend 5% more to make super premium quality affordable housing? Or we can, we make 5% more housing units that is really good affordable housing? But I mean, do you have a sense?
Les (10:49): the 5% is a moving number. 5% in good times, you know, when all of a sudden there are tariffs on everything that comes into this country and labor is not available, and you’re dealing with COVID that 5% is not 5% anymore. It’s now 10% or 15% or 20%. You know, there was a period, you know, I can remember it when all of the plywood that was being met, this is going back some decades, but, but I can remember that all the plywood that was being manufactured in the United States was going to China because China was in such a growth spurt, and they had so much demand that the manufacturers could get, you know, so much more money for it in China than the U S that it was almost impossible to get a piece of plywood and the prices were absolutely crazy. So those things still happen. Those kinds of commodity, you know, right now we huge lumber tariffs, the the government just imposed aluminum tariffs on Canada as well coming from Canada. So, you know, that number, the 5% is constantly moving. But the, the requirements of, you know, the people that are running these housing programs, don’t always account for that. And, you know, we want what we want and we want it now. And, you know, don’t really always understand, you know, the effects,
Robb (12:27): But, but is that a new issue or it may be exaggerated now?
Les (12:36): well, I think their appetite is increased. I think you know, the government always had, you know, it’s requirements, they’re putting in the land, they’re putting in the money and rightfully, you know, they should get what they want out of it. But I think with the dawning or the wakening of people’s sustainability consciousness, the government has like jumped on that bandwagon and is now kind of gone over the top in some ways, at some points in time. And this changes by the way, from administration to administration, you know, the other thing to throw into that mix is that every four to eight years, you know, you take the deck of cards and you throw it up in the air and start all over again, because there’s a new set of elected officials. each with a different agenda and each with different priorities. So there’s not as much flexibility in my mind in government to account for what’s going on in the world. It’s we want what we want. And and sometimes they can get it because they can find the financing, the subsidies, but I mean, like I said, you know, we have to guarantee rents If we’re renting an apartment, we can’t raise it a penny to account for any increasing costs, regardless of what they are. So if the costs go up from, you know, over a period of time, then the government has to usually make up the difference because there’s no simple other way to do it.
Robb (14:28): Interesting. Okay. So I think a lot of the regulators, a lot of the agencies, a lot of the funding organizations are starting to Institute some programmatic requirements. And, and you’ve done a lot. I think it was just about 20 years ago. It was just about 20 years ago. And I started working for Steven winter associates. One of the first projects I worked on was one of yours, one of the Melrose projects in the Bronx. And I think it was one of the first energy star affordable projects in the state?
Les (15:06): It was the first in the state.
Robb (15:09): Okay. Yeah. And, and you’ve done many more since. You’ve done certainly LEED buildings and enterprise green communities, passive house? I think you said you were working on PH?
Les (15:24): We’re working on a Passive house building now. Yes.
Robb (15:25): Okay. So you’re not a stranger to many of these programs. What are a couple of the real innovations program-wise that resulted in better buildings? And then also what are the couple big stumbling blocks or, or annoyances that are just really hard to meet or require a lot of money or require a lot of effort or coordination?
Les (15:52): I think getting back to basics is probably been in my mind the best way, you know, to, to improve the quality and improve the efficiency. The technology, as with all technology is, you know, gets issued and gets put out there, you know, maybe 10 years before we really understand how to use it. Or we understand what its good points and bad points are. I mean, I can’t tell you how many times we’ve used new products that are, you know, everybody said we’re the best and this and that. And so much better than that. And so many less problems. And` then five years later, Oh, well yeah, those systems are all, we don’t use that anymore because it had all these problems. And so there we are with, you know, buildings that were built that way. So, so that, I mean, but that, you know, that kind of progression is not uncommon, but, but it was happening and it still is happening so fast and furious that no one’s really, you know, there’s no time to think or to get real track records. Everyone just throws these concepts and products to market and expects everyone to adopt them. And and the government buys into a lot of, you know, hook, line and sinker without really, you know, getting, getting tested and proven, not a lot of data sometimes.
Robb (17:17): Is there an example that you can cite without the besmirching, some samples?
Les (17:23): I mean roofing systems, boiler controls, I mean, you name it. so I’ll give you one basic thing, we used to use regularly for all of our rental buildings that were hydroponically heated, we used to use these big cast, iron sectional boilers. And then somebody said, you know, that’s really old, you know, you should really be going with modular boilers. Right. So we went and everybody shifted over to modular boilers. The thinking was that, you know, they were smaller boilers and use you link them up in series. And so they would come on one after the other, as demand required. So except 10 years later it was found out that in fact, you’re running all those water through the modular boilers and it’s acting as a huge heat sink and sending all the heat up the modular chimneys. And it really, wasn’t such a good idea after all, but there are thousands and thousands of buildings that use that system. And we certainly did too. That’s one example.
Robb (18:41): Cool. So, so on the back to basics example you know, I remember ventilation being mandated as part of energy star 15 or 20 years ago. Yeah. And I, I remember certainly in your buildings and many other buildings, energy star required us to actually test how much air was coming through ventilation systems. Right. Which was a novelty. I don’t want to speak for you, but a lot of the builders, a lot of developers, you know, we’d, we’d put our flow hood up to a register and we’d say, Hey, you’re supposed to be getting 60 CFM. You’re getting 12. And that was one of the kind of examples of programmatic that I felt was, was pretty effective. I mean, do you, other things like that that’s kind of changed your standard practice?
Les (19:38): Oh yeah. Yeah. The ventilation certainly was and is an eye-opener. So, so before the ventilation was totally unregulated, so to speak, it was, you know, it was designed for, by engineers depending on how it got installed, depending on how good the design was. It either worked or it didn’t work, usually didn’t work. And you know, so now, now we test it. Now it’s required to go through, you know, much more rigorous design. And then now we bump against the code, because the energy efficiency standards all say it should be this. And the code says it should be that. And so this is a problem that we’re now running against, but as far as, you know, other things that we that have changed the way we do business or the way we build I have to say, there’s a saying, and I say this to people, you know, when people say, well, you know, they don’t build them like they used to. And my retort is always, it’s a good thing that they don’t. But, so take energy star. In fact, it was on on that same project that you started on where energy star started requiring combustion gas testing. In fact, they did not start, this is a great story, which I’m sure you’ll remember. You know, it was not a requirement when we signed and got certified signed on and got certified for that development for energy star. And then all of a sudden after the project was complete, we heard that NYSERDA, who had been administering energy star in New York state, was going back to the houses on unbeknownst to us and contacting the owners directly. This was an ownership project and going and testing all the gas appliances in the house, the water heater, the boiler, the stove. And you know, we got very upset because this was not part of our agreement to go and do this. And, and they were coming back with results that were scaring some of the homeowners. They were saying that their carbon monoxide levels were much higher than should have been allowed. Now, you know, we’re buying boilers and appliances from national manufacturers. We’re not, you know, we’re not building them in our backyard. So we kind of just assume that these national manufacturers are doing the right thing. Well, so we call in fact in that particular job, I think it was GE was the ranges that were that we used, and we called GE and told them what had happened. And they sent a technician down and they went through every single house and adjusted every single burner and every single oven to get them to conform to the, the carbon monoxide levels that were required. And we said, well, God, okay. Then we’re glad we got through that. And now they’re safe. And we’re never going to do that again. We’re never going to use GE gas appliances again. And then we went to another job and we went, I think it was Whirlpool. And and this time we knew about the requirement. So we had them tested and the levels were off the charts.
Robb (23:06): And we’re talking about ovens, right?
Les (23:09): The, the ranges in the ovens. Yeah, that’s correct. Yeah. And all the boilers and hot water heaters were pretty good. There was really no issues with those. It was really just the kitchen, the cooking appliances. So when we got through Whirlpool, they, they to send someone down, they fixed everything. And we said, look, you know, we got them fixed this one time. What what’s going to happen with these things in five years from now when we’re not around and no one’s monitoring them. And my partner And I just to each other, let’s stop this. And, and we shifted over at that point to electric, electric ovens and electric stoves. Just this way, we would not have to worry. It’s not as energy efficient as the gas or cost-effective, I guess. And some of the cooks, you know, were not too thrilled that they didn’t have gas in their homes as opposed to electric, but at the end of the day, we didn’t have to worry. And, you know, we were making our homes tighter and tighter as a part of this requiremen,t as a part of the, all the requirements from the different programs and different certifications. So, you know, this, let us sleep at night and knowing that at least we weren’t contributing to, you know, the air indoor air quality issues.
Robb (24:31): You’re ahead of the curve on that, in that regard, because electrification is all the rage. A lot of programs are actively discouraging fossil fuels of any kind in homes.
Les (24:43): Yeah. And it, and it actually is much more expensive, not much more, but it is more expensive to do. First of all, electric appliances cost more than gas appliances do. There’s just more stuff in them, I guess. And` to increase the electric service and run the cables to carry the loads for these appliances you know, is a big increase, whereas with gas, it was not. So there’s a case in point also where every, you know, now we’re all going to electrification, which is great. It costs more, you know, something’s got to give, no matter what it is, but is something’s got to give.
Robb (25:33): Yeah. And, and on the electrification front, if you go all the way and you don’t have any fossil fuels on site, now, you’re now you’re saving money. And I’ve heard a lot of developers who get it, get it, you know, as the loads get smaller and smaller, yes an electric system like a heat pump or something might cost a little bit more to operate, but if the loads are low to begin with, and you don’t have that infrastructure cost, you don’t have the, you know, the health and safety concerns of combustion. It can, it can make a lot of sense.
Les (26:05): I mean, look, you, the amount of heat that’s put off by the refrigerator and your, your big screen TV and your computer monitors, and even your laptops, that little fan blowing out of the side. Right. You know, you could probably heat an apartment or a house, with those things.
Robb (26:23): Yeah. Yeah. And on the ranges, I, I’ve heard, you mentioned which we chatted a little bit about induction. I mean, that’s kind of the high end electric range, thats a challenge?
Les (26:32): Yeah. It’s a challenge for the population that we serve. You know, our homes are going to low and moderate income families, and one is, you know, the education piece is getting people to understand that they have to use cookware out of certain materials and they can’t use other types of cookware, you know, causing them to have to maybe go out and buy a new set of pots and pans and utensils. And that’s, that’s problematic. In fact, you know, so here’s a technology that really did work. And that really helped us. One of the requirements very early on was programmable thermostats back in the day. Right. We used to have, you know, just a basic thermostat and now everybody had to have a program, digital, programmable thermostats. Well, I would say for the first 10 years, maybe 15 years that we were using them, probably the biggest heating complaints that we had were people who were trying to program their thermostats and couldn’t do it right. And it was just screwing up everything, the heat would go on, it would come off. It would be the wrong temperature. They couldn’t figure it out. So we would program the thermostats for people as best we could. But then we ended up shifting over to nest thermostats and the callbacks just disappeared overnight. Just absolutely disappeared. They were very simple to use. because of the self programming feature, the algorithms, no one had to set any buttons or times or dates. They could just set the thermostat the way that they like to use it on and off. And then the thermostat would remember it, combined with its occupancy sensor built in, would set the thermostat, set the temperatures to the right temperatures for them at the times that they needed it. And it was really a great thing. We’ll never go back to conventional thermostat. That’s for sure.
Robb (28:50): That’s interesting. I can sympathize. I mean, when I was out in the field doing lots of ratings doing testing, I often would have to sit and figure out how to set the thermostat. It took 10 or 15 minutes to puzzle through the press this and that. So on the sustainability side, on the energy efficiency side, I’m suspecting that the homeowners or the tenants probably don’t care that much about the labels about certifications. Is, is that accurate?
Les (29:27): You know, that’s it’s a mix. There are some people that come at it and they’re really excited about it. some are very knowledgeable, which is kind of encouraging. Some are not knowledgeable, but they’ve heard about it. And, and the fact that their home is something that’s beneficial to the environment is, you know, makes them, makes them happy. So, and then there’s a group of people that really could care less.
Robb (29:57): Okay. Okay. But it sounds like a lot of the program work or a lot of the certifications come from agencies that are providing funding, is that fair?
Les (30:12): Yeah. One, one thing that we do now to help you know, encourage or to educate as well, first of all, we, we produce a manual for each tenant or each homeowner that talks about the whole building talks about how it was bill talks about the features that make it maybe different than other buildings. And talk about sustainability, indoor air quality, you know, green living, as they say, and teach them a little bit as much as we can. And then we w we walked through the apartment with, and the building with them pointing out the features. We found in the past that when we gave people information that it usually got filed and no one ever opened it up until we said, did you open it up when they call about some issue. So when we found that, when we take people through and show them show them an aerator show that, you know, take the aerator off, show them the flow without the restrictive aerators, show it to them with it and explain why that’s an important thing. It imprints on their, their minds. And, and they have that image so that when it comes up later on, they, you know, they understand it and they said, Oh yeah, he told us about that. And it also gets people interested a little more in, in, you know, just about general environmental issues.
Robb (31:58): Do you do that with, with tenants as well as homeowners?
Les (32:01): Yeah. every tenant.
Robb (32:05): Is there with the COVID situation, are you seeing a heightened interest in indoor air quality, health and safety?
Les (32:14): Yeah, in fact, I was on two webinars yesterday. One about designing buildings for seniors with COVID in mind. And then another one about a standard called Fitwell about a a viral component to their certification. But so, so there is definitely, you know, people are looking at it and, and getting back to your original point. One of the first, the first pieces of the puzzle is about ventilation.
Robb (32:53): Oh, okay. Yeah. Hmm. So in the city, most of the projects, if not all that I’ve worked on with, you have been in New York city.
Les (33:07): Some in Westchester, some in long Island.
Robb (33:09): I was always impressed. You know, I’m be driving to the Bronx with my car full of blower, doors and stuff. I mean, you run a pretty tight ship and a lot’s got to go right. what are the big challenges, doing major construction in the city? or maybe you don’t have much compared to, but if you compare it to Westchester or compare it to long Island, I mean, what are the extra logistics? What are the extra hoops you have to jump through to do work in the city?
Les (33:40): If you’re talking about the same affordable housing government sponsored type construction in terms of regulatory, well that the state has its set of requirements. Or the towns have their set of requirements that you have to meet. And they tend to be a little more navigable than, than the city’s requirements, I would say. Or you can approach them with some of these issues that I’ve just mentioned, you know, conflicts and things that need to be resolved. The city is, is much, much, much, much more difficult to get through to someone who can make the decision about is this yes or no, but, but that, but that being said, I have to say, in all fairness to the city, it depends on who the people are more so than even the administration. You know, who’s sitting there behind the desk, in the building department or the department of environmental protection or whoever, whoever it is that you, you get lucky enough to get, can make all the difference in the world. We, we did a building in the Bronx called Arbor House where, where we have a a hydroponic farm on the roof of the building. It’s a residential building. And there were all sorts of reasons by code that way that cant happen. Some is about zoning, some had to do with fire regress. But we wanted to do it. It’s something that we had wanted you to do for awhile. So we went to city planning, we prepared all our answers to the questions, which we knew that they would bring up. And we had, you know, sheaves of material and waiting for them to ask the questions or to say it was, you know, you can’t do this. And when we got there at planning, the, the people were so cooperative and loved the idea and was so helpful that we told them what we were concerned about. And they said, no, that’s not really an issue. You can do that. And here’s how you do that. And, and then, so we got through the planning thing and we were like, we were dumbfounded. And then we went to the building department and we got a deputy commissioner to meet with us. And we talked, you know, we had this rooftop farm, and, and one of the things is you have to provide egress in a multi-family building to the roof for fire and access for the firemen to come in from the top. And you know, again, we were concerned about how would they treat this situation? And it was exact same situation. We lucked out again. And the commissioner who we met with, you know, she said, no, if you do this, this, and this, you’ll be fine. And, you know, that doesn’t happen very often. But more to the point is, is just about, regardless of whether it’s the city or, or outside the city, it’s really about, who’s sitting behind the desk that you speak with.
Robb (36:45): Interesting. Interesting. Was that the building where you, where you tried to do the CSA, that kind of fell flat?
Les (36:53): Yeah. well, it’s still going actually, it’s been revived. But, but yes. Yeah. The CSA fell flat. We, you know, to provide, we try to provide fresh produce to the, the, the low-income families that were in the building. And and we spent a lot of time and effort to get them to accept the government food stamp programs, the EBT program so that they could use that source of funding that they got some of them to buy it. Well, it turns out that most of the people had not really grown up with fresh produce, you know, they, in that particular community. So they really hadn’t developed a taste for it, or didn’t know what to do with it. And then the other group, you know, maybe were working two, three jobs to just try and make ends meet, and they were, you know, looking for something just so that they could throw in the microwave and, you know, heat up between the times that they worked and the times they were home. Yeah, boy. Yeah. It was, it was, that was a real eye opener for us, for me personally. Anyway.
Robb (38:06): So looking ahead, if we talk again in five years, what do you think we’ll be talking about? What do you think the big changes will be, or 10 years?
Les (38:18): First of all the envelope of the building, I mean, that really should be, that should really be what really focusing on, if I had to say where the money should be going, it should be going to the envelope, always. you know, you know, the systems come and go like the boilers I mentioned, and then everything else, you know, the appliances you can swap out. And the controls, the same thing, you can take out one set of controls and put a new set. But the, the building shell is forever. So let’s spend that money on something that’s passive, you know, that you don’t have to really do anything to it, and try and build something that’s as durable as possible. So that the maintenance is, you know, diminimous. And and then whatever technologies come along, they come along and if we want to adopt them, we adopt them. If we don’t, we don’t, but the building at least has that going for it is that the loads are reduced and the comfort is increased because of the building shell.
Robb (39:33): Yeah. Back to basics. That’s one of the first things you said.
Les (39:37): Yeah. And one of the things that I think that I, I also see is modular. I still see a lot of potential for modular building. And you know, there’s a lot, there are a lot of stumbling blocks. There’s a lot of acceptance that still needs to happen on behalf of the financing community even the city sometimes. But you know, building, something in a controlled environment is just so far superior to building something out in the field. I mean, I grew up I started working in construction and I was a laborer. And then I was a construction superintendent. And I can remember, I mean, too many months and years of standing there freezing my butt off my fingers, you know, numb, you know, teeth chattering and, and watching, you know, you know, all the trades doing their job in the same state as I was, you know, and when you’re trying to keep yourself warm or, or the, or the con the converse is, you know, it’s a hundred degrees out, you’re sweltering, you’re trying to keep yourself cool. And you’re moving at half speed. You know, stuff happens, you know, the quality just has to be affected by that, you know? And also not to mention the weather, right. You know, you know, we, we build these buildings, they’re wide open, you’re getting rained, snowed, poured upon. And then you close them up and you have rain and snow still in your building while you’re building it, you know, it’s not a good situation.
Robb (41:28): Yeah. We’ve worked on a lot of modular projects and I agree there’s huge potential there. It’s has its own set of challenges, but there’s really, yeah, there really is big potential.
Les (41:40): We haven’t, we we’ve been doing panelized buildings. So most for the last 15, 20 years actually. And we liked that system a lot because getting back to the cold, I don’t have to worry about a Mason, you know, freezing his fingers off while he’s trying to set a full cross joint brick that I have to then worry about, you know, is it going to leak? Is it not going to leak? So we like that. We also have been using modular bathrooms. And the quality of that bathroom was so much better than what we could ever build in the field. I mean, aside from the finishes one of the things that concerned us was the air testing, because we have to do the air infiltration tests for the, for each unit we’re for the building, you know, a sampling of the units. And in many apartments we have bathrooms that are back to back. And so that bathroom is our only barrier to, you know, a tight apartment. And so we made the manufacturer do blower door tests of the bathroom in the factory, and then have them certified by an outside agency. And the last job we did, the guy could not even get a reading on his blower door tests. So, you know, now I could never build that in the field ever.
Robb (43:11): Right, right. Yeah. So that was a great thing. Excellent. thanks Les. Any last thoughts?
Les (43:21): I mean, you could, you could get me going pretty easily, you know, which buttons to push if you want, you know, there’s no, there’s no genius to what we do. It’s just about people wanting to do the right thing and, and people letting people do the right thing encouraging them to do the right thing. I’m more of a fan of a carrot than a stick. I think a lot of the requirements and code issues that are now being discussed, you know, can be kind of draconian. And I don’t think, again, people are really thinking about the, the effects of them. Housing is a crisis situation and when you make things really difficult and you make things impossible to meet the need, then what happens is people take shortcuts. People will scrimp someplace else to meet, be able to do that. Or they’ll go someplace else and build where easier. And meanwhile, the housing doesn’t get built and the people still are in need. Julia child said it best, you know about moderation, including the case of moderation, So there are times when you, you really want to go full out, but, but I think basic from my mind is getting people into decent affordable housing that you know, is not doing harm or is doing maybe less harm than the housing that was built last week is always a good thing. And getting more people into that housing cause the demand and need is so high that, you know, some of the choices that have to be made on, I’m willing to make in that favor.
Robb (45:13): Great. Makes sense. We’ll see. In five years, we’ll see.
Les (45:19): Check back with me when I’m retired. I hope.
Robb (45:23): Awesome. Thanks very much. My pleasure. Thank you for listening. And thanks again, to last more, some more info about what we talked about is on our show notes page is winter.com. That’s swinter.com/podcast buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. We are focused on making buildings better in many ways in more ways, actually as time goes on, check us, check out our careers page. If you are interested, we have positions and maybe all of our offices, DC, New York city, Connecticut, and Boston. And thanks to the podcast team here. Heather Breslin, Jayd Alvarez, Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks for listening.
Air-Tightness Testing and Building Codes in Australia with Sean Maxwell
Aug 20, 2020
Featuring
Sean Maxwell, ATTMA Australia & New Zealand
Sean Maxwell is the Australia and New Zealand Scheme Manager of ATTMA, a global association of building air-tightness-testers. He formerly worked with Steven Winter Associates, Inc. in New York City before moving to Australia in 2015. Now, Sean works with Pro Clima Australia as a Technical Manager. He is also a committee member of Standards Australia, works to improve building codes and standards, and helps regulators and stakeholders see the value in building envelope commissioning through air tightness testing.
Standard construction (both in America and Australia) is sometimes a “race to the bottom” of who can satisfy the building code at the lowest cost. We know this doesn’t always result in better buildings, so we have to educate the industry and encourage a commitment to quality based on solid science. This is what our guest, Sean Maxwell, devoted his career to after moving to Australia and finding himself underwhelmed by the presence of building science principles in the local codes and standards.
This episode raises a few important questions: How do we improve the quality of construction? How does the effort differ in Australia vs. America? And how does the “carrots and sticks” approach to code enforcement relate to building performance, and is it effective? Listen and start thinking!
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.
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. So Sean Maxwell is a good friend of mine. He used to work for Steven winter associates in the cubicle next to mine, and we would stay up late trying to come up with creative ways to test ventilation systems. Who knew what you could do with a little cardboard, a little tape, and maybe a quick call to Gary Nelson from the energy conservatory. Sean has been in the building science industry for over 15 years and has had a wide variety of roles involving testing building systems, helping building owners, address issues, publishing industry leading research about ventilation and air tightness in multifamily buildings, and training others in the industry. Sadly for the New York city multifamily market, Sean moved to Australia, Australia, mate, Sean explains how finding a job wasn’t as easy as he thought.
Sean (01:09): When I first got here, I was looking to connect with other testers doing things that I used to do back in New York. So retrocommissioning and testing things, some research in building envelope leakage, and compartmentalization and ventilation, those sorts of really fun subjects. And once I got to Australia, there was just hardly anyone doing it.
Kelly (01:35): It was tough finding a job, but Sean started doing some air barrier consulting and soon needed to purchase his own blower door.
Sean (01:42): So I was looking for a quote for a blower door and I got a quote from Thomas Vanremstunk. One of my old trusty friends who is from Germany. Pro Clima Is a German company. And he gave me a quote for a blower door and then said, by the way would you like a job? And so I was the first one hired out here and my title is technical manager, but it’s more like it’s almost a bit of business development in that trying to encourage a building science industry. So pretty much that’s been my focus – encouraging people to care about air tightness and encouraging them to care about moisture management.
Kelly (02:33): So now Sean has been a technical manager at Pro Clima for almost four years. He was explaining to me that his job is obviously to sell Pro Clima products, but that day to day, it’s really about educating the market. I’ll let him take it from here.
Sean (02:49): Currently, standard construction, It’s true in America And it’s definitely true in Australia that there is a race to the bottom for whoever can satisfy the code with the minimum cost and the fastest, the cheapest that you can do satisfy the code. And so there’s a race to the bottom and Pro Clima is only going to sell high performance building products to an industry that cares about high performance. Because if people don’t care about building performance, then you’re never going to sell anything. So we need to educate the market to say, look, these condensation problems that you’re seeing are a result of either too much air tightness with no consideration of ventilation or a poor choice of building envelope materials. There’s lots of, lots of reasons for that. So Australia is going through this painful period here where they’re strengthening their energy code and then noticing these unintended consequences. It’s like a buzz phrase here. Condensation is the other hot topic. So they are learning these lessons that America learned 15 years ago, 20 years ago that you can’t just change one thing in, in the building envelope, like add more insulation and then not pay really strict attention to quality control, like insulation consistency and continuity, and building air tightness, and not end up with major problems. We had a conference here that we’ve been involved in volunteering for, AIRAH, which is the Australian Institute of refrigeration air conditioning and heating, which similar to ASHRAE in the U S and they have a forum each year which has been a lot of fun and a great time to trade ideas with the people who think in a, in a pretty progressive way here. Think about building science, it’s called AIRAH building physics forum, and it’s pretty cool. So I heard through a couple of podcasts Dwayne Johnlin. I heard him on the building science podcast first and he’s, he’s great. And I took so much inspiration from the way that they approached building code in the state of Washington and the Seattle area that I thought this would be a great example for us to copy or take inspiration from to drive how we’re going to do building codes, regulations, standards, labels, things here to drive the industry really inspirational.
Kelly (05:37): Yeah, that’s great. And we had the host of the building science podcast on as well. And I had talked with him a little bit about Dwayne JohnLynn. We had talked to him when we were updating the New York city energy code. So it’s something I think I’ve mentioned here on this podcast before is most of the things that you’re doing are not new. And so if you can look at what other people have found, even if the research is, you know, little bit of a different location, a little bit of a different climate, there are a lot of translations, I think. So leveraging the mistakes, leveraging the time and money and effort and research dollars that were spent in, in other locations, it’s really important to pick our heads up and see what’s going on around us.
Sean (06:26): Yeah. there was a lot of opportunity for cooperation, for sure.
Kelly (06:32): That’s great. And you mentioned codes. We had we had Gayathri on the podcast and she actually mentioned your work trying to get some air ceiling changes to the international energy code. The, that she kind of pushed through on and ultimately was able to pass. And I was wondering, are you still involved in code development in Australia?
Sean (07:01): We did some good things over the past couple of years, we got blower door testing into the code as an option. It’s not mandatory. It’s sort of like for a while in the IECC the commercial code says you can do a whole building air tightness test, or you can do a bunch of things related to air sealing and definition of air barriers in your building plans and testing to prove it. So it was sort of two, two paths the testing path that was only one option. And so that’s what we got into the building code for both commercial and residential which is good. It’s an option, which some would say, Aw, darn, it’s only an option and it’s not mandatory, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction. And it just lays the groundwork for future progress. So we would consider that success.
Kelly (08:04): Yeah. And I think there, you kind of alluded too that there’s differing opinions on what makes sense, but I’ve definitely seen that in standards and codes, that progress can be made by soft introductions of, of items and then kind of requiring them as a next generation step. So the next code cycle or the next standard cycle, sometimes then you can shift it up to a requirement.
Sean (08:31): Yeah. There’s progress. So really I’d like to think about building codes. There’s only one way of changing how things are done. That’s the whole purpose. That’s what your job. And my job has been this for my whole career. It’s been basically how do we improve the quality of construction? So I started out with energy star homes more than 15 years ago, doing blower door tests and insulation inspections and duct tightness tests and ventilation measurements, things like that. I easily have done a thousand blower door tests and that has been our job. You do commissioning now on a much larger scale crazy complexity of projects that you deal with. But that’s pretty much our job, Isn’t it? Just quality control.
Kelly (09:23): Yeah, absolutely. And I think, so are you saying that there’s there’s codes and standards and then quality control are kind of the two methods?
Sean (09:33): That’s what codes are, is quality control. So it’s, it’s sort of a minimum. I mean, that’s definitely a minimum quality control. I often smirk and say, well don’t be proud of something that’s built to code because building code is the worst building you can legally build. And it really is. I mean, you can’t build any worse than that and not get in trouble. So there’s nothing to be proud of.
Kelly (10:04): I actually say further than that, the worst building you can actually build is whatever the enforcement of the energy code is. So it’s actually, it can be worse than the energy code or worse than any other code, as long as those portions of it are not enforced. So that kind of gets to my, my feelings about you know, quality control and enforcement versus having something written down. And I think that’s, from my perspective, kind of in the commissioning world like what you’re talking about now, you sort of live in the space between the drawings and what’s written down on paper and then what kind of comes to fruition and real life and what gets turned over at the end of the day to the building occupants.
Sean (10:48): Yeah. The energy star homes program. If we just start there, I would say it’s a pretty modest improvement over energy code. Back when I was doing it 15 years ago, it was something like 15% better than code, or maybe 20% better than code. So not that much more stringent, but the quality control meant that you were actually inspecting the installation installation. So it was grade one, grade, two grade, three installation installation, and duct tightness testing and air tightness testing, which those basic steps of quality control like doc tightness testing, which now is building code in many U S States. Of course you should be building your ducts tight. And of course you should be building your your building envelope tight. It’s just sort of assumed or sort of willfully ignored that most standard doesn’t actually do these basic steps of quality control. So yeah. You can’t assume that what you’re getting is even building code you’re, you’re totally right.
Kelly (12:05): Yeah. And that’s an excellent point. I think I like to give everyone credit. There’s a lot going on in the, in the construction world. And you know, there’s a lot of people moving around in buildings, especially kind of the larger buildings and you’re installing things floor by floor. And did you do that thing before the drywall went up? I’m not sure. And, and sort of a tendency to keep going that I think allows people to sweep things under the rug or sweep things behind the drywall as it were, but but yeah, having those requirements to, to take a look behind the walls, I think are important and kind of moving, moving onto that, you talked, you talk about carrots versus sticks. So let’s get into that a little bit. I would say, you know, maybe I think I know what you mean by carrots and sticks, but maybe define it for us.
Sean (13:02): I guess you could say carrots and sticks are like incentives and penalties. And a lot of what we talk about, so building codes are basically entirely sticks and in a lot of cases, they’re sort of broken sticks. Some that aren’t really useful at all. So a lot of prescriptive requirements and building codes, if you were to only meet the prescriptive requirements in some building codes, I’ll just give you the example, the, you can download the national construction code 2019 from Australia. The section three point 12.3 of volume two of the residential code. It’s silly how useless this section of the code is for actually getting a building air tightness result. It says things like a roof light, which is like a skylight, a roof light must be sealed or capable of being sealed. And if that’s not ironclad language, I don’t know what is – just kidding. It’s just like, it’s completely useless to actually getting a result from someone. When I’m here I can’t keep pointing to the U S as this pinnacle of how things work correctly, because I know there are a lot of problems there, but at least some of the codes are at least more descriptive about what’s required. So if you look at the prescriptive, there’s a table of prescriptive envelope sealing requirements in the residential in the IECC. So there’s a whole table of things that have to be sealed. And there’s a thermal envelope criteria and an air sealing criteria that have to be met. So if you compare that page versus the couple pages in the Australian code, it’s very big difference in the results that you can expect and the results, obviously that we’re seeing. There’s a huge difference,
Kelly (15:01): Right. Sticking to the stick for a minute. And the broken stick you, you mentioned. If you could propose, say one to three things for code updates, what would those be?
Sean (15:17): Mandatory air tightness testing would be a very, very basic and effective step towards better envelope commissioning for this country, and what the number is and what the number you have to meet is what the target is and what leakage limit it is, or what pressure you have to reach. I’d say some of that stuff. So the way that Dwayne John Lynn and the state of Washington did it, and I think is very admirable, is to say, just get the testing started to start testing. And so many things will start happening from there. What happens when you start doing testing is you realize it’s not that scary, and you might actually learn something and that will improve the buildings a lot faster than, you know, more stringent code or, or regulation will. So I took a lot of inspiration from that. So mandatory testing should be in the code. I would say I don’t actually know what it’s like in America with ensuring that ventilation is actually measured, and that’s not a, not a code requirement, but it would be a regulatory requirement on a local level that local jurisdictions say, you have to show that your ventilation systems are actually ventilating. I Mean, I’m from New York, where we did a lot of ventilation studies and found that it was very seldom that ventilation systems, especially in large buildings were working correctly. It was amazing when they were, and it might’ve been just because of the weather. It might’ve been favorable at the time, but it’s really difficult to make them make them consistently work and deliver even just extract the same amount of air from every apartment at the same rate is very difficult.
Kelly (17:15): Yeah. And I’m sure we have something, a blog post about this or something, but you’re specifically maybe that you wrote about central ventilation systems and multifamily buildings that are sort of notoriously not pulling air from the right spaces and causing indoor air quality issues in apartments.
Sean (17:40): Yeah. It’s just really difficult to make them work effectively universally. I mean I got to say, to give some understanding to all the builders and mechanical engineers out there that are trying to delivering this thing that, that used to be okay. Like they just put the fan on the roof, connect the duct work to it, put all the registers down this 30 story building, and then it’s supposed to be working. So they’ve done what’s according to the code or as far as it’s enforced, but then once you go there and you take measurements, flow measurements from each apartment, you see that rarely are they actually delivering the nominated ventilation rate from every apartment, very rarely. And that’s it’s just really complicated. It’s just hard to do, so pretty much the, the conclusion we came to is that the more you can get control over all these variables especially in large multi zone buildings like multifamily or a multi-unit residential, the more you can compartmentalize the individual units so that they’re not communicating and creating these networks of air flows that you can’t really predict or control, the more opportunity you have to actually control the ventilation in and out of those units.
Kelly (19:13): Right. And we can I think we have your study actually on where does make up a air come from. So I’m speaking kind of basically to that there’s the ventilation system itself that you need to make sure it’s working. The fan is actually working. There’s actually a belt If there’s supposed to be, or even better it’s direct drive fans, the duct work is sealed. There’s no gaps or holes in the duct work, basic things like that. And then what you’re saying, the other portion of it, which is compartmentalizing the the apartment itself. Speaking of that, when you’re talking about getting, implementing things in the code, the ventilation test and the air barrier test, are you talking about single family homes or, and, or getting it in the residential code or are you talking about kind of all buildings?
Sean (20:10): So it’s in the national construction code 2019 as an option for both commercial buildings and residential buildings. So it’s not mandatory anywhere. But what it is taking a step in the right direction where some individual stakeholders, some para regulators you could call them, like green building council has the Greenstar label for mostly commercial buildings. And soon there’ll be a residential single family, detached residential label from green building council they would say, well if you’re going to participate in our program, then you need to take this option, which is a way of progress. So it’s not mandatory, but it’s at least giving, showing a path forward, which is helpful.
Kelly (21:06): Right. But I mean, you, you were saying what you would recommend to be added to the code for next cycle or future cycles.
Sean (21:14): Yeah. So number one would be mandatory air tightness testing. And then I would say that I would also recommend mandatory duct tightness testing both in commercial buildings and residential. It’s code for commercial buildings, but very large systems. Maybe it’s 3000 liters per second, so pretty big systems, but I would say you have to do it for any system. I would say that would be a huge step in the right direction.
Kelly (21:52): Yeah, that’s the same here. It’s only applicable in New York, at least even in the 2020 energy code. That was one thing I would have loved to see is mandatory duct tightness testing for low pressure ductwork. But right now it’s only required on ductwork greater than three inches, I believe.
Sean (22:11): I mean, there’d be some other things that I would recommend not just in the commissioning things, but I, it’s pretty amazing to me that single pane glazing is still the norm here for most of this country. And then Australia wonders, there’s whole working groups. My colleague, Jesse Clark from Pro Clima here is a wizard with moisture analysis. He’s on the condensation working group for the building code. They have a condensation working group. Let that take note of that. And I think it’s no wonder that you get condensation in a lot of buildings in Australia because we have no attention to building air tightness, no attention to ventilation, at least as installed. And you might write it on the code to say, you need ventilation, or you need this much ventilation, ASA 1668 is the ventilation standard. But there’s no mandatory, constant ventilation like there is in ASHRAE 62.2. So you’re not diluting moisture from the space. And then there’s thermal bridging all over the place. The biggest thermal bridge I can think of is single pane glazing everywhere. And you get condensation, these brand new buildings going up in Sydney, lots of construction going on all in all the big cities in Australia. And they wonder, why are we getting condensation everywhere, this condensation problem, but some of the building materials that are being used there’s foils everywhere. Can you believe they use these reflective foils in walls on, and it’s just standard construction to use these reflective foils on the outside of walls. Maybe you don’t think about this that often I’m doing mostly mechanical work, but they use these for the building envelope here. It’s standard practice to use a cheap S aluminum foil backed polyester.
Sean (24:27): They call it sarking here. And it’s a foil backed membrane that they put on the outside of every wall while they’re doing construction here and it stays in there. And then this is a very, very effective vapor barrier, and it’s on the cold side of the installation. So if you have any air leaks, which again, they don’t do any air tightness testing and you start adding more insulation, you start creating a dewpoint on that cold metalized surface in these walls. And of course you’re going to get condensation. Of course. So that would be another thing if I could just, you know, write a big red line in red text, no foils on the outside of the building envelope in some climate zones, it’s just obvious.
Kelly (25:20): Okay. That the new code is written by Sean Maxwell.
Sean (25:25): And there are a lot of other people who think the same way. I mean, so Jesse Clark here, have you ever heard of Wufi?
Kelly (25:32): Yes, but maybe you should explain for our listeners
Sean (25:36): Sure. Wufi is w U F I. So it’s moisture analysis for building envelopes and a lot of work. It’s really, really excellent work that’s been validated by real world data again and again, and again, it’s been around for a long time. It was started in Germany. Jesse Clark has been to Germany a few times and been to the Institute to talk to them. Hartwick Console, One of the creators of Wufi has been to Australia to speak and lead workshops on, on Wufi. And they are sort of puzzled as to why we’re still using things like foils in walls in climates like Sydney and then not doing anything related to building air tightness. So some really basic steps of building envelope commissioning are missing.
Kelly (26:44): And to talk about the issues with codes. So talk to me a little bit more about the green building council there and what they can do to maybe incentivize better performance, or if there’s other incentives there to kind of pull the carrot out.
Sean (27:04): Well. So we had some folks from green building council come when we had our trainings with Attma, the air tightness testing and measurement association. So it’s a way to unite all of our air tightness testers in this country and make new testers to expand this industry. And that’s been, been good. We invited green building council to meet some of them. Some of the really committed ones, the level two testers who can test larger buildings or more complex buildings. And we just looked around the room and said, you know what, all of us, everyone in this room right now is standing here because of a green building council and people like them. They are for all of their faults, they are definitely driving the market towards a better place. They’re trying to push what’s considered sustainable. What’s considered a energy efficient and trying to push that definition to be more stringent. And that’s really admirable. And we have to give them a lot of credit for that.
Kelly (28:13): Great. And where do you see that interplay between the sort of setting the green standard and then you know, holding the minimum. Where do you see those two things interacting and what do you think belongs in, in one bucket or another?
Sean (28:31): Well, so green building council has tried to do they’re trying to use carrots and sticks themselves. So one of the sticks that they’ve put in one of their, in their more recent versions of Greenstar – that’s their label like LEED is the the program from the USGBC. So they’ve tried to put air tightness testing in the commissioning credits which it is it’s building envelope, commissioning, which is good, but the way it’s happened is that most projects because no one has the awareness of what this means, A project will say, well, you want Greenstar on this? Okay. There’s a 10% premium on, on this because we have to use more expensive flooring materials and different paints and more paperwork and stuff. That’s a lot of what happens with green building labels, but then the commissioning process, the commissioning credits basically get lumped in with the mechanical contract and the mechanical systems contract. But this is the situation where the mechanical contractor now has this credit, that they don’t know what it is and they don’t care. They just want it done. They just want to know how much is this going to cost, because I just want this out of my hair. It’s just a problem for me. And so unfortunately the air tightness test gets put right to the end of the project. And then you get a terrible result because no one’s paid any attention to building envelope, and then everyone’s pointing fingers. And so I would say to GBCA, I would say, take some inspiration from the city of Seattle, just do an air tightness test. Don’t put a limit on it. Say, all we want you to do is do a proper test and do a whole building test where you get a real sense of the building envelope as a whole functioning, as it would in real life.
Sean (30:46): And then write down the number. No one’s going to criticize you for what the number is, but we just want you to be there to see it, to see what the problems are and to learn for next time things you can foresee and avoid next time. Because what happens is they’ve said you can do the you can get the credit and you can get good practice or best practice credits by only testing 10% or 20% of the building envelope, which again, bringing this back to scale of a house. If you said, we’ll give you a credit for only testing one bedroom in your house. And if you can say that that bedroom is has a permeability of 3 air changes per hour or less for that one bedroom, then you get credit for doing best practice air tightness for that whole house.
Sean (31:39): You’d say, what that doesnt make any sense? You’re only testing one bedroom. That’s not indicative of the whole house. So if I could scratch a whole bunch of those things out these requirements, and then put it sort of start from the beginning and say, let’s do something more constructive and educational and incentive the industry in a different way. So get rid of some of these broken sticks that you have and start doing things like incentivizing, say schematic design reviews, design development reviews for a building envelope that would be actual commissioning, and then you would actually get better, better buildings that way. So a definition of an air barrier, just to schematic design, schematic outline of where they, what the separation between conditioned and unconditioned spaces, is that sort of what you would think is the most basic thing that of course happens, It doesn’t happen in most projects. I tested a warehouse building where they had a big refrigerated warehouse and then an office building attached to it. Well, there were holes so big that you could literally crawl through them into the refrigerated warehouse area. And I bet the people in the office are cold because they’re being refrigerated. This building had a permeability of like 22. So that’s really, really bad. And so they were worried that they weren’t going to get their Greenstar credit. Well, the thing that you should focus on is the early intervention. So plan reviews, some inspections all the testers have seen all these problems before. And if they’re walking through, you should be incentivizing them to walk through and point out all the problems that they see. Cause that’s where you’re gonna make the actual gains.
Kelly (33:40): Yeah. You talked a little bit about getting certain things into the code and getting certain things into the green standard. Would you say that like the final test is something that’s easier to be regulated as kind of a stick under a code and that these sort of early design reviews and inspections along the way are something that are easier to be regulated as kind of a carrot under an you know, a green program.
Sean (34:08): Yeah. That’s, that’s the way it is. Yeah. So it’s, in fact that’s really the only place for a numerical quantitative test is in something like a building code where you say, this is a number that you have to meet and then do the test and show me the number, show me the certificate and that’s proof that belongs in the building code, all the other stuff, which is the whole process of actually designing and building a building. That’s not something that is easily very cleanly and clearly defined and regulated. So it’s more industry development and education. So the awesome thing about air tightness testing is Kelly. You’ve been you’ve done many tests yourself, right. And with the blower door over the years, many apartment air tightness tests. Do you remember your first one? Yeah. And was it, was it cool or was it just exactly what you’d expect?
Kelly (35:04): I think it was pretty cool. And I think, I didn’t exactly know what to do. I’m actually like reasonably sure that I was testing with somebody else and we had to phone a friend cause we didn’t actually know how to work the blower door and the friend might’ve been you. I’m not sure. The quantitative testing is interesting, but the qualitative testing is really interesting. Right. So that you can run the test and then you can go around and find the leaks. Sometimes it’s, it’s more straightforward than finding the issues in a mechanical system. Sometimes it’s not, but but it’s like straightforward, right? Like you put the fan in the door and then you can see where the leaks are. And I think actually the more gratifying thing for me is when you have construction teams in the room and, you know, you’re sort of showing the cracks and where there might be issues. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, I don’t think so. Like I don’t think so. That goes to that. Doesn’t go to the apartment next door. That just is internal. Like we’re not worried about that. And then you turn on the fan and it’s like, Oh, okay. I guess it is coming from, you know, the apartment next door or the outside or whatever.
Sean (36:17): Yeah. Once you get some experience with doing the testing, you start to learn where the problem originates. You start to think going back in time where the design over design oversight was the really awesome thing about a blower door test is that it’s numerical, it’s quantitative. So you can get a number which is useful, but it’s also, like you said, it’s great to have the whole project team there and to be able to show them Holy cow show them all these leaks. So we did a test with a green building council here in downtown Sydney. It was eight story building and helped a sustainability house, Suhou do the test. I was just a hand to help them. And as part of it, I brought my fog machine. And as I was expecting, the roof parapet is often a weak point in a lot of commercial buildings.
Sean (37:16): So we were out on the veranda, outside the roof, parapet on the top floor and with the building under negative pressure, I stood outside with the fog machine and shot fog at the roof parapet. And sure enough fog gets sucked in through the ceiling, through the roof, through the ceiling. And then coming out of all the light fixtures in this meeting area on the top of this building. I bet 10 years from now you will see little traces of dust on those light fixtures where the air is leaving, leaving those light fixtures and leaving the dust as it goes because it’s going out and up and out the top of the building or vice versa in the summertime. But to see all the people there from the design team, the consultants from green building council to see them walk around and say, what, why is there fog coming out of these lights right now? That’s crazy. He’s outside right now. And we’re inside, and fog is coming out of the lights. Why is that happening? It’s so eye opening to see this process you can touch and feel the air leaks like some of them are so big that you can take a piece of like toilet paper, like single-ply toilet paper, pretty much. The only thing it’s good for is showing air leaks. So you can put it on use a piece of single ply toilet paper and then hold it against these air leaks. And you’ll see it’s fluttering in the wind. And it just makes someone’s eyes go wide and say, wow, that’s supposed to be a fire separation there. This is supposed to be a smoke extract smoke exhaust, like a pressurized stairwell here. And here is a piece of toilet paper whistling in the wind. That’s a problem. And it’s just, it’s so it’s a quantitative test, which is very powerful for regulation, but it’s also qualitative in that you can touch and feel and find and fix air leaks. So it’s pretty, pretty awesome process.
Kelly (39:29): Yeah. And actually you were, you’re kind of talking about fire separation and we’ve talked about lower door testing on the whole building and blower door testing on an individual apartment. And I’m curious to get your thoughts. So you are a proponent of testing individual apartments. Can you describe for everybody kind of obviously the exterior envelope, if we’re talking about energy, the exterior envelope is, is matters a lot. Can you talk about what the impact is on the apartment level envelope and where, you know, why you think that test is just as important or maybe could be used as well.
Sean (40:11): Sure. Well, I’d say theres very little correlation between the exterior envelope air leakage number that you get and the individual apartment compartment test. So I was contacted by some people in California who wanted to do a research project to say, if you do a sample of apartment tests can you somehow correlate that with a whole building envelope leakage? And I’d say, definitely not. Maybe you might be able to draw some conclusions based on different construction types, like like building really broad construction systems like concrete or steel frame wood-framed he might be able to see some differences between them, but for the most part, there’s very little correlation between compartment testing results and the whole building exterior envelope results. And you’re right, that the one that most directly relates to building envelope energy use is exterior envelope leakage only not the individual compartment tests, but there’s a couple of reasons why I am a proponent of compartment testing.
Sean (41:18): Number one was maybe it’s shortsighted. But I’d say I, I was thinking this is definitely more digestible to a building industry that if they to do a test on a whole building if you did test on individual units, the cost of doing that as a fraction of the cost of doing a whole building test in some buildings, but as testing industry capacity grows doing a test on even a very large building is not that difficult. So that’s maybe not a great argument, but from doing research over the years at SWA in New York we found many of the building large multifamily building problems were related to poor compartmentalization. So ventilation systems work much, much better when they serve a bunch of independent compartments rather than what happens with a large building is you get this where there’s poor separation between the compartments.
Sean (42:25): You got lots of very complex networks of air leakage. And so, and you can see this in the middle of winter on a cold, still day in winter in New York, you’ll see people on the top floor have their windows open because it’s so stinking hot on the top of the building. And then the people on the bottom floor are cold because because of stack effect, the air is getting sucked in the bottom of the building and making the people on the bottom cold. And so the building super turns, the heat up changes the set point so that the people on the bottom are satisfied. But as a result, the people at the top are way overheated because all this warm air from the rest of the building is then spilling out the top. The only way that the people on the top are going to get relief is if basically all of the air from the building is evacuated, and finally they reach a comfortable temperature at the top. So it just makes that whole stack effect dynamic is made much, much worse by poorly compartment buildings. So for fire safety, for energy use for sound transmission, for pest reduction for noise, there’s so many really, really good reasons to compartment compartmentalize your multi compartment buildings that w whatever the fastest way to get reduce energy use is in the code. It just makes a lot of sense for so many other reasons to be tightly compartment doing units.
Kelly (44:07): Great. And taking us back to Attma, you mentioned kind of earlier that you worked for them one day a week, do they regulate kind of exterior envelope testing, or do they get involved in compartmentalization as well?
Sean (44:21): You could Do compartment testing, You could do either through them. So a single zone test would fall under Attma TSLOne. Basically the way to think about it as a level one tester knows how to use one fan in a single zone, simple, small building. So an apartment house, a small commercial building, one fan, a level two tester knows how to use two fans or more so a larger building requiring more equipment, a leakier building a building just because of its size needs more than one fan. That’s another level of usually level of complexity with building envelope, calculations, equipment preparation experience, lots of reasons why that’d be level two and then level three would be a, it’s basically a PhD in air tightness testing. So currently there are no level three testers but that’s how they, well, it’s basically that a lot of the level two testers should be considered level three. They just haven’t gotten around to haven’t needed to yet really clearly defined who’s qualified as level three
Kelly (45:36): And it just the Greenstar standard that’s requiring ATTMA my testing, or is it referenced in the code?
Sean (45:47): So ATTMA itself probably won’t be referenced in the code just like in the U S in the IECC hers rater or BPI tester is not referenced in the code. But it might be understood by local code officials that that’s, who you accept a result from is a RESNET hers rater and that you shouldn’t, you should treat with suspicion, just any random blower door test that you get from someone who’s not a part of, one of those schemes. So it won’t go into the code, ATTMA Specifically, but it would be what we’re trying to do is build relationships with individual stakeholders. So a green building council with individual councils, which are like small, smaller than County level government bodies here in Australia. So local, local governments that might incentivize things, and we’d say, or say a pilot program, if you want to start incentivizing this best practice do it for every registered certificate of air permeability test from Attma, you can get a credit or a refund of say a hundred dollars or something to drive the cost of the testing down and make it more attractive.
Kelly (47:06): And so if you had the entire audience of Australia now, what would you like the general building industry to take away from this discussion?
Sean (47:17): So if there were one thing that I would say one good place to start, it would be at the very beginning for any project team, it would be witness a test by an Attma tester. So same advice for someone from building codes board for someone from individual governments, from green building council, from individual consultants, from homeowners, from builders, just witness an Attma test, and you’ll learn so much about how the process happens. And then even more importantly, the things that you’ll find the problems that will be revealed by this whole process. And you’ll also get a number that you can compare then from your building to the next building, to the next building, to building code. So it’s really powerful process very well regulated. And this is a piece that you can be put into the regulatory framework, and it’s also really constructive useful feedback for everyone involved in the project.
Kelly (48:24): And do you do you do sample test for different people to witness?
Sean (48:30): So through Pro Clima, my employer, I’ve done tests for individual builders in Australia to show them here’s where you are currently. And here’s some things that you can fix. And then, I mean, for any, anyone who is trying to push building performance product sales or whatever it is you could say, look at the things we found with the blower door and here’s how you can fix them. And by the way, we can sell your products to help you fix that. Absolutely. So for, for builders, builders or product sales, it’s a great sales tool for consultants. It’s a great tool to say, look, we could have helped you find these problems on your building plans and help you avoid them next time. And then for, for manufacturers to say, look, we, our systems, have we have this panelized system that goes together with tight fitting joints, here’s this brochure of our new system, a curtain wall system or whatever it is, the air tightness test as a sales tool is an amazing ally.
Kelly (49:45): Right? Absolutely. And so Sean, if we have you back on the podcast in five years, what do you think we would be talking about then?
Sean (49:56): Hmm, well, what we’re going to be talking about is some of the awesome data that’s going to come from ATTMA. So pretty much the whole reason that I started talking to them is that I guess four years ago, five years ago now was that they made this tool called ATTMA lodgement, which is an online database where you submit your results and it goes, it goes through some quick quality checks to say, what’s your R squared, what’s your N it does some data checks to say, does your test result make sense? And then it spits out a registered air permeability certificate. And when you do that, you contribute your data to lodgement. It goes into a database. Now this might blow your mind. I hope it does. They started this database four years ago or something, and very quickly, it just, it was a runaway success.
Sean (50:58): So they have now in just over four years, over 750,000 test results in their database, 750,000 test results, 750,000 test results. It’s crazy. And they’re making it easier and easier and easier all the time. So it’s amazing for so many reasons. Cause you have all this data to then draw some really solid conclusions about build quality about policy effectiveness, about building systems that are being used. So in the UK, you lodge what type of building system it is. So whether you’re building with wood-framed or timber, they call it or masonry construction, steel framed. You can draw some pretty clear conclusions from this stuff when you have data sets that are that large. So it’s crazy how big this is. So what’s the most interesting thing you found in the data? Well I think it’s pretty, this is a common point of argument and discussion is that if you look at the results you see so in the UK, you have to define what the air permeability is before you do your project.
Sean (52:11): So say a common target is a permeability of five, which is about five ACH. So you say we are going to build this building with a permeability of five, that’s our target. And then we’re going to do the test. And what you see is that most of the, the results are about between 4.9 and five, which tells you that either the builders are really good at getting right on target or they are just slightly missing the Mark and then do just enough to get them over, down to that five limit. You can look at that in two ways you could say, well, the builders are clearly, they only do exactly the minimum required and the just scraping by which in some cases it’s true, but it also, you could look at it in another way, which is to say, this is clearly a market mechanism and market driving mechanism at work here.
Sean (53:02): It is incentivizing a best practice here of this air Tightness target. And then how you meet that target is up to you. Whether you want to use a better membrane or better tapes or a rigid air barrier on the outside, or a self adhered WRB, whatever, whatever strategy use it’s your choice to do that. And so it unleashes the power of innovation, I think. And also, so I think seeing some broad datasets for Australia, it would be really, really awesome. So looking at different building types and there are some things, some certain practices, I won’t name them now that we think are pretty poor. And we just want to use this data to show what works and what doesn’t. So in five years from now, I’ll be able to show you some pretty cool results.
Kelly (54:00): Okay. So you have that data in there already, but you’re waiting for more.
Sean (54:04): We don’t have much data. There’s about a thousand test results from Australia so far. But a lot of the data is, you know, good performers, people who are actually trying, which doesn’t give a fair gauge on what standard practices.
Kelly (54:20): Gotcha. So that’s 750,000 is around the world?
Sean (54:23): Those are just from the UK. Doesn’t that blow your mind?
Kelly (54:28): That does blow my mind. Yeah.
Sean (54:29): So it’s basically, they’re getting close to 100% testing of all buildings in the UK
Kelly (54:38): And that’s whole building testing, or that includes dwelling unit testing as well?
Sean (54:42): Both.
Kelly (54:43): Got it. So, okay. I was going to say, that’s not really a five year plan if you already have it.
Sean (54:47): Well, we don’t have it. The UK has that regulation in place to require that. In Australia, what we’re doing over the next five years is trying to work with these stake holders to say, look, here’s a path we can see forward and if a stakeholder might be in an individual state that says, alright, it’s optional to do an air tightness test in our state. But if you want to use this energy modeling path, the performance path, you have to do a test to prove that you met the target that you set for yourself at the beginning. That’s one way to do it. And then I just can’t wait to see all the data.
Kelly (55:20): All right. That sounds great.
Sean (55:22): Yeah. I’m really excited about it.
Kelly (55:24): Well, we look forward to hearing all about it in five years when we have you back on the podcast. Thanks for joining us today.
Sean (55:32): It was awesome. And I miss all the really awesome people at SWA and all the great work that you guys do. And if I were back in America I would love to work with you guys again, but I would still be pushing you all to join Attma as well.
Kelly (55:52): That sounds great. And you are welcome back. Anytime Sean. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates, we believe that our world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable, or inclusive as it needs to be. We continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. If you want to join us in our mission, visit www.swinter.com/careers. A big shout out to our production team, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex, Mirabile, Heather Breslin, as well as my cohost, Rob Aldrich. We all thank you very much for listening. And we look forward to seeing you next time.
Transportation in Cities with Zak Accuardi
Jul 07, 2020
Featuring
Zak Accuardi, NRDC
Zak Accuardi works in Los Angeles as a Transportation Advisor at the Natural Resources Defense Council. He coordinates with cities across the U.S. to advance transportation policies and projects as part of the American Cities Climate Challenge. Previously, Zak has consulted on transportation policy and climate change mitigation across a variety of organizations and sectors, and worked as a Senior Research Associate at TransitCenter, where he co-authored several national policy reports including 2018’s Inclusive Transit.
The transportation sector poses significant opportunities for and challenges to reducing US greenhouse gas emissions as the Country’s highest-emissions sector. As a result of stay-at-home orders issued in March and April in cities and states across the US, we’ve seen a visible difference in smog in part due to less driving. Streets in cities also comprise more than 30 percent of all land in many cities, and therefore more than 80 percent of public space. Yet for much of the past century, we’ve been designing them to prioritize moving cars quickly, which is neither safe nor efficient. What if we designed streets with different priorities and invested in high-quality public transportation?
In this month’s episode, Kelly and our guest, Zak Accuardi, discuss the attributes of public transit service that make it possible and desirable for people to use transit more, and why this can be so impactful in US cities today.
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.
Robb (00:09): The podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment.
Kelly (00:14): Focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.
Robb (00:18): I’m Robb Aldrich.
Kelly (00:19): And I’m Kelly Westby.
Kelly (00:22): My guest on this episode is a former environmental engineering classmate of mine. Zak Accuardi. Zak has an impressive background. He’s a researcher, writer, editor, and strategist dedicated to building sustainable inclusive communities through institutional reform and policy change. He started his career at Gotham 360 an energy consultancy in New York city before getting his master’s in policy and technology. He consulted for the world bank on sustainability indicators and performance tracking and conducted research for project draw down. Then he focused in on sustainable and inclusive transportation at the Transit Center. He now works for the natural resources defense council (NRDC), advising cities on transportation policy and project implementation as part of the American cities climate challenge. We recorded this episode a few months ago and listening back to it now, I realize I missed the opportunity to dig in and discuss the topic of racial equity. While Zak and others in the sustainability community and some of my colleagues here at Steven winter associates have been embedded in a discussion about equity and social justice for their entire careers. I personally, haven’t focused on the connection between my work as it relates to equity and inclusion, but in light of current nationwide discussions and our own internal discussions on racial and social justice and bias, I don’t want to gloss over the link between transportation and equity. Since I didn’t explore the connection in the episode, I wanted to highlight some of Zaks work at the transit center in this intro. Zak Is the author of a 2018 report called Inclusive Transit, which was one of the first national policy reports to summarize and highlight specific opportunities for local transportation agencies to plan and set policies designed to advance racial equity in the U S cities. I wanted to highlight the intro of this report, which says access to high quality public transportation can make cities more inclusive by increasing mobility and opportunity, particularly for people with low incomes and people of color. The role of a community is essential to fair and just transportation planning and decision making processes. This can lead to prioritizing transportation investments that better enable people to meet their day to day needs – getting to work school, the grocery store, the doctor’s office and social and leisure activities, allowing people to meet these needs creates long-term economic opportunities and helps them escape poverty. In addition to transits well-documented environmental and economic benefits, public transportation can be a powerful tool to advance racial equity and social justice in American cities. We’ll link to the full report in the show notes. And as it turns out, transit center has its own podcast called High Frequency. We’ll link to that in the notes as well. Now, turn to jump into my discussion with Zak, which focuses more on the sustainability aspects of his work on transportation.
Zak (03:23): Yeah. So transportation is, I think, I think has a history of being a little bit neglected among people who care about climate change and energy use. And I think that’s true for a few different reasons. I think it’s, it’s, it’s complicated. Transportation energy use is really complicated, but I think it’s really important and it’s, it’s a big opportunity to to reduce energy use, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a way that really supports a lot of other societaly important goals and priorities. So so I’d say first of all, streets in, especially in, kind of major cities are some of the most important public space that we have. They represent the vast majority of public space, including parks and other things that we kind of more traditionally think about as public space. And yet for, for years, for probably the past five, six, seven decades, we’ve been designing streets with about one singular goal in mind, which is prioritizing moving cars very quickly. And that’s resulted in streets that look very different than they would if we’d designed streets to prioritize making streets and making cities nice places for people to live. The implication is also that energy use is really high, that people drive a lot more than they otherwise would. But there are a bunch of other problems that this creates. So one is that more than 40,000 people die each year in the U S in car crashes. And that includes people who are driving. And that also includes people who are walking or biking. This is an enormous public health crisis, and yet it’s become normalized as this thing that we just that we just think about as kind of an acceptable cost of, of creating a society that really relies on cars, but this isn’t just a problem because people are unsafe. It’s also a problem because owning a car is really expensive and we’ve made car ownership kind of a necessary precondition to having economic opportunity, having the opportunity to get a job that pays well. Where you have a reasonable commute where you can afford to live in a place where you have a commute that, you know, is possible to do every day and that you can afford to do every day. So, you know, there’s this real strong connection between transportation access and housing affordability. And in cities today it’s really, it’s really hard to both afford a great place to live for you and for your family. And to be able to have a commute that doesn’t require a car, which can cost, you know, on average something like $10,000 a year. And if you’re a family that’s living at, or anywhere close to the poverty line, that is a huge percentage of your income.
Kelly (06:43): Yeah. Great. Those are all excellent points. And I think you’ve already taken us to kind of a much bigger perspective. I think a lot of times when, when I hear things talk to, when I hear transportation discussed kind of from a sustainability perspective we’re talking about, you know, electric vehicles to, for the most part or at least I guess that’s, that’s sort of the buzz thing in, in general space, not necessarily within the industry, but looking at what, how you can make an impact on the entire community for more of a urban planning perspective, I guess it is your take on it, an urban planning perspective of integrating transportation with the community both on the social justice side and on the efficiency side.
Zak (07:30): Right. Exactly. And I think that, you know, I, I frame it that way because I think that those really are, you know, the most urgent problems that cities are facing that we need to to be working on. But you know, I’ve obviously come to this work from a perspective of reducing energy use, reducing greenhouse gas emissions. And, you know, I deeply believe that that, that is also urgent, even though it’s not something that cities themselves feel every day cities are at the forefront of reducing energy use, reducing emissions. So it’s also, I think, important to say that the transportation, as of, I think 2017 is the sector of the U S economy that represents the biggest percentage of greenhouse gas emissions. I think it’s 29% of us greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. Most of that coming from driving from personal car use this obviously means that that’s a huge part of the climate story in the U S it also is a huge public health concern. One thing that’s been, been really stark the last few days in LA, since the state issued the safer at home directive is how clear the air is just from people driving less.
Kelly (09:02): Well, yeah, and you, you definitely have a different perspective of it in, in LA or I guess a very, maybe an exacerbated perspective.
Zak (09:11): Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s right. I mean, the air quality and, and smog here is is, is, is famous or infamous maybe. And, and the difference is so stark. And obviously, you know, we don’t want to like turn, turn off driving in LA overnight, because again, that would mean that people couldn’t get to their job. People couldn’t get to, to see their friends, couldn’t get to their school, et cetera. But we need to provide viable alternatives for people where people feel safe. People feel that it’s, it’s convenient enough to walk, to bike, to take public transit to the things the places and the people that they, that they want to that they want to be seeing.
Kelly (09:56): Yeah, that’s an excellent point. And I think giving those kind of multiple layers of importance to the issue, there’s sort of the immediacy of things like smog and health in, in urban centers. And then there’s obviously the global impact of climate change from greenhouse gas emissions over time. So thinking about multiple scales under which this transportation issue is incredibly important.
Zak (10:23): Yeah, it is. And I guess the last thing for the thing, I’ll say, you know, this is transportation is an issue where all of these things intersect and they all kind of point in the same direction, which is that it’s really important to invest in, in transportation options besides driving alone, to make those options possible, to align kind of land use and housing policies with that goal as well. And, you know, I mentioned that transportation has become the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U S that’s happening for two reasons. One is that in building energy use, we’ve actually done a reasonably good job so far at starting to kind of bend the curve and start to shift the trajectory of of the growth in energy use and the carbon intensity of energy use in the electricity sector. And otherwise, obviously we have a tremendous amount more work to do, but in transportation we’re going the exact opposite direction. People are driving more and more over time. And setting aside electric vehicles and electrification for a moment, you know, the, the amount that we’re driving, continuing to increase is it’s a really hard problem to solve because transportation system is so, so complex. And so there’s a lot more work to be done before we’re ready to to really start shifting that trajectory.
Kelly (12:04): Great. And that’s an excellent point. I think sometimes I have a bit of a skewed view during all of the discussion in New York city, where buildings are 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions taking a wider view across the entire country is really important when we try to say, you know, what, what across the country and what globally do we need to be thinking about and looking at, and buildings are certainly a much smaller percentage overall across the country.
Zak (12:36): I should say, at least one or one or more of your listeners would call me out on this. I’ll say transportation is only the biggest sector if you define commercial and residential buildings as separate sectors, if you combine them together, they’re still bigger than transportation. So for your audience, I should definitely be clear about that. The reason that transportation energy use in New York is so small is because the subway exists and because the New York city bus system exists. And because collectively people take you know, close to, when there’s not a coronavirus epidemic, there are eight and a half million trips taken on the New York city transit system every day between the bus and the subway. So you know, that that’s the scale of public transit use in New York is the thing which makes it necessary to focus on buildings in New York, because transportation is already on this, you know, dramatically more sustainable trajectory than in any other U S city.
Kelly (13:46): We know it’s a big deal. Now, our listeners are convinced you, you make a good point on, on all of the levels of concern, what are what’s something a city can do about it? And I’m not sure if it’s best to take the perspective of an existing city like LA that has a lot of driving or a perspective of if you’re building a new kind of town center or city center. Can you speak to kind of, what are the, maybe top three things that you should consider designing?
Zak (14:15): Yeah. Yeah. It’s I give this a little bit of thought before, before this conversation. I think there’s, my first answer is kind of a cop out answer, which is that it’s not just one thing. It’s not just three things. It really is about focusing on how we design both streets and our built environment to support people, not having to drive everywhere. It’s also about electric vehicles. So I don’t wanna, I don’t want to minimize that, but it’s also electric vehicles are also less of my expertise, so I have less intelligent things to say about them. So it’s really kind of making that making that kind of jump from the kind of planning, the kind of design that kind of policy-making that we have done for a long time into kind of systematically prioritizing investments that help people make the choice to walk, bike, take transit, et cetera. But I will also provide a real answer to your question, and I’m going to focus the focus, the kind of three examples on things that the interact with the built environment.
Kelly (15:40): And I think just to point out, as you were saying that we had a universal design episode and we talked, we alluded to this a little bit and our building codes are going towards a more performance based metric. I think we talked about universal design as, as like being a performance based code. Like I think this again is a, is more of a performance based mandate. What you’re, what you’re talking about, you know, can we design smartly, not specific prescriptive requirements necessarily, although we can get into those, but can we design in a smart way that encourages the kind of behavior that we’re looking for?
Zak (16:17): Absolutely. And there are actually some good examples in a kind of a growing list of examples in cities around the country who are taking kind of a performance, performance driven approach to looking at transportation transportation behaviors in the built environment. So I think that’s a good segue into these, into these three policies and that the connect transportation to, to the built environment. So one is, one is looking at kind of the development review process. So for for a new building, or like a substantial renovation for a building, thinking about how we in in, in evaluating kind of a development proposal, look at what the transportation impacts of a project are. And historically that’s, that’s done by looking just at what is the adverse impact to traffic. So literally how, how fast do cars move on the adjacent streets to, to a new development project. And that turns out to, without going into all of the details that turns out to be like the exact opposite of measuring, whether a project supports kind of sustainable equitable transportation investments. It’s just about moving cars more quickly. It’s antithetical to safety goals, it’s antithetical to greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. And what we actually want to do is ask in the development review process, is this new building, this new development going to enable people to get to the building through a diversity of transportation options. So that can mean like looking at kind of a menu of different things that a development can do which include, might include building less parking, providing amenities for people who I can bike, making sure that there are like great there’s, there’s great sidewalk infrastructure, not just on the development, but, but maybe nearby. And so that kind of development review process is a really important, important lever. A second one is looking at what you might call commuter benefits programs. So the building itself and how you construct it is one part, but then there’s, how do people use the building and how do you keep track of whether the employers or the other tenants in the building are actually achieving the kind of goals that are, that are built into the development itself? So this would be things like making sure that employers are are providing employees, not just with free parking or the opportunity to, to have free parking, but also kind of equivalent benefits that will allow them to, or, or support them taking transit, riding bikes walking, et cetera. So it, it, this is solving a problem, which is pretty common where an employer will offer free parking, but actually not even offer a subsidized transit pass which might be uncommon in New York, but it is very common, common in in cities around the country.
Zak (19:49): And that just creates a bad incentive. So it’s basically saying we, we, we support you as an employee if you drive, but but if you’re going to do something else, then you have to forego this, this benefit. And then the third one, the third one is is related to the first but a little bit, but a little bit more broad, which is focused on focused on parking specifically. And I think there are a variety of really important parking reforms that cities the cities can undertake, but the most simple and the most, perhaps the most powerful is eliminating parking minimums in new development. So in in a new development, most cities, well, the overwhelming majority of cities require some minimum amount of parking to be built. And that raises development costs, which in turn, you know, the average parking space cost tens of thousands of dollars to construct. So in a residential building, that means that you’re adding tens of thousands of dollars to every unit’s costs. So you’re exacerbating housing affordability, but it also means, again that you’re providing a strong incentive for people to drive by just making it as easy as possible for them to do so. And so eliminating those parking minimums is good for housing affordability, but it also makes it easier for developers to align good transportation incentives with the, the, the built environment.
Kelly (21:27): So you mentioned in the beginning a little bit about getting involved in the American cities, climate change, climate challenge, sorry, project, what are the goals of that? And can you describe it a little bit? And I think we’d love to hear if you’re seeing a tangible impact or not from, from that.
Zak (21:46): Absolutely. So the American cities climate challenge is a project spearheaded by Bloomberg philanthropies and led on a day to day basis by my organization, the natural resources defense council, and another organization called delivery associates. So our two organizations co lead this project whose goals are helping mayors and city governments go further, faster in achieving their Paris climate emissions reduction goals. So, right right now, in this, in this moment in the U S where federal leadership on climate is, is absent or, or in many cases going in the wrong direction cities have really stepped up to the challenge and have, have taken on ambitious goals to to kind of fill that void of federal leadership. And so cities were participating in the American cities climate challenge applied to the program and were awarded basically a suite of different types of technical support. So from our, our two organizations that I’ve already mentioned, but also over a dozen additional kind of best in class national organizations who provide technical support and other subject matter expertise across the spectrum from land use transportation policy and from electric vehicles kind of many, many different transportation from many different forms of support for cities working on transportation. Although we also have a similar kind of package of support for cities working on reducing energy use in buildings and reducing the carbon intensity of the electric grid. It’s pretty, pretty, pretty comprehensive. Each city has, has identified about four kind of priority projects that are getting support on both the transportation side and the buildings side. And so we work hand in hand with city staff on each of those projects across 25 cities to help them implement them. The project started last year. It runs through the end of this year. So it’s kind of a two year sprint to get as many of these projects implemented and producing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible.
Kelly (24:31): Wow, great. And what what was something you’ve already made progress on a specific example?
Zak (24:39): I work with several cities. I’m actually going to give an example from from a city that I don’t work with, but, but where I grew up, which is, which is Portland, Oregon they came into the climate challenge planning to implement a couple of kind of pilot bus only lanes. So they wanted to expand the, the number of places in the city where where buses are kind of treated, treated like royalty and like and where the, the capacity of the bus to move, you know 40, 70, you know, lots of people at once in one vehicle to make sure that, that, that, that kind of efficiency is recognized by, by helping the buses move, move more quickly through traffic or kind of avoid traffic altogether. So we were able to work with the, with the city of Portland to not just identify two or three places where, where bus priority could be improved, but the city actually decided to increase their ambition, where, to the degree where they’re now improving. They’re, they’re now planning to implement bus priority treatments, street treatments and I think 24 locations throughout the city. So they’ve really kind of up the ante in how ambitious they are ready to be, to really make sure that buses, which are the most, most efficient way to move people on kind of scarce city street space. Not just in a couple of places here and there in the city, but really through a comprehensive program.
Kelly (26:27): That’s great. And so I assume that does the two fold – one, it makes traveling by car less attractive, but it also makes traveling by bus move quicker and, and make it more attractive.
Zak (26:39): Right. And we, you know, it’s, it’s fair to fair to frame it that way because city street space is pretty scarce. You know, it’s, it’s really hard when, when you have, you know, 40 feet of street space every foot that you use for one thing you can’t use for another. And again, going back to the very beginning of this conversation, we have for a long time allocated the overwhelming majority of our streets to the single purpose of moving single occupancy vehicles as fast as possible. So that means that everything else, including bus lanes and other kinds of street design elements that help buses move quickly, but also including sidewalks also, including bike lanes that make it comfortable for people of all ages to ride a bike, everything else in this kind of zero sum game of allocating street space has has cut in the short end of the stick. So cities cities are working kind of one, one step one street at a time to kind of reclaim some of that space and restore some, some more balance to just to the streets.
Kelly (27:56): Great. And I assume there’s some research behind how many people then start transferring to buses, if you provide the space and the buses can move more efficiently. People are either convinced because they don’t want to sit in their car stuck in more traffic, or they’re convinced because the bus has moved quickly, but what kind of research has been done or what are your recommendations based on, I don’t know if you know any of the specifics offhand or or if you can point us to additional resources/
Zak (28:31): Totally. So my former employer transit center has done some really great research kind of synthesizing. What are the things about about a public transit system or about public transit service that make it possible and desirable for people to use them? Many, many, much more research has been done in the past by a variety of other institutions and organizations. But I think transit center has, has done a really nice synthesis. So what they find is that that people use public transit when it is fast, frequent, reliable and walkable. So when you have a S a safe, comfortable walk to a bus or a train stop when you can walk to it and feel confident that there will be a bus or a train arriving very soon. So you don’t soon enough that you don’t have to check a schedule beforehand. That means at least every 15 minutes, but obviously the more frequent the service the better. And you want to be, be confident that the, that the best of train is actually gonna arrive on that timetable. So even if it’s scheduled to come every 10 minutes, if it’s not reliable, if it’s pretty common for for there to be a gap of 20 minutes or more, then that’s gonna make you less likely to use it. And then of course in terms of speed, if, if the bus is coming every three minutes, but it moves at a snail’s pace, then that’s not going to do you much good either. So, so you’re totally right when you implement a bus lane as an example, you actually solve for fast frequent and reliable, when there’s a bus lane, it makes it really easy to run a lot of buses because they’re not stuck in traffic. So they move faster, which means that you’re actually getting more financial efficiency from every bus because the driver is covering more ground in, in any given minute. It also means that you can be more confident because traffic both slows things down, but also introduces a lot of uncertainty in travel times. You can be more confident about how long the the trip is going to take, because without, without a bunch of cars clogging up a lane, you just, you just, it’s just more predictable. And then there’s no better enticement for drive somebody who’s driving, who is stuck in traffic to start taking transit, then seeing a bus whiz by at twice or three times the speed while they’re waiting for waiting for the next light. And so that makes a huge difference when people can really see see that taking the bus is gonna save them time. And so that’s definitely a place where we see a lot of a lot of good healthy behavior change.
Kelly (31:47): One thing I wanted to circle back to on something that you’ve been working on, I’m curious to know with the American cities climate challenge, was there anything that you ran into that you were surprised that didn’t go as well as you thought it would, or maybe the uptake would be easy and either the local mayor said that’s a terrible idea, or the people were resistant or it just took longer any kind of challenges like that.
Zak (32:16): Yeah. I’d say there’s some challenges that you expect. And some, some that are surprising, I would say with the cities and the mayors that we’re working with across these 25 cities the, the mayors tend to be really supportive, really game to try new things. They want to lead, that’s why they applied to be part of the program. And so, you know, we’ve had really positive experiences working with city leaders to make this stuff happen. So that’s been I think that that’s always a source of of strength and an optimism for me. And you expect to get opposition from from communities when you’re doing really anything that threatens on street parking, for example, which is a kind of the, the proverbial third rail of of urban street design. People feel deeply that they that they need to have ubiquitous free access to on street parking. And that is something that they’ve been they have been kind of conditioned to feel, because again, that’s, that’s how we’ve been designing streets for a long time. And I think one of the interesting challenges that cities are equal or eager to solve, and that we, I think have done some some healthy thinking around it is how to help us the agency implement a kind of project that they haven’t done before for the first time, how to build capacity in a city agency that hasn’t existed before and which, you know, we hope in which they hope they’ll be able to, to, to leverage, to continue doing good work. So I’ll give a concrete example, which is which is building which is building kind of quick build a bus or, or it could be a bike lane. So there are kind of, full-scale what you would call it, a capital jacked on, on a street where you’re pouring concrete, you’re ripping up the asphalt, your kind of totally tearing the street apart and rebuilding it from scratch. And those are super expensive projects. They take many years of planning and design and engineering. And those, you know, those will be projects that costs millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars to, to plan and implement over their lifetime. So there’s another way of doing projects, which requires a lot lighter weight materials, much less expensive doesn’t require tearing the street apart where you can make quick changes. You throw some paint onto the street to kind of demarcate different areas where different types of people in your go, you see this in New York, a lot, New York has been one of the pioneers of this approach where in, in New York paint, that’s kind of a tan, a tan color indicates that that’s a place where people can walk. That’s an extension of the sidewalk and where you might use kind of flexible posts to to protect that space. Or you might use planters or some other kind of big immovable object and designing a project like that gives a lot of traffic engineers heartburn because it kind of goes against a lot of what the what they’ve been taught over the course of their careers. But but these kinds of projects at the same time have like very clearly demonstrated safety benefits and they allow cities to make changes at a much more rapid pace. But it still requires a lot of learning and a lot of kind of experimentation for any given city to figure out how to do projects like this, which will ultimately allow them to transform and re-imagine streets at a much faster pace. And so that, that tends to be, that’s like a kind of different kind of challenge than getting getting city leadership or departmental leadership bought into these kinds of changes is really helping cities learn the skills and their kind of core competencies that are necessary to implement the kinds of projects we know we need at scale.
Kelly (36:58): And the program brings a resource. I always think back to developing the energy code in, in New York, or just participating in the advisory committee. I didn’t develop it, but looking at what other cities are implementing and not just staying within your own bubble to try to find solutions that have worked in the past is a really successful way. And so having you as the, not you specifically, but your team, of course, as the go between to try to translate this information and how does or does it not apply to another area? Is there anything around that, something that maybe worked in one city and you thought this is a great idea. And then in another city, it just fell flat.
Zak (37:43): I think there are, I mean, there’s some easy examples. Like there are some cities who are talking about and who are actively working on implementing congestion pricing, which is a live conversation and then a major project in New York, but also several other cities around the country. And that’s, you know, that’s a policy solution that that really wouldn’t be appropriate or wouldn’t be like a priority in in a smaller, medium sized city where traffic congestion is like not not anywhere close to the top of the list of problems that cities face. So there, there are things like that that are that are kind of obvious. And then I guess there are, there are less, there are less obvious ones give an example of like land use, land use policy. So we work with a couple of cities on on land use policy reform in relation to our transportation work and its land use policies are just so wrapped up in local history, like how, like what are building setback requirements and potentially minimum unit sizes. And that’s an area where where you can’t, you really can’t use like a cookie cutter approach. You have to look at like the specifics of what’s there. What’s in the existing zoning code. Before you before you start to figure out what are the kind of specific policy change opportunities that’ll help us achieve its goals.
Kelly (39:33): Great. That’s awesome Point. I want to circle back to one other thing you said that I’m curious about, you mentioned the number of people that die per year in car crashes. I’m curious if how that relates to, like, is there sort of a per capita per rider mile comparison to deaths by public transit? This is just out of my own curiosity.
Zak (40:00): Yes, there is. I don’t know that I don’t know the data off hand, but I do know the kind of top line conclusion, which is that that public transit places with more public transit have safer streets. And the more people who ride public transit, you know, the, the, the safer the streets will be. And there are a couple of reasons for that. One is that there’s kind of like a virtuous cycle between having safe walking streets and having people ride rough ride transit more. And that’s, I think going back to your earlier question about what gets people to ride transit that’s like it’s kind of a chicken egg thing. Like you need safe streets in order to get people to ride transit. And the more people who ride transit, the more safer streets are going to be, there are a couple of reasons why that’s the case. So one is that the, the, the core of the transit workforce is the people who actually drive buses and who drive trains. Those are, those people are working one of the hardest, highest stress jobs in the country. There are people who have done studies on that, looking at job stress and, and driving a bus is, is, as you might imagine, when you start thinking about it is deeply stressful. You’re, you’re in traffic, you’re driving this huge vehicle. You’ve got people boarding, the bus are, who are paying you, and you’re supposed to like give them a ticket and you have all this, all of these things going on and people are asking you questions. They want to know where to get off the bus. Bus drivers play this really, really crucial role, which is both customer service, but also making sure that everyone stays safe, which is all to say that in order to be a bus driver, you have to be like a very well trained professional. Like your whole job is being a really good driver in a really stressful situation. That’s very different from, you know, the licensing and training process that the average driver gets, which is like, you might go to driver’s ed, or you might not, and you take a driver’s test in one state, which you never have to retake in any other state. So, and state testing requirements vary as do licensing requirements. And so who knows how much training anyone has, and even the most stringent licensing requirements for a driver’s license in the U S are pretty lax. There’s almost zero retesting at any point. So, which is, I’ll just say that, like the average driver in the U S is probably a pretty bad driver. And the average bus driver is going to be a really excellent driver. And so that, that pays a lot of benefits in terms of how safe people are going to be walking or driving on the street.
Kelly (43:00): Great. Those are all good points. Yeah. Thanks for, for all your thoughtful answers. We like to end a little bit in a longer look ahead direction. So looking towards the future, what do you think we’re going to be talking about when we have you back on the podcast in five years?
Zak (43:20): In five years, there will be a new list of American cities who have really kind of rewritten the rule book for how urban transportation systems look. They will have taken systematic approaches to prioritizing kind of more human transportation options, enabling people to walk and bike in ways that allow them to feel safe, creating significant new investments in public transit that make public transit, you know, the, the best option for for longer trips in, in urban centers. And they’ve rethought the built environment as we talked about in the context of, of parking in the context of of, of land use housing affordability, more density to create built environments and create the conditions for healthy built environments that allow people to make healthier, more, equitable, more sustainable transportation choices.
Kelly (44:51): Wow. So really setting the bar low for the future for the future of the industry.
Zak (44:56): Its a high bar, it should be.
Kelly (44:56): that’s awesome. Yeah. And and if any of you mayors out there of cities that aren’t involved in the challenge yet are getting excited, hearing hearing Zak talk about the future of buildings. Then now’s the time to get started if you want your city to look like that a couple of years,
Zak (45:17): Time to start is, is yesterday.
Kelly (45:20): Yeah. well, that’s awesome, Zak, thank you so much for coming and being on the podcast.
Zak (45:26): Thanks so much for having me. It’s great conversation.
Kelly (45:29): Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond to learn more about transportation and inclusive cities. Check out our show notes at www.swinter.com/podcasts. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe our world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable, or inclusive as it needs to be. We continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. If you want to join us in our mission visit swinter.com/careers, a big shout out to our production team, Jayd Alvarez, Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile and Heather Breslin, as well as my cohost. Robb Aldrich. We thank you for listening, and we will see you next time.
Training a Young Workforce to Operate Smart Buildings with Jonathan Spooner from Stacks + Joules
Jun 03, 2020
Featuring
Jonathan Spooner, Co-Founder and CTO, Stacks + Joules
Jonathan brings a trove of experience in technology, innovation and marketing to the Stacks + Joules team. Having led innovation teams at Intersection (a division of Alphabet) and launching multiple high-tech businesses he has a wide breadth of knowledge. His entrepreneurial passion has led him to plan, budget, oversee and lead all sizes of businesses across the span of his career. A lifelong DJ having played multiple gigs around the globe he also co-founded the internet’s first DJ mix site. Jonathan speaks frequently on emerging technology innovation, and his insight has been featured in the New York Times, Ad Age, Fast Company, The Motley Fool and the Wall Street Journal, among others.
As technology in the built environment increases, the workforce demand for those who can properly operate these buildings also grows. On today’s episode, Kelly talks with Jonathan Spooner from Stacks + Joules, a nonprofit learning program in computer programming and wireless network management. Stacks + Joules helps train and employ young people to have careers in building automation and energy management systems. Kelly and Jon discuss a common gap in the industry – job training and workforce development, particularly for building operators. They consider how we can “leverage the genius that exists” in urban schools, lift out the digital gurus who know about networking and technology, and help transition them into the building industry where they can thrive.
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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.
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.
Kelly (00:22): When we came up with the idea for a workforce development episode last year, the world was in a very different place, especially in terms of unemployment levels. But the main gap that we discussed in this episode remains – the gap between all of the technology that we are and want to put into buildings and the people available to connect, start up, commission, operate and maintain those devices and systems. On this episode, we have Jon Spooner, Jon’s entrepreneurial passion has led him to plan budget oversee and lead all sorts of high tech businesses across the span of his career. In John’s latest endeavor, he has taken his technology background in a slightly different direction. He and Mike Conway co-founded stacks plus joules, which is a nonprofit project based learning program in computer programming and wireless network management. Their specialized curriculum engages young people and gets them the valuable skills they need to Excel in the building automation and energy management sector.
Dylan (01:19): Hey guys, this is Dylan Martello from the passive house team at Steven winter associates. Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to let you know that the 2020 North American passive house network conference will now be hosted virtually with sessions airing every Wednesday afternoon from June 24th through July 29th. This year, I will be talking about how passive house can help buildings comply with the increasing carbon mandates enacted by cities across the U S be sure to tune in online and see my session and others by registering at naphn.dot com. That’s N A P H N conference.com. Enjoy the show.
Kelly (02:03): Jon, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Jon (02:05): Thank you for having me.
Kelly (02:07): Great. And I so I got introduced to stacks + joules by a friend of mine, Robin, give her a little shout out on here. And I just was able to have a discussion with you and you were so passionate about what you do that I was thinking we have to get you on the podcast. So so kind of with that framework, what was the issue that you saw in the industry that you thought, “Oh, man, we really got to tackle this one.”
Jon (02:36): Yeah. I mean, it, it really came from came from actually two separate separate sources. So I, myself and my co founder, Mike, we each we’re actually best friends from second grade. So we we’ve known each other for a long time. And, and he’s been in the education realm for 25 years and I’ve been more in the technology realm. And so we’ve been, you know, over the years, staying in touch and trying to bump our heads together, to find some way to bring, you know, the technology piece and the educational piece closer together. And, you know, we we’d stayed in touch and, and gone back and forth. And then I started really working with the Link NYC project in New York city which was basically bringing free wifi to the streets of New York. And this project was really, really amazing, huge scale, wonderful opportunity. But what we realized while we were working on that project is we had one of those link, you know, there these nine foot tall totems that are on the sidewalks in New York. And all of a sudden we got a call from a New York city police department. And they were like, Oh, Hey, we have a taxi backed over one of your link things. Can you come get it? And we were like, what, wait a minute. What? And all of a sudden, like our support center, people were having to like pull out their mom’s AAA card to get a tow truck, to go up to Harlem, to pull a taxi off of our, off of our tower. And what we would came really to the forefront of this is we might have all these amazing engineers who can build the incredible thing. But what we were missing was the second layer, the maintaining and upkeep of that technology, because one of the big things that I’ve learned in my career in technology is technology on its own is great, but technology in the wild requires tons and tons of iterative updates and maintenance and so on and so forth. And so we were really starting to see the, you know, kind of the second wave of the techno boom, as being this opportunity for, for technical specialists to come in. And as we were looking for these kinds of technical specialist roles, whether it be in, you know, in all of any of the kind of technical disciplines, Mike’s brother actually works in the BAS field and he had gone to Mass maritime and he was very, very steeped in the building automation world. And so that all of a sudden struck us as this really interesting intersection point between the growth of IOT and the internet of things and how tech is really coming in and starting to influence a lot of industrial processes. And then also the, the energy and sustainability elements to to building on a mission as well. And we saw that as two really, really vibrant kind of through lines for this industry. And the last piece of the puzzle is we were like, okay, we see this industry. It has a lot of demand and it has a lot of need for, because a lot of the workforce is graying out and how do we replace that workforce? We go to the high schools. And, and that, that really is where I think the master stroke of this whole thing came together is we went to an unexpected source of talent. And that’s really the big change that we did to this whole thing is, you know, currently there are massive energy companies that are still trying to run their own training programs. They’re trying to hire, they’re trying to build in and workforce. And, you know, they’re, they’re focused on one segment of the market, but then, you know, looking at high school students who are coming out they’re digital natives. So all of this IOT technology is really second nature to them, and they are incredibly motivated by having an impact on their community and having an impact on the energy and climate future. So having those two motivations, as well as a very good job and career growth trajectory to this industry, those three things kind of added up to be an excellent opportunity to take in and train high school students in, and also meet the challenge that the industry is facing in terms of making up that workforce gap.
Kelly (07:18): Great. So you found a problem where the technology meets the built environment, which it sounds like your link problem was a similar sort of technology meeting, the built environment issue and then, and solve that as a, as kind of an educational issue with your partner there.
Jon (07:37): Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And, and that, that is, I mean, that’s one of the things that we’ve really started to see as we’ve gotten into this world and really seen the breadth of the industry is that, you know, when people are looking at, at LEED and all these ways that are prescribed about how to build a building and then do it in a sustainable factor. And then, you know, I was actually, I started to learn more about LEED recently, and I learned about the fact that LEED not only requires for the building of a building, but also once you take that building apart and throw it away, how do those materials go back into the system and how are they dealt with? And I thought it was fascinating because I really see workforce as part of that design equation as well. If you’re going to look at the sustainability of a building as being, what are the materials I’m bringing in and what are the materials at the end of the life cycle of the building, you also have to look at like, okay, we’ve built this amazing energy efficient building. Now, do we have the workforce to maintain that efficiency? Because that’s one of the big challenges that we find across this industry is, you know, much like our, our plight with the link is we had the high level engineers who could come up with the amazing design system. It was getting the people to go through and reset the preferences, or update the software and be able to do the work that, you know, presently is available and needs to be done.
Kelly (09:07): Absolutely. And I think maybe I relate so much to that because I think commissioning exists in that space between, my background is, is commissioning. And we did an episode on that for this podcast as well, but it’s sort of living within the space between where the design happens and where implementation and then turnover and then operation. And so how do you actually get the value from, you know, we can propose a value from technology, but if it’s not being used or it’s not being maintained, then there is no value to it. And so you actually, you know, have to figure out a way to make sure that the industry is prepared to maintain, to get any value out of all of the products that we’re sort of all the sensors and things that we’re throwing into buildings.
Jon (09:54): Yeah, a hundred percent because I mean, all the sensors and all the technology and all the AI in the world can be put into a building, but if it doesn’t have the person who can actually keep things going and keep the system running, you know, that that’s what’s necessary, is there still needs to be a human piece. And I mean, this kind of segues right into this the current situation we’re in with COVID and with social distancing and all of these things is, you know, the way that the world is headed right now, automation and action at a distance, and being able to control things remotely and such, that’s going to become everything that is going to become the major part of industry’s adjustment to this whole episode. So while we’re definitely training these students and in understanding the built environment and how that, that can exist, you know, we were training them pre COVID. Now all of a sudden this has taken on a whole new level of importance because now there’s no attention to air handling inside of hospitals. There’s attention to all of these other automated systems and automated processes that the built environment needs in order to maintain safety and so forth. Those are all going to be in demand once again, and having, you know, building this workforce to address that demand in the future. I know things are going to be uncertain for the near term, but once we do, and we will get out of this, there is going to be such a backlog of work of buildings that haven’t been dealt with during this period of time, but then also companies that are going to want to automate and move things to nonhuman touch type interactions. And so that, that’s where I really see a lot of the opportunity coming is from from lots and lots of companies looking to automate a lot of processes that took a human before.
Kelly (11:52): Right. Potentially moving from A kind of, you know, nice to have a sort of fancy upgrade to a, you know, method of resiliency during a catastrophic event. And I would say we talk a lot about it in terms of future proofing especially, you know, for folks who are in, in New York city and Washington DC that are looking at, you know performance based existing building energy or carbon or energy caps for buildings. it’s too late, if you only have kind of a once a month bill for your energy consumption, that’s way too late for you to make any response to it. And so having an integrated system that you can control remotely, or at least monitor remotely the energy consumption over time, and you can kind of make tweaks to your building to ensure that you’re well within these caps, I think is going to be even more critical critical now.
Jon (12:53): Well, and I mean, the other thing that may be forthcoming, and I don’t really know, but if, if the pause in New York extends into summer you know, heat, HVAC and such is going to be such a very, very loaded issue and having buildings that can react to peak demand and things along those lines, that’s going to be another massive, massive differentiator. Cause if your building can be tuned to actually turn on when, when there’s, you know, peak demand is past, It really does change the whole economics of the building and work within the constraints of, of the energy companies. So yeah, that’s, what I really see is, is especially with the summer, I know New York city has already started to talk about stockpiling air conditioners. I just think that we need to be ready to address the huge need of workers in the HVAC field as well. So yeah, and once again, having automation brought to that, that industry will be we’ll be helping them make, make their way through COVID as well.
Kelly (14:01): Absolutely. And super interestingly, I know a lot of our clients have talked about the demand in commercial buildings, really not reducing very much, even though they’ve gone from, you know, thousands of people being at the building to, you know, 10 people being in these, you know 500 to a million square foot buildings in New York after, after people vacate it. So I think it’s a call to action, certainly for, for, you know, what are we doing in the buildings right now and what can we do to be more grid responsive in the future. You focus in on high school students specifically. Can you tell tell us a little bit more about, you know, why that is? Why is that the prime market that you’ve kind of gone after?
Jon (14:49): Yeah actually, I would label it as market because honestly we are looking at this as a, a business positive move, because I mean, the one thing to know is stacks and joules is actually, we’re a nonprofit workforce program. So we do have a nonprofit at the center of our, of our, of our group, but we are looking at this as like, you know, this isn’t just help giving a hand to a community, This is looking to a community to help the industry refill it’s dwindling workforce. So it is not something that we looked at as like, Oh, how do we extend a helping hand? No, how do we leverage the genius that exists in these urban schools and lift out those digital natives who know all there is to know about connecting and networking and all, all these aspects of, of technology. And they can easily go into the building industry and thrive because of the, on, you know, the influx of technology, how technology has just changed the entire industry. And, you know, they’re, they’re showing up with those skills already. They may not have all the skills of, you know, X amount of years of HVAC training and X amount of years of experience in the lighting market. But those skills, HVAC and lighting, they can get certified towards and they can still learn while they’re working. It is the networking, the understanding of IP addresses all, all those kind of standard internet ideas and concepts. That’s the difficult thing that these companies are really, really having a struggle finding. And so that’s, you know, that’s really the, the prized skillset. They are willing to take someone who just knows enough about HVAC to understand the concept and fully understand networking and how computers can, can kind of work in that environment. So that’s really why we looked to high schoolers was, you know, there’s a great, great opportunity set. They have all the skills that we need, and they live in the built environment. They live in these urban areas. And so, you know, they’re not having to move to another city. They’re not having to move out into the suburbs, they’re able to perform their work and in amongst the city. So, you know, there were just a lot of, a lot of advantages and it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s a great pipeline for us to get exposure to talented kids as they’re making their decision of what their future is going to be once they graduate high school. And right at that point we found that honestly, high school seniors, they have the most fire under their feet because once it hits spring semester, all of a sudden the clock is ticking.
Jon (17:56): And like, if they don’t have a plan for what they’re doing next year or this summer, you gotta figure out something. And so that we really found is a, is a motivator to, to really kind of hone their vision in on like, you know, this is a real job, this is a real career. And if you can get started in this industry, there’s a great deal of growth and a great deal of, of learning that can come with that growth. And so, so talking to students who are on the fence of like, do I want to go to college or do I want to go get a job and then go to college? You know, it, it turns it into an interesting conversation where you can talk to a company and say, Hey, look, I’m interested in, in working, but I also want to get, you know, X amount of money towards getting my undergraduate degree. And we have a student that we placed at Alberia energy in Boston, and he was hired and immediately had $5,000 a year to put towards college courses. He immediately enrolled in two courses and just upon getting hired, had already started working towards his degree. So while that isn’t, you know, that isn’t a guarantee that absolutely everyone’s going to get a job and go to college at the same time, it is definitely a model that we see. A lot of these companies are interested in exploring because if they can get an employee that early in their career and really help in the forming and the shaping of how they approach the business, you know, they get a four year headstart to train that employee and make them the utmost in value. And then that employee can, you know, train others and kind of, kind of grow as they grow Instead of what we heard a lot of the time from a lot of building owners was, you know, talking to an undergraduate who just graduated with an engineering degree, but who has no real world experience and doesn’t understand anything about, you know, the actual implementation understands the academics, doesn’t understand the implementation. So that was really what we were, what we were trying to, trying to get around was trying to get high school students who were interested in the hands on work, who also had the technical ability and, you know, saw this is a great, great way to earn money and start to learn while they’re earning. So so yeah, it just seems like it’s, it’s kind of got a lot of, a lot of supports and a lot of ways that this industry can, can help nurture this, this whole audience of talent who can really come online and do some great work right out of the gate and start to learn more and more about the industry and become experienced very, very quickly.
Kelly (20:48): Absolutely. I think that really is a Little bit of a different model than than a lot of people are looking at in terms of kind of tapping the, you know, workforce development and how to, how to create a workforce that is going to fill this need in building automation. And I think that’s a wonderful point of, you know, I did get a college degree, but I would be, I think some of the things were relevant, but there’s definitely the on the job training is the most critical component. And certainly the gap between when we’re looking to hire entry level folks, you know, not having any experience walking around in buildings, I think it, you know, that kinds of experiences really gonna set somebody apart you know, whether or not they have, you know, a higher degree.
Jon (21:34): Absolutely. And I mean, right, currently we’re working with a student who is, you know, set at this precipice. He’s either making the decision either way and we’re not all the way, just go take the job, forget about college. And that’s absolutely not, not our, that’s not our recommendation at all our position because we’re working with him and looking at Sunni and a couple of the other colleges that have it and, and and business related tracks that can easily ladder off of the stacks and joules training. Because I mean, that’s really, the thing is, is there is a huge benefit to that extended learning that can come about. But, you know just from my personal experience, sometimes you go into college and you don’t quite know what you’re going to do. And a lot of colleges right now, you’re just kind of starting, you’re using the college as your guide. And then you get out into the industry and the industry is like, what, why did you learn that you should have known about these seven things? So, so it really is just trying to, to make sure the industry is part of the guidance committee that actually says, Oh, here are the, here are some really valuable skills that we could hire someone today. And if they could, you know go around and fix VAV boxes like that job alone is something that we got from an early industry partner. And we have worked and, you know, focused on how do we get it so that somebody can go into a building and work on the VAV boxes. And we’ve ended up working with Niagara to get a certification and training course that basically will we’ll teach the Niagara certification to these students. And we’re actually using a kind of like an example board, which has a VAV box on it. So now they’ll be able to remotely connect to a Niagara Jace and then actually connect and control the VAV box and do any adjustments they want or whatever these are, are like the examples of the type of exercises we’re doing. We still, we touch real stuff. Like we definitely work on real things, but we also do it where we’re addressing the need that the industry said it exists. Like they want people who understand all the inner workings of VAV boxes and that’s exactly what we’re able to deliver. So it’s, it’s really trying to stay stay so that yeah, relevant, but also just stays so that the skills are applicable, like, so that they’re not coming out because I mean, the thing that I love and hate is Lego Mindstorms love it. It’s so cool. Hate it because it really doesn’t apply any job worthy skills. I mean, I don’t know anybody who gets hired for Lego robot tree, but I do know a lot of people who get inspired by doing Lego Mindstorms and then eventually move from that up into, you know, higher tech robotics. And that’s when they kind of figure out what the job is and run with it. But I think if we can keep the training so that it’s engaging and so it’s fun, but so that it actually results in something you really do. That’s, that’s the key. And that’s, that’s the challenge that gets students really turned on engaged and willing to kind of struggle and push past to figure out how to make something work.
Kelly (25:09): Right. And I love that about when you talk about your trainings, that number one, they’re hands on as an engineer I of course appreciate that, but then they’re not abstract like this. Isn’t, you know, go think about engineering theory and then come back and talk to us. This is specifically what buttons would you press if you were in the field and you had to set up this VAB box, for example, which as an engineer is just so practical and great to me. And I do want to circle back to one thing that you said a couple of times which I always recognize as more of an it industry item, but laddering up. And we talk a little bit about kind of, I talk about a continuous commissioning approach to learning. So always kind of tweaking our knowledge, testing something out and trying something new and then building off of that. And I kind of think that’s maybe analogous to your idea of these students kind of being lifetime learners and setting them up for success in kind of a continual learning fashion with the way that you set them up for a lifestyle that they’ll be able to sort of lab ladder up over time. So I’d love, I’d love for you to expand on that for everybody.
Jon (26:17): Yeah. I mean, that’s definitely one of the, you know, that’s, that’s, I think partially our approach to it is we’re very much a discuss it until we can kind of as a group figure it out. And so that’s one thing, you know, that’s one thing that actually, as we’ve had to transition our classes from in-person to online that’s something that’s really served us super in, in making the transition is we generally had this kind of like put an idea out there, have everybody talk about it and try to work their own ideas out in a collaborative method where everybody can kind of shout out whatever they’re thinking and nobody gets embarrassed and nobody clams up that that really leads to this concept of laddering up. Because you know, in, in the class, everybody might be a specialist at one thing, but they’re not all the same specialist, but if they all shout out what they’re thinking and what they know, all of a sudden, everybody else starts getting their advantage starts under saying, Oh, wow, you understand that piece, and I understand this piece. And we just find that, that the classes, when they’re able to kind of work with each other and, and we purposely have designed our curriculum so that we leave little gaps in, in the instructions where, you know, we just kind of throw our hands up and say, I really don’t know, man, maybe talk to that, that kid. And maybe they know, and, and all of a sudden the class starts kind of throwing ideas back and forth and you’ll just see unbelievable learning come out of this. And it isn’t just me sitting up there saying, Nope, you did this wrong. You have to reset it and push this button and have that button and dah, dah, dah, that that really doesn’t do much. Whereas when I just kind of give it to the kids and say, okay, you all figure this out. And then once you get this light to turn blue, give me a shout and leave them with that. They, as a group, like one of them will be the one who understands how to code the color blue. And one of them will be the one who understands how to network to the light bulb or whatever they will all start to share. And really, you know, realize that that iterative bump of learning is something that can all partake in and yeah, more often than not, they surprise me and are able to turn around and have that thing, Have whatever task done almost immediately. So it’s, it’s really, it’s, you know, I actually attribute this mainly to Mike cause he is the educator in charge and yeah, it’s just his approach to this, to teaching. This is very unique. I have not seen it. I mean, I’m a technologist, so I don’t have really an understanding of, of that, that realm. But but in my actual, like having to become a teacher in the past three years, he has been able to train me and get me to the point where I understand, Oh, it’s about kind of conversation is about getting the kids, not to be able to recite the information, getting the kids so they can think on the fly and do the next step on their own. That’s really what we’re going after.
Kelly (29:26): Absolutely. And that’s actually a great point and we we’ve been doing a lot of educational work as well, a kind of training of building operators and professionals slightly different audience, but similar idea, really, if you, you know, understanding where your audience is coming from, getting participation and then thinking about what are your objectives for the program. So, you know, your objective is not that they can recite something, but that they can then go do the work, which is much more impactful.
Jon (30:02): Yeah. And I mean, that’s definitely one thing that, that I’ve just been thinking about with these students is, so we have about, about 60 students across four cohorts throughout New York, one in the Bronx, one in the financial district. And then the other one is two classes in the Larry side. And you know, these kids are facing, you know, living in another house, not more often than not, not in a private room. They don’t know what the future holds. They’re not having a graduation, they’re not having a prom. They don’t have their friends in class. You know, they have all these challenges and all these blockers, but they show up and, and I’m just amazed because you know, this is a video conference and they’re showing up at nine in the morning on a Wednesday to check in and go over like studying HVAC, refrigerants. Like I am just blown away at this dedication and grit. And I know that a lot of the times when people are under stress, they, they, you know, a lot of different ways to react and a lot of different coping mechanisms come out. Most of these kids, what we found their coping mechanism is, is to redouble efforts and doubly focus on what we’re working on, show up and be there and just block everything out. And, you know, we’ll be on a zoom conference and every single, every other students microphones we muted. And what you’ll realize is once they, you do ask them something and they respond is they’ll turn their microphone on. And you’ll hear like little brothers jumping on beds and you’ll hear babies and dogs and kittens and all kinds of stuff going on. And you realize like these kids are sitting there, I’m telling them about like our 22 pressure at 80 degrees. And they’re fighting this Herculean battle of like trying to keep their little brother away from their computer screen. And they’re able to like still learn it. And that’s, you know, this is the thing that I just want to kind of tell the audience is that’s the type of employee you want, someone who every single card is stacked against them. There is no certainty in front of them and what do they do? How do they cope? They double down and they focus and they get to work. And so this is what we’re really doing. This is because these kids amaze us every single time we turn on to the class and they show up they’re they’re bright eyed and ready to go. And so right now we just finished they were studying their EPA six Oh eight exam. So we’re just about to take that exam online. We’re actually gonna do that, Proctor it, individually. So they will be taking that this week. And then we’re going to start working on a training for the Niagara for certification. So they’re doing real stuff and we’ve been psyching them up and getting them amped up and telling them what we have coming up for them. And they’re all just sticking with it. They’re all right there with us. So, I mean, that’s the one thing is, is having these kids realize that like, this is important and this is something that if they, you know, their college future or their next year, future is kind of a little bit fuzzy right now, at least if they focus on this, they can come out with these three certificates that we grant. And, you know, when they come out, HVAC is going to be in a boom, you have an EPA six Oh eight, you can definitely start to get a job. And so I think a lot of them are being very, very practical in the way they’re approaching this. And it’s just a Testament to their grit and determination.
Kelly (33:58): And I think you, you kind of mentioned a bunch of things there, but to tie back to one thing that I think is sort of core to my, my belief. And I think our belief from our perspective in the industry is you have these students look at kind of lighting first which is always a good kind of basic understanding, correct me if I’m wrong and then the refrigeration and then IOT. And I think the one thing I want to call out about that, which I think is a great progression is we do see kind of from our perspective in the commissioning world is a lot of the controls integration, or sometimes I would say the controls integrators don’t necessarily have the underlying building science fundamentals or like HVAC system fundamentals. And so tying those two pieces together, you have spoken to me about in the past as a critical component of your training program. So I did want to call that out as something that I, I think is really makes a lot of sense. You know, we can’t be building IOT workforce that doesn’t understand buildings.
Jon (35:03): Yeah, yeah. And that honestly came through my, my work in technology was, you know, you’d work at these companies that would, you know, all of a sudden pivot towards some technical discipline and they’d hire all these specialists in one certain discipline specifically around artificial intelligence, for example, like six years ago, it was big into big into working in that. The thing is, is you hire a bunch of AI specialists. They have no idea beyond just AI and just kind of math and statistics and all of, all of that information, they have no idea what you are possibly going to apply their thing to. So it really is that same idea of, you know, you might have the smartest analysis or you might have the smartest IOT connector in the world, but yeah, if they don’t understand why they’re, you know, why they’re turning on the chiller before you start the airflow like that, you know, that’s second nature to somebody who knows refrigeration, but to someone who’s just starting up starting up the airflow, like they would never think that way they would never think of like a cycle of, Oh, you have to turn this on and prime it before this goes on and such. So, so that, that’s the thing is maybe not the experience of working in the industry for X amount of years. That that’s one blocker that we definitely noticed in a lot of job hiring announcements was, Oh, it must have, you know, seven years of HVAC experience or whatever, whatever. And, you know, I really, really don’t think that that should be as much of a, of a blocker for, for a lot of these jobs because having HVAC to cram seven years of experience into three, three months, it’s a little tough. And it also is just, it’s something where, you know, you’ve got, you’ve got a lot of other, you got a lot other skills that you could spend those seven years working on and glean a lot of that experience just through, on the job experience. So, so, and you know, the other, the other big thing for me is so I went to school in philosophy and I realized that when I started versus what I came out with I came out and started working on the web because I was interested in the web. Had I gone in for the beginning, interested in the web, I would have come out programming like a text based web because that’s what I went in knowing, whereas in those four years flash and all the graphics and everything like that came to life. So if I was in college, I wouldn’t have really studied anything that was going on in the real world. And I would still be doing my text-based BBS looking webpage. So, so that’s really the difference that I see is a lot of these, a lot of these students are seeing like the current technology and their ability to work on that. And they almost see it as an opportunity lost if they go back to school because they’re going to lose their, hold on Niagara. I mean, four years from now, I’m sure Niagara is going to change and be different, or there may be another technology. So being here and now and working on it that just, you know, gets them experience, gets them the insight, and they’re able to really, really move on it.
Kelly (38:36): Right. And that’s sort of a, to any training industry also a challenge to the construction industry, frankly like the construction industry is so slow to try something out because if you do something new in a building and it’s, you know, it’s new construction you’ve designed it today, but it won’t be in operation. And, you know, having been tested for another, you know, three years, five years, six years. So that, that timeline is so long. I think it’s the same with, you know, changing a whole curriculum can be really difficult. So how do you get a industry responsive curriculum that’s developing fast enough to train people on what we really need to learn and, and how to get that industry educational kind of public private partnership. You know, you guys are that sort of educator, nonprofit organization. How do you have that develop that partnership? That’s kind of a critical piece.
Jon (39:26): Yeah. And, and that’s, you know, as you were saying before, the iterative approach has really just been very much throughout the DNA of our, of our company. I mean, so we started off with pretty much strictly a lighting curriculum and that curriculum grew and grew and we were able to get, we were able to get a lot of the energy conservation concepts in there, but then we started to realize like, Oh, if you’re going to go into building automation, lighting control is one of the disciplines, but there are others. And that was when we, we saw that the EPA 608 was a attainable certificate that would require not, you know, not an unruly amount of of studying to, to accomplish. So that, that was really how we saw to break. It was if we could break it into these focus centers of lighting, refrigeration and HVAC, and then IOT then of those three, we could really adjust those to stay in parody with whatever the industry needed and we don’t have to be dead on it. Doesn’t have to just be whatever the latest and greatest thing is because I mean, our lighting curriculum is a bit more abstracted. It’s, it’s basically three standard led light bulbs, but they’re controllable with color and intensity. And so the students are learning about Python and how to control those light bulbs wirelessly by writing Python programs. Now, this seems rather abstracted at first, but then we layer it over by bringing in professionals from Rab lighting and they come in and start talking to them. Oh yeah, well, we have to address each bulb. And we, we tune the lighting by, by bringing the color to the blue or bringing the color over to the orange and, you know, making, making for all these adjustments. That really are very much the same as what we were doing when we were working on the light bulbs and the light bulbs have the added benefit that our capstone project for that unit is we have the students actually take their favorite song and choreograph a light show using those three bulbs and they change, color and flicker on and off and different intensities. And so they’re able to do something expressive and fun using Python and using programming, but really kind of engendering those concepts of lighting control in the built environment. And so it’s an engaging way that they can kind of show a whizzbang cool thing, but then have some lighting rep come over and, and be able to tell them exactly in business appropriate or industry appropriate terminology, how this is reflective of scheduling. And this is reflective of, you know, daylight harvesting and all these different terminologies that they know from lighting control. They can, they can kind of align those to the project and the industry, and really start to make sense. And so, so that’s really how we see it is by engaging the students, getting them invested in getting them interested and keeping a coding of the professional language. It allows them to really get into it, but then also have something at the end that they can go to an industry event and talk about and be relevant and be understood.
Kelly (43:02): Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like you’ve been busy. You’ve been up to a lot you know, developing all of this, but in, in five years where do you think, what do you think we’ll be talking about in five years when we have you back on the podcast?
Jon (43:18): Wow. well…
Kelly (43:22): Feels weird talking about that circumstance where we’ve been day to day, but..
Jon (43:28): Like dang five days, I don’t know, but five years.. Well, I mean, one thing is, is very true is I see New York city as is poised in a very interesting opportunity. As, as this year started, we were all the, the building owners were starting to come to grips with the new environmental laws and the green laws and how they were going to be affecting buildings. And so that, that pressure was already starting and now we’re in a whole new COVID world. So that’s another pressure that’s starting. I just, I think that, you know, with the, the growth that we were talking about automation and things of that nature, I think we’re probably going to see is an expansion of expansion of looking to high schoolers for filling a lot of these technical jobs. And, and, you know, I, that that’s going to be something where, where using college college will be less of a place you go away for four years. And college will be something that is in parity with your work and helps you skill up along the way to continue on your career trajectory. So less of like a break for four years and more of like an ongoing process that you kind of take along with you as you’re progressing professionally. I think that’s definitely coming. I think that there’s going to be a big, big, big push into robotics automation and kind of, you know, telepresence and all these, all these different things. Those have all been kind of bubbling up and kind of getting early adopters to take it on, but now it’s becoming a necessity. So I think a lot of that and a lot of the infrastructure that makes all of that happen, that will become another huge, huge area of of expansion. And, you know, my hope is that once we come out of this, there will be a resetting of priorities and, and where we really choose to, to focus our education and where we really choose to focus on, you know, how to get people into fulfilling and family sustaining work. And, and so that’s, that’s my big hope is that we can kind of look at, you know, look at careers as being kind of more than just a thing to make money, but be kind of part of the continuum that makes your family work. And so, so I don’t know. I have big hopes, little hopes, realistic hopes.
Kelly (46:08): Yeah. I was going to say we have our work cut out for us. I think a lot of people have big ideas on this podcast. Yeah. It’s going to be a long five years. Well, I appreciate you coming on the podcast and sharing all this with us and I really appreciate your enthusiasm around the industry. So thank you so much.
Jon (46:27): Oh, absolutely. Thank you so much for the opportunity to come on. And and yeah, I was just, I would love to reach out to anybody listening, who is either interested in sharing their expertise or who is interested in talking to some of these really talented young people.
Kelly (46:42): Absolutely the best way to reach you. We can link to that in the show notes. So that sounds perfect. Thank you so much. Again, I have been very impressed with stacks and joules model of partnering students with industry to really align skill sets with the jobs available at Steven winter associates, we are always looking to hire talented individuals to join the team. So providing a great training program to kickstart a lifelong career is always of interest to me. Speaking of careers, we have several openings still,check out our website and apply there, or find me on LinkedIn If you have any questions, if you want to learn more about smart buildings, what they really mean and what getting smarter can do for your portfolio or your next project, visit smartbuildings.nyc. And if you want to learn more about workforce development, stacks + joules, or anything on this episode, check out our show notes at www.swinter.com/podcasts.
Robb (47:34): Thank you for listening buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. Visit S winter.com for more info on us, visit [inaudible] dot com slash podcast to get to all our episodes and to see the show notes and visits winter.com/careers to see job openings. We have quite a few across all our offices, Connecticut and New York city, Washington, DC, and a new office in Boston. I’ve been here for just about 20 years now, and it’s pretty amazing working with brilliant people who really care about making great buildings, improving sustainability, accessibility, health affordability, durability. It’s a pretty fantastic crew. Thanks to the podcast team here, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin, Dylan Martello, Jayd Alvarez, Kelly Westby, and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks for listening.
Universal Design and Accessibility in Mexico City with Luis Quintana
May 12, 2020
Featuring
Luis Quintana, Founder, Todo Accesible
In 2011, Luis Quintana founded Todo Accesible – a company that strives to eliminate the architectural and cultural barriers that exclude people with disabilities from fully integrating with the rest of society. Todo Accessible has worked with clients from a variety of sectors such as entertainment, culture, business, tourism, and more, to help them achieve the “A” distinction – meaning their space is accessible for everyone. This collaboration has resulted in the inclusion of people with disabilities throughout the Mexican Republic. Luis is an Ashoka fellow, as well as a member of Éntrale, an organization that integrates people with disabilities with different companies. Todo Accessible also has a corporate alliance with Cushman & Wakefield, allowing them to make a wide variety of companies and businesses accessible.
April was Fair Housing Month – a time to recognize the importance of equal access to housing. As we celebrate the milestones we have made, we are committed to furthering equal access for every person – regardless of race, gender, nationality, socio-economic status, disability, etc. On this month’s Buildings + Beyond episode, we interview Luis Quintana to hear more about Universal Design and accessibility in Mexico City. We discuss who Universal Design is meant to help, and how Universal Design principles can allow equal access to buildings and products for everyone.
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.
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
Kelly (00:23): On the podcast with me today I have Luis Quintana. He has a master’s in universal accessibility and design for all. In 2011 he founded Todo Accesible, which strives to eliminate the architectural and cultural barriers that exclude people with disabilities so that they can integrate with the rest of society. We’ve certainly discussed accessibility and universal design a lot on this podcast before, but Luis brings a new perspective on the issues from Mexico and our conversation goes beyond the technical, physical, architectural boundaries and really steps into that cultural aspect. Luis really sees accessibility holistically and we cover a range of topics from website design to sensitivity training. I hope you all enjoy our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.
Luis (01:15): It’s my pleasure, Kelly. Thank you for inviting me and having me.
Kelly (01:19): No problem. And I gave folks a little bit of an intro in the background kind of at first, but we obviously had a long introduction conversation a couple of weeks ago. And there’s a lot of work that you cover so we have some ground to cover today. But maybe just to get our audience back into thinking about accessible design and universal design, can you just give and of course your perspective from, from Mexico there. Can you give us a little bit of a definition for you of what accessibility is, what universal design is and kind of maybe where they overlap and where they differ?
Luis (01:58): Sure. Well, for me, what accessibility means is when not only a place but also things that we use are completely comfortable and usable by everyone. Not only people that live with a disability. And by this I mean going into any place on that there are no steps. The doors are wide bathrooms, but also the heights of the shelves or the height of the lights and different things that we use day by day have to be comfortable for everyone. When I mean everyone, like I said before, I also mean kids or maybe someone that doesn’t have an arm so he can use his hands or maybe also people that have limited movement because they broke a leg.,so they’re using crutches or they’re using some other device to get by. All of these people are also benefited with the accessibility. And when we speak about universal design is when we’re going to design something since the beginning that has to be thought for everyone. So when you make it, you already sure that everyone is going to be able to use it that way in the future. You don’t have to bring someone in to make the place or the product accessible for everyone.
Kelly (03:43): Right, It’s set up for success longterm. Great.
Luis (03:46): But when you think about it since the beginning, it’s much, much easier.
Kelly (03:53): Right. Great. And I heard you a little bit kind of refer to both, you know, someone who’s living with a disability that might be permanent or maybe something that is temporary as well. There’s lots of different types of ways that individuals might be interacting in a temporary way or permanent way with their environment.
Luis (04:13): That’s right. But also this benefits people that come from a different country. Like for example, if you’re visiting Mexico city and all of the signaling in my office is in letters and in Spanish letters probably you won’t understand everything that it says. Are you going to have to be asking people where’s the bathroom or where is the bath hall? But if that’s signaling instead of being using words, we use draw wings or icons – that can be understood by everyone.
Kelly (04:51): Yeah, that’s an excellent point. And we talked a little bit about this, that your your website, you had to explain a lot to me since a lot of it is in Spanish obviously jumping kind of into your your website actually since you brought it up. And we, we see in the U.S., Some more requirements now are around website design for accessible website design. And I know you have some experience or, or Todo Accesible has some experience with that. Can you describe a little bit what accessible website design might look like or what, what that’s intended to do?
Luis (05:32): Sure. One thing that we must keep in mind is that when we’re making something accessible, a place, a website or whatever it is, we don’t need to market all over the place. No, you don’t have to have the blue ramps. You don’t have to change the design that you already have there. So when doing a website, it’s not that I’m going to change the pictures or I’m going to change the way your website works. We might do different contrasts with colors in order to make the colors look more different from one another. Like instead of using dark gray and light gray, we might use white with dark gray, but it doesn’t change that much just so people can understand the image. And what we do is on the part that we users don’t see with all the programming is in order to make it accessible so you can move through the website without using your mouse pad. So you can do it with your key pad or with voice. That way, not only a person with a visual disability can use it, but anyone. So maybe someone that has Parkinson’s that can’t use a mouse to travel around the website, it must be much easier for them to use just the key pad. So it’s not only something that we’re making for someone that cannot see, but again, for everyone and the page, the design of the page is exactly the same as the one you have right now. That is something we don’t change.
Kelly (07:35): Great. Just allows everyone to use it in the way that is in the way that they’re able to. And you know, Peter Stratton who you know, obviously from Steven Winter, talked a little bit about kind of folks cracking down on accessible website design as, as it relates to, like you said, kind of a website might be the access point to a different location or to a building. It’s how you might make reservations for for a spot for dinner. It might be through a website. And how can and, and so there are regulations around how those websites need to be accessible. Does the same thing happen in Mexico?
Luis (08:20): Well now Web accessibility is something required by law. But the problem that I see here in Mexico city with that is on one hand there is no one that is in charge of executing per se that law, you know, that is checking which website complies or which one doesn’t. And in the other hand is the owner of the website. They think that because you’re going to make it accessible, it’s going be expensive and you’re gonna waste a lot of money on it. And that is something that is not true. Accessibility doesn’t cost more, especially here in Mexico city because everything, every dime you invest in accessibility, you can deduct it a hundred percent off tax. So it’s not even a, it’s not even something you have to consider as an expense, but as an investment and like I said, by, by making that page accessible, everyone is going to be able to use it, not just some people know.
Kelly (09:35): Right. You have a bigger audience, a wider audience for whatever you’re trying to show. That’s right. That’s great. You mentioned it’s more about the, you know, just because something is the law doesn’t mean it’s being enforced, which I definitely see a lot and I talk about a lot, you know, the bare minimum requirement isn’t necessarily whatever the law says. It’s, it’s however that law actually gets enforced on kind of a day to day basis.
Luis (10:05): That’s right. And that’s why also we measure the usability that accessibility has. Like for example, here in Mexico City, the law tells you that you can put up a ramp with a slope of 10% degree incline, I am a wheelchair user and there is no way I’m going to go up that ramp and if I’m going down, I’m going to need some teeth protection because I must leave my teeth half the Ramp down because they’re too steep. So that is something that is going to cost you money. It is cleared by the law, but it’s not something usable for everyone. Right? But what if instead of making that ramp with a 10% degree in Claymation, we give it a 6% or we give it a four it’s going to be much, much comfortable for everyone to use it because now not only me is going to be able to use it, but maybe you are walking on the street, you’re going to much rather go through up a ramp than through stairs. Or if you’re a mother and you’re going out with your kid on a stroller, that is going to be much, much easier for you to use. Then with the other degree of inclination.
Kelly (11:26): Yeah, there’s this difference between kind of the bare minimum code requirement and what actually is accessible for for individuals and they’re not necessarily the same thing. So kind of just a cautionary tale in some ways of just because you’re designing to all the requirements of the code doesn’t mean you’re necessarily providing access to your space.
Luis (11:51): That’s right.
Kelly (11:54): And you have actually Worked on a standard to push designers to think about going above and beyond. There is a standard kind of like LEED with various levels of performance. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Luis (12:04): Yeah. When were going to make an assessment? The first thing we make sure of is that you comply with what the law States here in Mexico city and for that we have something called the disctiva “A” that is just the plaque that stands out and says this place is accessible. But when you go beyond the Mexican standard, we have two other degrees. We have one that is the gold level. That is when you are a little bit further than what the law States, maybe you will have accessible playgrounds. So you’re a restaurant that you’re accessible. If you have an accessible playground for my boy, you’re going to get another point. So now you’re not on the basic level, you can achieve the gold one, but then if you hire someone with a disability to work in a restaurant, you get another point so you can achieve the highest one. That way. What we look for is that you are not only accessible to receive people with a disability, but that you’re also hiring one. I, like I said before, we have different benefits in Mexico and there’s another one for the companies that hire people with a disability.
Kelly (13:37): Oh wow. That’s great. And I there’s a lot of parallel because we had an episode with the commissioner for the mayor’s office for people with disabilities in New York city and he was talking a lot about a workforce integration program for people with disabilities. So definitely was on the top of his mind as far as access and, you know, access to spaces, access to websites, access to jobs. So really thinking about accessibility in a, in a holistic way.
Luis (14:11): Yeah. And that’s how we must think because if I want to take you out for lunch while I need money, how am I going to earn money if I cant get a job? So it’s wonderful that there is a restaurant where we can go have lunch but I don’t have a job. So with this kind of thinking, we’re making sure that we are back in the society, every part of the society. Now I can go work, we can go out, I can go to a movie theater, I can travel, I can go to a museum, we can go to the same places.
Kelly (14:53): Yeah, that’s a great point. And speaking of that actually it reminds me of, you had mentioned to me in the past about a I think you were talking about an app where you could see how to get to spaces that were maybe finding the accessible bathroom in a large park or something like that. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sorry if I’m misremembering.
Luis (15:17): No, no, that’s correct. We have a website here in Mexico that is called Lugares Accesibles that it’s basically translated accessible places. And then we used to put up here places where that had some sort of accessible standard, maybe the entrance, maybe the bathroom and accessible for who? maybe it’s not accessible for someone in a wheelchair, but it is accessible for someone that cant see. And we started integrating all these things into the website and we launched an app at the end of last year. So now you can download the app, you can register there and you can help us putting up places. But also analyzing and suggesting places that have different sorts of accessible, that way people that need accessibility can know what kind of accessible that place has. So we’re going to go to a restaurant, we can look up there for the restaurant or it is here and it has an accessible bathroom. There is no stairs and they have valet parking or they have a big parking space. So now I know we can go there and no problem.
Kelly (16:47): That’s awesome. So that’s like crowdsourced information. It’s like, I don’t know if they have this app there too, but Waze, basically you can add information as a, as a person using the software to say there’s a police car up, up ahead. But this would be using this, this app to say you know, to tell basically this community of people that have bought into it, this bathroom is accessible. I found that, for people using a wheelchair at this stadium or this restaurant or something like that. So that it’s basically gets, gets better the more people that plug into it.
Luis (17:27): That’s right. And that way more people know of places that we can go and visit. The first places that you’re going to see are the ones that we’ve assessed the ones that have their Disctinive “A”. And then there might be lots of other places that we haven’t assessed, but other with a different kind of disability have recommended because they’ve visited the place. So we put it up and you can also suggest or comment, you know, I went to this place, like it happened one time. There was a restaurant in a very nice own here in Mexico city that I like going there for my meetings and to eat. And they had a very nice ramp on the entrance. So I made a reservation there and I went to a meeting and when I got there, there was no more ramp. They decided to make the terrace bigger. So they use that space. But now I can’t go in. So through the app we can also come and this place has no longer accessible because they took out the ramp. So now we know that it is not accessible so we can take it out of the app as well. Or talk to the client and tell them, you know, you’re missing a big population by getting rid of the ramp. If you don’t have space for our ramp, there are other alternatives you can use. So people that can’t walk can go in the restaurant like they did before.
Kelly (19:14): Yeah. And that’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about people going the opposite direction to make it less accessible. We typically think about people making things more accessible over time. But once you, once the building has that, you know, that rating, that standard that you talked about, you have to maintain it by making sure that you keep your space accessible.
Luis (19:35): That’s right. We evaluate you each year. The Disctinctive “a” is only valid for a year. So if you want to renew it, we go and visit again. Because we also found out that there were places that were accessible and they had this huge bathroom for us, but because they didn’t hire anyone with a disability, then they would use that bathroom for storage. So what’s the use? No, that is not a storage room. That is a bathroom. So use it as it is. So that’s why we have to continue year by year talking to our clients and saying, okay, would you like to renew it? We go and we make it just a quick visit and that’s it.
Kelly (20:21): Right. One of our accessibility consultants was talking about the other day when you look at accessibility, you can’t just look at the architectural plans. You have to also look at the furniture layouts because sometimes in, in especially hotel spaces, they would have all this space where you can maneuver within a wheelchair as intended, but then they wouldn’t, they would put in some sort of toilet paper or some sort of thing afterwards that was a piece of furniture that would then block the ability of of someone to actually use the space effectively. So it’s important to think about it holistically, not just from the architectural design itself.
Luis (21:02): Well that is something very important that you just mentioned. All the furniture has to also be accessible. Talking about hotels, we’ve also seen that sometimes the beds are way too high so I can jump in the bed because it’s way too high and when I’m getting off all the good thing is I’m going down and I can manage jumping back in my chair, but going up in the bed, it’s sometimes it’s difficult or with the closet we only open it up and the only place you can hang your clothes is on the high part. So there’s nothing below that I can hand my clothes in or another thing tables, there are some tables that have the legs in the middle that don’t allow a guy with a wheelchair to put his legs underneath the table because the leg of the table hits the chair. So I’ve sometimes had to ask in the restaurant for the waiter to lend me the tray, I put the tray in my legs and that’s where I eat because I can’t get in and use the table. Or utensils. I’ve found that here in some restaurants, I don’t know if it’s politics where they think that very nice forks and spoons are necessary, but they’re also heavy and for me that I can’t use my hands when I put one of the those spoons between my fingers and I put soup on it. It’s very hard for me to be able to bring this soup up to my mouth without dropping it because it’s really heavy and those are things people have no idea because they don’t need it. Right. That’s one of the important things of using and accessibility consultants that know all these things. Because if you don’t need it, you don’t notice it. But until someone that does tells you, then you realize and it’s not more expensive to buy a table, that instead of having a leg in the middle, has legs on the side or instead of buying one spoon, you buy another one that’s not as heavy.
Kelly (23:30): Right. Maybe it’s cheaper to buy the lighter spoon even.
Luis (23:32): Maybe. That’s right.
Kelly (23:37): Yeah, those are absolutely good points. And you kind of bring me to another one of your the things you mentioned that I think is really interesting that I think is really related to all of this, right? So a lot of bias I would say plays in when you’re not exposed to something or you don’t understand something. And you’ve talked a little bit with me about sensitivity training. Can you tell tell our audience a little bit more about what does sensitivity training mean? And how do you go about teaching people how to kind of work more effectively with others?
Luis (24:17): Sure, we found out that there were some times that talking about a restaurant, the restaurant is completely accessible. But I went there with one of my friends and he’s blind and he has a guide dog. And when we go in, they tell him, your dog cant go. Well by telling a blind person that his dog cant go into a place with him, It’s like telling me I have to leave my wheelchair on the entrance. It’s completely ridiculous because it is not a dog. It is an animal that gives support to them. Right? So we found out that it is very important to teach the people what it really is. So that’s why we do this workshops and are implemented by people that live with each type of disability. So they tell you how you can support a blind person. Do you grab his arm? Does he grab you? Or if he’s deaf, well, not because he’s deaf means she’s not gonna understand you. Maybe he reads lips or maybe you can point him to different things. So we show you how to interact with someone that can’t hear and how when he answers you, you’re going to be able to understand what he’s saying or what happens if a person comes in with a wheelchair. I’ve had some different experiences that they want to help me. So I let them guide me and they’re pushing me and then suddenly they see someone and they want to say hi or something and they let go of the chair and there I go. No, then that’s something you cannot do because if you have no control in your arms while you’re going to hit someone or you’re going to fall, or I don’t know what can happen now.
Luis (26:26): So that is what we show them. When you’re helping someone with a disability, your focus is on the person with a disability. Or another thing in the restaurants here, you know, they, they want to give you beautiful plates. So they may be, they put a toothpick on your meat to hold it closed, but when you’re eating it, you don’t realize that there’s a toothpick in there that was holding your meat so you can hurt yourself. So we also tell them what it is that you put on, do not put on a plate or how do you tell a blind person what he has in front of him using the clock hands, like your coffees at 12 o’clock. Your fork is that your 10, you have your syrup at two o’clock. So they can imagine what the table looks like and know where anything is and can move freely without thinking they’re going to drop something or break something. So we show them all these things in these workshops. So now the next time they see someone with a disability, not only attending the restaurant but maybe on the streets or on a different place, they feel confident walking up and say, hi, can I help you or what it is I can do for you?
Kelly (28:00): Yeah, absolutely. Because I think some of it is just that fear of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing or not really knowing how to interact with people that you you know, maybe you have just don’t have experience and you sort of get nervous. So you and I noticed a lot of your stories have a little bit of a little bit of a sense of humor in them. And I think that is a good way of bringing down people’s guard a little bit and getting them kind of listening to what you’re talking about. The heart of what you’re talking about.
Luis (28:34): That is correct. I’ve noticed that people don’t do that because they want to, they do it because they don’t really know how to help you, but when you show them, you can even see a big smile on their face that now they know how to help someone with a disability. When I’m going to jump out of the car, I can do it by myself. So the guy that helps me is the one that puts me in a chair. But sometimes to make it faster, we look for help. And I’ve noticed that some people, when they see that he’s bringing out the wheelchair and we’re starting to see how it is that he’s going to make a help me get in my chair. Sometimes they even cross the street. So that’s the guy I call, Hey you please come over. And they’ll give me a hand. And they come. Sometimes they don’t even talk to me. They talk to my assistant. No, they look at me like, Oh, he can talk. Okay. But once they help me and once they see it’s not so, and it’s not so difficult, we get along perfect with them.
Kelly (29:47): That’s great. Even in your daily interactions, you take it upon yourself to make sure to help people be their best self. Really.
Luis (29:57): What an excellent way to say it Kelly.
Kelly (30:01): Well I, we covered a lot of different topics here and I’m curious, what do you want people to kind of take away from this conversation? What’s most important to you that people take away from this conversation?
Luis (30:16): Disability is not a disease and disability is not contagious. So you can walk up to someone and be completely fresh. Like you’re with everyone else. And if you’re going to build something or if you’re gonna invest in something, be sure to make it accessible. It’s not going to cost you more money. It’s going to be much more well taken by everyone. And the amount of people you’re going to be able to receive is going to be much, much wider because a person with a disability spends almost 80% more than the rest of the population. Why? Because I never go out by myself. So if I’m going to go eat in the restaurant, I’m going to go with my assistant, the guy that helps me. If I’m going to travel, if I’m going to go visit you in the States, will I pay for two plane tickets? Two hotel rooms? So it’s a population that you can consider and when you’re making this kind of place as with universal design, it looks wonderful and it’s usable by everyone. So just to leave you with the question instead of saying why involve? Is why NOT involve people with a disability because it’s full of benefits from war, any point you want to see it.
Kelly (31:45): Those are great points. And our our final question that we like to ask people is when we have you back on the podcast in five years what do you think we’ll be talking about then?
Luis (31:59): I would love to say that we would be talking of how universal design changed the way people live, not only the way people think how now everyone and everything is included for everyone.
Kelly (32:22): All right. That’s a tall order for the world for the next five years, but I like it. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking with me today.
Luis (32:32): No, on the contrary, Kelly, thank you so much for inviting me and having me over. I really enjoyed it hugely. Thank you thank you.
Kelly (32:45): Thank you so much for listening to buildings and beyond today. To learn more about universal and accessible design, check out our show notes at swinter.com/podcasts S W I N T E r.com/podcasts buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We believe the world is not as sustainable, healthy, safe, equitable or inclusive as it needs to be and we continually strive to develop and implement innovative solutions to improve the built environment. Our production team includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin, and my cohost Robb Aldrich and me, Kelly Westby. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.
Episode Transcript – Spanish
Kelly (00:05): Bienvenido a edificios y más allá.
Robb (00:08): El podcast que explora cómo podemos crear un entorno construido más sostenible.
Kelly (00:12): Centrándose en la eficiencia, la accesibilidad y la salud.
Robb (00:17): Soy Robb Aldrich.
Kelly (00:18): Y yo soy Kelly Westby
Kelly (00:23): En el podcast conmigo hoy tengo a Luis Quintana. Tiene un máster en accesibilidad universal y diseño para todos. En 2011 fundó Todo Accesible, que se esfuerza por eliminar los bolos arquitectónicos y culturales que excluyen alas personas con discapacidad para que puedan integrarse con el resto de la sociedad. Ciertamente hemos discutido mucho la accesibilidad y el diseño universal en este podcast antes, pero Luis aporta una nueva perspectiva sobre los temas de México y nuestra conversación va más allá de los límites técnicos, físicos, arquitectónicos y realmente entra en ese aspecto cultural. Luis realmente ve la accesibilidad de manera integral y cubrimos una variedad de temas, desde el diseño de sitios web hasta la formación de sensibilidad. Espero que todosse alegren nuestra conversación. Muchas gracias por acompañarnos en el podcast hoy.
Luis (01:15: Es un placer, Kelly. Gracias por invitarme y tenerme.
Kelly (01:19): No hay problema. Y le di a la gente un poco de una introducción en el fondo familiard de al principio, pero obviamente tuvimos una larga conversación de introducción hace un par de semanas. Y hay mucho trabajo que cubres así que tenemos algo de terreno que cubrir hoy. Pero tal vez sólo para que nuestro público vuelva a pensar enel diseño accesible y el diseño noiversal, puedes simplemente dar y por supuesto tu perspectiva desde, desde México allí. ¿Puede darnos un poco de una definición para usted de lo que es la accesibilidad, qué es el diseño universal y tal vez dónde se superponen y dónde difieren?
Lues (01:58): Seguro. Bueno, para mí, lo que significa accesibilidad es cuando no sólo un lugar, sino también las cosas que usamos son completamente cómodos y utilizables por todos. No sólo las personas que viven con una discapacidad. Y con esto me refiero a entrar en cualquier lugar en que no hay pasos. Las puertas son amplios baños, pero también las alturas de la shelveo la altura de las luces y diferentes cosas que utilizamos día a día tienen que ser cómodos para todos. Cuando me refiero a todo el mundo, como dije antes, también me refiero a los niños o tal vez a alguien que no tiene un brazo para que pueda usar sus manos o tal vez también personas que tienen movimiento limitado porque se rompieron una pierna., así que están usando muletas o están usando algún otro dispositivo para pasar. Todas estas personas también se benefician con la accesibilidad. Y cuando hablamos de diseño universal es cuando vamos a design algo desde el principio que tiene que ser pensado para todos. Así que cuando lo haces, ya estás seguro de que todo el mundo va a ser capaz de usarlo de esa manera en el futuro. No tienes que traer a alguien para que el lugar o el producto sea accesible para todos.
Kelly (03:43): Correcto, Está configurado para el éxito a largo plazo. Estupendo.
Luis (03:46): Pero cuando lo piensas desde el principio, es mucho, mucho más fácil.
Kelly (03:53): Correcto. Gran. Y te escuché un poco referirse a ambos,ya sabes, alguien que está viviendo con una discapacidad que podría ser permanente o tal vez algo que es temporal también. Hay un montón de diferentes tipos de maneras que las personas podrían estar interactuando de manera temporal o permanente con su entorno.
Luis (04:13): Así es. Pero también esto beneficia a las personas que provienen de unpaís diferente. Como por ejemplo, si estás visitando la ciudad de México y toda la señalización en mi oficina está en letras y en letras españolas probablemente no entenderás todo lo que dice. ¿Vas a tener que preguntar a la gente dónde está el baño o dónde está el baño? Pero si eso es señalización en lugar de estar usando palabras, usamos alas de dibujo o iconos – que pueden ser entendidos por todo el mundo.
Kelly (04:51): Sí, ese es un punto excelente. Y hablamos un poco sobre esto, that tu sitio web, tenías que explicarme mucho ya que gran parte de ella es en español, obviamente, algo así como saltar a tu sitio web en realidad desde que lo mencionaste. Y nosotros, vemos en los EE.UU., Algunos requisitos más ahora están alrededor del diseñodel sitio web para el diseño de sitios web de accesable. Y sé que tienes alguna experiencia o Todo Accesible tiene alguna experiencia con eso. ¿Puede describir un poco cómo podría ser el diseño del sitio web accesible o qué, qué se pretende hacer?
Luis (05:32): Seguro. Una cosa que debemos tener en cuenta es que cuando estamos haciendo algoaccesible, un lugar, un sitio web o lo que sea, no necesitamos comercializar por todas partes. No, no tienes que tener las rampas azules. No tienes que cambiar el diseño que ya tienes allí. Así que al hacer un sitio web, no es que voy acambiar lasimágenes o voy a cambiar la forma en que funciona su sitio web. Podríamos hacer diferentes contrastes con los colores para hacer que los colores se vean más diferentes entre sí. Como en lugar de usar gris oscuro y gris claro, podríamos usar blanco con darkgray, pero no cambia mucho sólo para que la gente pueda entender la imagen. Y lo que hacemos es en la parte que los usuarios no vemos con toda la programación es con el fin de que sea accesible para que pueda moverse a través de la página web sin utilizar su almohadilla de ratón. Así que puedes hacerlo con tu teclado o con voz. De esa manera, no sólo una persona con una discapacidad visual puede usarlo, sino cualquier persona. Así que tal vez alguien que tiene Parkinson que no puede usar un ratón para viajar por el sitio web, debe ser mucho más fácil para ellos utilizar sólo el teclado. Así que no es sólo algo que estamos haciendo para alguien que no puede ver, pero de nuevo, para todo el mundo y la página, el diseño de la página es exactamente el mismo que el que tiene en este momento. Eso es algo que no cambiamos.
Kelly (07:35): Gran. Sólo permite que todo el mundo lo use de la manera que es de la manera en que’son capaces de. Y sabes, Peter Stratton que ya sabes, obviamente de Steven Winter, habló un poco sobre el tipo de gente reprimiendo el diseño de sitios web accesibles, ya que, como usted dijo, una especie de sitio web podría ser el punto de acceso a unlugar different o a un edificio. Así es como puedes hacer reservas para un lugar para cenar. Puede ser a través de un sitio web. Y cómo puede y, y por lo tanto, hay regulaciones sobre cómo esos sitios web necesitan ser accesibles. ¿Sucede lo mismo en México?
Luis (08:20): Bueno, ahora la accesibilidad web es algo requerido por la ley. Pero el problema que veo aquí en la ciudad de México es por un lado que no hay nadie que se encargue de ejecutar per se esa ley, ya sabes, que es comprobar qué sitio web cumple o cuál no. Y por otro lado es el propietario del sitio web. Creen que debido a que lo harás accesible, va a ser caro y vas a malgastar mucho dinero en ello. Y eso es algo que no es cierto. La accesibilidad no cuesta más, especialmente aquí enla ciudad de México porque todo, every dime que inviertes en accesibilidad, se puede deducir cien por ciento de descuento en impuestos. Así que ni siquiera es un, ni siquiera es algo que tienes que considerar como un gasto, pero como una inversión y como dije, al hacer que esa página sea accesible, todo el mundo va a ser capaz de usarla, no sólo algunas personas lo saben.
Kelly (09:35): Correcto. Tienes un público bigger, un público más amplio para lo que sea que estés tratando de mostrar. Así es. Genial. Mencionaste que es más sobre el, ya sabes, sólo porque algo es la ley no significa que se esté aplicando, que definitivamente veo mucho y hablo mucho, ya sabes, el requisito mínimo no es necesariamente lo que dice la ley. Es, sin embargo, que la ley en realidad se aplica en una especie de día a día.
Luis (10:05): Así es. Y es por eso que también medimos la usabilidad que tiene la accesibilidad. Como por ejemplo, aquí en la Ciudad de México, la ley te dice que puedes poner una rampa con una pendiente de 10% de pendiente, soy un usuario de silla de ruedas y no hay manera de que vaya a subir esa rampa y si voy a bajar, voy a necesitar un poco de protección de los dientes porque debo dejar mis dientes la mitad de la rampa hacia abajo porque son demasiado empinados. Así que eso es algo que te va a costar dinero. Está claro por la ley, pero no es algo utilizable para todos. ¿Correcto? Pero ¿qué pasa si en lugar de hacer esa rampa con un 10% de grado en Claymation, le damos un 6% o le damos un cuatro va a ser mucho, muy cómodo para que todo el mundo lo use porque ahora no sólo yo voy a ser capaz de usarlo, pero tal vez usted está caminando en la calle, usted va a ir más bien a través de una rampa que a través de escaleras. O si eres madre y vas a ir a tuhijo en uncochecito, eso va a ser mucho, mucho más fácil de usar para ti. Luego con el otro grado de inclinación.
Kelly (11:26): Sí, hay esta diferencia entre el tipo de requisito de código mínimo y lo que realmente es accesible para los individuos y no son necesariamente la misma cosa. Así que sólo una historia de precaución en algunas maneras de sólo porque usted está diseñando a todos los requisitos del código no significa que usted está necesariamente proporcionando acceso a su espacio.
Luis (11:51): Así es.
Kelly (11:54): Y en realidad has trabajado en un estándar para empujar a los diseñadores a pensar en ir más allá. Hay un tipo estándar de LEED con varios niveles de rendimiento. ¿Puedes hablar un pocomás?
Luis (12:04): Sí. ¿Cuándo ibas a hacer una evaluación? La primerag delgada de laque nos aseguramos es que usted cumple con lo que la ley Estados aquí en la ciudad de México y para eso tenemos algo llamado la disctiva “A” que es sólo la placa que se destaca y dice que este lugar es accesible. Pero cuando vas más allá del estándar mexicano, tenemos otros dos grados. Tenemos uno que es el nivel de oro. Es entonces cuando estás un poco más lejos de lo que la ley Estados, tal vez tendrás áreas de juegos de recreo accesibles. Así que eres un restaurante al que eres accesible. Si tienes un playgro und accesiblepara mi hijo, vas a conseguir otro punto. Así que ahora no estás en el nivel básico, puedes lograr el oro, pero luego si contratas a alguien con una discapacidad para trabajar en un restaurante, obtienes otro punto para que puedas lograr el más alto. Eso way. Lo que buscamos es que no solo seas accesible para recibir a personas con una discapacidad, sino que también estás contratando una. Yo, como dije antes, tenemos diferentes beneficios en México y hay otro para las empresas que contratan a personas con una discapacidad.bility.
Kelly (13:37): Oh wow. Genial. Y yo hay un montón de becau se paralelo que tuvimos un episodio con el comisionado de la oficina del alcalde para personas con discapacidades en la ciudad de Nueva York y él estaba hablando mucho sobre un programa de integración de la fuerza laboralpara las personas con discapacidades. Así que definitivamente estaba en la cima de su mente en lo que respecta al acceso y, ya sabes, el acceso a espacios, el acceso a sitios web, el acceso a los trabajos. Así que realmente pensando en la accesibilidad de una manera holística.
Luis (14:11): Sí. Y así es como debemos pensar porque si quiero llevarte a almorzar mientras necesito dinero, ¿cómo voy a ganar dinero si no consigo un trabajo? Así que es maravilloso que haya un restaurantedondepodamos ir a almorzar pero no tengo trabajo. Así que con este tipo de pensamiento, nos aseguramos de que estamos de vuelta en la sociedad, en todas las partes de la sociedad. Ahora puedo ir a trabajar, podemos salir, puedo ir a una sala de cine, puedo viajar, puedo ir a un museo, podemos ir a los mismos lugares.
Kelly (14:53): Sí, es una grancaca. Y hablando de eso en realidad me recuerda, que me había mencionado en el pasado sobre un creo que estaba hablando de una aplicación donde se podía ver cómo llegar a espacios que tal vez estaban encontrando el baño accesible en un gran parque o algo así. ¿Puedes hablar un poco de eso? Lo siento si estoy mal de memoria.
Luis (15:17): No, no, eso es correcto. Tenemos un sitio web aquí en México que se llama Lugares Accesibles que básicamente se traduce en lugares accesibles. Y luego solíamos poner aquí lugares donde que tenía algún tipo de estándar accesible, tal vez la entrada, tal vez el baño y accesible para quién? tal vez no es accesible para alguien en silla de ruedas, pero es accesible para alguien que no puede ver. Y comenzamos a integrar todas estas cosas en el sitio web y lanzamos una aplicación a finales del año pasado. Así que ahora se puede descargar la aplicación, se puede registrar allí y nos puede ayudar a putting up lugares. Pero también analizar y sugerir lugares que tienen diferentes tipos de accesible, de esa manera las personas que necesitan accesibilidad pueden saber qué tipo de accesible tiene ese lugar. Así que vamos a ir a un restaurante, podemos buscar allí arriba para el restauranteo está aquí y tiene un bañoaccesible. No hay escaleras y que tienen servicio de aparcacoches o que tienen un gran espacio de estacionamiento. Así que ahora sé que podemos ir allí y no hay problema.
Kelly (16:47): Eso es increíble. Así que eso es como información de crowdsourced. Es como, No sé si tienen esta aplicación allí también, pero Waze, básicamente can añadir información como un, como una persona que utiliza el software para decir que hay un coche de policía arriba, por delante. Pero esto sería utilizar esto, esta aplicación para decir ya sabes, para decir básicamente esta comunidad de personas que han comprado en ella, este baño es accesible. Creoque, para la gente que usa una silla deruedas en este estadio o este restaurante o algo así. Así que es básicamente se pone, mejora cuantas más personas se conecten a él.
Luis (17:27): Así es. Y de esa manera más gente sabe de lugares que podemos ir y visitar. Los primeros lugares que van a ver son los que hemos evaluado los que tienen su “A” distrital. Y luego puede haber muchos otros lugares que no hemos evaluado, pero otros con un tipo diferente de discapacidad han recomendado porque han visitado el lugar. Así que lo pusimos y también puedes sugerir o comentar, ya sabes, fui a este lugar, como sucedió una vez. Había un restaurante en un propio muy agradable aquí en la ciudad de México que me gusta ir allí para mis reuniones y para comer. Y tenían una rampa muy bonita en la entrada. Así que hice una reserva allí y fui a una reunión y cuando llegué allí, no había más rampa. Decidieron hacer la terraza más grande. Así que usan ese espacio. Pero ahora no puedo entrar. Así que a través de la aplicación también podemos venir y este lugar ya no tiene accesible porque sacaron la rampa. Así que ahora sabemos que no es accesible por lo que podemos sacarlo de la aplicación, así. O habla con el cliente y diles, ya sabes, que te estás perdiendo una gran población paradeshacerte de la rampa. Si no tienes espacio para nuestra rampa, hay otras alternativas que puedes usar. Así que la gente que no puede caminar puede ir al restaurante como lo hacían antes.
Kelly (19:14): Sí. Y eso es interesante. No había pensado en que la gente fuera en la dirección opuesta para hacerlo menos accesible. Normalmente pensamos en las personas haciendo las cosas más accesibles con el tiempo. Pero una vez que usted, una vez que el edificio tiene que, ya sabes, esa calificación, ese estándar que usted habló, usted tiene que mantenerlo asegurándose de mantener su espacio accesible.
Luis (19:35): Así es. Te evaluamos cada año. La “a” Distritiva solo es válida durante un año. Así que si quieres renovarlo, vamos a visitarlo de nuevo. Porque también descubrimos que había lugares que eran accesibles y que tenían este enorme baño para nosotros, pero debido a que didn’t contratar a cualquier persona con una discapacidad, luego que usaría ese baño para almacenaje. Entonces, ¿de qué sirve? No, eso no es un trastero. Eso es un baño. Así que úsalo como está. Así que es por eso que tenemos que continuar año tras año hablando con nuestros clientes y diciendo, de acuerdo, ¿te gustaría renovarlo? Vamos y lo hacemos sólo una visita rápida y eso es todo.
Kelly (20:21): Correcto. Uno de nuestros consultores de accesibilidad estaba hablando deque el otro día cuando se mira la accesibilidad, no se puede simplemente mirar los planes arquitectónicos. También hay que mirar los diseños de los muebles porque a veces en, especialmente en los espacios del hotel, tendrían todo este espacio donde se puede maniobrar dentrode unsi lbador como se pretendía, pero luego no lo harían, que poner en algún tipo de papel higiénico o algún tipo de cosa después que era un pedazo de mobiliario que luego bloquearía la capacidad de alguien para realmente utilizar el espacio de manera efectiva. Así que es importante pensar en ello holísticamente, no sólo desde el propio diseño arquitectónico.
Luis (21:02): Bueno, eso es algo muy importante que acabas de mencionar. Todos los muebles también tienen que ser accesibles. Hablando de hoteles, también hemos visto que a veces las camas son demasiado altas para que pueda saltar en la cama porque es demasiado alto y cuando me estoy bajando todo lo bueno es que voy a bajar y puedo manejar saltar de nuevo en mi silla, pero subir en la cama, a veces es difícil o con el armario sólo lo abrimos y el único lugardonde puedes colgar tu ropa es en la parte high. Así que no hay nada debajo que pueda entregar mi ropa u otra cosa mesas, hay algunas mesas que tienen las piernas en el medio que no permiten que un tipo con una silla de ruedas ponga sus piernas debajode la mesa porque la pierna de la mesa golpea tél silla. Así que a veces he tenido que pedir en el restaurante que el camarero me preste la bandeja, puse la bandeja en mis piernas y ahí es donde como porque no puedo entrar y usar la mesa. O utensilios. He encontrado que aquí en algunos restaurantes, no sé si espolítica donde piensan que muybonitos tenedores y cucharas son necesarios, pero también son pesados y para mí que no puedo usar mis manos cuando pongo una de esas cucharas entre mis dedos y pongo sopa en ella. Es muy difícil para mí poder llevarsu sopa a mi bocasin dejarla caer porque es muy pesada y esas son cosas que la gente no tiene idea porque no la necesitan. Correcto. Esa es una de las cosas importantes del uso y los consultores de accesibilidad que saben todas estas cosas. Porque si no lo necesitas, no te das cuenta. Pero hasta que alguien que te lo dice, entonces te das cuenta y no es más caro comprar una mesa, que en lugar de tener una pierna en el medio, tiene piernas en el costado o en lugar de comprar una cuchara, compras otra que no es tan pesada.
Kelly (23:30): Correcto. Tal vez sea más barato comprar la cuchara de lighter incluso.
Luis (23:32): quizás. Así es.
Kelly (23:37): Sí, esos son puntos absolutamente buenos. Y me llevas a otro de ustedes son los delgadosgs que mencionaste que creo que es realmente interesante que creo que está realmente relacionado con todo esto, ¿verdad? Así que hay mucho sesgo en el que diría que juega cuando no estás expuesto a algo o no entiendes algo. Y has hablado un poco conmigo unentrenamiento desensibilidad. ¿Puedes decirle a nuestra audiencia un poco más sobre lo que significa el entrenamiento de sensibilidad? ¿Y cómo se enseña a la gente a trabajar más eficazmente con los demás?
Luis (24:17): Claro, nos enteramos de que había algunas veces que hablando de un restaurante, el restaurante es completamente deacceso. Pero fui allí con uno de mis amigos y él es ciego y tiene un perro guía. Y cuando entramos, le dicen que tu perro no puede ir. Bueno, diciéndole a una persona ciega que su perro no puede ir a un lugar con él, Es como decirme que tengo que dejar mi silla wheeen la entrada. Es completamente ridículo porque no es un perro. Es un animal que les apoya. ¿Correcto? Así que descubrimos que es muy importante enseñar a la gente lo que realmente es. Por eso hacemos este taller y somos imlegadospor personas que viven con cada tipo de discapacidad. Así que te dicen cómo puedes mantener a una persona ciega. ¿Le agarras del brazo? ¿Te agarra? O si es sordo, bueno, no porque sea sordo significa que ella no te va a entender. Tal vez lea los labios o miaybe puedas señalarlo a cosas diferentes. Así que te mostramos cómo interactuar con alguien que no puede oír y cómo cuando te conteste, vas a ser capaz de entender lo que está diciendo o lo que sucede si una persona viene con una silla de ruedas. He tenido diferentesexperiencias que quieren ayudarme. Así que dejé que me guiaran y me están empujando y de repente ven a alguien y quieren saludar o algo así y soltaron la silla y ahí voy. No, entonces eso es algo que no puedes hacersi no tienes control en tus brazos mientras vas a golpear a alguien o vas a caer, o no sé qué puede pasar ahora.
Luis (26:26): Así que eso es lo que les mostramos. Cuando estás ayudando a alguien con una discapacidad, tu enfoque está en la persona con una discapacidad. O otra cosa en los restaurantes de aquí, ya sabes, ellos.ely quiere darte hermosos platos. Así que pueden ser, ponen un palillo de dientes en tu carne para mantenerla cerrada, pero cuando te la estás comiendo, no te das cuenta de que hay un palillo de dientes allí que estaba sosteniendo tu carne para que puedas lastimarte. Así que tambiénles decimoslo que es que te pones, no te pongas un plato o cómo le dices a una persona ciega lo que tiene delante usando las agujas del reloj, como tus cafés a las 12 en punto. Tu tenedor es que tus 10, tienes tu jarabe a las dos en punto. Así que pueden imaginar when la mesa se ve y saberdónde está algo y pueden moverse libremente sin pensar que van a dejar algo o romper algo. Así que les mostramos todas estas cosas en estos talleres. Así que ahora la próxima vez que vean a alguien con una discapacidad, no enly asistir al restaurante, pero tal vez en las calles o en un lugar diferente, se sienten seguros caminando y decir, hola, ¿puedo ayudarte o qué puedo hacer por ti?
Kelly (28:00): Sí, por supuesto. Porque creo que algo de eso es sólo ese miedo a decir lo incorrecto o hacer lo incorrecto o no saber realmente cómo interactuar conla gente que sabes, tal vez no tienes experiencia y te pones nervioso. Así que tú y yo notamos que muchas de tus historias tienen un poco de sentido del humor en ellas. Y creo que es una buena manera de bajarun poco la guardia de PeOple y hacer que escuchen de lo que estás hablando. El corazón de lo que estás hablando.
Luis (28:34): Eso es correcto. Me he dado cuenta de que la gente no hace eso porque quiere, lo hacen porque realmente no saben cómo ayudarte, pero cuando les muestras, incluso puedes ver una gran sonrisa en su cara que ahora saben cómo ayudar a alguien con una discapacidad. Cuando voy a saltar del auto, puedo hacerlo solo. Asíque el tipo que me ayuda es el que me pone en una silla. Pero a veces para hacerlo más rápido, buscamos ayuda. Y me he dado cuenta de que algunas personas,cuando ven que está sacando la silla de ruedas y estamos empezando a ver cómo es que va a hacer una ayuda que me salve en mi silla. A veces incluso cruzan la calle. Así que ese es el tipo al que llamo, oye, por favor ven. Y me darán una mano. Y vienen. A veces ni siquiera me hablan. Hablan con mi asistente. No, me miran como, Oh, él puede hablar. Bien. Pero una vez que me ayudan y una vez que ven no es así, y no es tan difícil, nos llevamos perfectos con ellos.
Kelly (29:47): Genial. Incluso en tus interacciones diarias, te lo tomas a ti mismo para asegurarte de ayudar a las personas a ser su mejor yo. Realmente.
Luis (29:57): Qué excelente manera de decirlo Kelly.
Kelly (30:01): Bueno, yo, cubrimos muchos temas diferentes aquí y tengo curiosidad, ¿quéquieres que la gente se lleve de esta conversación? ¿Qué es lo más importante para ti que la gente te quita de esta conversación?
Luis (30:16): La discapacidad no es una enfermedad y la discapacidad no es contagiosa. Así que puedes acercarte a alguien y estar completamente fresco. Como si estuvieras con todos los demás. Y si vas a construir algoo si vas a invertir en algo, asegúrate de hacerlo accesible. No te va a costar más dinero. Todo el mundo va a tomar mucho más bien. Y la cantidad de personas que vas a ser capaz de recibir va a ser mucho, mucho más amplia porque una persona con una discapacidad gasta casi un 80% más que el resto de la población. ¿por qué? Porque nunca salgo sola. Así que si voy a comer en el restaurante, iré con mi asistente, el tipo que me ayuda. Si voy a viajar, si voy a ir a visitarte a los Estados Unidos, ¿pagaré por dos billetes de avión? ¿Dos habitaciones de hotel? Así que es una población que puedes considerar y cuando estás haciendo este tipo de lugar como con el diseño universal, se ve maravilloso y es utilizable por todo el mundo. Osólo para dejarte con la pregunta en lugar de decir ¿por qué involucrarte? Es por eso que NO involucrar a las personas con una discapacidad porque está llena de beneficios de la guerra, cualquier punto que desee verla.
Kelly (31:45): Esos son grandes puntos. Y nuestra pregunta final que nos gusta hacerle a la gente es cuando te tenemos de vuelta en el podcast en cinco años, ¿de qué crees que hablaremos entonces?
Luis (31:59): Me encantaría decir que estaríamos hablando de cómo el diseño universal cambió la forma en que la gente vive, no sólo la forma en que la gente piensa cómo ahora todo el mundo y todo está incluido para todos.
Kelly (32:22): Muy bien. Es un pedido alto para el mundo para los próximos cinco años, pero me gusta. Muchas gracias por venir en el podcast y hablar conmigo hoy.
Luis (32:32): No, por el contrario, Kelly, muchas gracias por invitarme y deinvitarme. Realmente lo disfruté enormemente. Gracias.
Kelly (32:45): Thank que tanto para escuchar edificios y más allá de hoy. Para obtener más información sobre el diseño universal y accesible, echa un vistazo a nuestras notas de espectáculo en swinter.com/podcasts S W I N T E r.com/podcasts edificios y más allá es traído a usted por Steven winter associates. Creemos que el mundo no es tan sostenible, saludable, seguro, equitativo o inclusivo como debe ser y continuamente nos esforzamos por desarrollar e implementar soluciones innovadoras para mejorar el entorno construido. Nuestro equipo de producción incluye a Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Heather Breslin y mi coanfitrión Robb Aldrich y yo, Kelly Westby. Muchas gracias por escuchary y nos vemos la próxima vez.
How Codes Get Made with Gayathri Vijayakumar
Apr 08, 2020
Featuring
Gayathri Vijayakumar, Director, Residential Energy Services, Steven Winter Associates, Inc.
For 15 years, Gayathri Vijayakumar has specialized in evaluating residential and multifamily buildings with an emphasis on high-performance construction and renewable energy systems. Gayathri is a Director for Residential Energy Services at SWA, supporting team members on their energy efficiency, research, and product development projects. She also provides consulting to federal, state, and local agencies, codes, and programs to develop emerging standards and procedures that involve energy efficiency requirements.
Gayathri currently is a member of the ASHRAE 62.2 Multifamily Working Group, Chair of RESNET’s Standards Development Committee, SDC300, and a voting member of ASHRAE’s Residential Buildings Committee.
Curious about how building performance standards are decided upon?
The IECC, or “model code”, establishes the minimum requirements for building energy efficiency by specifying the performance levels for the building envelope, mechanical systems, lighting systems, and service water heating systems in homes and commercial businesses. This model code is updated every three years, and within those three years there is a LOT of behind-the-scenes work going on to determine the changes for the next version. In this episode, we learn all about the long and lengthy code development process from SWA’s own Gayathri Vijayakumar.
Testimony Videos from the Committee Action Hearing (April 2019, Albuquerque, NM):
RE88 Video (Proposed change to R402.4 for air leakage testing under residential code)
Testimony Videos from the Public Comment Hearing (October 2019, Las Vegas):
CE44 Video (Proposed change to commercial provisions to allow MF to use the R406 ERI Path)
CE96 Video (Proposed change to C402. 5 for air leakage testing for MF under commercial code)
CE97 Video (Proposed change to C402.5 for air leakage testing for non-MF under commercial code)
*While not mentioned during the podcast, Gayathri wanted to acknowledge Robby Schwarz, Reid Hart, Mike Moore, New Buildings Institute, the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition, the National Multifamily Housing Council, Ryan Meres, members from NY Department of State, and Joe Lstiburek, for their support and collaboration on many of the above proposals and at the hearings.
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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.
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): In this episode I spoke with Gayathri, Vijayakumar, who is an engineer here at Steven winter associates. For a few years She’s been involved in the code amendment process specifically with the IECC, the international energy conservation code, like all of the IECC codes. That’s international code council. These are updated every three years and she got involved with working on several amendments to the code to improve energy efficiency. This is this conversation is really about the process of how codes are amended, not the substance of the codes or the substance of the amendments, not the amendments themselves. We’ll link to that information for sure, but this is really about the process and this is not my area of expertise as you can clearly tell if you listen to this episode. But Gayathri does a great job of breaking down the process, answering my many questions and clarifying when I’m confused, which was fairly often, I really learned a lot. So let’s chat with Gayathri.
Dylan (01:30): Hey guys, this is Dylan Martello from the past passive house team at Steven winter associates. Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to let you know that the 2020 North American passive house network conference will now be hosted virtually on June 11th and 12th. This year I will be talking about how passive house can help buildings comply with the increasing carbon mandates enacted by cities across the US. Be sure to tune in online to see my session and others by registering at naphanconference.com that’s N a P H N conference.com. Enjoy the show.
Gayathri (02:06): So they call the IECC the model code. And so generally all the work that goes into the model code, so it’s been the 2009, the 2012, the 2015, 2018 IECC. Right. So every three years when they go through those cycles it’s, it’s set up to be the model code that local jurisdictions like States can adopt and become the state energy code. And so if we talk about the 2018 IECC, usually States don’t adopt it that same year. They’re not adopting it in 2018. Right? It just gets published in 2018 so they’re usually a few years behind. And so what’s strange about the code cycle is that before your state has even adopted it, before most users are using it for their buildings, you already have to know that you want to change it. You have to know what about it you don’t like. And so usually it ends up being the people in the game that either in the building industry or in energy advocacy groups, they’re the ones that know what they don’t like about the current code. And they already know what they want to change about it three years from now. And so I got involved in the code cycle back in 2016 and so a colleague of ours,
Robb (03:16): And so we’re talking right now in March of 2020 to put things in reference for people
Gayathri (03:21): Exactly. So four years ago, and again, similar to you, I was not interested in code development is not my background. I’m a mechanical engineer. I came to Steven winter associates 15 years ago. Never envisioned that code development is where I wanted to go. A coworker of ours, Sean Maxwell, had been involved in the New York state adoption of the 2015 IECC, so like we were discussing, every state wants to adopt the model code, but it’s a model code. So they’re going to amend it to suit whatever needs they have. And so when New York state was looking at the 2015 IECC, there were things they didn’t like about it. And so they’d reached out to Steven winter associates and specifically about air leakage testing. Sean Maxwell had some ideas for certain changes to the air leakage test standards. And so he worked with them, provided some language. And so what most most States will do is they’ll amend a certain part or multiple parts of the model code. And so that becomes our own state version. And so he was working with them and then he had the bright idea instead of just limiting this amazing change he’d come up with for air leakage testing to be used in New York state, why not submit it to the actual model code, the actual IECC. And so the 2015 had just been printed, and so as soon as it’s printed, you have to think about the next code cycle, which is the 2018 version. So we had the language ready and so he somehow got involved and figured out, you know, on the IECC website how to submit a change proposal. And so he did that in time and that had to be done by January of 2016 so New York state hadn’t even used the 2015 IECC. He had just seen it in language through the amendment process. And so he submitted the change, and he was also not well versed in code development. There’s probably other people in our company that did code development work, but that was his first experience with it.
Robb (05:08): Okay, cool. And long story short, that did not go through. So then he passed the torch to you for this next round of code amendments. Is that right?
Gayathri (05:20): Sort of. So what happened was there’s three stages to the code development process.
Robb (05:26): So let’s talk. So it’s 2020 now. So in 2019, you or people you were working, with submitted amendments went to several hearings or meetings about those amendments, and then there was ultimately some voting, which we’ll get into, but was the whole process like in 12 to 16 months?
Gayathri (05:54): Basically, it’s very rapid fire. And so the story of some of those amendments actually starts with Sean’s proposal. So he initially submitted that proposal, air leakage testing in 2016. Right. So every code cycle, it’ll always start with a proposal. And you’re right, we submitted a couple amendments. He had submitted one, but what happened was, is he, he moved to Australia. So he missed two key parts of the process. So after you submit a proposal, there’s a committee action hearing and we’ll talk about that. And then there’s also a public comment hearing. So because he missed those very critical rounds, he roped me into it at the public comment hearing level. And so I tried and failed because I knew nothing about what the cycle was, but I gained a lot of experience from that experience at that the public comment hearings, learned who the players were, tried to defend a proposal in front of a lot of people and learn who my opposition was. So I learned it the hard way. And so then fast forward to three years later, I knew a little bit more about the process than I did back in 2016. And so I used that and I knew what the dates were. You know, I knew how to propose something by 2019 for the 2021 IECC. So none of our States are using the 2018 IECC, I don’t know, a year and a half ago. Who to reach out to, to collaborate to propose something and submit it by January of 2019.
Robb (07:14): Okay. Okay. So you were involved with three three amendments, right? Yes. And we had talked a little bit before, it might make sense to focus on the simplest amendment first, what was the simplest amendment?
Gayathri (07:32): The simplest one to just show you how it goes through the process is one where I wanted to submit a change for multifamily buildings that are subject to the commercial code. People in the past, had to get proposals in for multifamily because they get cut at the three-story height, you know, three stories and less its residential. Four stories and up is commercial.
Robb (07:51): So you could have a three story multifamily building, add one more story, even though they’re exact same apartments, exact same construction type, entirely different code?
Gayathri (08:03): Exactly. Very Different requirements. And so people had tried and failed in the past to provide some kind of unified path forward for code compliance for multifamily. So I thought of a simple one. So I submitted and basically there’s a code compliance path for low-rise multifamily called the ERI path, which is energy rating index. And so it’s not very popular but some people could choose to use it and because recent changes had allowed it to be used for multifamily high rise buildings, I said, why don’t I propose it as a code compliance option for high rise multifamily that are subject to commercial code. And so I submitted that as a very simple change.
Robb (08:35): So ERI, it’s kind of like the HERS index, but the non proprietary version of a HERZ index. and so you can prove that you comply with for residential buildings with, by getting a hers rating or getting an ERI.
Gayathri (08:50): Yes. For code compliance. Since 2015 there has been an ERI path. Most people will, a prescriptive code compliance use a Rez check. There’s also a simulated performance path. And then they had introduced in 2015 this ERI energy rating index path.
Robb (09:05): I think you had said it was existing for high rise, but it was actually existing for residential and low rise and you propose to make it an option for high rise.
Gayathri (09:14): Correct.
Robb (09:14): Okay. Okay. Nice.
Gayathri (09:17): And so because that had changed relatively recently that you could do an ERI on a apartment in a multifamily high rise building, that’s a relatively new change. That’s why it was limited before when they introduced it in the 2015 IECC, it was limited to residential low rise multifamily three stories and below. It was limited to them from the beginning. And so, because I knew it had changed, I introduced a, a sentence in the commercial provisions.
Robb (09:44): So, so wait a minute. When you say you knew it would to change, you mean like you couldn’t even get an ERI in a, in an apartment in a high rise building?
Gayathri (09:52): Correct.
Robb (09:52): Okay. Okay. I didn’t follow you there. So Even pre-code just the whole ERI concept, you couldn’t apply it to a high rise building? And then now you can?
Gayathri (10:03): Exactly. And so that, I mean that was a process that took some time. But yeah, historically you weren’t able to do the ERI except for units in buildings that are three stories and less. So when that change came about and I was aware of that I introduced it as a possible option if a commercial multifamily building now that this ERI was now available due to recent changes in that standard. I wanted to say they could choose it as their code compliance path. So it was just going to be an option. And so I figured I would throw it in there and I knew I’d failed in the previous code cycle, but I figured this would draw out the opposition so I’d hear what they didn’t like about it. And so it was a simple proposal. It went in. I also failed to attend the committee action hearing for this particular proposal.
Robb (10:44): Oh, okay. So back up, so you submitted this, so this was trying to get it into the 2021 code. You submitted the proposal in January of 2019?
Gayathri (10:57): Yes.
Robb (10:57): Okay. So you submitted the proposal and then, then what happens?
Gayathri (11:01): And then what happens is a committee action hearing. And so this is part of every code cycle. So once you put in a proposal, there’s hundreds and hundreds of proposals. You don’t know who’s going to propose something similar to what you proposed, who’s going to contradict you. You don’t know what sections. It’s just the wild, wild West. It’s all unknown. And so there’s hundreds, hundreds. And this is just, this is just that IECC if we’re talking about all the other codes, I’m not even involved in that. And so you can access all the proposals. So you know what else is being proposed and similar sections and you can find out who they are, who the people are that propose them. But you go to the committee action hearing and this is where you defend your proposal. And so in this simple example of this, this one of my proposals I wasn’t, I didn’t stay on for the committee action hearing on this.
Robb (11:49): Whos the committee?
Gayathri (11:50): So theres the commercial provisions and residential provision. So there’s two sections of the IECC. So they have a residential committee at about 11 people on that that committee. And then the commercial committee was about 14 people. I don’t know how they pick those members. Again, I’m not this, I’m not the expert in co-development, but they have a list of members that are on the residential side and then a different group for commercial. So it’s a long process. It was over 10 days of testimony cause there’s hundreds and hundreds proposals and it’s a, it’s a very long amount of time to get everyone the opportunity to speak. So you don’t know what day you’re going to speak necessarily. And so I couldn’t stay for 10 days in a row to wait for my commercial proposal to be heard. And so I left. And so I listened to the testimony. It was 30 minutes. So people get up and you know, there’s lots of opposition. I had a couple of people speak in my defense. But anyways, it failed. The committee was not, you know, there wasn’t enough testimony and support in my proposal. I think if I’d been there, I probably could have argued against the opposition pretty effectively, but I wasn’t there. And so basically it fails.
New Speaker (12:57): Is this just a simple majority from the committee?
Gayathri (12:59): Simple majority from the committee.
Robb (13:00): And who’s on the committee?
Gayathri (13:02): I actually don’t know. It’s a, it’s a mix of people. There’s definitely a few faces that I recognize. There’s usually they try to keep it balanced. So between like building industry and then energy advocates, I think there’s a mix of people that they have to keep on the committee.
Robb (13:18): So here’s a question. Since your proposal was to treat high rise residential units as residential units, that was the commercial committee that had to hear that? Or was that the residential committee that had to hear that?
Gayathri (13:33): The commercial committee had to hear it. Cause you basically have to propose specific words for the IECC and that’s it. Those are the words that will get used if it gets, if it’s successful, nobody else goes back and wordsmiths your language. This is it. If you see typos in the code, that’s because that’s what happens. It’s not that the IECC goes back and says, Oh, what they meant to say was this. Now it’s, that’s it. You have one shot at it. And so because they didn’t like, you know, but they outlined they have to give rationale for their reason for rejecting it. And so for this particular one, they weren’t confident that the, the expansion of scope of the energy rating index was warranted to go to high rise. They were concerned about central systems and multifamily high rise buildings. They had a couple, you know, good reasons for wanting to have heard more or understood more. But the problem was I wasn’t there to give them all the answers. And so the next step, if you aren’t going to admit defeat is to submit a public comment. And so once they announced that the committee has made all their, their decisions, so they, they print out all the results and you can decide, I want to submit a public comment. And there’s a deadline. I think it was in early June or July. So you have to submit a public comment to bring your proposal back to give it a chance. And so that happens at a public comment hearing in October.
Robb (14:55): Okay. So yeah, a few weeks or months after the first meeting, which was called the committee action hearing they published their decisions and it’s basically either thumbs up or thumbs down. The majority of the committee
Gayathri (15:09): Yeah. And the document will show exactly how many committee members will be like, you know, 14 to zero or 13 to one. You’ll see the number of committee members who voted for and against and they have to give you some kind of summary statement of why, you know, it doesn’t wrap up the entire conversation. You know, the testimony for this one was 30 minutes. So they just have to give a, a sentence or two about why they, they didn’t like it.
Robb (15:30): So then you’re not done. Then you submit a public comment.
Gayathri (15:37): A public comment. And so the public comment anyone can submit, anyone can submit a public comment. And so for this particular one, I was the original proponent of the change proposal. I’m submitting a public comment. I did two of them, actually I did one just in support of my original one because I thought it was a good sound proposal. I just wasn’t there in person to defend it. And so you submit it online with a reason statement of why you think it should be heard again. And so I did one like that. And then the second one I did was to actually broker a compromise. You know, I’d heard loud and clear from the testimony of why they didn’t like it. So I said, okay, I hear you.There’s qualms about central systems. So I limited the scope of the language in the, in the proposal to say you can use this but not if you have central systems.
Robb (16:25): So only if the heating, cooling, water, heating
Gayathri (16:27): was all in unit systems. It seemed like what I heard from the testimony from the committee action hearing was that was kind of like the really point of contention. And I thought, you know, all right, I can meet them halfway, I’ll propose two, and so the reason to propose two is then it gets on the public comment hearing agenda. If you don’t submit anything, you never get a chance to defend it again at the public comment. So if I’d missed that it would just be dead in the water. And so you have to make sure that you submit a public comment. The, the hurdle is much higher. It’s we’ll get to voting probably at some point in this conversation, but usually it is just a 50% simple majority vote to disagree with anybody’s proposal. So it’s very easy to reject changes.
Robb (17:13): So, so, so hang on, so anybody and everybody can submit a public comment. And probably most people who have their proposed amendment rejected will come back and submit a public comment. Okay. So they submitted public comment and then there’s this next meeting, which is a public comment hearing. I should be able to remember that name, but I won’t. So at the public comment hearing, which was, which was when in 2019?
Gayathri (17:40): it’s usually in October. And so the committee action hearings usually like in April or may and then the public comment is usually in October.
Robb (17:50): All right, so you went out to Vegas, wasn’t this one?
Gayathri (17:52): This year was in Las Vegas.
Robb (17:53): So then is this another 10 day?
Gayathri (17:59): The window’s a little shorter because there’s not as many proposals on the public comment agenda. So in the committee action hearing, everybody’s proposals are being heard. And it’s just the committee of 11 people on the residential and it was 14 on the committee, on the commercial one everyone gets heard, but everyone only gets two minutes to speak in favor. And then one minute opposition. But it’s all the proposals on the public comment hearing agenda, the, it’s less, right. So if their original proposal was well liked by the committee and they said thumbs up and nobody submits a public comment, that’s not on the public comment aGendra so we’ve whittled down the number of proposals that are going to be heard.
Robb (18:38): I see. So it’s both ways. They turn proposals down and then people who actually want them submit a comment or they give the proposals a thumbs up and people who don’t like them will submit a comment. Okay. So then what’s that like? Like do you at least have an idea of when your, when your amendment is going to be heard?
Gayathri (19:00): It’s not a very clear idea. They give you a schedule and so they try and stick to it. And so some days you’d be there from 8:00 AM and they’d say we’re going to go until seven but then you’d be there and they’re like, we’re not making enough progress so we have to get, you have to go through it a lot faster. So you could be be there until 10 o’clock at night. So you know some people you just have to book a one way ticket because you don’t know. There was definitely times where I thought my proposal might not get heard before I have to leave. And so it is a little, it is very hard. Yeah.
Robb (19:26): Like, is there an order, like there’s 4,000 comments, you’re 2,782 or whatever?
Gayathri (19:34): They do Print the agenda. The hearing order. Okay. And so what happens is at the beginning of the public comment, hearing people can make a motion to reorder certain proposals and regroup them and things like that. But it has to be sustained by the voting members. So some people will just see that, you know, there’s a getting moved ahead or behind to somebody and they’ll reject it for that reason. So yeah, you definitely need to be present when certain things like that happen. But yeah, you can change the order on it. It is a lot.
Robb (20:04): Wow. So wait, is it the same 11 or 14 people?
Gayathri (20:11): Ah, no. Good question. That’s different. It’s totally different. So the committee action hearing, right? the first meeting in April, right? So you have this great proposal, it’s a great idea. You’re defending it against the opposition. Anybody who can talk to you, but you’re only trying to convince the people on the committee. So there was 11 or so people on the residential 14 on, on commercial. And the public comment hearing is completely different. You’re not trying to convince a committee, you’re trying to actually come convince voting members. And we haven’t talked about voting members yet. So voting members are people like government and state officials. It could be from like your local department of buildings, every jurisdiction, all these authorities having jurisdictions, they have these voting members that go to the public comment hearing cause they’re basically there to see which proposals are probably going to make it into the next round of the model code. And so whether they like it or not, whether they’re going to have to have all this extra work the next time the model code gets adopted by their state or if they’re going to have to change it. So they have a vested interest to be there and they get to vote. So they get to hear it firsthand from anyone who had a proposal to see if they actually support it. So that’s who you’re trying to convince.
Robb (21:18): There must be thousands of these voters you would think in the country, but then any of those thousands can come to this meeting?
Gayathri (21:27): Yes. Yes. But guess how many were there actually voting? I mean like we just sat like there’s so many days on end that you have to commit to being here.
Robb (21:38): 112?
Gayathri (21:40): For certain codes. Like so there’s the IRC, the international residential code, there’s a building code, mechanical code. So when they got down to the IECC, the residential provisions, some of the votes were only a total of 60 voters. So it’s not a lot of people.
Robb (21:56): So this second round of meetings, the public comment hearing, there are thousands of potential voters, tens of thousands probably.
Gayathri (22:09): Yeah, definitely thousands. But the only ones that can vote are the ones that actually make the trip to wherever the hearing is and this year was in Vegas. And if they’re in the room at the time that the proposal is heard. So there was a lot of ebb and flow of like how many people were in the room. So you could, you know, they could break for dinner and your proposal, it could be the next one up. And here you are in Las Vegas. People don’t come back after dinner. And so all of a sudden there’s only 11 voters when your proposal is heard and it fails because there’s just not enough people. Or the people that you knew were going to vote your way are gone now.
Robb (22:41): Okay. So, all right. So anyways, you have 11 to 20,000 voters in the room and you have what? So your amendment is called number 2784, whatever. And you come up and so you will explain your public comment, so what happened with this?
Gayathri (23:11): So we’ll go with this example. So this first example, right? So first of all, the committee hated it, right? So it got denied 14 to zero on April. So it was, so the motion on the floor, so this all lots of wording that I was not familiar with before. The motion on the floor is the committee disapproved it. Okay. Right. So basically the first motion on the floor in Vegas at the public comment hearing is to sustain this move, this disapproval vote that the committee had. Okay. So they say, you know who wants to speak? Who wants to speak in favor of the committee’s motion for disapproval. So all the same people that hated it before get up and speak again. But this time I’m there. And so I also have some other people that did like the proposal who had spoken on on behalf of it when I wasn’t there. And so we all line up and we speak in favor of it. So it’s a two step process at the public comment hearing if the committee already said they did not like it, you have to convince enough people. It’s a simple majority of the voting members to at least allow you to present your public comment.
Robb (24:13): So you just end up convincing twice. Okay, so you stand up and say, I make a motion to explain the rationale for this amendment or, or in this case, the modifications I’ve made to the amendment.
Gayathri (24:24): Yes. So basically that first, that first step is like they all say all the things they hated about it. You got up and say, no, it was really good. And we really want to convince you guys to let us talk about the public comment. The first motion is to let them, you had to convince them to say the public comments worth hearing. And so we cleared that bar. We told them, you know, we have two good public comments, just give us a chance. And so we had the, we got the simple majority to say, all right, we’ll give them a chance to explain the public comments. And then public comment comes out and I had two options, right? I was just the same one I’d proposed before. And then the one where I said, you know, here’s a compromise. The, the commercial committee on this didn’t like it cause it was too broad in scope had central systems. So I have a public comment that’s very limited. And so when I defended that one that got, you know, 80% of the vote in the room, the compromise did. And so that became the standing motion instead of disapproval. The public comment hearing results would say that that was as modified by public comment that becomes the result from this public comment hearing was that instead of disapproval we want to go through with this proposal, but as modified by a public comment.
Robb (25:37): Were the initial committee members there also?
Gayathri (25:39): Yes. So a lot of the original committee members were there. They are, some of them are still voting members and so they might’ve been there voting. I know I spoke to a couple of them to, you know, get their firsthand input on why they liked it or why they didn’t like it. So yeah, they’re voting, they’re also voting members.
Robb (25:56): Okay, cool. So did anybody come stand up and speak against it?
New Speaker (26:02): Oh yeah. Pretty much the same people from the committee action hearing, which I wasn’t there for, but I watched the videos. I knew who they were. There’s video of all of this.
Robb (26:14): So we’ll, I’ll make sure to put the link to that in the show notes for everybody who can’t wait to watch two weeks of code hearing. Oh my gosh.
Gayathri (26:25): Oh, and also the committee action hearing. So We’ll just leave it at, I was convincing enough that it was worth the vote of the people, the room, and they agreed.
Robb (26:44): Okay. Very good. Then it came out of Vegas at the committee after the public comment hearing. Then all of these hundreds of proposals go to all of those thousands of voting members across the country. Is that right?
Gayathri (27:05): Well, you basically, you do have to get into the system, you have to like there’s a deadline. I’m not a voter. So the online voters, they call them the governmental member voters or something like that. So only certain people can vote. Like the people in the public comment hearing, you know, they had a vote cause they were like a local official and they were there. So those are the same kinds of people that can vote online. So there’s this online vote that happens in like November or December. And so at that point you there was some deadline where you had to register. It’s just like voter registration. You had to make sure you registered to vote in time and if you did, then you can participate in the online vote and you don’t have to vote for every single proposal. You can go in and cherry pick the ones you want to vote for.
Gayathri (27:45): But when you go and do your vote, they’ll give you the whole history. So the original proposal is there, you’ll have the voting results from the original committee. You’ll see that like in my example that they disapproved it. You’ll see that in the public comment round, they, you know, the, the committee was overturned and the public comment decided that they liked the public comment. And so the voter will get to see all of that. They’ll get to see the numbers, they’ll see their original language, they’ll see the modified language and they can make a decision. And so that’s the final vote.
Robb (28:17): And, I think you said that there were way more votes, way more possible voters actually voted this year. Is that right? How did the online vote work for this?
Gayathri (28:31): So this ne was a little bit different than the the first year that I was involved in 2016 when you did the public comment hearing, all those votes were just taken by a wave of hands. And so there was no electronic voting. And so in this code cycle, when we were in Las Vegas, all the voters had these electronic gizmos and they were doing their voting electronically. And so all those votes automatically transferred into the online system. And so, you know, instead of starting at zero votes, so like in the first set, the first one I was involved in back in 2016 when I got to the online vote, the one that happened in like November, December, there’s zero votes for any proposals. You start from scratch. But this year you at least started with the 50 or 60 people that voted while they’re in Las Vegas. And they have not yet released the final vote tallies for the 2021 IECC, So I don’t know how many people totally voted. I just know at least all the public common votes automatically counted.
Robb (29:33): Wait, but, the online voting happened in like late in 2019.
Gayathri (29:40): Yes. So like November/December It wrapped up. They just haven’t released the final voting tallies. They have preliminary results out. So we kind of an idea if everything goes smoothly. I think they just have to go back. There’s like a, a process, again, I’m not familiar, but there’s a process where they go back and check the votes.
Robb (29:54): So, you know preliminary numbers but it has to be like certified or whatever? What were the preliminary numbers?
Gayathri (30:01): So for at least my, this proposal that we’ve been talking about, it’s approved.
Robb (30:07): By a good margin.?
Gayathri (30:08): I don’t know. Those are preliminary thumbs up, thumbs down.
Robb (30:14): So because it got approved at the public comment hearing. Does it only need A simple majority of all the voters to approve it?
Gayathri (30:32): So this is where it gets complicated. So it’s a very low bar to reject any code change proposal, which is why it’s generally very hard to get a change through. So the voting body, if over 50% of people don’t like something, it just gets denied. So the one that I had, it got rejected by the first committee. So at the public comment hearing it didn’t need a simple majority. It needed the two thirds majority to get it through. And then once it gets the online vote, it still needs the two thirds to sustain it.
Robb (31:10): so because that initial committee meeting turned it down, Each of the subsequent stages needs a two thirds majority to approve it.
Gayathri (31:23): Yeah. So the bar gets raised higher, that’s what the purpose of that committee Action hearings.
Robb (31:28): Okay. Okay. Yeah. But so then initial the initial tally looks like you got two thirds.
Gayathri (31:35): Yes.
Robb (31:35): Okay. And we’ll know the final results?
Gayathri (31:39): I have no idea when, we are waiting. It looks like on the preliminary results, It’s going to be one of the most efficient code cycles yet if it goes through.
Robb (31:58): what do you mean to most efficient codes?
Gayathri (32:00): A lot of energy efficient proposals got approved.
Robb (32:08): Oh okay. Should we talk about one of your other ones?
Gayathri (32:25): So the other two I was part of were air leakage, air leakage tests. And so that’s how I got roped into this back in 2016 and because I failed at it, I knew I wanted to try again. And because I knew who the opposition was and I knew what they didn’t like about it, I spent, you know, basically 2018 corralling those people and saying, what didn’t you like about it? Can we work together? Instead of being on opposite sides of the aisle? Can we be on the same team coproponents of a proposal for air leakage testing on the residential side. And so we did, so we worked together.
Robb (32:59): And we probably shouldn’t name any of these people?
Gayathri (33:02): Maybe not. I don’t know. I don’t want to take credit for it, but I mean I guess I didn’t ask permission to mention them, but a group of us worked together to get the air leakage test metric changed. And so it was very similar to what Sean had proposed for New York back in 2015. And so we worked together and at the committee action hearing it was very well supported by the residential committee. And so in this case it was supported by the committee. So basically we haven’t talked about this yet, but if it’s supported by the committee and nobody submits a public comment against it, then it goes on something called a consent agenda. And so basically that’s just a shoe in to be part of the next code cycle.
Gayathri (33:49): So we had this, we had this winning proposal on the air leakage tests. We’re very excited about it. There were two public comments against it. And so we worked with those two public commenters to ask them, you know, what is wrong with our proposal? How can we work together before this gets to the public comment debate in Las Vegas. And so in working with them up until, you know, that public comment hearing was at the end of October, I think up until like the middle of October, I was still working with them to say, is there a compromise we can work out? And so we did and we worked out a compromise.
Robb (34:21): So Briefly. This was about air leakage testing in multifamily buildings?
Gayathri (34:26): Yes. And again, this is this particular one I had two. One was for residential buildings and one was for commercial. So when I say residential, it’s low rise multifamily, three stories and less. So it was an air leakage testing. So since 2012 IECC the residential buildings have had a test to either a three air changes per hours of 50 pascals or five air changes at 50 pascals. And that’s based on climate zone. So the warmer climate zones have the five and the colder climate zones have the three. you can do this for a single family home, but it’s the same metric for apartments or attached townhouses. You know, the metric never changed and it’s a volume based metric and you can test it at the building level or you can test it for individual apartments. There’s no distinction. And so for all the States that have adopted the 2012 or 2015 IECC, they struggled with that metric. Because there’s a lot of leakage between attached units. And so the work around, because maybe their state didn’t amend the code, a lot of States did amend the code to make, you know, the three ACH 50 a higher number or something more easy to comply with.
Robb (35:29): So I guess from our standpoint, let me back up. So when you’re certifying a building for code compliance or whatever, you take a blower door you stick it in the door to that apartment, you depressurize that apartment and only that apartment and you need three or five ACH 50. Some of that leakage comes from outside, but plenty of it comes from neighboring apartments up and down. So I guess our, our take is, you know, compartmentalization is good, you know, air leakage between apartments is bad if your neighbor smokes or you know, for indoor air quality reasons. So from an energy standpoint, yeah, maybe, you know, outdoor air is the biggest culprit from an energy standpoint, but for IAQ reasons that’s why we were kind of like, just test each apartment. Is that the rationale?
Gayathri (36:15): Yeah. Well basically, the rationale was there were a lot of opposition that were stating very similar things. The air between apartment that doesn’t reflect an energy penalty. Why are we talking about this? You know, you want this for indoor air quality. And so I learned enough about codes that the way around that argument was that the codes already allow compartmentalization testing. So the code already said you can test an apartment individually to meet that requirement of the three or the five ACH 50 so I wasn’t actually introducing a new concept. It already had compartmentalization testing. It already allowed you to test and include air from a neighboring apartment to meet the compliance. So luckily for me, I could, I could stand up to that opposition comment by stating that because that was true. I wasn’t introducing some new testing approach. All we were trying to do is say let’s, let’s continue to test the way code has allowed these buildings to tests, but let’s give them a different metric. And so the different metric instead of the ACH 50 was a surface area based metrics. So we use 0.3 CFM at 50 pascals per square foot of the enclosure of the apartment. It’s a metric energy star has used. LEED has used, ASHRAE 62 two as used. And so that’s the one that Sean helped get into the New York state code back in 2006
Robb (37:31): Okay. So for a single family home, it’s kind of all external, but for an apartment it’s some party walls.
Gayathri (37:38): Yeah. And so we got that. So we limited the scope of it. And so that was part of that compromise. We limited the scope of it to multifamily buildings and very small single family homes. So it wasn’t going to be a metric that was gonna be allowed for all single family homes. And so that was the, that was a proposal. And so because it was approved by the committee, the committee definitely likes options. Builders have been struggling with how to meet the current test metric, this three and five ACH 50, they’re always looking for work arounds and guarded tasks and other approaches to comply with the standard. And so they liked this approach because it gave the builder and option a new metric that maybe they won’t have to resort to a more expensive test procedure to comply. And so they liked it. And so because we dealt with the public comments and they agreed to withdraw their public comment. And so in doing so, it came off the public comment agenda, which saved it.
Robb (38:34): you lost me again. So This proposal would allow to certify a multiple low rise multifamily building, you could test apartment by apartment. Is that right? Per CFM. Per square foot
Gayathri (38:47): Right. You could already test department department. That didn’t change. We were just changing the metric to this, this new one.
Robb (38:53): Okay. The CFM per square foot of enclosure area. So two people submitted public comments against it after it was approved by the committee. But then you talk to those two people and got them to withdraw their objections. Correct. So then what happens?
Gayathri (39:10): So by doing that, it saves the proposal. So the proposal now doesn’t get debated at the public comment hearing. So if it’s not being debated, the public comment hearing it goes on something called the consent agenda and the consent agenda basically skips the public comment hearing. And so all the online vote sees is that it’s just as submitted. So that’s basically going to go in as, as submitted. That’s the, if the committee said we like this as submitted, it skips the public comment hearing, it’s basically going to go into the 2021 IECC as it was. So that’s, that’s the Holy grail right there. That’s what you want. You want to go with a winning submission at the committee action hearing, get it as submitted and it has zero public comments.
Robb (39:50): So in Vegas, you didn’t have talk about this at all?
Gayathri (39:53): No, thank goodness. No. And again, this was like a week leading up to it.
Robb (40:00): So what were their objections? Like you didn’t, you didn’t change anything? Did they misunderstand?
Gayathri (40:05): No. Well there was two. So no one was just wordsmithing part of the definition that we had for enclosure area.
Robb (40:14): Did you change something then?
Gayathri (40:16): No, we did not change something. We told them like we hear you, We think maybe we could change this in this, in another code cycle. And so some things like that aren’t worth changing. And the way we explained it to them is, you know, if we do change this because you know, we agree with you that the wording could be better. The problem we face is now when we go to public comment hearing instead of just being a simple majority like this just skates through to the 2021 IECC, now you’ve raised the bar to convincing two thirds of the people that now we need the standard. So is the change that you want so valuable that you’d rather you’d sacrifice his whole thing just being shot and not making it at all? So they just wanted to tweak it. And so we said we hear you, but I think we could work together on the next code cycle to fine tune that language. But the substance of it is so important that we’re hoping that you’ll withdraw the comment so we can actually get this metric into the code. And then wordsmith, the fine details of it was just the definition of my closure area. Okay. And the other one was also, the other one was a little bit more complicated. Again, like I said, when people submit proposals, you don’t know who are all the groups that are getting together to submit proposals on the same section. And so there was a bunch of people submitting on air leakage test because it has been a struggle for so long for multifamily builders. And so it was just, it was kind of a conflict with something that they were trying to do. And so we kind of negotiated away where they would do their public comment and we had a public comment on theirs. And so we kind of worked out a deal that, you know, we overlayed all our, our proposals together and we realized, you know, there’s a solution here that works. And so that’s kind of, you know, they agree to withdraw their public comment on theirs on ours. And we were agreed to withdraw public comment on theirs. I know it’s complicated. Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s all about conversations and just work. At the end of the day, it comes down to, you know, a lot of us just want the same thing, but we’re kind of going at it the wrong way. Like you don’t know what your opposition, you don’t have a chance to have these conversations with people before you submit the proposal. You don’t know who those people are. So once you do know who they are, you work together and figure out what the objections are. And then you can get like a compromise proposal through.
Robb (42:33): But, you do have people who are just, Intransigent is the word that’s coming to mind, but that may be a little harsh, but just really opposed to codes requiring more and more of builders and developers.
Gayathri (42:56): There’s definitely two factions that are usually represented at these hearings and people that are kind of resistant to change and people who are saying we were not changing fast enough. So those are kind of dueling factions that are always out there. And so some of my proposals, you know, I’m only there for a couple things. You know, I was there for this energy rating index thing. I was there for air leakage tests. Some of these other folks are there for the long haul. They have proposals invested in every section of the code.
Robb (43:24): So it still goes out to all the thousands of voters around the country for the online vote. But for this air leakage testing proposal, it only needs a simple majority Because The objections to the committee got withdrawn.
Gayathri (43:40): Right. And so it doesn’t even need anything at the online vote. It on the consent agenda.
Robb (43:50): Oh so It’s just code? It will be code? that you know for sure?
Gayathri (43:55): I believe so. Again, I’m not a super duper expert on it, but the way I understand it is that the Holy grail is to get something on the consent agenda. And the consent agenda basically is the committee action. Like the committee hearing, they approved it, nobody put a public comment against it. So there’s no other reason to debate at the public comment. So when you get to the, so they hold a consent, there’s a emotion at the beginning of the public comment hearing and it’s something about the consent agenda and all the proposals. There’s hundreds that were liked by the committee. So it’s just one fell swoop motion like all of these approved. Yes, something like that. Okay. And so at the online vote, maybe they it again, but I think it’s another just motion like yes, obviously were going to check this all the way through. I’m not a voter, so I don’t exactly know it looks like, but basically my understanding is that is what you want. That’s, that’s the goal. And so I didn’t have to clear another 50% that was, that was just that, that was why it was so important to have that discussion with the two public commenters to say, do you really want to have your public comment go through and raise the bar on this? Or do you actually like the substance of this change enough to say, all right, we can figure this out. And they did. Okay. And so the other, the other proposal I had is that same metric number three, number three. So this was, you know, that’s if it’s good for low rise multifamily, why can’t it be good for high rise multifamily? And so in the commercial code they also have an air leakage section.It’s just not mandatory. And so it’s an optional test. And so optional test means nobody tests it. And so for a couple of code cycles, they had also tried to get A mandatory air leakage test to be part of the commercial code. So residential codes been doing this since 2012 IECC commercial’s just had this optional visual inspection. And so I was approached and asked, you know, can you submit this proposal? We’ve got a technical brief on this. Can you submit one? And I said, sure. And so basically they had three overlapping proposals. What happens is sometimes if somebody doesn’t like one aspect of your proposal, it’s dead in the water. Even if they like everything else, right? They’re going to nitpick about that one particular aspect. And even if all the rest of the good stuff, they support it, they can’t support it because it’s one aspect. So the approach was to split this air leakage test proposal into three pieces. And the one I was involved in was for multifamily. And so it was going to require air leakage test for multifamily buildings. And they wanted to do the same metric that we had successfully gotten in low rise or they anticipated, they didn’t know at that time, they anticipated we would. So the same metric, the same 0.3 CFM FFT pascals test the apartments. So that was one that actually was also submitted by the commercial committee that heard it in in April. That was in Albuquerque. So that was voted as submitted and then it did have a couple public comments that were approved. It was approved. So the committee liked it. They did think that it was a good time to change. And I don’t remember the, the makeup of that committee but they did you know, they supported this air leakage test becoming mandatory. Again, I wasn’t there and I didn’t watch the video for that one. But in the public comment hearing there were two or three folks that submitted public comments cause they didn’t want to do air leakage tests in these multifamily buildings. It’s expensive. Things like that. Multifamily or any commercial buildings, they had split it into three because they thought if multifamily got through but the other ones didn’t, at least multifamily got through. And then if, if the other one, which I didn’t submit that was for non multifamily. So the other commercial buildings under commercial code
Robb (47:36): Didn’t I remember you mentioning you testifying on the, like there was a certain big box store that had some very strong objections.
Gayathri (47:43): Yes. They had very strong objections, even though they have a giant webpage devoted to how sustainable they are for their consumers. But they were out there against doing air leakage testing because they didn’t want to spend an extra $20,000 on a test. So yeah. So in that case, very similar, the committee liked it. The committee liked it when I had a residential proposal on the commercial proposal, the committee liked it. This time there’s three public comments, but we didn’t work together. We tried to have conversations with them to say, you know, do you really want to pose this? Like how about you know, could you meet us halfway? And so those conversations didn’t go anywhere. And so that’s why we were faced with debating them on the floor in Las Vegas. And so we did. And so we being other co proponents, other likeminded individuals, people that you know come out of the woodwork when you’re at the, at the hearings.
Robb (48:33): So who gets to talk? Like do you get to talk cause you are the initial proponent of the amendment?
Gayathri (48:39): Yeah. Anyone can talk, with no qualifications, no credential, nothing. You could have anyone. Well maybe not. Again, these are code hearings. It’s not super exciting. So yeah you can walk up there and basically you just queue up in a line and everyone gets their two minutes to say something. And then there’s a moderator keeping track of everyone. Two minutes. You have two minutes of testimony and then the next person. Basically all the people that are kind of on the same side of the proposal, they all speak. So we all stand up in a line behind the microphone and we just kind of discuss who wants to go first and who wants to go. So I remember on the flight to Las Vegas, I had a lot of strategizing to do. So. I definitely, you know me, I’m very organized. I basically laid out everyone’s testimony and said, you will say this and we will say this and I don’t cause you only have two minutes. So we didn’t want to overlap our all our content and there’s a lot of content to get through. And so we kind of just coordinated that to, you know, these are the points each of us can cover. And then other people jump up and say what they want. And you never know what the opposition is going to say or who’s going to say it. Well you preempted a lot of the opposition. Well because you already know what they’re going to say because they’ve said it at the committee action.
Robb (49:59): So you just kind of preemptively refuted?
Gayathri (50:03): Sometimes you have to do that because you only have two minutes. And so you know, they’re going to come back and you can rebut what they say in another minute. So you just go, it’s a, it’s a lot of back and forth, but the moderator makes sure people aren’t duplicating testimony and things like that. So.
Robb (50:17): So for this, for this commercial code air testing, I guess there are three amendments, three proposed amendment, is that what you said? Or three parts.
Gayathri (50:26): So 3 independent Proposals all in the same section with the hopes that if all three passed they would work, they would get melded together and they would work. But they were willing to sacrifice one. If one had the support of the committee or the public comment voters, then, you know, one having one was better than having none. And so I think maybe, and I wasn’t involved in prior cycles, so I think maybe previously maybe they had failed by looping, you know, lumping them all together.
Robb (50:55): Okay. So because the initial committee in Albuquerque liked these proposals, You only needed a majority of voters present at the public comment hearing to approve it in order for it to come out of the public comment hearing as recommended?
Gayathri (51:15): Correct. Exactly. And so the people that are submitting public comments, they have to know that they have to convince two thirds of the people in the room that their public comment is better than ours. And so there was one public comment that was like another wordsmithing. But you have to get two thirds of the people to agree with that. And then same for like the people that just flat out didn’t want it. So they had to be more convinced.
Robb (51:40): So all of these three, did they pass?
Gayathri (51:44): Yes. So far, so far so good.
Robb (51:50): So from the Hearing in Vegas, They all came through?
Gayathri (51:51): Yes.
Robb (51:52): All right. And then so then it goes to the online vote. So, okay. Backing up, in Vegas, you would need two thirds to overturn the committee’s recommendation?
Gayathri (52:06): Yes.
Robb (52:07): And then they didn’t get two thirds on any of these. So then it goes to the online voters and they would need to approve it by a simple majority in order for these proposals to become code? And did you get preliminary results?
Gayathri (52:21): Yes and So these are all, all the preliminary results are just lumped in together. So nobody knows anything else. I mean the preliminary results are, yes, those are, those are in, yes. But again, everything’s just still preliminary.
Robb (52:31): So you batted a thousand this code cycle.
Gayathri (52:34): I was told that, yes. I don’t know what that means, but something to do with baseball. It was easier when you only had, you know, I’m only there defending like three proposals whereas other people are there with giant binders cause they have to speak in defense of every single section. And so I went in there and all I had to focus on were the three that I cared about.
Robb (52:58): Wow. Yeah. And but you were psyched,
Gayathri (53:01): Yeah, it’s so fun. I like a good fight. And the thing is, the things I was fighting for just made sense. You know, they made sense. We’d put in the effort to coordinate and discuss, you know, we reached out to the opposition to see what they didn’t like about it to understand it and we put words into the proposal that kind of addressed their main concerns. So I think we proactive about it and so I thought, yeah, I think that helped.
Robb (53:28): Nice. Awesome. So what do you get on the slate for next code cycle?
Gayathri (53:35): Oh my goodness. I don’t even know. All the little word smithing and things like that that people said, you know, Oh no, we got to go back and you know, fix certain things. I know these three proposals on the commercial side, you know, when they melded together it, some of it is a little clunky, so I know people want to, you know, fix that.
Robb (53:55): But these are some pretty significant changes.
Gayathri (53:57): Yes. That’s what I was saying. Like from the beginning, like, you know, this is going to be the code cycle that I think really makes an impact on how efficient buildings will be. That once they would adopt the 2021 there’s tons of proposal I was not involved in that were, you know, pretty significant changes to the 2018 IECC. So I think it’s going to be pretty impressive. Things like the energy rating index, you know, dropping those scores a little bit lower, making those more stringent. Yeah, so there was a lot of changes I wasn’t involved in, but yeah. You know, maybe, you know, maybe the next cycle air leakage testing instead of the 0.3 number, maybe we make it a little tighter, you know, maybe 0.3 goes down to something else, you know, we’ll propose something different. So yeah, no, I find it interesting and Challenging.
Robb (54:40): So do you know when we’ll get the absolute final decision on all the voting for the 2021?
Gayathri (54:46): I do not. I have asked and I’m sure the second it gets released there’ll be, you know, blogs about it and things like that because everyone’s just waiting because definitely the people that are into energy efficiency and advancing the codes and getting to net zero, they’re excited about this one. So the second it’s, it’s legit, you’re going to see blog posts about it.
Robb (55:05): All right. And we’ll post it. Yeah, absolutely. And you have a couple of blog posts about this already that we can link to.
Gayathri (55:12): Yes. When I came back there was just, so I was just so excited about this process and you know, coming away with a successful proposals, you know, this is a dry topic. But I find it super exciting and I just liked the idea, you know, I think even like Sean when he got involved, the fact that, you know, we work in buildings and we just don’t realize that we could actually be the ones that changed the rules for all the buildings, not just the ones we work on with our individual clients. It’s just like, if we want to have a broad impact on buildings, we got to affect, you know, more than the ones that we know of. It’s got, this is the international energy conservation code and so we need to raise the bar for all of the buildings. And so if we have a good idea that makes sense. It’s not just like my way or the highway, you know, reach out to the builders and say, would this change work for you? Yeah. So instead of just like fighting against like, you know, code is, you know, it’s too hard. It doesn’t make sense. Instead of fighting it and complaining about it, you know, you just go and submit changes to it. So I thought it was fun.
Robb (56:07): Awesome. Thanks for doing it. Thanks for talking about it.
Gayathri (56:11): Yeah, no problem.
Robb (56:16): Thank you to Gayathri. We have quite a few links on the show notes page if you want to check out more on this topic. Gayathri written some blog posts about the amendments themselves that she was working on and also about the process that we’ve been talking about. And all of these meetings and hearings are recorded and we’ve linked to them to the relevant videos that deal with the amendments guy through is working on. And I was impressed watching some of these videos. The, the hearings were run very efficiently. People were very concise for the most part and professional, very substantive comments very unlike say political debates. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I learned a lot watching much about the process, watching some of these videos. And finally at the time I’m talking right now, late March of 2020, the results of voting have completed, but the, the code itself is still not final.
Robb (57:16): As Gayathri said, the, there was a kind of a groundswell of changes that really will push energy efficiency in a lot. A lot of buildings if they all get approved, voters approved them. But now there are challenges as I understand it, there are challenges relating to the procedure. This procedure that we’ve been talking about for the last hour or so was not done correctly. And so the results, the 2021 IECC will not be finalized until these challenges to the procedure are sorted out. We have links to more info about all this. Also, show notes are at swinter.com/podcast that’s S W I N T E R.com/podcast buildings and beyond is produced by Steven winter associates. Our mission here is to improve the built environment. That’s really the core of our official company mission statement. That means better buildings or durable buildings, accessible, sustainable, healthy, new buildings, existing buildings. We are looking for help in doing this because it’s winter to.com/careers. If you are interested, we have openings in all of our offices, Connecticut, New York city, Washington, D C and our newest office in Boston. Thanks again to Gayathri and to the whole a podcast production team here. Alex Mirabile, Jayd Alvarez, Heather Breslin, Kelly Westby, Dylan Martello and myself. Rob Aldrich. Thanks.
A Path to Zero Waste with Celeste McMickle
Mar 03, 2020
Featuring
Celeste McMickle
Celeste McMickle is the Director of Client Solutions for TRUE Zero Waste certification with the USGBC. She is trained as an architect, and is a certified permaculture designer, master composter, TRUE Advisor, Green Rater, LEED-H AP, and horticulturalist. Celeste uses her background in architecture, green building, and zero-waste to improve both the natural and built environment wherever possible.
We often address large-scale sustainability issues by focusing on improving building energy use, material use, and accessibility. But what about waste? According to the EPA, the average American generates 4.51 pounds of trash each day.
To learn about strategies for reducing waste, we interviewed Celeste McMickle, Director of Client Solutions for TRUE Zero Waste certification with the USGBC. TRUE Zero Waste certification supports facilities and businesses in achieving their zero waste goals by providing a clear path to certification using a point-based rating system and educational tools, such as the TRUE Advisor program. Celeste shares what large-scale companies are doing internally to make an impact via the True Zero Waste certification, how zero waste solutions help save money, and even what “wishcycling” is.
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.
Mission Critical: Embodied Carbon in Sustainable Design with Kai Starn and Catherine Paplin
Feb 04, 2020
Featuring
Kai Starn
Kai Starn is a Senior Sustainability Consultant at SWA on the Sustainable Building Services team. He is a green building advocate, serves on the board of the CT Green Building Chapter, and combines his enthusiasm for zero energy design with Whole Building Life Cycle Assessment.
XPS insulation boards
Catherine Paplin
Catherine Paplin is a Senior Building Enclosure Consultant at SWA. She adheres to the twin precepts that preservation and restoration are inherently sustainable practices, and that designing for climate is an essential spur of good design.
For the past 30 years or more, when we’ve been talking about the carbon emissions of buildings, we’ve usually been talking about operational emissions – the carbon put in the atmosphere after the building is built. We now know that 30-50% of a building’s total carbon emissions are already in the atmosphere before the lights are even turned on. These emissions are referred to as embodied carbon. There is an enormous, industry-wide effort underway to incorporate accounting for embodied carbon in construction, because the realization has dawned that you can’t build ‘green’ without it.
On this episode, Robb sits down with SWA’s Kai Starn, Senior Sustainability Consultant, and Catherine Paplin, Senior Building Enclosure Consultant to hear about WHY embodied carbon is becoming a larger part of the conversation.
Athena: Oldest embodied carbon counting program, good for initial concept/schematic design
EC3 : Embodied Carbon Calculator just issued November 2019 with focus on materials
Beacon: Thornton Tomasetti tool just issued January 2020
For purchase:
Tally: integrated with Revit
LCA One-Click
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.
Robb: 00:06 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: 00:23 For this episode I talked with Kai Starn and Catherine Paplin. They’re my colleagues here at Steven winter associates. Kai focuses mostly on green building certification for larger commercial buildings and Catherine works on high performance building enclosures, also for bigger buildings. and we’re talking about embodied carbon and this is an issue we’re seeing more and more, in more and more different places. When youre talking about carbon, we’re talking about greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide is the biggie, but there’s also methane, nitrous oxide and halogenated hydrocarbon gases, HFCs, refrigerants, blowing agents, etc. When we talked about carbon until fairly recently, most people were talking about operational carbon – a building uses energy, a lot of energy is generated by fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels gives off CO2 and that was what we’re trying to reduce. When we’re talking about embodied carbon, we’re talking about the materials themselves and the building itself, the material extraction, processing, transportation, construction. When you analyze the whole carbon picture, people who do it rigorously do lifecycle assessments or LCAs, which is a pretty rigorous analysis. We’re not getting too deep in this discussion, but this is a quick conversation to talk about why and how and where we’re seeing this embodied carbon issue come up more and more. We’re all seeing it more and more. If you want to learn more, check out our show notes. Katherine and Kai linked to some great resources. And if you can make it to Boston later in March, I encourage you to check out NESEA’s BuildingEnergy conference. NESEA is the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, March 23rd and 24th at the Westin Boston waterfront. I think I’ve missed one of these BuildingEnergy Boston conferences over the past 20 years. I’ve gone for quite a while. I’m looking forward to this year. A colleague and I, Nicole Ceci and I, are doing a session on building electrification called”To Electrify or Not to Electrify,” it’s a discussion or perhaps a debate on prioritizing electrification efforts, building electrification efforts. I’m looking forward to that. And also I just looked at the program and there are three sessions focused on embodied carbon. This has been a hot topic at NESEA BuildingEnergy Boston for the past few years. So come check that out. March 23rd and 24th, 2020 Western Boston waterfront, go to nesea.org N E S E A .org for more info. In this conversation with Catherine and Kai, we started discussing why we’re hearing more about body carbon these days.
Catherine: 03:34 We now have evidence that the amount of carbon emissions from a building during its whole life cycle, on average, 30% of that is from embodied carbon – is from building the thing. And if you’re looking at a 30 year projection, the first 30 years of the building’s life, then you’re looking at 50% of the emissions that will be due to that building being the result of embodied carbon. And all of those emissions are going in before the building even begins to be used. So it’s already there in reality by the time that you’re starting to use that building. And that is a huge thing to think about when you start looking at the horizons that are projected for climate change acceleration and possible tipping point.
Robb: 04:54 Yeah. So if reducing carbon emissions, carbon dioxide equivalent emissions is a priority, this is definitely something you should be looking at. I mean that’s huge. So basically constructing a building results in as much emissions as the building operating over the first 30 years does. Very generally speaking.
Catherine: 05:23 Yeah. And this is based upon the 2018 report on climate change and emissions. So this is top scientists in the world coming to a consensus about about this number.
Robb: 05:47 Gotcha. So that’s worldwide number?
Catherine: 05:50 Yes it is.
Robb: 05:50 Okay. And Catherine, you wrote a blog post on our website a while back about embodied carbon associated with different insulation materials. And that’s kind of eye opening. Cause obviously a key way to reduce operational carbon is to add more insulation. But some insulations have really big embodied carbon implications. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Catherine: 06:22 When you’re talking insulation, it turns out that more is not always better. Because there are types of insulation which are extremely commonly used. Namely plastic foams. And there’s a rigid plastic foam board commonly called XPS for extruded polystyrene. and there is a spray foam plastic insulation, closed cell, which is also used all over. And both of these are manufactured, and in the case of the spray foam, installed with a hydrofluorocarbon blowing agent, and that blowing agent has something like 1200, 1400, there are different estimates, but they’re all in the well over a thousand range, times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. So when we talked about those those equivalent gases to carbon dioxide, this is one of that 2% of, of emissions gases that are completely out of proportion in terms of the amount of carbon emissions they actually represent. So what that really means is that when you go and put something like this, if you put just one inch of this insulation into your building, it’s going to be 36 to 40 years before you pay off, before you have saved all of the emissions that you just spent in putting that in there, and one inch is not enough insulation. So in reality, it’s decades and decades before you have made up for what you spent putting that in.
Robb: 08:47 No, that’s great. And it’s a huge number it’s kind of jaw-dropping. And cellulose comes to mind as what I would think would be the lowest, one of the lowest embodied carbon insulation. But is that accurate first of all?
Catherine: 09:09 It is certainly among the lowest. What you get into with insulation, and with all materials, is there’s a reason why we’re using these things. There is a reason why this is the most common commonly used material, or one of the most commonly used materials for insulation. And that is because it does so much so well – those two insulations give you among the highest R-value, that is thermal resistance value per inch of any insulation. And they have other qualities that make them extremely useful, even sometimes indispensable for particular uses. The spray foam is a vapor barrier. It’s an air barrier. It conforms to any irregularities and on and on.
Robb: 10:05 No, like you say, foam insulation is so appealing for so many reasons and it has been the Go To for many different applications for people on the leading edge of high performance buildings. And now maybe that will change a little bit and we’ll put a link to your blog post and and some of your sources for that in the show notes. But yeah things are changing.
Kai: 10:38 I just sort of want to reiterate sort of what we’ve been talking about. It’s really fascinating and it’s a really big deal talking about this carbon that’s front loaded into the buildings before we even move in. And you know, I think what we’re sort of talking about when we’re talking about these installations and stuff are high performance buildings – we want our buildings to operate at a low cost. And you know, that’s been the forefront of our minds since the 70s, you know, energy efficiency. And we’re starting to realize that these high performance buildings with these high embodied carbon materials release more total emissions then, you know, maybe a code minimum building with, you know, moderate body carbon emissions. And that’s a really big deal and sort of startling, and you know, we absolutely need these net zero energy buildings, we absolutely need those, and you know, we’re not disputing that. As Catherine said, these materials have properties that we need in areas. But just looking at the net zero by itself isn’t gonna get us to the goals to stabilize the temperature of the climate in the timeframe that we’re looking at.
Robb: 11:58 Yeah. So, in your work Kai are there a few materials – you’ve done a little bit of number crunching on building by building I think, and what are the big components where there are big problem areas or big opportunity areas to reduce embodied carbon?
Kai: 12:23 Yeah, yeah. I mean the, the short answer is to choose lower carbon materials and we could maybe get to that later how to do that. And maybe using carbon sequestering, natural materials. Also part of that short answer is just to use less material overall. You know, that’s one thing that we can look at early on, you know, different massing options, but in industrialized areas, the three main structural materials, concrete, steel and wood are the, are the drivers of embodied carbon by virtue of just how much fuel and energy it takes to create them, to bring them into existence.
Robb: 13:02 Yeah. Kai, maybe I’ll ask you, I mean programmatic wise, what are you seeing? How are you seeing your clients or programs starting to address embodied carbon?
Kai: 13:19 Yeah, so in my world, I work a lot with green certifications, building certifications primarily LEED. And the LEED version 4 building rating system really has been the biggest market driver. You know, up until now related to embodied carbon, in my view.
Robb: 13:41 So people are starting to pay attention in the context of programs? It’s just credits right now that people may or may not go after, but people are starting to look at it. Is that fair?
Kai: 14:00 I would say there’s a growing consensus that overall zero carbon needs to be our goal across the industry. And you know, we’ve heard that from architecture 2030 who stated that the construction industry needs to be net zero carbon by 2050. You know, sooner is better, but that’s sort of the outer goal
Robb: 14:24 And are those goals explicitly embodied and operational carbon?
Kai: 14:30 That’s right. Yeah. So we’ll be looking at both those pieces. Yeah.
Robb: 14:33 Okay, cool. Nice. And Catherine, what are you seeing on the policy side or among clients about interest in embodied carbon? Or what would you like to see maybe is another question that’s a different question.
Catherine: 14:52 One of the most Important things at this point that we could do when we really look at embodied carbon is to make a shift in our priorities from building new buildings as the first thing that we want to do all the time to renovating existing buildings as the first thing we want to do all the time. Because it’s a very simple and obvious thing, that if you don’t take down a building and build something else in its place, or even just build a new building, but especially if you, if you take an existing building and you dismantle it, and you destroy it and build something else, it’s obvious how exponentially more embodied carbon you are putting in the atmosphere at that point. It’s tremendous and we really can’t afford to do that anymore.
Robb: 15:55 Yeah. This is a huge issue on, I mean we’ve all run into that I’m sure with clients who want to build new rather than renovate and it’s much harder. I mean we were talking about insulations, Catherine with, you know, foam insulations having a lot of advantages. Starting from scratch with new construction makes it easier to, you know, get good efficiency, get accessibility, durability, resiliency, all of those are easier when you start from scratch. But this is a huge deal about the embodied carbon of that construction.
Catherine: 16:38 Well, I think one of the misconceptions that should be dispelled is that older buildings are automatically less efficient or have considerably less capacity to achieve high efficiency, high performance. I think that what we’re showing more and more now is that in fact, we can make older buildings high performance, high efficiency. And you have to get into also a discussion, which we don’t have time for here, about what age of buildings, because over the past hundred years, construction methods have changed Radically, scale has changed radically. And, and there, there’s a different approach for each era of building. But for example, you, you will find that it is often easier for pre-war buildings to be brought into a high performing status than some 50s through 70s buildings.
Robb: 18:09 So pre-war we’re talking about New York city before world war II generally. Yup. Pretty clear demarcation in the city. Okay.
Catherine: 18:18 But at the same time there is now a lot of work afoot to figure out how to make those 50s through 70s buildings be retrofitted to perform well. One of them, there’s a lot of focus of course on curtain wall now because are going to have to deal with aging curtain walls. There is also options like a interior storm windows that people don’t necessarily know a lot about yet. But these can be operable and you can even have basically interior curtain wall replacement that that prolongs the life of your, your curtain wall building and gives you a huge bump in performance.
Kai: 19:15 Just sort of mulling over the existing building conversation, it’s real interesting. I’m thinking about why building owners may opt to keep the building instead of tearing it down and building new. And I imagined that one of the drivers is cost. It’s more cost effective to reuse these buildings in certain instances. And it makes me think of something that our clients often ask us is, you know, they ask for a life cycle assessment when they really want a life cycle cost analysis. And you know, I think what they’re looking at is, okay, well what materials are we going to use, how much is it going to cost us, how long are they gonna last, this sort of thing. And you know, both employ this like life cycle approach where the lifecycle cost, the LCC is the direct monetary costs for a product or service. Whereas the LCA is the environmental benefits and they actually can, if you’re doing lifecycle costing, you’re not so far off from doing a lifecycle assessment too. You’re collecting your materials, you know, how much material quantities you’re using. And it’s, it’s not so difficult to to transpose those into the environmental benefits. And I hope that more of our clients start asking for that.
Catherine: 20:48 We’re watching buildings get torn down every, every day. It’s it’s really time to start thinking about the fact that buildings aren’t disposable. We really have made this in our minds into a disposable product. And it’s not. And the poster child for this as far as I’m concerned would be 270 park Avenue, which is a high rise, international style commercial building, a skyscraper that is being torn down as we speak. It is the largest such demolition at least ever in New York City. And it may be in the nation or the world. I am honestly not sure, but it is being demolished in order to make way for a new larger skyscraper. And if somebody analyzes what kind of embodied carbon hit this represents, I think that this ought to become what the demolition of Penn station was to the historic preservation movement. It’s a wake up call that we can’t afford to think like this because we won’t achieve our goals if we continue to do this.
Robb: 22:37 Thanks to Catherine and Kai, and again, I urge you to visit the show notes page. There’s lots of resources. There’s links to the embodied carbon network, the relatively new EC3 tool, architecture 2030, several reports, blog posts about embodied carbon, about historic preservation. We decided to link to all these in the show notes rather than have Catherine and Kai rattle them off in the audio. Also go to nesea.org to Check out the building energy Boston conference if you can. March 23rd to 24th 2020. One may be sobering note since we recorded this, according to Wikipedia, at least we confirmed that 270 park AVE is indeed the tallest building ever to be voluntarily demolished in the history of the world. So sorry, we’re not ending on a high note.
Speaker 2: 23:38 Thank you for listening. Buildings and beyond is produced by Steven Winter Associates. Visit Swinter.com for more info on us, visit swiner.com/podcasts to get to all our episodes and to see the show notes and visit [inaudible] dot com slash careers to see job openings. We have quite a few across all our offices, Connecticut, New York city, Washington, D C and a new office in Boston. I’ve been here for just about 20 years now and it’s pretty amazing working with brilliant people who really care about making great buildings, improving sustainability, accessibility, health, affordability, durability. It’s a pretty fantastic crew. Thanks to the podcast team here. Alex Mirabile. Heather Breslin, Dylan Martello, Jayd Alvarez, Kelly Westby, and I’m Robb Aldrich. Thanks for listening.
The Keys to Commissioning with Kelly Westby
Dec 06, 2019
Featuring
Kelly Westby, Commissioning Director, Steven Winter Associates, Inc.
Kelly Westby is the Commissioning Director at SWA. She works with developers, owners, contractors, and design teams to improve building performance in the New York City area and throughout the Northeast, and has completed energy audits on millions of square feet of existing buildings.
Kelly’s work also includes other aspects of new construction and existing buildings such as site inspections and energy modeling. She specializes in identifying and implementing practices to lower building life cycle energy costs, optimize capture of incentives, and improve operations and maintenance. She conducts on-site testing and verification of the effectiveness of green design and building methods. She also documents and communicates results, including specific recommendations for corrective actions. Kelly’s commissioning, energy code, and energy efficiency projects cover millions of square feet of commercial buildings across the five boroughs. Read more
As code requirements become more stringent around the country, the process of commissioning is more valuable now than ever before. Acting as third-party quality assurance providers, commissioning agents help building owners by improving the quality of construction and reducing maintenance and energy costs in the long run.
On this episode, Robb interviews podcast co-host, Kelly Westby, who is also SWA’s Commissioning Director. Kelly explains the importance of quality control on any project and describes how commissioning has evolved into a process, rather than a one-off measure.
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.
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: 00:22 In this episode I’m talking with Kelly about commissioning. Kelly Westby heads up our commissioning group here at Steven Winter Associates. And I’ve wanted to talk about commissioning for a while on the podcast, but it’s taken us a while to get to it. Kelly and I talked for quite a long time, which should surprise nobody who knows us, but we condense things a bit, so it’s a more concise discussion where we hopefully hit the high points. Kelly wanted to start with a good definition of commissioning.
Kelly: 00:54 So the ASHRAE guideline 0, the good old backbone of commissioning talks about commissioning as a process of ensuring that the building is designed, constructed, operated, and maintained in accordance with the design intent. And I like the definition, even though it’s a little bit wordy and a mouthful, and I can never remember the exact words, because it gets out a couple of different things that I think people miss when they’re thinking about commissioning. So the first thing is a process. So I think a lot of people think about maybe manufacturer start up as commissioning or you know, just a static or a one point in time test of a system as commissioning. But commissioning is really a process that’s applied to making sure that buildings are working properly. And that process, the timeline is, is part of that definition too. It’s from early kind of schematic design- predesign, through turnover, through into operation and can kind of move into continuous commissioning, which we can talk a little bit about. And then I like the ensurance part, it’s a quality assurance process, I say. And it doesn’t replace the quality control process that the general contractors need to be implementing throughout the project to make sure that things are being installed properly. It doesn’t replace that. It adds a layer of third party review kind of on top of that to make sure that the right quality control processes from the general contractor are kind of set up and being implemented properly. But we can offer a perspective of making sure that building systems holistically are operating properly. And I would say from an efficiency perspective for sure. But we’ve gotten a little bit in the industry. I think commissioning has gotten pigeonholed into the efficiency world alone because it falls in the efficiency category, the energy efficiency category and lead and because it’s required by energy code. But I think commissioning is so much more than that that it really has to do with like the guest experience, like thermal comfort acoustical performance. If equipment isn’t installed properly, it’s going to be very noisy and that’s going to impact the health and wellbeing of the people in the space.
Robb: 04:03 I probably would have said comfort and reliability. What are the biggest advantages, I guess, to an owner, and energy efficiency, certainly. But, you know, I think a lot of our clients that is secondary, you know, it has to be comfortable, it has to work, has to be reliable, and then we don’t want to, you know, use tons of energy. Would it make sense to talk about a somewhat specific example, like say an outdoor air system for common spaces in a multifamily building. Can you kind of give us a brief outline of what’s involved in commissioning something like that or a different piece of equipment? Or a different system I guess?
Kelly: 04:58 Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way. I like that being on this side of the microphone because I can just ramble and you have to make sure that I stay on track. So this is fun. So if we get brought in in the beginning, the question is, what’s the intent of the space? What requirements do we need to pay attention to for outdoor air? Are you going for LEED? Are you going for passive house? What does the system need to be providing? So we need to set the guidelines for what we need from that system, including reliability, like you said. Comfort. Is humidity Okay in this space, can it go as high as 85% or as low as 10%? Or do we need to keep the humidity in a certain range for comfort? Do we want the temperature to be in a certain range for comfort? Are we a typical New York where we’re not going to supply cooling to the corridors in maybe a smaller multifamily project or is it a luxury condominium and we absolutely are going to provide cooling to the corridors. And so we have to have those discussions up front of what’s most important to the owner. And so that’s what we call the owner’s project requirements. So that’s kind of step one. And then we look at the design and make sure that all the things that we outlined, whether it’s, you know, passive house and you need to have energy recovery, making sure that that energy recovery system is shown there on the drawings and is set up in a way that it can work properly, that the equipment is located in a way that one day the maintenance staff can actually access the filters and change belts and be able to maintain the equipment and to also make recommendations about is there a more efficient way to do this? Is there a better way to lay out the duct work so that you can reduce noise or you can increase efficiency of the equipment? And then moving on into submittals, making sure that the submittals are appropriate and match with the design intent and the owner’s project requirements are, and watching through construction to make sure that during the course of construction, the entire system, so the duct work and the components, are being installed properly, that the outdoor air unit on the roof is being mounted properly, that the clearance is actually provided there and the field, that things have been coordinated. So you don’t have, for example, a pipe hanger running through your duct work. Not that I’ve seen that specifically or anything. And then we, we look at trying to set guidelines for how that equipment then gets started up and we’ll review kind of the startup reports from the manufacturers representatives and that some people call commissioning. And so that can be a little bit confusing so that the manufacturer will come up, come out to the site and start up the equipment, which basically means kind of turning it on and checking some of the boxes. And they might go through a pretty thorough and rigorous review of what’s going on. Or a pretty simple review, then we’ll come out and make sure, run through all the tests, make sure the equipment will go into heating mode or cooling mode, dehumidification mode if that’s required. And make sure that it kind performs the way that it was intended to perform. The system then gets turned over to the operation staff. And so we need to make sure that the operators know what the equipment is supposed to do, first of all, what the design intent was. How to maintain the equipment, when to change the filters, when to change the belts, what other kinds of things they need to double check, how to do regular commissioning, which we talked about the different kinds of commissioning. Since I commissioned the building to begin with, then if the operator goes through and runs tests every six months or a year, that’s called recommissioning to add another word in there. And then the we can get into monitoring base commissioning. So if we set the system up to be what people like to call smart these days with a couple of sensors, maybe ]checking the power consumption on the fan in the outdoor unit, maybe checking the temperature out of the unit and we can monitor that over time and make sure that it doesn’t deviate from where it’s supposed to be.
Robb: 10:06 And I think that that one piece where you turn on the equipment, measure some power, measure pressures, measure flow, you know, that that kind of one time check when it’s just turned on. I think in a lot of people’s minds that is commissioning. But I appreciate you laying out, you know, there’s a lot that goes before and after that.
Kelly: 10:25 Yeah. And I recognize that it’s, it’s quite a process. There is quite a long process. So it can be, it can be difficult to describe, to take the time to go through that whole process. And I do think because we as an industry have thought about commissioning as kind of that manufacturer’s startup, that checking of those boxes. I think it is looked at as a slice in time, but I do think that’s changing. And actually there is a a study that, I’m going to blank on who put it together, but that looks at how many commissioning agents that are part of the building commissioning association now do continuous commissioning type work. And I think it was something like 60% versus a couple of years ago, maybe several years ago. You know, that number was much lower. And so I think a lot more people are thinking about how our buildings really operating after the normal routine of kind of, you know, okay. It’s not like all the construction people are gone now.
Robb: 11:41 Yeah. And I think there’s been a shift in commissioning, cause my impression, and correct me if I’m wrong, you know, it kinda was a necessary evil for LEED. It’s like, all right, you have to have somebody come in and do commissioning and you have to pay him, but we just need the commissioning box checked so he can get our certification. Like 10 years ago that was kind of the feeling I used to get about commissioning. Do you run into that? Have you run into that?
Kelly: 12:12 Yes. And I think it depends on who you talk to and I would say it also, it really does depend on the type of building in the industry. The other thing is now it’s not just LEED that’s requiring commissioning, but the energy codes are requiring commissioning now. So that’s a whole different level of checking the box that now gets, you know, the local government involved. And these requirements are all over New York City for example, is eforcing it versus other places in New York state where it might be required, but it’s not enforced. So then what does that even mean when it’s enforced? What exactly is enforced? You just need the little report or a little a one pager that says we received the commissioning report. And so I do think that there’s this opportunity for the market to respond by providing a very low quality service. Just like anything else, like local law 87 in New York City where it was required to do retro commissioning and energy auditing every 10 years. And we had an episode with Lori Kerr and she was kind of expressing some disappointment in the impact that that had made on, on the industry in terms of energy. And I think that a lot of building owners took that as, you know, another one of those New York city regulatory boxes that they needed to check. And I think that some similar things are happening in mid Atlantic region right now with the green code requirements and commissioning being required as part of that. Well, okay, I got to the permitting phase, the design is complete. I got to the permitting phase and they won’t let me get a permit unless you give me a preliminary commissioning plan. And you have to explain, well, you know, I’m not just gonna give you a plan, like we have to actually do commissioning if we create this plan. And luckily in those places they require it at the, the permit stage. In New York I’ve had folks call me and say, Oh, we need a commissioning report to get TCO. Can you give us a commissioning report this week? No, I can’t. There’s probably somebody out there who will, but then there are other owners that call us and they say, you know, I really think that I need another set of eyes on this building and you know, we need someone to do this commissioning thing.
Robb: 15:22 So for most of your work, are there code or program requirements? I mean, there’s growing code requirements, so
Kelly: 15:32 Yeah. There are growing code requirements and frankly LEED is required by code in a lot of places. So even some LEED projects are actually technically code projects. But it’s certainly a mix. A mix of different types of projects, different types of clients, different goals, and I do think commissioning, even ASHRAE says that, you know, commissioning is based on the owner’s project requirements. There’s always going to be differences in your process because of that, because it’s based on the owner. It’s not based on Kelly’s project requirements and I’m going to do commissioning my way on every project and if you don’t like commissioning my way, then go somewhere else. Potentially that is a method of commissioning. But I think that it is important to think about commissioning as finding the gaps in that particular project and figuring out how to fill those gaps. So for example, in some projects, everything runs through the general contractor and they are good about getting their subcontractors to respond to issues in the field and getting them to be on site at the right times. And other times we speak directly with the subcontractors, because that’s what’s appropriate on that job. And if I said I would never reach out to a subcontractor directly, I think that there would be some projects where I wouldn’t get traction. Now it’s, it’s a dicey relationship. We commissioning providers have literally no authority whatsoever. We don’t hold any of the contracts. Nobody gets paid by us. So we can get language if we’re brought on early enough, we can get language into the specifications that require subcontractors do certain things, but ultimately we’re not paying them. So there’s 1,000,001 things in the specifications and the con, you know there are some projects where not all million and one things get implemented on the job. So it can, it, this kind of trying to influence the project without having any authority is much more of a human behavior question than a technical question.
Robb: 18:20 Yeah. But that’s, I mean, I think that’s similar to all kinds of certifications. You know, I’ve, I’ve seen that I’ve been more involved in residential certifications, energy star, HERS ratings, but also leed, and you know, you’re not paying anybody, you’re a contractor to the owner or the architect or whoever it may be. And this is it. You report to the owner and you say, all right, check, check, check. We got something missing here that needs to be corrected. And then, you know, what the owner does with that or your client does with that will vary like crazy. But I think the best clients, you know, are organized enough, have their ducks in a row that there’s a method to, you know, get it done. You know, figure out who’s responsible and make sure that they address, address the gaps.
Kelly: 19:19 Yes, I do agree with you in some ways, but I would say that with a program, you’re either in or you’re out, right. And there’s a list of requirements and if you’re in, then you have to do those requirements. And that’s, that’s that. With commissioning, the owner gets to decide that ultimately. So it’s up to us. It’s more of recommendations along the way. The commissioning process is required by code and by LEED, but every little thing that we recommend is not necessarily.
Robb: 20:06 Gotcha. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. That totally makes sense. I mean, even if you find some big gaps, you still have done the commissioning and then, and then the ball’s in the owner’s court as to how they want to use that information.
Kelly: 20:23 Yeah. And that question is super valid. I mean, do you ever end a commissioning project with zero open issues?
Robb: 20:32 Do you ever end a commission project with zero open issues?
Kelly: 20:37 Only if the owner accepts as is all the open issues and then they get converted to accept it as is. But yeah, I mean there’s like some things can’t be closed because, or I guess can’t be resolved because they got caught a little too late or it’s too expensive at this point to go back or there’s a lot of finger pointing along the way or they fired the mechanical contractor halfway through the job, you know, lots of things happen. So it’s not a perfect buttoned up process at the end unfortunately.
Robb: 21:14 So my first experience with commissioning, which I now know is should have been called retro commissioning. I was in grad school in the 90s and there was a new, very fancy new engineering building at the university of Colorado. And one of my professors got some funding to hire a grad student. I think it was first summer, it might’ve been first semester, to commission all the systems and there was a very fancy, advanced BMS with logging all kinds of variables everywhere. So I had the list of hundreds of points and my job was to go around the building and all the systems and measure with the second instrument, all of these points. So I was going through the air handlers measuring pressures and temperatures and humidities and doing Peto traverses and there was a structural stuff. I needed the money. It was a job. It was kind of boring. I’m just walking through what you know, is this really worthwhile? I’m just going through hundreds of points, hundreds of points, hundreds of points, very tedious. And I came to one of the air handler fans, like the main air handler fan and I was looking at it, it’s like, man, these pressures are high. And I had access to see what the control parameters were and the static was supposed to be set at one of the air handlers at 1.5 inches, it was instead set to 15 inches, which of course the fans couldn’t do. So the fans are screaming, the VFDs were pegged. And you know, I talked to the facilities guys and it was no big deal. It’s just a decimal point. And he just changed it. And then everything was right. But that was like right there. That paid for my time during this summer job, fivefold I did the math. And it was like, man, you really gotta you really gotta check. Somebody gotta check all this stuff. So it was pretty interesting, but, but that you would call that retrocommissioning right. The systems are in the buildings occupied. All right. Go in and see how things are working.
Kelly: 23:45 Yeah, yeah. And sometimes the line is blurry if the building just opened and then you realized that you should have commissioned it in the first place. And I wouldn’t stick to strictly to it if you’re, you know, going through and testing making a plan and testing systems and making it work properly. I think that sounds pretty good. But yeah, I think that that’d be more retrocommissioning. But it’s interesting that you said you know, you got excited when you found something. I thought about this a little bit before we started talking and people just love calling out other people’s stuff that they did wrong. Like it’s like human nature to just want to talk about what other people do wrong. I think it’s funny because we have the presentation that we, that we made into a podcast that you did with Steve, the top 10 design mistakes, right? If it was the top 10 things you should do in design, I don’t think as many people would be as excited about it. Right? So, yeah, so we do at commissioning conferences sometimes people do presentations on like trying to one up each other on weird stuff they found in the field and it can be hard to do over audio. Some of the weird stuff we find. But yeah, absolutely. 1.5 versus 15 it’s a small mistake because it’s one little period, but it’s a big mistake in terms of energy consumption.
Kelly: 25:48 We’ve seen toilet exhaust ducted to the wrong side of the ERB and supplying into the space. So you know, things happen.
Robb: 26:01 And nobody would discover that?
Kelly: 26:03 Yeah, until it started smelling weird. I’m not sure. I hope that they would, I’m not sure. And some of the energy stuff you really wouldn’t discover. So many, a lot of spaces have a heating system and a cooling system and those systems are separate but serving the same space and there’ll be operating at the same time. So you feel okay in the space because you’re being provided hot air to heat you up and then cold air to cool you down. So you’re on average, you’re okay. But you’re just running out those systems forever and spending rons on your, on your energy bills for no reason or your equipment is banging on and banging off all the time. So some things like that, some things you might notice, you might hear something when it’s operating improperly or you might feel uncomfortable, but you really have to go through the systems one by one step-by-step to make sure that everything’s working properly.
Robb: 27:04 Is any of that made easier or less time consuming or streamlined or whatever by newer technology, by smart systems, by IOT, I mean if you and the one of the HVAC contractors don’t go through the system step-by-step measuring pressures, measuring powers, measuring flow rates and instead all of this equipment gets installed. Can that lower the labor, lower the upfront time and as well as provide some down the road evaluation?
Kelly: 27:45 There’s potentially a bunch of software companies that disagree with what I’m about to say, but I think that maybe in the future, but I’m not sure that we’re there yet, Number one. Number two, I think that who commissioned then all of their sensors, I actually think you just added to the amount of time you have to be double-checking sensors in the field. The simplest system to check is like a one to one heat pump or you know, a packaged terminal key pump,
Robb: 28:17 Single speed on off. Yeah.
Kelly: 28:19 Yeah. The system’s right there. It’s not doing anything crazy. Oh, and by the way, it turns out packaged systems are actually more efficient than giant central systems, but we can save that for another podcast. I think we have this idea that if we say IOT and machine learning, then we can take humans out of the equation. And I just, I don’t think, I don’t believe in that philosophy. And I think that we are adding more and more sensors, more and more control points and that just makes the importance of commissioning even more because it’s not always going to be obvious what’s messed up.
Robb: 29:07 Do you have experience working with different engineers or different contractors repeatedly? Where it gets easier? I mean, did they come to appreciate you being there or, or other commissioning agents being there? Do you get, you know, a more streamlined working relationship or is it that the first time Every time?
Kelly: 29:33 That’s a good question. I think you should probably ask them, but I think, yes, I think the process does get easier. Oftentimes. The thing is, even if it’s the same engineer, it’s a different actual person, human being. So it might be the same engineering firm, but might be a different human being. Maybe it’s the same person, but it’s the combination of people are different or it’s a different system. so there are so many things that can change. And what I’ve really, truly been amazed by in my career and it, I call it job security, there is so many different ways that something can be messed up. So every time I think, you know, this isn’t something we need to pay as much attention to. Just like you said, you know, like, do I have to test every single sensor? Like, okay, packaged the packaged coil, like we talked about this a little bit packaged refrigerant oil, like the packaged unit. I’m not going to test the refrigerant charge in the field. It’s a package unit comes and you know, you install it and it’s fine, it turns out not always. So we, there was a catastrophic failure at a project that they kind of found later on that there was pinhole leaks and all of the packaged heat pump systems. Oh man. And they traced it back to a factory in Mexico that had just opened up and this was their first batch and they forgot about quality control or or whatever. But things like that can happen. Mistakes get made everywhere along the line and so it’s really important for, it’s important. I think for us as an industry now, I’m obviously biased, but to allocate capital resources to making sure those things are set up properly because like we were talking about hotels, if you put a guest in that space and it’s not working properly, you have to pay them back for that room probably under certain brands. Right.
Robb: 31:54 I sort of asked you this before. I mean with code requiring commissioning more and more, Are you seeing more buy in to the value of the process?
Kelly: 32:16 That’s a good question and I think that I might give you a little bit of a non-answer. The thing is I have been trying to make sure that we are having as big of an impact as we can have with the time that we have. And so we trying to move to really working with clients that, that are understanding the impact of commissioning and rather than rushing to open the building, which is reasonable, there is a large amount of money at stake if buildings don’t open it on time. But if we don’t set ourselves up with a proper plan from the beginning, then things can get behind and commissioning can look like it’s slowing down the process because it happens at the end. And with the code you need the sign off for your temporary certificate of occupancy. So it can be a very sensitive time for everyone. So I think that in some ways it makes the commissioning provider even more of the bad guy because you’re the one person holding up a C of O potentially. If you want to require something like for example, a bare minimum that they’ve at least started up their boilers. I would say there are some clients that haven’t, hadn’t necessarily done a lot of commissioning before and because it’s required, they’ve started to do it and they be grudgingly tell me that they are happy.
Robb: 34:13 So, so why do you like commissioning?
Kelly: 34:24 I like commissioning because you can look at a project early on and get an idea of what needs to be done and then follow that through to the very end of the project and see all the details then getting built around you and make sure that those things really work well really happen. I had worked in doing some energy auditing and you make a lot of recommendations and things may or may not go through depending on funding or other things. But 90% of the time that you work on a, on a commissioning project, the building will get built either way. And without you, it will get built in a crappier way, so you can definitely your energy is spent improving the built environment.
Speaker 6: 35:21 Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. Our production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
NYC: A Melting Pot for People of All Abilities with MOPD Commissioner, Victor Calise
Nov 05, 2019
Featuring
Victor Calise, Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities
As Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, Victor Calise has been an advocate for people with disabilities in both the Bloomberg and de Blasio Administrations. Responsible for ensuring that New York City is the most accessible city in the world, Calise advises the Mayor and agency partners on accessibility issues, spearheads public-private partnerships, and chairs the Accessibility Committee of the City’s Building Code.
Commissioner Calise began his City service working with the Capital Projects Division of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation where he led efforts to make one of the largest and most complex parks systems in the world accessible by ensuring compliance with the construction standards, managing facilities, and developing training materials. Prior to working in New York City government, he was a disability advocate in the non-profit sector. Read more
Did you know that New York City is home to approximately one million people with disabilities? As we often discuss strategies for improving the built environment, it is critical that accessibility remains at the forefront of the conversation. So, in a city as big and dynamic as New York, who is tasked with ensuring that the spaces in which we live, work and play are fair for all?
On this episode, the Buildings + Beyond team had the privilege of chatting with Victor Calise, Commissioner of the NYC Mayor’s Office of People with Disabilities (MOPD). Commissioner Calise describes the actions that he and his team have taken to help NYC become one of the most accessible big cities in the US. In addition, the Commissioner reminds us that we need to take a human-centered approach, not just to design, but to life.
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.
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.
Kelly: 00:22 [Intro] Victor Calise is the commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. He has the very modest job of making New York city the most accessible city in the world. So I was introduced to commissioner Calise when Harold Bravo from our accessibility team served on the code committee for the New York city building code chapter 11. But in this episode we talk about accessibility in a much broader sense than just the code. Access to the arts, ferries, playgrounds, as well as access to work opportunities for people with disabilities. Commissioner Calise catches me saying differently abled people, this may seem innocuous, but he reminds us all that language matters. The person comes before their disability and people-first language is critical in creating the mindset we need to provide access for everyone. Just like Kristoff in our episode on human psychology in the built environment, Commissioner Calise urges us to take a human centered approach, not just to design, but to life. So let’s get right to it.
Kelly: 01:22 Thank you so much and welcome to Buildings and Beyond, we wanted to set the scene by having you tell us a little bit about your professional journey and how you became the commissioner of the New York city mayor’s office for people with disabilities.
Victor: 01:37 Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It’s really nice to be on the podcast. So yeah, it’s certainly been a journey. It’s been a journey in my career from where I was 25 years ago as a blue collar worker working in the plumbing sector and then being injured, having a bicycle accident that left me paralyzed, and changing things up. I Had to go back to school, got involved in a lot of disabled sport. And in 1998, I was a Paralympic athlete in the sport of sled hockey in Nagano, Japan. So that was pretty cool. Yeah. And through that whole sports era, I realized that the department of parks and recreation in New York city just wasn’t doing enough for people with disabilities. So I got involved in a roundabout way and wanted to really push the agenda for accessibility in parks. And eventually I got recruited over to parks and I was in charge of providing programs and services and looking at design and construction for people with disabilities. And, and it was a great job. We developed a transition plan figuring out what barriers existed in New York city parks department and how we would fix the barriers. I would argue today that all the work that we’ve done in playground design, that we are one of the leaders, if not the leader in accessible playgrounds around the world. We’ve been adding lots of different features for people with disabilities, people with visual disabilities, people with hearing disabilities, people with physical disabilities, people who are aging, and really putting some design standards in place that exist today. And it’s great to see the work that they’re doing and seeing how important the Commissioner was and how it really was a top down approach really inspired me to, to look for a position like that. And fortunately for me at that time, this position for the mayor’s office with people with disabilities opened up and I’ve been here for seven years now and serving two administrations and it’s been, it’s been great being able to make effective change and changing the way people live their lives in New York city for accessibility.
Kelly: 03:59 Yeah, that’s great. Let’s dig in a little bit.You covered a wide range of initiatives there. So what’s one thing do you think that you’re involved in, in New York city today, that really has the biggest impact, or maybe top three impact?
Victor: 04:16 Wow. We’re involved in so much everything that touches New York City and every agency we’re involved in. If we’re talking about voting democracy NYC, we’re involved in voting. If we’re talking about the cultural plan were involved in the cultural plan, if we’re talking about vision zero, we’re involved in vision zero. So there’s nothing in the city that we don’t touch. So to say the top three, wow. So many different things. Well number one, I’ll start with transportation. We’ve added an accessible ferry system. That throughout New York city that’s been amazing. Fully accessible bathrooms on the same floor, kiosks that are accessible for people to purchase tickets. So we’re pretty excited about that. And along with that, we, the city of New York, are the only city in the world to put a cap on these ride sharing companies in the four high a vehicle sector. And when that happened, that cap was one thing, but it now allows, if they’re going to put any vehicles on the street there for wheelchair accessible vehicles. So we’re really excited to be able to drive that. And in the yellow sector we’ve been able to add accessibility in that sector as well. And the great part about that is we’re the only city in America to be able to have the number of accessible taxis and for hire vehicle fleet. So we’re pretty excited about that in transportation. Another great thing that we’ve done is we added disability service facilitators and agencies across the city. People that are people with disabilities or represented in the disabled community, and what they’re doing is they’re looking at the programs and services they deliver and looking at the design and construction that’s happening to ensure that accessibility not only meets the ADA codes and requirements, but goes above and beyond that.
Kelly: 06:11 Yeah, that’s great. We have the New York City landscape changing constantly and like you said, commuting by ferry, that wasn’t quite as big of a thing. Now we have New York city ferry. Do you think the changing landscape makes it more difficult? How do you keep up with all of the changes and construction that’s going on?
Victor: 06:42 Well, one thing is important to have those representatives that I mentioned earlier, those disability service facilitators in those agencies, because they’re really the pulse of what’s happening in that agency and being able to hear what’s going on, and getting briefings from those agencies is important.
Kelly: 06:59 And then you can have a coordinated effort.
Victor: 07:00 Yes. That’s it. What’s the coordination happening? And making sure that agencies have a pulse on what’s going on and making sure there’s representative there and that all complies. But New York city is an old city, right? And making it accessible can be a challenge sometimes, but everything was built before the ADA without people with disabilities in mind. So we have to be cognizant of what’s happening, considering the nature of the infrastructure and what’s difficult to access and what needs to be changed is what we are all about.
Kelly: 07:36 Right. And so how, how do you look back at buildings? You talked a little bit about this with the parks department having accessible playgrounds, which is actually something that I haven’t thought about as part of the built environment. That’s an important part of the built environment.
Victor: 07:50 Well, you think about it, we all learned on a playground, right? And kids with disabilities should have that same opportunity or parents with disabilities or people who are aging to be able to play with their grandchildren at that playground, it all makes sense.
Kelly: 08:04 That’s an excellent point. And that speaks a little bit to sort of universal design versus accessibility. So you could build maybe a space that is technically accessible by sort of ADA requirements, but it sounds like your initiatives are actually focusing on any kind of different abilities, not just strictly can a wheelchair get from point A to point B, but can people at with different abilities, maybe pregnant women, maybe elderly folks that are taking care of young kids, how can they access the space? Tell me a little bit more about the inter-play and how your agency sees kind of the interplay between setting the bare minimum standard and then really incorporating everybody.
Victor: 09:04 So if we look at the ADA, a great piece of legislation as a whole, and we look at the guidelines and the guidelines are really driven for physical disabilities, we really don’t think about other disabilities. We do, but they’re minor. So what we try to do is really bring that up to a higher level, right? When we’re thinking about people with disabilities, we really need to be cognizant of what that means, right? That’s people with hearing disabilities and it’s people who are deaf. People are hard of hearing, people that have lost their hearing, right? There’s so many different levels of hearing, but we have to be cognizant of that and make sure that’s included. When we’re talking about blindness, it’s not just people who are blind, it’s people with low vision and all different degrees of vision that people go through in their life. And we have to think about people with cognitive disabilities that’s important. People on the spectrum, people with mental health concerns, right? All of that needs to really be addressed. And of course people with physical disabilities. So that all interplays and when we’re talking about accessibility, it’s so broad in its scope and we have to really dial down on things and make sure that what we’re providing is accessible to all of those sectors. And it can be challenging at times, but there’s ways to do it. And that’s where we’re committed to do and the expertise that we have in our office, looking at lots of different technologies that are emerging, looking at infrastructure that’s being built and making sure that those big four, as we like to call it, the cognitive hearing, vision and physical disability are incorporated into everything the city does.
Kelly: 10:44 Okay, got it. Not all of our listeners have read through the entire ADA requirements for any of those. What disabilities do the older fair housing act, ADA mostly look at?
Victor: 10:59 They look at physical disabilities, wheelchair access and height ranges and turning radiuses and stuff like that, which are all important. Because I mean, you even mentioned it before, people who are aging, right? We acquire disabilities as we age. Right now you’re looking at me and a year ago I wasn’t wearing glasses and now I am. And that’s something that has happened, right? People don’t realize that they acquire disabilities and vision is certainly one of them. And you may not be wearing glasses one day, but for reading purposes another. So things change and we have to be prepared for that and build our environment for that. So as you age, you age in place.
Kelly: 11:41 Right. And that we had an episode focused on universal design, mostly in single family homes, small multifamily homes. But how can you make a space that you’re not constantly having to change with the way that your body will change? We know how our bodies will likely change. How can we incorporate that into the space? So it sounds like you guys maybe are looking at that from a public works perspective.
Victor: 12:09 Absolutely. From a public works perspective. And there’s so much construction that happens and frequently people come into our office from thinking about flood issues and how that affects people with disabilities, making sure that we have accessible options through that. It can be anything. It could be parks and playgrounds that we constantly see. And I’m trying to think as I’m talking about all the things that happen in the city and all the jobs that we look at from waterfront access, to beach access, to bathroom access, it just goes on and on.
Kelly: 12:46 Right. That’s an excellent point. And we talked a little bit about there’s a lot of existing landscape in the city. We didn’t necessarily have the same size walkways as we would want now. The same size hallways as we would want now. The codes cover new buildings and renovations. Is there anything that we can do with the existing building stock and what are you guys looking at with the existing building stock?
Victor: 13:16 Well I want to say this really loud and I can’t wait till we get to the existing building code and really be able to change that and say “Hey what do we do in these existing buildings? Cause people are having issues.” People are not sure what to do or how to do it. They apply the new code to existing buildings, which is great. And we’d like that. But there are also constraints with that and we have to be cognizant of it and a lot of people are getting sued under this, under the ADA. And we have to figure out a way to dive into that existing building code and let people know what that is. And people are just lazy on design and not really thinking, cause you have to think outside the box for some of these old older buildings. And what type of infrastructure can be put in place. Is it ramps? Is it a lift to get in there or do you have color contrast that that’s there and things at proper heights and do you have doorbells that allow people to see and so many different things. And you have to be creative in what’s happening in this existing spaces and apply everything that you can. People simply just want to come into our office and say, “we can’t do this, we’re grandfathered in.” Well A. grandfather doesn’t exist and B. you can do this. You just have to go back and think creatively.
Kelly: 14:49 Right. And that’s an excellent point. And I, I’ve talked probably on a couple of other episodes. There’s a lot of different things even that we cover within our office from sustainability, accessibility, universal design. And there might actually be conflicts between say one example that I’ve given is, the the door thresholds for accessibility. You want to be flat so you can get in easily, for passive house, you need a insulation around them. So how do you insulate it when it’s flat to the ground? So things like this, where we’re trying to balance different priorities. So it almost feels like, how the design world is trying to balance a bunch of different priorities and they’ve just said, you know what, we’re just not going to look at this universal design thing. It’s too overwhelming. It’s too scary. Accessibility.We’ll Try to check the box with as little as possible, but maybe they’re really not focusing in the right place.
Victor: 15:49 And no one really cares about disability until it happens to them. And it’s really important that people look at this, because we mentioned earlier people will acquire disabilities, could very well happen to you, right? It can. But think about this, how will it apply to you as you get older, or how it will apply to your grandmother or grandparents right?
Kelly: 16:13 Yeah. No, that’s an excellent point. We talked a little bit about human behavior too. There’s statistics out there, there’s plenty of information that says this is a better way to build a building. Universal design and thinking about people with disabilities, thinking about differently abled people.
Victor: 16:29 Oh no, no, differently abled is something we dont say! And language is important too and really thinking about how we drive, because what we try to do in our office is ensure that there’s equity across everything and language is really important. So, and I know we have to really think about language there and there’s a lot of different things that you don’t say in disability because what you want to do is really provide a space where people aren’t offended or people are accepted. So we really have to think about our language.
Kelly: 17:09 Yeah. And I thought about that a lot at first and messed it up there. But it’s one thing the framing is sort of the human centered focus, right? So it’s people, everybody is a person first and anything about them is secondary.
Victor: 17:25 Yeah. We like to use person first language a lot because you put the person before the disability instead of saying a wheelchair person, you’re saying a person in a wheelchair. So those are really the importance, or a blind person- It’s a person who is blind. And then those are some of the language that we like to put forward. And there’s also the H word.
Kelly: 17:52 Right? Yeah. Tell me more about the H word.
Victor: 17:54 Yeah, the H word is the word handicap and we don’t use that anymore. It’s just an archaic word. And people just like to be referred to people with disabilities. Plain and simple.
Kelly: 18:09 Yeah. And that’s an excellent point. And I think centering around humans, if we think about universal design with that lens, then I think we don’t get so tied up in this specific, “Oh can you make the turn in this room.” Well if we drop that lens, can we just think about all people? How can all people use this space in a more effective way? I think that’s excellent. Are there initiatives for people like me to increase sensitivity around around the language that we use to move the, the discussion forward in a healthy way?
Victor: 18:54 Yeah. And there’s a lot of different ways, right? One of the things that I didn’t mention earlier, but I’m going to mention now is a program that we have called NYC at work. It’s a public private partnership first ever in New York city, to employ people with disabilities. And we hear a lot about diversity and inclusion today, but if you hear about that diversity inclusion initiative, it doesn’t, it never includes people with disabilities. Never does. It never does. I want you to really dial in to the conversation next time you hear it and don’t say anything but just listen. You will not hear disability mentioned and if you do, let me know who they are because I want to be involved with them. So hiring people with disabilities, seeing people with disabilities in your office, understanding what that’s like and what their experiences are at work or how, how they can be such a collaborator with you and being able to bring new ideas, different approaches. We don’t see that in the workplace too much. So employing people with disabilities are certainly one of them. I’m also taking unconscious bias classes is another great thing. And more importantly, disability etiquette, reading up on disability etiquette and taking disability etiquette classes. I mean, one other thing, great things that our office does is that we go around and we give disability etiquette training to people that are involved with us. And it’s really something that’s eye opening. We are now developing a training module that will to train city employees that we’re developing right now on what disability etiquette is and how to work with people with disability, how to approach people with disabilities, what language is around. So it’s pretty in depth.
Kelly: 20:49 And that’s sort of like a fix ourselves first program? Or not fix, but work with people within the government agencies kind of as a first and make sure that those people have an understanding
Victor: 21:04 Well yeah, we do a lot of training within city government as well, but we also do with businesses that we partner with as part of our NYC at work initiative and where people have made complaints about businesses not doing things correctly. And then we’ll reach out to those businesses and work with them so they understand how to work and talk with people with disabilities. Really important. Really important to get it right. And it’s a process and we wish we could turn things around as quickly as possible, but people need to, to know and understand. But it’s not until you really have people with disabilities, the only people with disabilities in the workforce and fully inclusive education that we’re really going to move the needle for people with disabilities.
Kelly: 21:50 Right. That’s an excellent point. I’m gonna take a little bit of a turn. You mentioned technology and how technology is changing things. Do you have any specific examples of how technology is advancing the way that people with disabilities can interact with spaces or can interact with the built environment?
Victor: 22:22 Yeah, lots of different ways. We, we do a lot of work with museums around the city. And we use technology that drives people to exhibits and be able to if you think you go to an exhibit and you put on headphones and it talks to you about what that exhibit is, that’s one piece of technology. Another piece of technology that we’ve been working with is the Broadway theaters and something called Gallop Pro and the technology that’s there, it allows a person to get an app or a device at a theater and be able to get audio description and captioning on demand. In the past you’d have to wait for a specific show. Now you just go to a show that you want two weeks after it’s performance and it’s audio described. It’s captioned and people can get this technology. That’s great stuff that we’re driving. One other great thing that we’ve been, that we’ve done is work with link NYC. You know, those links you see on the street, the big kiosks. We reinvented the payphone and what that came the link NYC. And we’ve added a lot of accessible little features in there, height features, brail features, talkback features that are there and we’re always looking to add new technologies.
Kelly: 23:41 And what exactly does Link do for people that dont know?
Victor: 23:44 It’s a free phone on the street and free web service that’s on the street, free wifi hotspots that are on the street that people can get and they’re fully inclusive to people with disabilities.
Kelly: 23:55 Awesome. That’s great. And we’ve focused a lot on the New York city context. What do you think makes the biggest difference here versus maybe in other places around the world? I know you’ve done some traveling and speaking engagements in other places. What do you see as kind of our strengths and weaknesses? Is it dependent on the kind of buildings that we have?
Victor: 24:20 Sure. Well the great thing about New York city, is it really is the greatest city in the world. I’m a pompous new Yorker and I’m not going to hold back. And there’s a lot to do and there’s a lot to see and there’s a lot to make accessible and people are really interested about what happens in New York City. I’ve been around other parts of the world and I see other great things that are happening. And when I see those things happening, I’m just like, well, how do we get involved with that? How do I steal that?
Kelly: 24:53 What was one idea you found from somewhere else?
Victor: 24:55 Well, it’s a lot of technology. Stuff like the Gallup pro that we’ve been using in theaters is something that I’ve seen there. Different crossings ways that other people are looking at crossings for people with disabilities. Accessible pedestrian signals. I’ve seen something when I was in Wellington, New Zealand, I saw some great accessibility. Every singlized crossing had accessible pedestrian signals that are there. And I thought that was great. So it allows a person with a visual disability to cross the street in a safe manner. But just like every single signalized crossing was there and I was like, wow, this is pretty cool. They really got it right. And seeing things like that, it’s like, all right, we can do that. We will figure out how we can do that and we’re adding more and more on our street and continue to do so.
Kelly: 25:49 Yeah, that’s great. We talked a little bit before we started recording about 1% better, so if we can get a couple of 1% better every day. Any of the programs that we have, do you see any opportunity to replicate them at the national level?
Victor: 26:07 We are working a lot with other mayor’s office, with people with disabilities across the country and we just held the first convening in may of all those offices, about 13 offices everywhere from Chicago to Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, st Louis, Chicago. So yeah, usual suspects and we’re working together for different initiatives and where we were looking to start an empowered cities initiative where we work on financial empowerment, housing and employment for people with disabilities. So there are certainly some national efforts that are happening and and we convene every other month via phone to talk about the issues that we’re having and see which, who’s tackling what and what best practices are happening in and how we can all make it better.
Kelly: 27:04 Great. And thinking about something that’s gone the other way. We had the national ADA requirements and then we have kind of the local code requirements. You were on the code committee with one of our accessibility consulting directors. Sorry, I’m jumping around a little. To develop chapter 11, the accessibility chapter. How is this code language moving us forward in New York? We spoke a little bit about kind of the host of existing buildings, but what are some of the things that you guys were focused on getting in this round into the accessibility code?
Victor: 27:46 So the great thing about the code is you really need to come to consensus, right? And thinking about when we go through that, we had a lot of different people in the room, right? We had architects and designers and building people and city people. And the list goes on and on and on. And in a room like that, it can be tough. But the idea with the, with the chapter 11 was, and I set the tone at the beginning, I want to figure out ways that we can go above and beyond accessibility. And we found ways to do that and we build consensus around it. We’ve increased the number of accessible tables that are, that are in restaurants. We put in new parking spots, bicycle parking spots for people with disabilities because people with disabilities like to ride bikes. Either it’s a hand cycle, a tricycle or a tandem bike, and that requires a little bit more space. So we’ve added more space for that. We’ve looked at different ways to look at elevator access because what we’re doing right now is we have these destination elevators and you ever go to see one of those destination elevators. You go in, you press a floor and then one comes, it brings you right to that floor. And they’re really confusing because they’re so different than the traditional elevator where you push a button and you stop at every floor. And there’s lots of reasons for that. More efficient, easier to access. But what we’ve done is we created a barrier for people with visual disabilities and how they access everything, because everything’s like a digital keypad, right? And they aren’t physical. So we worked through the code to come up with standards that are more efficient for people with disabilities and people acknowledge we’re talking about the sound that’s there, the physical buttons, and when you hit it, it gets more time to access that elevator. So those are some of the things that we looked at in code that we push forward. That has certainly increased accessibility. And that’s what we’re talking about. Incremental changes that will get better. Of course I want to go in and just make everything better. But again, we have a lot of people in the room and we’ve got so much further in the code and I can only see it going further and further.
Kelly: 30:03 Right. And that elevator piece is such an excellent point because as things change for other reasons not related to accessibility or universal design, that are changing for efficiency, we then have to adapt the codes that relate to them to make sure that they’re accessible for all.
Victor: 30:24 And we talked about digital accessibility a little bit before technology and what we did with the destination elevators, right? At some degree, when we’re bringing in these new technologies as a whole, not just the elevators, we start to create a digital divide. We gatta kinda bring that back and say, well, if we’re going to digitize something, we have to make sure it’s accessible for people with disabilities. So that’s the reason why when we looked at the code and we had an opportunity to change these destination elevators, everyone came on and we didn’t do it in a bubble, right? We had people with disabilities that went out and actually tested the service with designers, manufacturers. They were there to witness what happened and how people got lost. Right? And we had everyone involved. We had people from research. And we wanted to make sure that what we’re putting forward was right. Not only for people with disabilities, for the people that are designing the elevators. We can’t create a digital divide. We have to ensure that it’s accessible for people with disabilities, but we need the input from people with disabilities and can’t do that without them.
Kelly: 31:42 Right. That’s an excellent point. And you spoke before to different perspectives on things. Everybody is going to come at that with a different perspective that will then hopefully make a solution that’s actually better for everyone. So what can I do and what can our listeners do to contribute and make a difference Today?
Victor: 32:03 We mentioned some of it earlier, right? Disability etiquette, right? Looking at people to hire, right? What is your HR practices and making sure that you’re hiring people with disabilities. Simple things. Do you have a Twitter? You have Instagram? Are you adding alt-texts describing the photos? Right? These are all simple little things. You think about it. Instagram is fully something that people look at with pictures. Well, a person with visual disability wants to know what those pictures are. Describe what that picture is, right? Those are simple little things that you can do to change things. And the perceptions of people with disabilities. And people with disabilities are not disabled, right? You could say, “Hey, you know, Victor, I’m looking at you right now and you’re in a wheelchair. You know that that appears to be a disability to me.” It’s like, okay, yeah, I could understand why you would say that, but what makes me disabled is not my wheelchair. It’s my environment, and when we start to change the environment to be accessible, the disabilities go away.
Kelly: 33:22 That’s an excellent point. That is a really great note to end on, but I will ask you one more question. What I like to ask is when we’re on this podcast again in five years talking, what will we be talking about? Then?
Victor: 33:40 Our goal and our vision is to make New York city the most accessible city in the world.
Kelly: 33:47 So we’ll just be talking about how great it is
Victor: 33:49 How much further we have gone and including accessibility and everything that the city has to offer.
Kelly: 33:56 All right. That’s great. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
Speaker 5: 34:02 Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today. Visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. Our production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Passively Built with Jesse Thompson – A Look at Air-Sealing and Ventilation
Oct 01, 2019
Featuring
Jesse Thompson
Jesse is an award-winning architect who has become a national leader in green design and building science. Growing up in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, Jesse started his career working construction in high school. Since then, he’s been through every stage of design and building. Jesse is relentlessly practical, but he sees possibility for greatness in every project. He loves a good challenge. Jesse’s always working on balancing elements—engineering with art and design, beauty with affordability, function with potential.
Jesse is a graduate of the University of Oregon, current President Elect of AIA Maine, and a former board member of the Portland Society for Architecture. He’s a founding member of Passivhaus Maine, and was the first architect in northern New England to become a Certified Passive House Consultant. Read more
As building professionals, we often ask ourselves, “what are the most critical components to a high-performance building?” Portland, Maine based architect and building science expert, Jesse Thompson, will tell you it’s air-sealing and ventilation.
On this episode of Buildings and Beyond, Jesse explains the importance of incorporating as many Passive House principles as possible when designing multifamily buildings. His focus on air-sealing and ventilation allows him to effectively maximize building performance, reduce energy use, and increase comfort. Leveraging those strategies, Jesse and his team have completed many noteworthy high-performance buildings in some of the most challenging climates.
ASHRAE 62.2 is a standard that sets minimum ventilation requirements for achieving acceptable indoor air quality. Balanced ventilation in multifamily was a big theme in this episode, and there’s a change being proposed to Standard 62.2 that would limit exhaust-only ventilation in multifamily buildings and instead say that balanced or supply ventilation should be used. If you have strong feelings on this, it’s open to public comment until October 21. Here’s the proposed amendment and link to submit the comment (you’ll need to create a Log In to do so).
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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.
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: (00:22) For this episode I talked with Jesse Thompson who is a principal at Kaplan Thompson architects in Portland, Maine. I saw him present at a conference about a year ago. It was a great session called stealth passive house or something along those lines. And the idea was people can be intimidated about passive house they can hear about r-100 roofs or very expensive windows. The certification can be complicated, so quite a few people are put off by it, but in a lot of his work in multifamily buildings, Jesse really integrates a lot of the key, the core components of passive house into the projects, namely air sealing and ventilation. They’re really fundamental to good buildings and by incorporating these elements on the sly as it were, a lot of his projects perform very near passive house levels. So it was a great conversation. I started out asking him about air sealing, but Jesse wanted to start with ventilation
Jesse: (01:29) Over the last few years I’ve felt like we were inside the home performance industry or whatever we call this, there was this phrase that was rattling around called “build tight and ventilate right.” And we’ve gotten really sure over the last couple of years that we had that a hundred percent backwards. That what we should have been saying is ventilate right, and then you can build tight. That we you know, start with the fresh air, start with good ventilation, and then after you’ve got people happy and healthy inside of the building, then you can get to work air ceiling.
Robb: (02:03) So what is good ventilation for these projects? What does it consist of? Usually.
Jesse: (02:11) It usually has a fully ducted heat recovery ventilation system. You know, a box maybe on the roof. Maybe at the end of the hallway, maybe inside each apartment. And that machine is bringing in fresh air and it’s exhausting all of the pollutants from the kitchen and the bathroom. And it’s capturing the heat. So the heat isn’t leaving the apartment, but all the nasty stuff is and there’s always fresh air coming in and supplying it. It’s a balanced system always in a passive house. And it’s always has heat recovery and that heat recovery is way better than we thought we needed 10 or 15 years ago. It’s at least over 80% of the heat recovery. It’s a really good heat recovery device.
Robb: (03:00) And they’ve been around for a long time.For the 20 years that I’ve been in this industry and I have seen some repeated problems with getting systems installed, operated and maintained to keep up with that. Even on day one, it’s doubtful that the system has the performance you want without some tinkering or retrocommissioning or something. Are you finding that these systems work, that contractors are getting used to them so that they do work more reliably and I guess I’ll ask you about maintenance after that.
Jesse: (03:48) Yeah, I think this is a, this is the big challenge is that the boxes are easy to buy even though you always have to do some sort of pitched battle over buying a good enough box. But these are complicated things that weave their way through buildings that we may or may not be used to doing well. And I think that is one of the areas where we feel like passive house and energy star have done incredible work at getting people to really test the systems and find out where they really working or not. There’s a lot of sort of faith-based construction in our industry where you know, the game is to cover things up as fast as they can and move on to the next building. It’s not to test to see if it’s working and to really see it. Most people are just trying to get onto the next one. 5So that’s just an industry endemic across the board. And then you combine it with a kind of system that maybe folks aren’t quite as used to doing well. And then you have all these weird things, you know, exhaustingly systems aside, like we, you talked to folks in, you’re starting to talk about a building and you’re talking to, maybe it’s a mechanical engineer you haven’t worked with. Maybe it’s a contractor and it’s okay, we’re gonna put the air in the middle of the living room and then we need a heating coil to heat the air up cause it’s gonna be cold coming in from outside. So we have to buy a heating coil and then we have to pay attention to where we put it. And then we’re going to dump it all in the living room and extract from the kitchen to save money.
Jesse: (05:16) And so even then you get these systems that frankly probably don’t work very well. And then you get someone who complains about it and then the owner says, boy, I don’t know why we did that. Let’s stop doing that. Let’s go back to the bath fan way. At least we didn’t get complaints there.
Robb: (05:28) And what a big premium, what a big cost premium. Installed costs of an ERV or HRV versus a bath fan.
Jesse: (05:35) So yeah, that’s where I appreciate where the passive house folks got much more rigorous where they said, no, we will make sure there is fresh air into bedrooms. Like when the teenagers in there with their doors shut, they’re still getting fresh air. We’re not gonna put fresh air in the living room and pretend that magically somehow works its way into the bedroom where the person’s in there have their door shut. Like, no, we’re going to put fresh air where people sleep. And you’re just going to do that. You’re not going to cheap out and you’re going to do such a good heat recovery box that you don’t have to add a bunch of electric coils all through the buildings and add a bunch of costs. You know, you don’t need to do that kind of thinking. We’re going to both make sure it really works and make it simpler. So those have been refreshing and they definitely take some pushing though. But there’s also this bizarre thing where I think multifamily buildings have these systems that never worked, but are code legal, I think the bath fan exhaust system, it kept buildings from rotting out. It kept moisture out of bathrooms, but by no means got fresh air to where people were. And so there’s a funny thing where I think we have a code that prevents people from rotting out building but doesn’t make people healthier. And there’s a whole code path that’s very inexpensive to do. It’s legal, but it doesn’t work.
Robb: (06:51) So yeah. And oh my god, there’s a huge debate about that everywhere, even within our office. I mean, there are people in our office that are pushing strongly for, for mandating unbalanced ventilation in multifamily buildings. Balance doesn’t necessarily mean heat recovery, but once you go to balanced, might as well push on to energy recovery. But personally, my biggest hangup is that I agree that exhaust only ventilation has some big potential problems. Some big potential question marks. It’s better than no ventilation, often, maybe even usually, but there’s no rigor in guaranteeing that fresh air gets to occupants.
Jesse: (07:45) Yeah that funny thing where it’s like, we will build it just tight enough that code says we don’t have to have balanced ventilation. And so we’l leave just enough holes. I mean, no one is putting the holes where the people are first of all. And you know, there’s no pretending that it works. And there’s funny thing where, you know, the passive house folks have this reputation for crazy air sealing. And when I go around every American city, I see peel and stick membranes on every building. I see, you know, Blue Skin and Carlisle products on everywhere. So people are building incredibly tight buildings everywhere.
Robb: (08:26) Way more. Yeah. Way more.
Jesse: (08:29) Just the building products are so different than what you were doing 20 years ago. So that to me is a little wacky where we’re, we’re still pretending that those buildings are not airtight. When I’m looking at those products saying they’re an inch away from being a passive house, they just haven’t thought it through and the air’s coming from The parking garage and the elevator shaft.
Robb: (08:47) I totally agree. Exhaust only doesn’t work.
Jesse: (08:53) Totally. It doesn’t work to make people happy. It keeps the buildings from rotting. I think it’s successful at that part.
Robb: (08:59) But are you finding that your ERVs or HRVs are working? Are they installed, Commissioned? That’s hangup cause I see bad installations so often. And then lack of maintenance. These systems require more maintenance than exhaust only.
Jesse: (09:17) Well that’s the hard thing is, we’re in one of those step changes where we’re making our buildings perform a lot better and they’re getting more complicated at the same time. And we’ve done this before, like we do these moments when you go from a two by four wall to an engineered system or we start rain screening or all the other things that we’ve done in buildings that make them work better, but sure they’re more complicated and it’s, yeah, it’s hard. You do have to put a bunch of effort effort in when you’re at that transition point and you have to figure out what to push on. And that’s kind of grinding work, you know, making sure someone made their fresh air system work, like that’s not very glamorous.
Robb: (10:02) But you’re finding you’re finding that are succeeding?
Jesse: (10:07) After people put a lot of effort into them. Our very first passive house building we couldn’t get certified for I think it took, it took a while because one kitchen exhaust louver, the duct wasn’t connected to the grill and it just took so long to hunt it down. Like it took multiple testing. It took a person getting access to an apartment to go look into realize that, Oh, that thing isn’t connected to that thing. And we didn’t get certified for quite a long time because of one kitchen in a 45 unit building. But, you know, if the client hadn’t tried to be passive house, it never would have gotten found. Right. No one ever would’ve fixed that kitchen. Yep.
Robb: (10:47) Yeah. No ventilation from that kitchen at all. Right.
Jesse: (10:50) So yeah, it was incredibly hard to get it there, but we got it there and that took rigor.
Robb: (10:57) Yeah. And that’s something that I’ve been involved in. Just measuring the performance of systems when they’re installed, and especially new systems especially, you know, especially if it’s new to the contractor or new to the builder and the developer, there’s a learning curve with all of it for everybody.
Jesse: (11:17) The building industry is a really strange industry where our quality control standards, compared to the automotive industry, or any product industry where they make thousands of the same thing, they have quality control that is rigorous, that checks everything, you know, and that has a way of chasing out flaws. And here we are in this weird business where every single one we do is different. Every building’s a prototype. You know, and we don’t have rigorous quality control standards quite frankly.
Robb: (11:48) So for you, are you and your projects are getting to a point where every Building is not a prototype, that there’s enough, I don’t want to say standardization, but similar systems that it’s getting easier?
Jesse: (12:05) You’re getting back to the talk you saw about the stealth passive house and that’s what we were really talking about is that, so here we are, we’re architects. We aren’t building scientists, we aren’t researchers. We aren’t on that field. We’re trying to design beautiful buildings that our clients love. And then we got into this, trying to make better buildings technically, and I would say yes on the multifamily buildings. We tried out a bunch of things four or five years ago and we’ve settled into for buildings of a certain scale, a thing that kind of works. And it has quieted down where we’re starting to draw the same wall every time. We’re starting to think the ventilation systems are probably pretty similar, and it’s allowed us to focus on architecture a little bit more again, because we maybe are a little bit over that technical hump where we can, yeah, it is funny. We can look at a building if it’s in the two to four stories tall, wood frame, four to five stories tall on in the Northeast like Oh we can make that, we can get that to passive house. Throw a six, eight, 10 story building at us and we’ll be pretty lost. We arent big city architects. But if you’re in wood frame five stories max, Yeah, I could probably rattle off the five things we need to do to make a building a passive house.
Robb: (13:27) Could you rattle off the five things you need to do to make your building a passive house? Y
Jesse: (13:32) Right. There’s a test, you know, in the Northeast we build out of wood, we are probably a two by six wall with exterior installation. That’s about two to three inches thick. There is probably a roof that’s about, you know, r40 to 50. We are stringently air sealed. We have a heat recovery ventilation system that is either on the roof or at the end of the hallways that’s doing a block of 10 to 15 apartments in one unit and it’s got at least 80% heat recovery on it. Triple glazed windows. Probably if we’re in affordable housing, it’s fiberglass or vinyl. If it’s in a nicer building, you know, it’s just, it’s a nicer triple glazed window. I would say that right there gets us 85-90% of the way. You know, if you’re in a peculiar orientation where you’re all facing West and we’re starting to look really carefully at air conditioning issues, that one is really a tricky one.
Robb: (14:36) Yeah, I was going to ask you about heating and cooling. Is there a standard for that, for this kind of building typology?
Jesse: (14:44) Well, if you’re doing a really, really good building, I think one of the things that’s been so funny for us is you know, these intricate technical programs like passive house are hard to kind of get your arms around. And one of the ways I think that was really, really effective for us was I, I went back to kind of some of the first stuff I ever learned and they said, Oh, passive house, it’s a heating load of one watt per square foot. And that kinda stuck for me. I was like, okay, wait. All right, I get this. Like a bedroom is a 10 by 10 in affordable housing, a hundred square feet. So a hundred watt light bulb, heats a bedroom on the worst day of the year. Okay. I can get my head around that. Like, yeah, you’ve got a 600 square foot apartment and you need 600 Watts of heat. Yeah, okay. That’s like that little portable heater they use on construction sites. or you might use in your attic like, Oh 600 watt heater. Like that’s the heating system for that apartment. And that was kind of this radical thing of what’s the thing that can keep an apartment warm? And that gets you down to this funny realization that you can do it with electric resistance. You know, electric baseboard like they did in the Pacific Northwest works pretty awesome in a passive house and it’s super simple. And how’s the thermostat? But you know, it doesn’t air condition your building, but that’s the territory you’re in. It’s just this crazy jump down. But that was funny for me was having this thing stuck in my head of, Oh, it should be about one watt per square foot. Like I can talk to a mechanical engineer about it and I’m not a mechanical engineer, I’m just an architect.
Jesse: (16:18) But I can like ask them, are we close to that? And they, they should be able to give me that number. You know, that sort of plain talk has been part of it of like, Oh, these buildings should be one watt per square foot, which is radically tiny. I mean it just this minuscule amount of heat.
Robb: (16:41) Yeah. It’s a big game changer. It really, it really is.
Jesse: (16:44) It’s just so tiny. It’s hard to wrap your head around it.
Robb: (16:47) I agree. Yeah. And we’ve seen, you know, we’ve had success with really very efficient, very efficient buildings without needing to distribute heat, you know, a point source heater and a central space. You know, you turn on the light and a bedroom and the gains from a person being in the bedroom heats the bedroom. It’s a game changer.
Jesse: (17:07) And so that takes you to air conditioning. So if you can heat a building with a hundred watt light bulb, boy, it must not be that hard to overheat. Is it? Huh? Like point that window towards the sunset on August and yeah, you could probably get kind of hot in there. Even in Maine or Northern Vermont, right? Yeah. So even in Maine, you must be seeing more need for air conditioning in passive house. Yeah, and I guess of course it’s not just passive house. Everybody’s got air conditioners now. All my neighbors have air conditioners even in Maine now, and they didn’t in the 70s. So that’s just changed across the board where people’s expectations are different, I think than they used to be. But in apartment buildings in Maine with the worry that summers are going to get even hotter coming up. Yeah. I think we need to be planning for air conditioning in every apartment building.
Robb: (18:01) And are you? Even affordable housing where that has not been standard? Are they coming to a realization that maybe they need to?
Jesse: (18:10) They very much want to. There are pretty severe budget limits in our state that are, we’re still going without. But I think if you talked to any affordable housing developer in Northern New England and asked them, on your new buildings, are you running into overheating? And they will probably nod and say, yeah, we’ve had some real struggles like high humidity. I mean are you seeing it? This isn’t the passive house thing. This is just a new building thing in Northern new England. People are getting over heating in their apartment buildings.
Robb: (18:47) And so are you going to heat pumps? I’ve even seen some projects with window air conditioners, that are borderline passive house.
Jesse: (19:00) I mean, we’re definitely trying to do heat humps because they’re so much better. They use so much less electricity than electric resistance. We are a pretty frugal state. I mean people are being asked to build buildings in the $160 to $170 a square foot range for affordable housing. And today that’s pretty, pretty tough to build anything for that cost in our area. But it’s the best the target the state agencies are asking people to work for. So there are just these huge budget challenges in 2019 building anything. But so that aside we have heat pumps and then we’ve got these engineers we work with who are pushing us really, really hard to go back to hydronics and to go back to hot and cold water loops instead of heat pumps, which is kind of interesting.
Jesse: (19:50) well, what are their reasons?
Jesse: (19:54) Their reasons are interesting. One of their main reasons is they say, so the refrigerant, whatever we’re using now, and I don’t know what refrigerant we use now, they say we’ve been through like three refrigerant changes in the last 30 years and we’re probably got another one. So owner, you’re going to put a thing in your building where all the stuff that makes it work is going to be obsolete and probably illegal in another 10 years. So there’s a little bit of a planned obsolescence. They are also pushing us that they are saying, you know, these heat pumps might only be a 20 year life span. That they just aren’t expected to last very long as pieces of machinery. And when you have a 40 unit building and you’ve got a whole lot of these machines that can get pretty complicated and it’s hard to downsize them far enough still and refrigerant leakage, they, I mean, they sort of rattle off these reasons. And they’re pushing us to go back to the sort of very simple fan coil systems of a hot water loop and a Coldwater loop because they’re saying, okay, so you changed the box on the outside of the building, but you only change one of them and it, if it fails in 20 years, you put a new magic super efficient thing that didn’t exist when you design the building. But it’s still water running through the building. It’s still, it’s like it’s future proof is what they say. So that’s been kind of interesting push.
Robb: (21:09) We’re seeing that too. And there’s no silver bullet. I mean he pumps can work great. I have tested many. I’ve tested many that have not, I’ve tested many that have worked great. The durability, the long term viability, the refrigerant phase out, the refrigerant leakage. Those are all big question marks that I don’t know that anybody has a perfect answer to. But yeah, as far as, I mean, as far as first cost for heating and cooling, with a single system, it seems in buildings with very modest loads, it seems like, it seems like that would be appealing. Is, is that accurate for your clients?
Jesse: (21:54) Yeah, the clients I think are pretty happy to have someone who seems to know what they’re doing pushing for something. And I think they do have, most people have hot water baseboard buildings that seem to work pretty well. They may not love the costs they get them, but they don’t think of them as failing. The buildings they own here in our area. And yes, a lot of clients want to not be using fossil fuels and they probably, you know, okay, I guess there’s a gas system running that and that’s not great.
Robb: (22:23) But For now. You know that that plant might be able to be replaced with a much more efficient, lower carbon emission device.
Jesse: (22:38) Yeah. Easier than retrofitting a 40 unit building and ripping out all the heat pumps.
Robb: (22:41) This is true. This is true. It’s, it’s not crazy.
Jesse: (22:45) So yeah, we’ve, we’ve got a building right now that’s a 65 unit building and we are looking at electric resistance heat and a cooling loop that runs through the whole building. And it, it’s only gonna air condition in the living room, living spaces. It’s not going to air condition the bedrooms. That’s how we’re going to keep costs down. And we’re gonna have one little tiny fan coil and the living room of every apartment. So it’s affordable housing. And so, you know, your living room will be nice and cool and if it’s a really hot night, you’re going to keep your bedroom doors open, turn on a fan. And I think, you know, we’re looking at, it seems to be like, ah, it’s like 320 it’s like $5,000 a unit to get this system into the whole building. And it’s definitely cheaper than a VRF fancy computer controlled commercial heat pump system.
Robb: (23:34) Yup. Yeah. And so there’s a central chiller, is there?
Jesse: (23:38) A central chiller. Yup
Robb: (23:39) Okay. So, yeah, totally viable. It’s frustrating to have loads that are so small and still still struggle to find really simple.
Jesse: (23:49) And the other thing our engineers love is like when you only need a tiny, tiny bit of heating and cooling, a water system can deliver a tiny little bit of heating and cooling. Infinitely small. I can just keep going and they’re persuasive folks and you know, okay. We’ll try it. But yeah, I mean it is. Yeah, you’re right. Cause it is this funny thing where you end up in these bizarre little rabbit hole conversations. The great thing is, is that we’re just seeing that the, if you can pull off these passive house buildings, they’re just so incredibly economical to run. Yeah. The first one we did that we have measured numbers and it’s like $60 per apartment per month, heating, cooling, hot water, and absolutely everything. All electric bills, like every single bit of energy, $60 a month to run an apartment. That’s, that’s amazing. Very happy clients. And they also say that the costs are much closer to the modeled expectation than all the LEED buildings and all of the other like performance programs they try, they’re saying it, you know, these passive house buildings are running closer to what the, the fancy design teams told them it might be than any other system. Much less variance, which I think is interesting. It gets back to that testing, you know that like, it’s about the only program that forces you to test the damn building and find out if it worked or not. And then if it triggers Energy Star, so you have to do all the energy star or the energy star stuff is the great stuff.
Robb: (25:28) So the energy star for homes, with the kind of the quality control throughout the construction design and construction process.
Jesse: (25:36) Yeah. Somebody like looking at the installation, looking at the building and staring at every wall. That’s, that’s the great testing. That’s where owners get hit. There’s so much money out of that. So much value out of that for the money they spend.
Robb: (25:48) And they appreciate that?
Jesse: (25:49) I hope so. It sure is about the biggest bang for the buck they’re getting.
Robb: (26:00) Did the owners see that or are they kind of a little bit divorced from that whole process where, you know, insulators are being called out or air sealers are being called out about something.
Jesse: (26:12) I mean, they’re definitely getting these memos that are usually saying like, Hey, somebody didn’t do something right and we caught it. You gotta appreciate that.
Robb: (26:23) We do a lot of ratings and some people are only in it for the incentive. Others utility incentives. So I have to hire a rater. Ugh. It’s like, you know, they’re not happy. But then we have some clients repeat clients who, who really do see the value in, you know, that layer of quality control that they’re not, they wouldn’t be getting otherwise. I mean, code building inspectors, they don’t, they can’t get into that level of detail. The code doesn’t get into that level of detail.
Jesse: (26:58) Yeah, it’s really interesting. And yeah, it’s been a funny journey over the last years, but we are definitely to the point where we’re starting to work on a lot of buildings all over. So we managed to have success early on in Maine with sort of a passive house building that was a decent scale. And now we’ve got calls from New Hampshire and Connecticut and Massachusetts and Maine and we’re doing projects all over and a lot of it is being driven by affordable housing and state agencies saying you know, we will score projects well in our competitive rounds that try that pledge to make a passive house. And so we’ve got folks calling us. So it’s pretty great because it’s seeing a lot of better buildings getting built really quickly.
Robb: (27:46) Excellent. So is really most of your business high performance if not certified or going in that direction?
Jesse: (27:56) Yeaah, yeah, it is. Absolutely. I think our business is I would say it’s half single family homes, new in renovation. And another chunk of multifamily. The multifamily is not the biggest thing we do. I’d really say it’s, it’s homes for people is the biggest thing we do. We also do a bunch of restaurant work and high performance restaurant work is, that’s a weird one. Yeah. So everything we’re doing is high performance.We have pledged to the AIA’s climate change goals and we’ve signed on that this idea that everything we do will be carbon neutral by 2030, which is a little scary cause that’s only 11 years away. But yeah, I think we know what looking at, we actually measure every project we do and we check it against the targets. And last year I think we had like on average 70% reduction over sort of the American baseline on projects across the board. We’re definitely getting some kind of amazing successes I think by this focus.
Robb: (29:02) That’s a pretty cool statistic right there. That’s awesome.
Jesse: (29:06) And you know, admittedly we don’t tackle the super hard things like college laboratories, you know, or hospitals, things that are crazily energy intensive. But We’ve definitely figured some things out. I think it feels like, and trying to spread the word.
Robb: (29:24) Absolutely. And your single family clients, did they come to you because they want high performance?
Jesse: (29:33) Well, it’s definitely something that we tell people we do. And I mean our tagline is beautiful, sustainable, attainable. So I’m sure we are definitely attracting folks who are looking for it. But yeah, I think to us, every house we do should be able to be net zero. If it isn’t, we must be doing something wrong. And honestly, the single family houses, I guess we were talking to a minute ago, multifamily is still in this really huge learning curve moment It feels like where a lot of people are trying a lot of things. And I hope in 10 years we look back and it’ll be a solved problem. To us, the single family is kind of looking like a bit of a solved problem. Like it’s not particularly hard to make a net zero home, a heat pump water heater, some air source heat pumps, make the walls r30 to r40 and air seal it well and you’ve probably got a net zero home. Like, you know, it’s nuts. Net Zero energy just isn’t very hard with single family homes. Solving the transportation, you know, there’s plenty of other hard things about it, but that, that part should be pretty easy.
Robb: (30:42) Yeah, yeah. I agree. Single-family new construction is one of the easiest things to do, yeah.
Jesse: (30:49) But 15 years ago it wasn’t, I mean it was a complete like head-scratcher. But in 2019, yeah, it’s like, you know, when I, when I’m out in the world talking or something and someone starts asking about like, well, what wall assembly are you using? And it’s like, look, it’s 2019, if you can’t Google five high performance wall systems, you’re not trying. Like you don’t need me to tell you what wall to do here. Just Google it.
Robb: (31:15) That’s cool to hear that, that we’ve gotten there. I mean I dont hear that enough, but I agree it’s becoming more and more understood. Well understood more and more. You know, you look at, you look at details, you look at sections, you see their ceiling. I mean that’s part of sets now. I mean that’s, people know that they have to pay attention to that stuff.
Jesse: (31:47) Go do what building science Corp says to do. Okay. Oh, you don’t want to use foam? Okay. Go do what the other people say to do. Okay.Yeah, there’s lots of resources out there in single-family world, but the multifamily is complicated. You have lots of different users with crazily different needs. You have urban sites, you have bigger scale. You’ve got different machinery. And yeah, and a really tough cost environment so it’s, yeah, it’s not quite a solved problem yet, but it feels like we’re getting closer.
Robb: (32:16) Yeah. You feel like you guys have your own method for a specific building type a, but industry wide you’re not seeing that become standardized?
Jesse: (32:27) No, I don’t think so. And I guess that’s why the stealth passive house talk, I felt like we were really trying to push people on a couple key things that were really eye opening for us. And one was that we’ve really been working hard to reverse this idea that passive house is about really thick insulation. And that’s why we’re so focused on really get the ventilation right and then work on the air ceiling. And honestly, you’ve probably done 70% of the heavy lifting at that point. And when we we’re doing these energy models and we first saw it and we were sort of turning all these dials, it was kind of this amazing thing that it was like the installation wasn’t doing the work. And I was like, I couldn’t really get it at first. And then I was sitting with a mechanical engineer. I said, okay, wait, so you’ve got like 50 cubic feet per minute in an apartment is like the ventilation rate. So you’ve got 50 cubic feet coming in, 50 cubic feet coming out, you’ve got a 40 unit building. Like okay, yeah, so you have 2000 cubic feet of air moving 24 hours a day, 100% of the time. I was like, that sounds like a lot of air. They’re like, yeah, that’s a lot of air. Like this is a tornado blowing through the building 24 hours a day, and then we first did these building, we stood next to the machine that was moving air. It’s like, wow, that machine is working really hard. Like you’re right. There was a lot of air moving through this building. It was like, and then it was this idea that apartment buildings have a lot of people living in close proximity and there’s a lot of air moving through there to keep the building fresh and healthy and there’s a wind blowing through the building. So if you have a really good heat recovery box, you are absolutely doing the right thing. Just cause the quantity of air moving. You know, that’s the biggest driving force and that’s why you have to have really, really good heat recovery stuff.
Robb: (34:17) Yeah Infiltration and ventilation. Certainly the biggest, the biggest pieces.
Jesse: (34:22) And after that, you know, make sure you don’t do them. Things like connects steel from the inside to the outside. Make sure you’re totally thermally broken with at least, you know, r10 to r15 to r20 and you’re probably getting there. And the other funny thing that we realized is that every project team is just used to fighting over insulation. I guess just this classic thing you do, like you designed the building, it’s over budget. You take all the insulation off the building, and it’s this ritual dance where like the contractor knows that you do that first and everybody’s used to it. And so we were kind of realizing that you can’t do that with air sealing. You can’t look at the owner and say we need to air seal it a lot less. We’re going to save you money because you know, if you look at them and you say, well, okay, so how much money and how much less better are you gonna make it? Or if they say like, Oh, all that air, something’s going to cost a lot of shit. Well what do I get for free? They don’t always have a good answer about what they get for free because most people can’t quantify it. So you get this very different cost reduction question when if someone says like, Oh, that passive house air ceiling is really expensive. It’s like, okay, well then give us only half passive house.
Robb: (35:46) What is that Jessie?
Jesse: (35:48) Exactly they don’t know either. So it’s been a different thing where everybody knows how to take triple glazed windows out of a project. Everyone knows how to take half the insulation off a building. Yeah. It’s like everybody’s good at that. So when you can do these buildings that have code levels of insulation, there’s nothing left to take.
Robb: (36:06) Right, right. Yeah. And I’ve seen it, you know, code levels of insulation with the rigorous air sealing and the excellent ventilation get you to passive house levels.
Jesse: (36:17) Yeah. Especially the bigger the building gets, right? The bigger the building, the more the forces are going in that direction. So yeah, it’s been really interesting for us. It’s been taking the focus off and that’s what I had been going, you know, if I’m talking to folks about one thing, it’s this, it’s like your, your ventilation equipment that your engineers doing is probably nowhere near good enough.
Jesse: (36:35) Like you really need really good stuff so that the folks aren’t freezing in their bedrooms. Again, someone explained to me, So if you buy a 50% effective ventilation unit and it’s zero out and 70 inside, the air coming into your bedroom is 35 degrees. That’s pretty cold. Like I don’t want to be 50% of the way to zero, but if you’re 85% efficient, you know, that air coming in the bedroom is at 60, Oh 60 that sounds a lot better. And those kinds of levers are things that are really worth working on that if you, cause if you stop at 50 and you do that standard stuff, you don’t get the benefits.
Jesse: (37:16) Yeah. That’s good. You’ve learned, you’ve learned the buttons to push a little bit too.
Jesse: (37:24) Yeah. I mean, you know, half of it is these funny little like tidbits you just put in a meetings. I do think the big thing that’s going to change is when people start asking for great ventilation systems in their apartments. So when condo buyers start asking about like, Oh, so what kind of ventilation system does this apartment have? You know, that’s when the market turns inside condominiums when people really start asking. And I think it’s when people become really attuned about asthma and urban environments with their kids. And you know, that’s, that sort of health consciousness is what’s gonna really change. Another piece of construction in America is when homeowners and you know, that’s what I really would tell to every homeowner who’s even thinking about buying a house or a condo. Like, Oh, what’s going to get me fresh air in the bedrooms when my kids are sleeping? And is it going to be filtered?
Robb: (38:19) I’m not arguing that that would be a really a change. But are you, are you even starting to see that? I’m not sure that we see that in any scale.
Jesse: (38:30) I don’t think we’re there yet, but I think it’s coming pretty soon because we had a building recently. And it was a condominium project. So the realtor was in the building and you know, the team was really struggling. They were like, why do you keep saying we need to have this ventilation system. They really looked at us and they said, no one else in town is doing this. Why do you say we have to do this? And you say things like, cause it will work and the other thing they’re doing doesn’t work. And they really didn’t like that answer cause they were selling the other thing. And finally the realtor did say, she’s like, you know, a lot of these buyers are really health conscious. She’s like, I think I can sell that. I can tell people that there’s a feature that you have fresh filtered air in all the rooms of your apartment. And I think people will buy this over the other thing.
Robb: (39:15) So she like came around just in one, in one kind of meeting with you.
Jesse: (39:21) Oh no it wasnt one, it was like 6. Six of us trying every single trick we had to try to convince them to do it, but it was, that was the one where she finally said like, yeah, that I can do. That we’ll get that will bring people around. Cause she just had two young kids and she was thinking about it, but she was thinking about her own house all of a sudden. So yeah. But it is person by person. Yes. A giant marketing campaign would be wonderful by the American Fresh Air Society or someone.
Robb: (39:45) That’ll be a big step. SoI usually wrap up with like asking, you know, what are we going to see five years down the road? But you already started us on this line of conversation. Do you think that, you know, that we’re going to see more high performance as far as efficiency, as far as sustainability, as far as carbon emissions being driven by health concerns on the residential side?
Jesse: (40:15) I don’t know, cause I’m no sort of trend master or anything like that. I do know that all the health stuff sweeps through everybody, you know, like gluten free sweeps through the country. You know, these things do catch fire. I think the work in the affordable housing community and the take up of passive house is really amazing and it’s, it seems to be happening really quickly, where, yeah, it’s changing an industry really fast and I think we’ll get some really good buildings coming out of the next 5 to 10 years in that sector. And then I think other building owners, I think university dormitories are happening pretty quickly. They’re jumping on it as well. Yup. People who own buildings a long time are hearing that there’s a thing out there that seems to be working pretty well. So that group of folks I think is catching on pretty quick. Cool. Yeah. Cool.
Robb: (41:15) Thank you Jesse. Thanks very much. If you want to hear more from Jesse on this and you can make it to Portland, Maine later in October, Jesse’s going to be talking about the IAQ and energy conference on October 31, Halloween 2019 I’ve been to that conference a several times and it’s a really, really good conference. I will probably be there. There’s a link on our website or you can go to IAQ and energy.com everything spelled out, a N D spelled out. Also, if there are any multifamily ventilation geeks listening, there’s a proposed amendment to ASHRAE standards 62.2 that’s the standard that deals with residential ventilation and this amendment would limit where exhaust only ventilation could be used in multifamily buildings. The idea is this would get more fresh air getting to dwelling spaces more consistently. That amendment is open for comment until October 21st I believe 2019 we’ll put a link on our website or you can find more details on ashrae.org thanks.
Speaker 4: (42:31) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today. Visit www dot [inaudible] dot com slash podcast and check out the episode show notes. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. Our production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex [inaudible], and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Human Psychology and the Built Environment with Kristof Irwin
Jul 18, 2019
Featuring
Kristof Irwin, PE, M. Eng.
Kristof Irwin, P.E., M Eng., is the visionary principal of Positive Energy. Kristof’s background includes 12 years of experience as a custom builder (including deep energy retrofits and zero-net energy projects) and 11 years as a building science consultant. He worked for 14 years as an engineer, research scientist, and physicist for government and university research labs. He is active in the local and national high-performance building community including his role as the Chair of AIA Austin’s Building Enclosure Committee, several ASHRAE committees – ASHRAE TC-2.1 (Physiology & Human Environment), ASHRAE SSPC-55 (Thermal comfort), ASHRAE SSPC-62.2 (Ventilation/IAQ), and the RESNET ANSI Standards Development Committee (SDC).
When all is said and done, buildings are intended for people. So, why do some buildings lack the components critical to human health and happiness? This podcast explores the human-centered approach to designing buildings, focusing on the value preference systems that guide our everyday decisions.
To help us better understand this often neglected topic, we invited a special guest from the Building Science Podcast, Kristof Irwin. From his experience as an engineer, research scientist, and physicist, Kristof describes the human psychology behind decision making and the physiological impacts associated with the built environment.
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.
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. Kristof is the principle of positive energy in Austin. Their mission is to transform the way conditioned space is delivered to society. They offer residential outcome focused design engineering services for robust mechanical systems as well as off-grid power and water systems. Kristof was also the chair of AIA Austin’s building enclosure committee. He has been involved in several ASHRAE committees including physiology and human environment, thermal comfort, ventilation and IAQ as well as RESNET standards development committee. I first learned about Kristof through the building science podcast which he hosts. We wanted to bring him on our show because of his focus on human centered design. We discussed two main topics in the episode, human psychology related to decision making and the impact of damp indoor environments on human physiology. If you are considering skipping this, because I’m” an engineer and I’m not interested in psychology, I know everything I need to know about mold,” Stop right there. This episode is particularly for you. But first a quick aside, my cohost Rob wants you all to join him at the 2019 us symposium series for a deep dive into issues and opportunities around electrification in the Northeast. The symposium is brought to you by the Northeast energy efficiency partnerships, the Northeast States for coordinated air use management and the electric power research Institute. Pathways to de-carbonization in the Northeast will be held August 27th to 29th at the Marriott Brooklyn bridge in Brooklyn, New York. The event will convene leaders from government, industry, community and advocacy to address opportunities, trends, and challenges of minimizing the carbon footprint for homes, buildings, and transportation in the Northeast. U S check out the link in our show notes for more details. Now let’s get back to hot and humid buildings and humans in Austin, Texas.
Kelly: (02:15) So welcome Kristof to the buildings and beyond podcast.
Kristof: (02:19) Thank you.
Kelly: (02:19) And thanks for agreeing to meet me here in this WeWork in beautiful Barton Springs in Austin.
Kristof: (02:26) My pleasure.
Kelly: (02:27) And today we wanted to talk a little bit, I’ll give a little, give a little background about you in the intro, but we’re going to kind of dive into the, I think what people call the softer sides of engineering and building science, which is the psychology and physiology kind of parts of humans. I know you talk a lot about this. So maybe just give us a little background. How did you start to become interested in human physiology and how it relates to building science and where do you see the industry needs to maybe make a pivot around, around that?
Kristof: (03:06) Great. So I’m a problem solver as we all are. I think in the back, at least the back of our minds. And I recognize that we’re putting a lot of energy and resources into buildings. And coming out of a background at several national labs, I was a research scientist where we put a lot of inputs in to get the output that we want, right? So I started to think about, well, what’s the output of a home or an apartment? And it’s actually you and it’s actually me. It’s a healthy, productive member of society. That’s what these inputs we put in- electricity and freshwater and data today and gas and the other inputs and then the outputs are the black water and gray water, things like that. But really the fundamental output is you, the content of your mind and the key in the fact that you’re in a healthy body. And so that’s how I got into it.
Kelly: (04:06) Yeah. Reframing basically, we’re not building buildings for the sake of the building, but for housing our individuals. That’s really interesting. I was just at a house warming the other day, which was the opening of a multifamily building. And someone said something along the lines of, if we’re not focusing on the humans that are interacting with the building and living in the building, then what are we doing?
Kristof: (04:35) Yeah. It’s all sort of ego trips otherwise.
Kelly: (04:38) Yeah. Right. Can I make the biggest or the smartest or whatever building. Yeah.
Kristof: (04:44) Really, did you build the building to take pictures of it and get it on house? Is that really what it was?
Kelly: (04:51) Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And so talk to me a little bit about, we sort of chatted a little bit in the beginning, but about the invisible and how we as a society, but also in our industry aren’t paying attention to the invisible and what we, what we can’t see can hurt us I guess is sort of your messaging although I’m paraphrased a little bit there, but what do you see as some of the key things like top key things that you wish people knew about or thought about that are invisible?
Kristof: (05:27) So three come to mind and two are maybe what most people think of when you talk about invisible. And the third is maybe a little more subtle. the first two would be invisible in the sense that what we call vision are these eyeball things that we have on our head. And that picks up a narrow range of frequencies and a certain range of sizes, right? So if it’s out of that size and frequency range, we call it invisible. So things like thermal bridges are actually invisible. But we’ve learned as an industry through something I jokingly call the head Gemini of enclosure realism. And I, I know you’re sort of on the enclosure side, but we over the last, let’s say 10 years in our industry have really upped our game and understanding enclosures. Meanwhile, indoor air quality is invisible. Thermal comfort is invisible, right? And then, so those were the two, by the way, two of the three. I wasn’t going to talk about thermal bridging, but first of all, we talk about what our eyes can pick up and not just that, but it’s, it’s what our eyes pick up and that data gets fed into a subjective neural network that then responds with opinions about what our eyes picked up. And that is really where the focus of our industry is. So I’m already doing a little sprawl, so I’m gonna just make it clear. The three things I think are invisible are human psychology and that is the absolutely primary input in the building world that is not being paid attention to. And that is the dominant impact. But then the other two are, we are living in the chemical age, we are immersed in chemicals all day long. I mean this little room we’re in is easily a hundred pounds of air, which is compressible fluid. But we are like fish in a little fishbowl and you know, depending on what I put on me this morning and what’s coming off of the kombucha, I have here, and the vinyl table, and the flame retardant in the cushion in the chair. Right. So we are soaked in, immersed in indoor chemicals all day. And by the way, you could wear a scuba tank with me right now and they can go transdermal up to take is real. You can get these chemicals in your blood without breathing.
Kelly: (07:32) Right. Okay. Transdermal meaning through the skin.
Kristof: (07:35) Yeah. Right. Like a nicotine patch. And then we could talk about, there’s data behind that. I mean it’s like there’s a research study behind that. And then, and then the indoor microbiome, right? The microbiota, the biotoxins, there’s all kinds of ways to refer to this, but the myriad living beings that affect us. So those would be the three psychology, chemical pollutants and microbiomes.
Kelly: (08:00) Okay. I like it. And to dive in a little bit more on human psychology, I think we maybe have been talking more about it now and I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the WELL standard, of course you are, or how much uptake it’s had in, in Austin. I know, you know, it’s still sort of small and growing, but talking more about how we feel in a space a little bit more than what we maybe have done before. And that’s been really interesting to me. And I was saying I dabble in the envelope, but my heart is in the mechanical side. Although I liked the whole building altogether. And I always thought, you know, the aesthetics piece is not that important and we need to like get a good enclosure and we need ventilate right. And maybe part of my transition is buying my own house and worrying about what it looks like. But I think also just realizing how people feel in a space is so relevant to how they’re going to experience the space and how that person is going to be productive later on. So it’s interesting that you mentioned psychology. I’m wondering what your thinking when you say human psychology, what aspects are you thinking about?
Kristof: (09:28) Well It’s a great question. Fundamentally we have sensors on our bodies and we take in data and then that leads to actions and decisions. And so in between is what I call human psychology. And I know there’s probably a formal crunchy definition, but what I guess what I’m referring to is the somewhat invisible even to ourselves, value preference systems that we use to guide our decisions. And one of them that is really strikingly powerful in our industry are the opinions and the preferences and the kind of background history of owners and developers. I’m reading an awesome book right now called the right use of power. I recommended for anyone, it’s not building science related at all, it’s psychology, but basically where is the power? Like you’re at a project team meeting someone in that project team, typically if the architect or the owner or the developer are there, that’s where the power is, right? But typically they’re not often at the meetings, but the owner interests are either held by an owner’s rep or the architect purports to say, I am speaking on these decisions. So that’s where the power is. And often that power is ill informed. It is, it is biased by eyeballs, by economics and by kinda like egos. Like this is what I do. And that’s a really important one. Let, let’s say I’m a developer and I have been a small developer. I’ve built many homes in Austin. I had the power. And I recognize in hindsight now that I didn’t have the body of knowledge to make good decisions. I assumed everything was fine such that it was reasonable to focus on aesthetics. Right? So at the same time, I lacked this really important character trait that is detrimental to developers in some way. And that’s called humility. And what I mean by that is if I’m a developer, I’ve got a lot of money on the line. This is a risky situation. Similarly, if I’m a builder, if I’m a general contractor, I need to be a motive force and make this happen. And neither one of those is like, gee, I wonder if I should rethink my approach. Gee, is there anything I don’t know, are there unknowns. So these personality types and these character traits that are needed to make these big projects come to fruition are actually not including humility and not including the soft side of, should I rethink things or is there something new?
Kelly: (12:09) That’s actually incredibly interesting because I’ve been thinking a lot about this from the commissioning side. So I do a lot of commissioning and you are supposed to influence the entire job, but you have no authority whatsoever. You don’t hold any of the contracts. Right. And I lead a team. I think there’s some translation between how I lead or want to lead in within the office internally and how I want to lead kind of externally and with a project team. And so there’s this I think mentality and I don’t know if it’s New York city centric to be honest, but we like to get in a room and just yell. That’s the tactic of command and control if you are also the commander. And really what that produces is a bunch of people running around and agreeing with you in the meeting and then knowing that they’re never going to meet those deadlines or saying yes, yes, yes. And then cutting corners somewhere else so that they can, you know, meet the deadline, meet the fee, whatever. And I see this happen again and again, and I think that just what you said, this shift in, can we rethink the way that we’ve structured this so that we can take into consideration the amazing experience that we have at this table that doesn’t necessarily reside all within that one person who happens to be the loudest or happens to have the power hold the cash.
Kristof: (13:45) Yeah. Yeah. There’s a beautiful quote. I took some philosophy classes in college and there’s quote that stuck with me is what does he know of London? He who only London knows and excuse the patriarchal reference with the he there. But like what do we really know about our industry? If all we know is our industry locally, right? Like in central Texas, people consider in residential context, certainly duct board and flex air distribution systems is completely normal. It’s like, you know, fast food restaurants are in fact restaurants and that’s all we need to know about. And so there’s this implicit distortion that the hardworking, dedicated human beings that are installing these systems and recommending systems, they don’t even recognize that if, if I go to Seattle or New York or even Washington D C, that metal distribution systems are quite common and that’s normal there.
Kelly: (14:44) It is interesting and I think a lot of people come into the context of something new and assume that their prior experience will apply until like completely proven otherwise they need to be proven otherwise rather than taking kind of an open approach. And I think you’ve spoken to this on, I’ve heard you speak about you know, the, I’ve been doing this for 30 years. Everyone’s gotten that comment before, independent of the industry. I think everybody wants to say, you know, I’ve been doing this for X years, so just listen to me, whatever. But you talk a little bit about, well, that’s okay and you probably have some really important ideas and reasons behind why you’re doing what you’re doing. But the buildings are changing, codes are changing, things are, so if you continue to build the way that you’ve been building with these new changes, we’re going to run into problems. so I think that that perspective is really important.
Kristof: (15:38) Absolutely. Yeah. And I need to remind myself often to stay connected to the individual I’m talking to and saying, look, this individual cares about themselves, their work, their family, this project. That’s why these opinions are coming out and how do I work with that? How do I redirect that in a way like, look, I can tell you really care about what you do. Do you know that buildings use less energy now that the CFM per square foot is down by about a factor of two from what it was a few years ago?
Kelly: (16:09) Yeah. And I think that the, that’s an interesting thing that I’ve kind of learned on my career journey in the very beginning I think it’s always, why aren’t they paying attention to this thing? Right? Why can’t they just install the air barrier properly? Why can’t they just install a balancing valve? Why can’t they do whatever it is? Why can’t they just, whatever. And that’s from my seat of these are the five things that I’m paying attention to. Why can’t they pay attention to these five things? Well, they’re also paying attention to their own five, 10 millions of things. And so realizing that was an important shift in my ability to work with other people and on teams.
Kristof: (16:49) Yeah, it’s so easy to go into the blame and it’s so easy to go into, you know, basically like thinking of other people as the issue and yeah, you’re exactly right. It’s a team, but people have different reward kind of reward systems in place for them. Right. The architect would be delivering a design on time and maybe one that hits the budget or the general contractor. Definitely it’s about scheduling budget and yeah. A lot of the things that are invisible suffer because of that. And I think it’s poised to shift with, you know, this is the information age and we’ve talked about the hierarchy, there’s information and then knowledge and then wisdom. So unfortunately we’re only in the information age.
Kelly: (17:34) We have a lot of data.
Kristof: (17:35) Would like it to be the wisdom age or something. But in the information age, what’s going to happen in indoor spaces relatively quickly? It’s ongoing. We know this is the overlap of sensors that are going to make the invisible visible for us. I, like you, know a lot of numbers. I know a lot of data, I can measure and I just assumed it kinda like cigarettes. You’d say, look, most people that smoke cigarettes are unhealthy because of it and they can get really bad illnesses. Oh I’ll stop smoking cigarettes. No, it’s data. I’m a data-driven person and I thought if I just communicated the right data in the right way, then the decisions would change. Then people would see the light, you know, like Oh but instead I started studying like well what does change behavior?
Kristof: (18:25) Cause that’s ultimately what we want. We Don’t need more credentials. We need behavior to change actions, stories change behavior. And now when you talk about stories, you, you end up in this slippery kind of squishy reality where Fake news is sort of in the news now, right? So the stories are very important cause they change behavior. But unless the stories are anchored to fact they are not helping the situation. And so for me as a building science consultant, as an engineer, I can tell you the story that is based in reality of a a man who had asthma for 60 some years and did a home performance retrofit and now hasn’t used an inhaler in seven years. Right? That’s a huge quality of life benefit. And it happens to be real and, but I can also tell others so I can just make up stuff like that. So it’s a weird thing to say that stories changed behavior, therefor we should focus on stories
Kelly: (19:24) Right? I actually think that’s essential because having that engineering problem solving mindset, I think we think about data and now data itself, I think, I mean we looked at energy data for a building recently, then we got a little bit of occupancy data from that, we tried to adjust, but then we got more occupancy data and it didn’t coordinate with the older data. So sometimes more data just is more confusion, which is its own own topic I think. But I think that there are instances where we can look at a bunch of data and actually have less clarity or we look at it with our own lens and we still have a subjective view even though we say it’s data backed. And so I think we have to be really, really important in our industry, especially, because it’s this combination between hard and soft sciences and how do we address both sides of that? How do we look at the data and interpret it in a way that’s not with our own subjective bias? And then be able to translate that in a way where you can tie into people’s emotions. Cause that’s what you’re saying, is like emotions is where we make we make change. You just warned me about my coffee drinking habits just before we started talking here and and I’m going to continue drinking coffee because I know about that and I’ve weighed the benefits myself, but maybe one day I’ll come over to the other side. But I think, you know, you’re right. If there was something that maybe was more personal to me, if I had a parent that had issues related to some sort of, you know, consumption of, I don’t smoke cigarettes, but maybe that would be, you know, that would be the kind of trigger of something like that. Even though, you know, data wise you’re going to be impacted by this, it’s until you kind of feel it personally.
Kristof: (21:16) That’s exactly right. So you just brought up something for me. I’m presenting tomorrow at a conference in Houston and one of the things I’m talking about are the five principles of healthy homes, which are: start with a good enclosure, minimize indoor emissions, keep it dry, ventilate, and filter. And we can talk about that, but what I wanted to say is one of the things that gives me solace and gives me hope, as a mechanical designer is, look, keeping it dry, ventilating properly and capturing particulate pollutants, those are really important actions that I don’t need to change anything else that’s going on in this situation and I can make a difference. And where this came to me from was basically this electronic commissioning, this constantly evaluating sensors and shifting things. So I am having success in the industry selling better solutions for indoor air quality based on technologies that have been available for a long time.
Kristof: (22:09) And that’s a big thing and that’s a good thing. You are having success with sensors and evaluating data and occupancy data and making real time adjustments to save energy. Meanwhile those are like the tip of the iceberg things. Over here we have, why are all these pollutants in the building and in the building materials and why do I need to focus on dry ventilate and filter, you know, can’t we address the root causes? And then even beyond that, when it comes to saving energy through sensors and commissioning, what about the pallet of colors of the building materials that we use today? Why are downtowns, canyons of concrete, glass and steel, the highest embodied energy material? You know, it’s just like the big issues are so big that we as an industry kind of go uhh lets talk about this
Kelly: (22:55) That’s true. Although the big wood buildings is a big topic, so we’ll have to have a separate whole episode about that. But definitely I think people are talking more about embodied carbon in building materials. But I think we still just don’t know what to do about it. Especially when everybody’s trying to build the tallest this or the biggest that. Were sort of stretching the limits of some materials in some ways. And, you know, we certainly can’t build some of the buildings that we build in New York City out of wood for example.
Kristof: (23:34) Used in the right way at the right time.
Kelly: (23:38) I was just gonna say, pivoting us back as I want to be conscious of your your timeline here. I know you’re renovating your own office, so we’ll have to hear back the stories of lessons learned after that. But pivoting us back to the interior space and that some of the things that we can you know, address you’ve mentioned you mentioned to me that, you know, we’re so focused on mold because it’s one of the issues with humidity that we can see that comes up.
Kristof: (24:07) Thats right, its visable, and therefore important.
Kelly: (24:08) Right. And so talk to us a little bit more. We’re in Austin right now. It’s hot and humid. It’s getting hotter by the hour here. What are some of the issues that you run into with humidity in buildings that you think people aren’t paying attention or enough attention to yet?
Kristof: (24:23) Yeah, this gets back to where we were in the beginning of the episode. In some ways where we use, we based most of our decisions in life on the premise that as things are, the way I see them and see is also in that sentence is like interpret them with my mind and my thoughts. Well that’s fundamentally incorrect, right? So we cannot see or perceive the flickering of a fluorescent light, but we know it gives us eye fatigue and headaches over time. So that shows the difference between what I consider the, like the limbic system, the body’s emoting system and sensing system, and the neocortex, which is the one that we relate to. So, hello, I’m Kristof. You’re, you’re Kelly. You know, that’s our neocortex. What’s your favorite color? And so one of the books I was reading not too many years ago talks about our bodies take in between 50,000 and 250,000 more data than it sends to our neocortex. SoOur neocortex is completely woefully uninformed when it comes to damp buildings, mold is visible. People talk about mold a lot. It’s almost as if, if you want to recognize a fairly fast style understanding of indoor environments, you will hear someone talk about mold and mold, mold, mold spores, spore counts, and they won’t talk to you about bacterial endotoxins and, and Dinah flagellates Spiro Keats and you know, all these other things. I mean, there’s just this rich microbiology that we are immersed in and it’s interacting with itself. All of these like mold and mid spores and the spores break into small fragments and bacteria can live on the fragments. The fragments can affect us, the bacteria on the fragments can then affect other bacterial populations in the room.
Kristof: (26:16) So it’s this incredibly complex, multi-variate, multilayered, rich, dynamic interaction that we say, Oh, it’s mold. Right? It would be nice if it were just mold. It would be much easier to deal with. And so where it needs to go quickly is we just need to understand that keeping buildings dry is very important and that when you allow moisture to get into a space, water does two things fundamentally. It takes things apart. That’s kind of why we wash our hands with it. That’s why we wash things with it. And it causes life to thrive. Right. Most of us are based on acquiesce chemistry. There’s some things living near events in the ocean that are living on different chemistry.
Kelly: (27:00) Yeah. So that’s interesting. So would you say that maybe most people are thinking, well, whatever moisture content is in my home, unless there’s mold, it’s not a problem. And you’re saying, no, no, no, no, no,
Kristof: (27:16) That’s great. I am saying, no, no, no, no. You will not see it . Often by the time it gets to be mold, there have been background impacts for could be decades or something like that. Could be years. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Kelly: (27:31) And so convince me and the other folks listening here, what are the things that I should be worried about when, when I let my home become damp? Even if there’s no mold in there?
Kristof: (27:43) Well, what impacts is that having the mic or the materials that are becoming damp, are they made out of organic matter so that that can be become food for a bacteria or a fungi. Or other things, right? It can become larger things like parasites and mites. They can live on that. We can start to see those that can be smaller things like viruses. So it’s really hard to, to know. But what we know as an, as a society based on peer reviewed medical research is that the indoor environment, the quality of that, and let’s just right now we’re just talking about let’s say dampness. So damp indoor environments are what correlate with negative health outcomes. It is not fungal communities correlate with health outcomes. So it’s damped indoor environments. It’s also called water damaged buildings, is another way to describe it. And these outcomes, these negative health outcomes, they aren’t just, Oh, I have asthma. Oh, I have breathing difficulties, Oh, I have some sort of symptom that I can logically causally trace back to an indoor air exposure that is now you know like, Oh, I had water and I have mold. Now I have asthma. No, it can be heart disease. It can be strokes. It can be obesity, so if you have someone that’s gaining weight and it’s not responding to diet and exercise, it can be just myriad different things. Problems sleeping, not sleeping deeply, having attention deficit. I mean all of these things are basically triggered by exposure to indoor environments. And I don’t mean just mold spores. I mean particles trumps of spores, molecules and spores, the Dyna flagellate they can break into parts. We breed those things in. And what happens is our body has an immune system. You have an innate and an acquired immune system. I’m realizing this is sprawling out. It’s really, they really the fundamental challenges, this such a big body of knowledge and information and I’m trying to find a path to get us through in a concise manner and it’s like, Whoa, I’m gonna block off this whole room full of knowledge. Right?
Kelly: (29:51) Yeah. We’ll have to have a series of episodes on this. And we had a health episode earlier, and just talking about, you know, we, as building science professionals or as people who work on buildings that humans are going to live in, we all need to be at least aware that this is an item that we need to be looking into. We need to be paying attention to.
Kristof: (30:16) Yeah. And I’m going to wrap up where I was and I agree with you completely. It is definitely an item you need to be paying attention to and look into. And it’s like what we talked about, you know, canyons of glass, steel and concrete, but that’s much harder to deal with. Let’s focus on these things are easier to deal with. This problem is so complex that you could almost say it’s too complex for me to make decisions based on it. Yet we do other things in our life like buckling a seat belt, like brushing our teeth that are based more on a precautionary principle. So why is it that when it comes to invisible things, we’re not willing to do it. And the invisible thing that I really wanted to finish that last chain of thought, which is your own immune system once triggered can become the disease itself. And what I mean by that is you can be exposed to things in an indoor environment. We can clear the indoor environment and your body can for decades still be tweaked, still be going like and that is something that is profoundly vast in our society that we’re not paying attention to.
Kelly: (31:19) Yeah. Wow. You touched a nerve there for me because we have auto immune related issues in my family and that goes back. So that’s it’s interesting, in terms of we talked about how coffee has the inflammatory properties and things that we’re putting into our body and things that are going to do longterm damage.
Kristof: (31:43) You’re exactly right and saying there’s a story there that you can feel your emotions getting triggered. Autoimmune disorders, inflammatory responses are absolutely triggered by indoor environmental exposures all the time.
Kelly: (31:55) So now that our audience is completely overwhelmed and worried about and maybe are going to pinch pitch tents now in the wilderness or something, what do you think is, is one thing that all of us can take to our next project to try to improve this issue of, of damp buildings specifically
Kristof: (32:21) The enclosure is very important for dampness right? Air leakage from outside of the human climate is a big problem and getting your control layers right. Just around the corner here, there’s a residential building that was just built maybe a year ago. They’re peeling off all this stucco almost because solar driven radiation, solar driven moisture diffusion, they have control layers that are all vapor open. They put zip on and then tie back on and then the pelt. And the only reason I can think of that they’re pulling all the stucco off a year into this beautiful architect design custom home is moisture issues. And so here was a team that tried to do it right but it wasn’t based on enough science. So that keeping it dry is thinking about the enclosure and it’s thinking about what is the system that dries it? Is it the cooling and heating system? Probably not. It’s probably a drying system in our climate. Soon as you do what you need to do to make basically a fairly air tight enclosure that’s resistant to moisture, well now ventilation and filtration become very important, as do your decisions and actions as an owner about what cream did I put on my skin, what, what do I do to freshen my air? I’m using air quotes there. Yeah its complex.
Kelly: (33:36) Okay. So it’s complex, but I think in terms of taking away thinking, I mean it goes back to what we, as building science people actually have been saying for years and years, which is build tight ventilate right. So that’s actually what we’re, what we’re getting back to in it. And to your point about getting the control layers right, they did what they were supposed to do. They insulated, they put an air barrier in but it’s actually not just the putting the air barrier in. I was at a commissioning conference and we talked a lot about building enclosure commissioning. The actual surface of the material that is your air barrier is not the problem. It’s wherever your interfaces are. So can we pay a little bit more attention to the details? You say the tyranny of enclosures, right? We’ve been so focused on enclosures but I think we’ve been focused on; you need an air barrier, you need an air barrier material. Here are some air barrier materials. I think we still are struggling as an industry in terms of the enclosure details.
Kristof: (34:39) Yeah. And we, and we struggle as a society with with solutions that are not based on purchases. Right. It’s great to buy a Prius. It’s great to buy a Tesla. It’s not as easy to buy powerwall batteries, but if people want to, or the electronic commissioning that’s based on controls that are available, the filter ventilate and dry, right. Those are product based solutions. VRF systems. What’s hard is exactly what you say. It’s not just interfaces between materials, it’s interfaces between trades. And the architecture makes a difference. Can you not have the building constantly moving in and out in the vertical plane? Yeah, so it’s behavior changes, and wrapping this up, is that we spend around 80 years- that’s the average life expectancy right now, inside. I’m sorry, alive, spend 80 years alive, 70 of that inside of buildings. So it’s, it’s really poignant. I would like to see groups like delos with the WELL standard, I would like to have them to say, you know what, we’re going to start with wherever people’s beds are. Cause that’s where most of the time is. They currently don’t do residential. They certainly don’t do single family residential. I hope that’s their aspiration. But we tend to start our large new building certifications in commercial buildings because there’s more fee I guess there. There’s more square footage. I don’t know exactly why I’m guessing. Tell me why
Kelly: (36:10) I see. I would say I think the reason is we had the historically spent a lot of time focusing on efficiency in larger like office buildings. But actually energy is like an order of magnitude or two less per square foot that you’re paying per square foot, then the humans you’re paying to employ. And so an increase in 10% inefficiency is just so insignificant compared to a 10 increase in productivity. And there’s a cog effects study that we referenced, and it’s hard a little bit to measure kind of human interaction cognition around the home. But when you’re thinking about it in an office perspective, it’s significantly easier, and you can kind of see how you can increase productivity of employees by increasing ventilation rates or by using you know, better materials or whatever it is. And so I think that is probably why the focus is there, but I think you’re absolutely right in terms of bringing it back to the home and you talk a little bit about, you know, we spend a lot of our time in our homes and so we, you know, we like to talk about big buildings and the bigger the better and whatever, but in terms of bigger time spend, you’re in your home most of the time.
Kristof: (37:41) Yeah. Let’s see. I’m gonna pause for a minute. Get my thoughts. Cause you said something. Well, I’m just gonna go with this. So the positive energy name when we started it, relates to what you just said, which is that it was obviously about net positive energy buildings. It was also about yes, we can do this. Yes we can as an industry. And it was also about, and this is you maybe living in Austin, which is kind of woo woo, which is the, when you make a home healthy and the parents and children’s cognition is better and they slept more deeply, their lives are better, right? That’s the positive energy. And one of the things there is that people love, like we just talked, we just talked about energy code. We talked about energy code in this podcast and you just talked about energy efficient and there’s this adjective operational versus embodied that is wonderful that it’s starting to get called out. Like, so the international energy conservation code is actually the international operational energy conservation code. We’re not interested in conserving invited energy yet. We’re starting to be, but we’re mainly answered in operational energy.
Kelly: (38:50) Right. That’s an excellent point. And so to my point, and we’ll wrap up here, that was an excellent conversation. We took a little bit of a windy path, but what I like to ask is when we have you back on the podcast in five years what do you think we’ll be talking about then?
Kristof: (39:12) I so hope we’re talking about embodied energy and putting this time element back in, cradle to cradle. Like, so that piece of steel, where did it come from and where is it going? It’s not just all about my building, it’s about resources. So that’s one thing I hope and I can see a shift happening. I mean we are talking about to make a crazy metaphor like the organic food section of the building industry and living here in Austin, Whole foods started here, so it was always easy, but I would go to other cities like Corpus Christi 10 years ago and good luck finding organic produce. And now there’s big sections. So large swaths of the country are interested in organic produce. And so I think large swaths in the industry are gonna be interested in buildings that are healthy.
Kelly: (40:01) Great. That’s an excellent note to end on.
Heather: (40:05) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes, buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven winter associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
We Should Know Better: Top 10 Multifamily Design Mistakes with Steve Klocke, Part 2
Jul 09, 2019
Featuring
Steve Klocke, RA
Steve Klocke is a Senior Sustainability Consultant at Steven Winter Associates and a registered architect with 18+ years of experience in architectural design and building science consulting in residential buildings. He provides comprehensive green building certification support for the LEED for Homes, ENERGY STAR and Indoor airPLUS programs with a focus on lowrise multi-unit new construction and gut rehabs.
Steve is an integral part of the initial strategic planning sessions and workshops with builders, architects, and homeowners, setting goals and scopes of work for projects. The certification support he provides for project teams includes energy and building systems analysis, architectural design support, and project management. As a HERS Rater and LEED for Homes Green Rater, Steve inspects projects under construction for compliance with energy performance, durability, and health and safety standards. His performance testing expertise includes whole-house infiltration and duct leakage, as well as infrared thermal imaging.
The residential building industry has made incredible progress toward sustainability and energy efficiency goals. At the same time, Senior Sustainability Consultant and Registered Architect Steve Klocke finds many new buildings under-performing because designers continue to make simple, avoidable mistakes.
Based on lessons he’s learned from certifying over 1,200 dwelling units over the past seven years, Steve discusses the top ten multifamily design mistakes being made over and over again – and how to avoid them. On this episode, Steve uncovers mistakes 6-10. Be sure to check out Part 1 of this episode if you haven’t already!
What comes to Robb’s mind when Steve mentions illicit, high-flow shower heads…
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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.
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 Rob Aldrich
Kelly : (00:19) And I’m Kelly Westby.
Robb: (00:22) This week is part two in my conversation with Steve Klocke, architect and rater here at Steven Winter Associates. We were talking about his top 10 frustrations, top 10 multifamily design mistakes. And this week we talk about the second five on his list. We start by talking about lighting controls, which was probably the one that I found most surprising.
Steve: (00:48) Here’s the deal.
Robb: (00:49) All right. I was surprised to see this on your list. I was.
Steve: (00:52) Really? Because this is so often done poorly.
Robb: (00:56) And again, we’re talking about multifamily buildings. When there are just lights that are on always is that the issue?
Steve: (01:02) as far as I can tell, the only reasons to have lights on all the time is if you’re growing pot, which is certainly legal for some of you. Or in areas of, you know, Egress, et cetera. The trick is, in areas of egress. So there’s a lot of different parts of the code and lot of different codes that apply to lighting. So here’s the jist. 10 foot candle is the norm for supplying illumination to a space. Let’s focus on Egress, I guess, cause that’s areas that usually get screwed up. But when it’s not, when an ingress area is not in use, you can go down to as low as one foot candle and that a big jump in consumption of energy. So, you know, there’s parts of the energy code that says you have to have occupancy sensors in these, you know, dozen spaces. It doesn’t say you can’t have occupancy sensors in these other spaces, right? And so it’s a misinterpretation of the problem.
Robb: (02:11) So really, it’s not that people are lazy and don’t care about energy. But sometimes they think the code forbids?
Steve: (02:20) That’s my impression. Yeah. You know, and the rooms like electrical rooms, for safety reasons, et cetera. I’m not gonna argue with that. But you know, a lot of times you’re going to have these stairs where in some buildings we have, you know, for security reasons they don’t want people to use the stairs. And so they actually kind of make it harder to use the stairs. And yet they’ve got the lights on 24/7 full blast in there and just kills me. And so really what you need to do is put in controls. It’s all about controls. You know this from an engineering standpoint, Rob, it’s all about controls. And now, occupancy sensor, vacancy sensor, what’s the difference? An occupancy sensor will turn on when someone enters the room and it’ll turn off after a certain period afterwards once it stops sensing that person in there. A vacancy sensor, you typically will turn on yourself and then it’ll turn itself off. And there are some spaces where one is appropriate and some of the places where the other is appropriate.
Robb: (03:21) And that’s not a timer? You turn it on, and then there is an occupancy sensor that senses you leave
Steve: (03:27) In this room we’re sitting in right now, It is an occupancy sensor, and it doesn’t matter if the sun is shining bright through the windows, this light comes on, which drives me nuts. And it will eventually shut off, but you know, think of all the startup, you know, wear and tear on the lights, and the consumption, et cetera. And so, you know, an occupancy sensor makes sense in your egress areas where, look, if it’s an emergency, you don’t want someone have to flip the switch and turn the lights on and you know a hundred people plowing over you because you’re the first one through the door.
Robb: (03:59) I see. So, a vacancy sensor, in this office in which we’re recording, for instance, if someone walked into this office just to empty the trash, or just came in to get some more coffee. You have to turn on the light.
Steve: (04:23) Yes.
Robb: (04:23) In a lot of the offices, there’s plenty of natural light. So this would be a great place for a vacancy sensor.
Steve: (04:35) Agreed, but not in in egress area.
Robb: (04:35) In multifamily buildings, what places are good for vacancy sensors?
Steve: (04:50) So offices, closets, exercise rooms, mail rooms, trash rooms. As far as I’m concerned. I suppose you could do an occupancy sensor in there because most of them are internal and don’t have any windows. But you know, in your egress areas, your corridors and all of those places, you definitely want an occupancy sensor for safety. And we’ll never try to pick a fight with a code official. I mean, we know where we stand, but there are nuances that are being missed
Robb: (05:21) And they’re getting better and cheaper, is that right?
Steve: (05:25) Yeah, and I guess you have to balance the short term versus long term cost implications. Look, if you’re selling this building and you’re not paying for the utilities or whatever, you’re going to put in whatever’s cheapest. If you’re maintaining the building, keeping it, you know you are going to want something that’s going to minimize your operating costs and so there’s that issue too,
Robb: (05:42) These are things that don’t come into the ratings a lot of the times.
Steve: (05:44) They’re required under some certifications and basically what it comes down to is an argument. With me, they’re like, “hey, you can’t do this.” and I’m like, “well no, you can, you just need to try a little harder.” You try to say that without hurting anybody’s feelings or sounding like a jerk, which is not always achieved by yours truly.
Robb: (06:07) Moving on, I’m going to let you talk about this one: oversized HPAC.
Steve: (06:16) I’m glad that as the engineer in the room, Robb differs to the architect in the room to talk about oversized HPAC. I think it’s going to be a testament to how well I’ve been trained by the engineers here at Steven winter associates. So the keyword here is short cycling and it doesn’t mean a whole lot of people on bicycles that are short of stature. That’s the slide in my presentation, is my bicycling team from rag rye in Iowa. Anyway, short cycling means that your equipment is typically of a single speed. It turns on hard, runs hard, shuts off, and it does that in rapid succession. And so what you get is, the analogy I use, is a car or like, let’s say you’re in a taxi or something like that, if you’re in a crown Vic with a v8 engine, you get in there, the driver pounds on the gas until he hits a red light and then pounds on the brakes. So not only is he wearing out the vehicle faster, he’s consuming way more gas than should he’s, making you sick in the back seat, et cetera. So if you apply it to HVAC, you know, humidification, or dehumidification I should say, is the hot topic now as we keep getting these warm, wet summers that seem to be warmer and wetter than the past. I’m not going to digress into any sort of questionable theories, don’t want to make any enemies here, but good thing our house is on a hill here in Norwalk. Anyway, so you’re not pulling that latent heat- that ones for your benefit Robb. Which means “moisture” to the rest of the architects out there.
Robb: (07:41) Thanks for clarifying, cause I wasn’t going to, I was like, yeah, of course, you’re right. That’s I think one of the biggest, probably the biggest issue with oversizing- is not dehumidifying in a warm or humid climate you really don’t get the dehumidification.
Steve: (08:33) Yeah so you’re not achieving the efficiency that your equipment is rated to cause of short cycling, you’re wearing it out, you’re not getting dehumidification on the cooling side and it’s just uncomfortable. You know, like who wants a cold hard blast of air on their necks every 10 minutes, right? You’d rather have sort of a more even, smooth operation, ramp up a little bit, ramp down a little bit, smooth operator is what we aim for.
Robb: (08:56) It’s interesting. So you can make an argument that some fuel fired heating systems, there’s not a big efficiency to oversizing.
Steve: (09:13) Sure, especially those that ramp down. Like, you know, boilers for example, can go at a 10th of their…what’s that term Mr. engineer? Modulating but uh, turn down?
Robb: (09:25) Turn down. Sure.
Steve: (09:26) Yeah. That’s the term I’m looking for.
Robb: (09:27) Yeah. If you could modulate down 90%, turn it down 90% that’s pretty good. But I think it’s a comfort issue. It’s a humidity issue and it’s a cost issue. Especially with air conditioning, I mean you put in twice the capacity you need, you pay almost twice as much
Steve: (09:46) Yeah but Robb what if you’re going to add on some day? You really want that extra capacity man.
Robb: (09:53) We’re talking about multifamily buildings, who’s going to add on Steve?
Steve: (09:58) Anyway, next one.
Robb: (10:04) Next one, and actually, I’ve been dealing with this tons lately on the oversize HVAC with heat pumps, which are really taking over in a lot of things.
Steve: (10:19) Everybody thinks that “oh, the heat pump is no problem.” Is totally up and down, up and down
Robb: (10:24) It has some really big efficiency and comfort potential drawbacks when you oversize.
Steve: (10:30) Oh yeah. Well I was in a townhome in Brooklyn, in Park Slope actually, with millions of dollars of art on the walls and it’s getting ruined because they got these great VRS systems, but they’re just too darn big
Robb: (10:43) Yeah. No good. We need to do another episode on humidity. Too much. Too much. All right. Moving on for real this time. Antiquated ventilation.
Steve: (10:56) Yeah, so I start this one off in my presentation with the old school way of dumping a bunch of air into your corridors, undercutting your apartment entry doors and expecting the air to get into the apartments. Not only is it not allowed by mechanical code, it’s not allowed by fire code.
Robb: (11:16) With an exhaust fan? So we’re talking about an exhaust fan..
Steve: (11:20) You have exhaust out of your apartment and make up air. Make up air is, I realized, that it’s important in some areas in this area, it’s not applicable. Make up air is coming from the wrong place. You don’t want to be pumping air into the middle of the building and expecting it to get to where it needs to be. You need to control the air. So by antiquated ventilation, we’re basically meaning we’ve got to take it up a couple of notches. And let’s turn the equation backwards. What if we have central exhaust and then we’ve got a trickle vent scenario, there are some things like that. You know, and we unfortunately were pretty guilty of this. We’ve said for a while based on program clarification, that trickled vents are required and I’ve done a few studies, I’m fairly sure you can tell me better, that show that they really don’t work all that well cause you get all kinds of stratification and tall buildings and stack effect and all kinds of funny things are happening. When you take control away from your ventilation system, it needs to be controlled.
Robb: (12:19) In both the exhaust and supply.
Steve: (12:22) Exactly. Both sides.
Robb: (12:23) Okay. You can’t do one and hope the other side works itself out. And for a century that’s been the standard, where you just suck air from the kitchens, you have a big mushroom fan on the roof, a big stack sucks air from bathrooms and kitchens and there you go. You’re all done.
Steve: (12:45) Well I still get asked why we have to have exhausted in kitchens.
Speaker 2: (12:50) Kelly’s doing a separate episode on that one.
Steve: (12:53) Okay we’re just not going to dwell on that one.
Robb: (12:56) Its a hot topic. Because passive house and IQ people are butting heads over it.
Steve: (13:02) Yeah, I stay out of that.
Robb: (13:05) So what would you like to see? Are we talking balanced ventilation. Are we talking HRVs, what’s good?
Steve: (13:12) Well, it’s a matter of what you can stomach.
Robb: (13:14) We talking money?
Steve: (13:15) Yeah, basically. Yeah. I mean, the extreme end of the spectrum is balanced ventilation through an ERV/HRV. I feel like that’s the direction that you know, code is going to go eventually as soon the people who have been fighting it thus far run out of gas. And Robb says, no by reading his body language. I just don’t see how with more and more studies that come out about the value of indoor air quality, I just don’t see how we can keep not doing that.
Robb: (13:56) I don’t disagree. And once again, this is a whole other topic, but so many of the balanced ventilation systems, I see ERVs and HRVs, they may not be installed properly, and that’s a big deal. They may not work from day one and if they do work on day one, they’re maintained so poorly or not at all, that they don’t work even like six, nine months after occupancy. So that’s a big deal. And that I think is one of the more valid arguments against mandating ERVs and HRVs. But you can’t argue with the performance benefits with the health benefits, with the indoor air quality benefits.
Steve: (14:37) Well, in our house, we renovated LEED Platinum, exhaust only ventilation strategy, meets Ashrae, all the boxes are checked. And then after living in it a year, we were like, no, it’s too stuffy. I feel like I’m physically affected because I don’t have enough fresh air. And so we put the ERV in and it literally was a night and day difference. And so here’s the deal. Do they cost more to install? Yes. Do they cost more to operate? Yes.
Robb: (15:10) Well the energy savings can certainly make up for it
Steve: (15:15) Right. Well, in our house at least, we had turned up the flow rate above the exhaust only, what we had for exhaust only. So in our case, that was the case that it costs more to operate and there’s more air to heat and cool basically. And it took up space in the attic, Yada, Yada, Yada. But you know what? I mean when it’s your family and you don’t think you’re as healthy as you should be, I mean, it’s a no brainer. Now as a designer, it’s different, you know, but in my presentation, I say, look, try to think if it was your kid, your family, and if you’re living in these apartments.. I know what the constraints are, but you know, it’s something to consider. I tug at the heartstrings.
Robb: (16:03) There’s no argument about the benefits. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. And there’s better ways to do it. Maybe there are better products coming.
Steve: (16:14) Yeah. We’re slow to it here in the U.S. I mean, I guess,
Robb: (16:18) And in Canada it’s very common. And in a multifamily building with good property managers, with good owners, good maintenance, they can be maintained very well.
Steve: (16:31) I mean do you buy a car and not change the oil every, you know, 5,000 miles or whatever?
Robb: (16:36) Most people don’t but on the ERV’s and HRVs, most people do.
Steve: (16:43) This is the luxury I have of it just being an hour presentation. Say what you’re doing wrong and not worry about the bigger consequences.
Robb: (16:51) Alright enough about ventilation.
Steve: (16:56) I know you want to dwell on that, but maybe that’s a whole other podcast
Robb: (16:58) We could go on and on and on. But we won’t, okay. Domestic hot water.
Steve: (17:04) Domestic hot water. So I had always wondered before I got into this, how the hotel hot water works. How is it that it’s a big hotel and I can turn on the faucet and I get hot water right away? Scolding hot water. And I wonder how does that work? And now I know, right? There’s hot water coursing through the building 24/7. And so you can’t get around that. I mean, people are going to want their hot water and not have to wait for it. So at this point, the best you can do is make that system as efficient as you can. And that means, this is the most technical part of the presentation, there’s a diagram showing a three pipe domestic hot water re-circulation system and a box design. And basically all it is, is taking the hot water return and shortening those runs instead of taking them back down the risers that they came up. So, in a multifamily building, you’re going to hopefully have your hot water generation on the roof, it’s coming down a shaft in the middle of the building and then getting distributed horizontally and then back up again into the various apartments and it goes back down again over again and then up again. Right? So instead of taking the return water back down to the building, you just take it across the top of the building. You take a shortcut back to where it came from in the first place. And so basically if you can reduce your pipe length, if you can also reduce your pipe diameter, so surface area, right? And if you can insulate them. Well back to pipe diameter, I mean in New York City at least, we have to have low flow fixtures, in any of our green programs, you have to have low flow fixtures, and engineers are still designing their pipes to the higher medium on that ASHRAE chart. Right. And so they should be going no more than the low because unless everybody in the building yanked their shower head on the first day they move in and puts in, you know, nine gallon permit or whatever, you don’t need those big pipes. So bigger pipes, bigger loss. Yeah. So longer pipes, more loss, and insulation, just making sure you’ve got your details in there, keep those things insulated.
Robb: (19:34) I will put the link to one of your PowerPoints up on the site. And others here have done some work on this because it’s much easier to get a handle on this when you’re looking at diagrams in my opinion
Steve: (19:46) Yeah. It’s a very visual thing.
Robb: (19:48) Yeah. But, but you’re right. I mean it’s the oversizing thing again, it’s overkill, you know? It’s a CYA.
Steve: (19:54) Yeah. Not throwing engineers under the bus, but you are a conservative lot. I’m just going to say it.
Robb: (20:03) And good thing. It’s not inappropriate. That’s not a bad thing
Steve: (20:11) Sometimes.
Robb: (20:13) Alright. And how about controls for DHW distribution?
Steve: (20:16) I didn’t get into that. You are welcome to. Robb, tell me about controls.
Robb: (20:16) So like you said, in hotels, there’s this big loop that’s pumped 24/7. And in hotels and in larger multifamily buildings, that’s pretty much necessary to pump 24/7. In smaller multifamily buildings, I think there’s potential for demand control. So super simply, there’s like a flow switch that senses if anybody is calling for hot water and whenever anybody’s calling for hot water, then a pretty large pump comes on, primes the system very quickly. So people wait, you know, very short amount of time. But then when nobody’s calling for hot water, it shuts off. And you’re not recirculating hot water throughout the building.
Steve: (21:08) Midnight to 4:00 AM
Robb: (21:11) You don’t want to discriminate against people on the second shift.
Steve: (21:14) No, I’m just saying though that you know, instead of running full blast all night. I mean like you said, there’s savings to be had there. Yeah, for sure.
Robb: (21:22) All right, we’ll move on. Last but not least, poor communication.
Steve: (21:29) Yeah, so is that a design mistake? And so here’s what I say: yes it is. Because what is your job as an architect or an engineer? What is your product? I should say. Your product is not the building. Your product is not the MEP systems. Your product is the design, is the drawings and specs. That’s your deliverable. And so if you cannot convey what you’re trying to achieve through those drawings and specs, you’re not living up to, you know, your role as designer. And so it’s making sure that you’re getting everything that you need to on paper, but you’re also getting the feedback you need. So architects, are you listening to your engineers or are you just throwing background drawings at them and expecting them to make it work with whatever? You know architects, they got their hands full with all kinds of other things. Right? And so, it’s just one more input to this whole big machine that technically they’re responsible for. But the best projects I’ve seen is where the architects and engineers have a real partnership and they communicate back and forth. And you know, an engineer will tell an architect, “well, why are you drawing it like that? Why don’t you, if you could just do this, this and this, our systems would be that much smaller.” And you know, so it’s got to be a two-way street as far as communication
Robb: (23:02) And there are more and more people involved like through the raider to the passive house consultant to the sustainability consultant. I mean, if your feedback gets incorporated.
Steve: (23:11) this might be slightly biased, but yes, one big important point is listen to your consultants and actually have that two way dialogue. We’re not here to just tell you how much your design is not right. We want the building to be better. We’ve been improving the built environment since 1972 fairly sure. Six years before I was born. I was thinking about it. But anyway, it’s also construction, I mean, I was up in an attic out in long island on a Tuesday this week and we’re up there and I’m like, I’m sorry guys, you just got sort of backed into a corner here. Like, I couldn’t have done this any better than you did, but it’s still not where it needs to be because of the limitations that were placed on you by the design. And so, you know, the good architects will get out there and they’ll get their boots dirty and they’ll talk to the people who are actually building their buildings and they’ll learn from it.
Robb: (24:12) Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you learn so much being on the field and seeing the screw ups more than anything else.
Steve: (24:22) Learning from mistakes. Yeah. Well and not even necessarily mistakes, but maybe just things that could have been done better. If you can get out there and communicate with the guys and Gals who are actually making it happen, they have a lot they could teach you. And I learn every time I go out, I learned something from just some random plumber, like, oh, I’m going to put that in my toolbox and contribute that in the future because I would’ve never known.
Robb: (24:52) And it goes both ways. I’ve explained to various trades, the importance of an air barrier, what we’re trying to accomplish. And it’s not necessarily straightforward.
Steve: (25:06) No. And I get a lot of good suggestions there. They’re like “what if we did it like this?” And I’m like, “yeah, you could do it like that,” you know? Yeah. So just as designers, I don’t know if the siloing is the right term, but don’t put yourself in a place where you’re not willing to take feedback, basically. So communication is making sure what you’re putting out there is good in the first place. And then, you know, being willing to hear feedback on it and the other thing, and it actually feathers back into number two, which is designer regularities. You know, engineers are really good at having a pile of stock details that they’ll apply depending on what kind of system they’re working with. Architects not so much. Some are. I don’t think, at least personally. I don’t feel, I mean, and it’s not like if here’s dealing a window detail from scratch every time you’re, you’re doing exactly. If you redrawing the same detail two or three times, it’s a bad detail from the beginning. So what you do is, you learn from good designs, you put them in your own little virtual toolbox, right? You say, for wood construction, this is how we do it. For steel construction, this is how we do it. You’ve got those stock details, use Them. Instead of wasting your time trying to redesign the wheel a little bit every time, build yourself a good stable of details, and then either a. charge your clients less. There you go. There’s one thing. Make the project affordable overall, b. spend your extra time on making the building better in other ways or c. just go golfing, spend some time with your kids, be happy. whatever. Right? Like why are we spending our time with these cutesy, wootsy little details. You know, I’ve got a builder in New Jersey, who does affordable senior living developments. And in an 80 unit building, there are three unique designs, three. Guess what? He can’t build these things fast enough. People love them. They’re relatively efficient. And so it’s like, are they winning any design awards? Not necessarily. But is he providing affordable, healthy, efficient places for elderly people who need that sort of thing? Yeah. I mean, it’s nice to have a design trophy on your shelf, but gosh, I don’t know. I would sleep pretty good if I was saying that I was providing that, you know?
Robb: (27:51) Right on. That’s 10. We did pretty good. Less than an hour. Yeah. Anything, any other concluding comments? Anything to wrap up?
Steve: (28:04) Yeah so basically, at the beginning of the presentation, here’s where it starts. Designed decisions made in the office have a snowball effect throughout both the design process, the construction process and the life of the building. Right? And the earlier you can make good decisions, the better off your building’s going to be in perpetuity. And so someone asked me, as I was asking around the office, you know, like for suggestions on design mistakes, and what I should incorporate in this thing, and he said, “well, have you thought about why people keep making these bad design mistakes?” And you know, that’s a good question. It’s very meta or whatever you want to say. But I thought about it and it’s like, you know, design is just decisions. It is decision after decision after decision after decision, its endless. I mean, that’s really all design is, is you’re deciding to do one thing or another, right? So here’s the thing. If you don’t know, that’s what design is, how can you actually make good decisions, right? How can you move your design forward if you don’t realize that every time you put that pencil down to paper, which nobody does anymore obviously, but every time you click that mouse you’re making a decision. So you know, valuing those decisions is important and super hard to keep in mind and also very fluffy. But really that’s where it’s at. I mean, because who else is going to do it? I mean all these buildings keep popping up. Do they happen spontaneously? No. People are drawing them. People are developing them.
Robb: (29:37) Right. So being mindful, being conscious, learning.
Steve: (29:42) Yup. There it is.
Robb: (29:46) Thank you very much Steve.
Speaker 4: (29:52) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. The production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
We Should Know Better: Top 10 Multifamily Design Mistakes with Steve Klocke, Part 1
Jul 02, 2019
Featuring
Steve Klocke, RA
Steve Klocke is a Senior Sustainability Consultant at Steven Winter Associates and a registered architect with 18+ years of experience in architectural design and building science consulting in residential buildings. He provides comprehensive green building certification support for the LEED for Homes, ENERGY STAR and Indoor airPLUS programs with a focus on lowrise multi-unit new construction and gut rehabs.
Steve is an integral part of the initial strategic planning sessions and workshops with builders, architects, and homeowners, setting goals and scopes of work for projects. The certification support he provides for project teams includes energy and building systems analysis, architectural design support, and project management. As a HERS Rater and LEED for Homes Green Rater, Steve inspects projects under construction for compliance with energy performance, durability, and health and safety standards. His performance testing expertise includes whole-house infiltration and duct leakage, as well as infrared thermal imaging.
The residential building industry has made incredible progress toward sustainability and energy efficiency goals. At the same time, Senior Sustainability Consultant and Registered Architect Steve Klocke finds many new buildings under-performing because designers continue to make simple, avoidable mistakes.
Based on lessons he’s learned from certifying over 1,200 dwelling units over the past seven years, Steve discusses the top ten multifamily design mistakes being made over and over again – and how to avoid them.
What comes to Robb’s mind when Steve mentions illicit, high-flow shower heads…
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.
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: (00:22) This episode I talked with Steve Klocke who is an architect and senior sustainability consultant here at Steven Winter Associates. He works with a lot of builders and developers, largely multifamily, especially low rise multifamily, and he’s been asked to do a presentation at several events-several conferences, called “We should know better, top 10 multifamily design mistakes” and it really resonates with folks and certainly resonates with me. He gets big audiences, so we figured we’d try and talk about it on a podcast. We’ll link to the slides he uses in his presentation, which can help visualize some of the things he talks about, but it was really good to chat. This was a long chat. So this week we have the first five of his top 10 multifamily design mistakes.
Robb: (01:13) All right. Number one over complicated geometry
Steve: (01:21) yeah. Okay. So I won’t get too deep into architectural theory and what we all learned in school and what we should’ve learned in school.
Robb: (01:31) We should say that you are a registered architect.
Steve: (01:34) That’s true. I’ve been for 13 years now. And I wouldn’t ever say that I was ever a “hot pencil”- would be the term, like designing things that look great. I can make them work but, and then make them look good, but making like the really great stuff that wins awards, not my jam. Hence senior sustainability consultant. But anyway, so at some point in architecture we got the impression that to make a building interesting, you had to make it sculptural, blame frank Gary or whatever. And so architects are for some reason driven to make their buildings do funny things sometimes. And to me funny things mean: bump outs, bump ins, setbacks, jogs in the building footprint. I mean, I’ve seen building sections that look like a human spine. They jog in and out, and I guess it’s to make things look interesting, but it makes the building work a lot harder than it has to. And really it’s all subjective. And you know, again, not being a hot pencil, I can just say that, just because I was never good at it means I can trash it, but really very few buildings are going to go out and win a design award. Right. Very few buildings you’re going to look at and be like, “Yep, everyone agrees that it’s a great building.” Mostly everyone is going to have a different opinion and some people are going to hate your building no matter what you do. So its very subjective. Things that are not subjective include: gravity, heat, wind, rain, all these things that the building has to resist over its entire life. Those things are not subjective. They are all objective. And so I think sometimes we put too much of a priority on these subjective design desires, and not enough on these objective things that really maybe matter just as much if not more.
Robb: (03:34) As an engineer, I’m exercising excellent restraints, I think right now. I couldn’t agree with you more.
Steve: (03:42) It helps that you’re tied up with leather belts. Sorry.
Robb: (03:47) I mean the more surface area, the better, sometimes seeing how many gables can we cram on this, or how many dormers can we cram on this roof? And it gets silly
Steve: (03:56) yeah, I drove by one on the way home from Albany yesterday and I almost stopped to take a picture to add to the next time I give this presentation, but I didn’t, too much traffic.
Robb: (04:05) And it turns into all framing and there’s no room for installation issues.
Steve: (04:08) Yeah. You’re making the building work harder. And the basis of, of where I’m coming from is making the buildings easier to actually build. And so I think that results in a building that is going to be more efficient. It’s going to be probably less expensive. It’s going to be easier to maintain. It’s going to be easier to build in that you’re not giving your subcontractors a bunch of surprises. If you can build predictability into the design and a little bit of modularity, even, you can really get some momentum going. You make the lives easier for the guys and gals who are actually building it and you’re going to get a better product.
Robb: (04:49) Better quality control. Yeah. And that actually leads very nicely into number two. Which is design irregularities.
Steve: (04:57) Right. Which again, maybe they could be seen as the same thing, but they’re a bit different.
Robb: (05:02) You’re talking about like the exterior form versus the plans. Is that kind of what you’re getting at?
Steve: (05:07) Yup that would be one thing, you know, in a midrise, high rise building, they’re very good at lining up their apartments. Right. In nice clean stacks, in low rise, which is my jam, it’s not always the case. You have units overlapping each other. I have a project right now, I swear they were playing Jenga and designing at the same time and there was some cross pollination there. And it makes it hard to do your take offs for energy models. It makes it really hard to energy model. I’ve got so many funky little ceilings and floors and whatever. It makes it hard for the contractor. That stuff is going to eventually sag and yeah, it’s got more thermal bridging, more structure, they got to work harder to make the building do what it wants to do. So yeah, just, you know, don’t get cute, build sensible or design sensible buildings.
Robb: (05:58) Yeah, I mean there’s a lot. Making a simple building look interesting seems like quite an art and there are some people that are very, very good at it. I’ve seen some very simple plans, simple forms, very functional- I’m not licensed to express an aesthetic opinion- but it’s good. I mean, we’re not talking about shoe boxes.
Steve: (06:28) yeah. I mean, in my presentation, I’ve got a slide from park slope where I used to live, and the town homes all look exactly the same. Do you think those people paid $6 million for their brownstone because it looked the same as the neighbors or they didn’t care that it looked the same as the neighbors? Does it maybe even add to the urban, you know, the street fabric? I don’t know what the right design term is, but you know, is there value in things kind of looking more the same instead of everything having to be just a little bit different and putting all that energy into these little tweaks when you could be putting the energy into refining your details, building some standard practices in that everyone can build efficiently.
Robb: (07:11) All right. Now we’re switching gears a little bit
Steve: (07:16) More technical now. That was all very fluffy. Yes and No.
Robb: (07:21) I can’t say that you can say that. I’d be pilloried. Alright. Thermal bridging- roofs and walls. This is a nitty gritty performance issue.
Steve: (07:34) Yes. And we have our passive house friends to thank for really making this more obvious to the rest of us. So when we do all these energy models, actually, my friend Charlotte, she’s working on a project in Toronto where one of the key things that they’re looking at is the difference between modeled performance and actual performance in these buildings.
Robb: (08:01) There is a difference.
Steve: (08:03) There is a difference, and where did that difference come from? And one of the things in the envelope, that contributes to this, is thermal bridging. So roofs, you know, in New York City…
Robb: (08:14) Should we define thermal bridging?
Steve: (08:14) Go ahead
Robb: (08:17) Well, in a framed home, for example, if you have a two by six wall and it’s filled with R19 bats, the studs themselves only are about R-5 or something. So t week, that lesser odd value kind of diminishes the performance of the whole wall. And by adding rigid insulation on the outside, Bill and I talked about this in the envelopes, podcasts, you add more. If you put R5 rigid on the outside, you add more than R5 to the whole assembly because you reduced the bridging.
Steve: (08:56) Yup. And that’s the point. So in roofs, in New York City at least, with mostly low slope roofs, it’s not a problem because the typical detail is, you know, a few layers of poly ISO on top and you’re good to go. I will say though, that in the newest version of the building code, they added a table that was actually only in the residential code for years, where if you have an unvented ceiling or attic assembly, a certain percentage of the R-value, if you’re using your permeable installation, has to be above deck. So if it’s an r 38 roof, you have to have r15 continuous above, and then you can do your best down below. And it doesn’t apply if you do spray foam or whatever. But I still see drawings come across my desk that haven’t picked that up. And you know, again, thermal bridging is not only a loss of performance but it’s also potential for moisture condensation and then you’ve got durability issues and indoor air quality issues and etc.. So yeah, low slope roofs aren’t bad except for when you get around roof drains. A good architect will say, r15 minimum at the roof drain instead of going from zero to whatever. The walls are really where it’s at. And especially masonry and especially steel framed walls, that metal is so conductive, I mean, if you’re not putting rigid insulation on the outside, and I know for Code that’s an option, or you can try to load your wall full of closed cell spray foam, but who wants to pay for all that? Just do some bats on the inside and then a couple of inches of rigid on the outside.
Robb: (10:34) Do you see steel framed walls with insulation in the cavities and nothing else?
Steve: (10:44) I see it come across my desk. I don’t let it off of my desk
Robb: (10:48) You still see drawings where you have steel framing bats in the steel framing and nothing else?
Steve: (10:53) Yeah, I still see low slope wood-frame roofs with, you know R-38 bats between the joice and nothing on top. You know, and a lot of this is, the title of the presentation is, we should know better and so I have to tell people at the beginning of my presentation, look probably, hopefully, you will have heard about all these issues before or at least hopefully been aware of them and maybe just need to be reminded or whatever. But it’s not rocket science. These are things that we should have figured out a long time ago, and they just for some reason keep finding their way into these construction documents. So the sub category, or the next one for thermal bridging, is that slabs, and this is how I would say at least 50% of my project first time I see the drawings, and this is hard to do on the radio or podcast or whatever, but the installation is drawn behind the foundation and under the slab. If you have a slab on grade foundation, and so you have an inverted L, but you have continuous concrete vertically and horizontally. So A. you don’t need both the vertical and the horizontal, you only need one B. You need to get installation either on the outside of the foundation and make sure the top of it is contiguous with the above grade wall insulation, or you can leave it on the inside of the foundation and at least separate the slab from the foundation if you don’t have a structural slab. And man, that’s one that architects for some reason, just have a really hard time wrapping their heads around.
Robb: (12:26) First of all, I think passive house people wouldn’t necessarily agree with you, that you don’t need sub slab insulation.
Steve: (12:34) Right, let me clarify. So my projects are mostly low rise, multifamily, affordable. We’re not pursuing any of the advanced certifications. We’re just pursuing the base energy star, you know, LEED for homes or green communities.
Robb: (12:49) And when you’re talking about slabs, are we talking about basement floors? Were we talking about slab on grade?
Steve: (12:54) Slab on grade. There is a difference. Well yeah, and a diagram in my presentation shows we’ve got insulation starting at six inches below grade going down to 24 inches below grade. What about zero to six inches below grade? That’s the coldest part. The ground gets warmer the farther you go down, hence the frost depth for your footings. And so, the coldest part of the foundation is a part that’s getting any installation.
Robb: (13:21) Yeah 20 years ago I was dealing with that. Yeah, I’ve seen it so many times, where in a basement, insulating the outside of a foundation wall, and you get to above grade, well, I don’t know. I don’t want the foam above grade. I’ll just cut it at grade and then leave the top 18 inches.
Steve: (13:44) Yeah because they want to see that concrete. Or they don’t want to cover it. And it is a tricky detail to cover it on the outside if you have a lot of exposed foundation.
Robb: (13:49) Yeah and this is one of the trickier details I think to get right.
Steve: (13:54) I will definitely concede that
Robb: (13:56) In the show notes can we put links to some resources you think? There are good details, we can put a link to at least one of your PowerPoints.
Steve: (14:07) Sure. Absolutely. It is not rocket science though.
Robb: (14:16) No, but it can be challenging and it can be different, and anything different is hard.
Steve: (14:25) Yeah. Right. Agreed. If it was easy, we would have wrapped our heads around a long time ago and it wouldn’t be on my top 10.
Robb: (14:38) Yeah, fair enough. Number five, poorly detailed air barrier.
Steve: (14:44) The trick to air barriers is that you have to draw them.
Robb: (14:49) So this is on plans?
Steve: (14:49) Zone plans. Or sections. Yeah. And so actually that’s really how it should work, is you have that air barrier continuity, big fat dashed line running across your building section, top, sides and bottom. And then you zoom in and you’re looking at every jog in the building. If you just couldn’t help yourself. Every material transition, every assembly transition, you know, floors to ceilings to walls, etc. And you’re zooming in all the way down to the level where the general contractor should not have any questions about how you expect their leakage requirements to be met. Now he or she can say, “oh, I would rather do it this way.” That’s fine, but if you don’t have something to start from, what happens is, I get out there in the field as the building’s being framed, contractor looks at me and says, “what do we got to do?” And I say, “well, what’s in the drawings?” And they say, “this is what’s in the drawings, but we don’t know what it means” or it’s just buried in the spec somewhere because it’s buried in the code somewhere. And, you know, who looks at the specs? Let me take that back. Several general contractors look at specs, but are they sitting out there, you know, in the job trailer or are they in someone’s tool belt as they’re walking around building? No.
Robb: (16:24) It’s hard to find things from specs. Oh my God, it really is. What are some of the examples you see? I mean, give me an example of an air barrier that’s just..
Steve: (16:35) well, first of all, we should probably shouldn’t mention any trade names, but let’s say the sheet air and water barrier product, that one would typically apply to wood framed construction on the outside of a building. Building paper, house wrap, no brand names. Something like that can work well as a water barrier, if it’s installed correctly, which between you, me, and whoever’s listening, it never is. It can be, there’s less of a chance that it’s going to be an air barrier. And I can safely say it is never installed in a way that is going to achieve complete air barrier, like you and I would expect it to be.
Robb: (17:23) And they stopped claiming that. Those manufacturers have not been claiming that. They call it a water resistant barrier or drainage plane.
Steve: (17:32) Okay so they do know better by now, but do the people using it know better?
Robb: (17:36) Well that’s the issue, yeah. I have house trap, that’s my air barrier. And you’re right, it’s not. Its lapped, it’s got staples
Steve: (17:46) And who knows, its flapping in the wind for however many months while they’re waiting the weather to warm up so they can put up their clatting or whatever.
Robb: (17:52) Gotcha. Whereas, so if this was the frame construction, what do you like to see for an air barrier?
Steve: (17:58) Well, we started seeing a lot more of the, again not naming any products, but the sheeting with air and water barrier built into the outer layer. That seems to have a lot better results because it is more manageable.
Robb: (18:16) And tapes all the seams there? It’s very important to tape those seams properly.
Steve: (18:19) Exactly, and a liquid applied air and water barrier, we don’t see all that often on low rise wood frame, but you know, obviously in steel and masonry, it’s this the norm.
Robb: (18:31) Caulk and foam from the inside?
Steve: (18:34) Caulk and foam from the inside. Yeah. You know, we’re starting to back pedal a little bit on spray foam. Spray foam is good to use in certain areas when it was really hard to do anything else. But you know, if you’re looking at the global warming potential and all that stuff, we just really started to see, you know, either fiberglass bats or cellulose. As long as you’ve got a good layer of insulation on the outside, which also has its own, you know, global warming potential. Unfortunately, it’s all a bunch of tradeoffs really. You can achieve the same tightness if you’ve got a good air barrier in that assembly and all the way around.
Robb: (19:18) Thanks for listening. That’s the first five of the top 10 multifamily design mistakes. We’ll do the other five next week. Thanks.
Heather: (19:27) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile and myself, Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Healthy & Sustainable Building Materials with Charley Stevenson, Part 2
Jun 18, 2019
Featuring
Charley Stevenson, LFA, LEED AP
Charley Stevenson, Principal, Integrated Eco Strategy (IES), is a sustainability consultant and green building entrepreneur with a particular focus on helping others understand and implement their healthier materials goals. IES is a pioneer in assisting project teams in creating Full Living buildings, specializing in the Living Building Challenge Materials Petal.
Since 2010, Charley’s North Adams, MA, company has managed the green aspects of projects from 1,000 to 500,000 square feet, including the Williams College Environmental Center, Hampshire College’s R.W. Kern Center, Hitchcock Center for the Environment and Yale Divinity School campus. To facilitate materials compliance, IES created Red2Green (R2G), a comprehensive platform for building materials evaluation, selection and management. R2G is available to project teams by subscription and currently in use nationwide.
The advancement of building materials has allowed professionals to achieve new heights when designing and constructing high-performance buildings. But, the topic of building materials is not discussed enough, and more consumers are asking important questions. How do we know where these materials come from? What effects do they have on human health and the environment? How are standards for responsible building materials being enforced? The list continues…
This two-part episode features an interview with Charley Stevenson, a sustainability consultant and green building entrepreneur who has devoted his career to helping others understand and implement healthier materials goals. The discussion begins with a look at the Living Building Challenge, a program that pays particular attention to healthy building materials, and continues with a review of some of the resources that are intended to help consumers learn more about materials and their make-up.
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.
Robb: (00:09) a 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: (00:22) This episode is part two of my interview with Charley Stevenson from integrated ECO strategy. And we continue our conversation about sustainable materials and healthy materials. We got into a little more detail about specific building products and approaches to selecting those products and also prioritizing what systems to look at first, which has a bigger impact. So here’s part two of my chat with Charley Stevenson.
Robb: (00:54) People that are not ready to, as you said, dive into LBC. What are some of the lightest lists? What are some of the lowest hanging fruit to really get the most bang for their buck or their time and their effort to get more sustainable materials into their projects?
Charley: (01:12) I have two thoughts in mind. If my practice had a mascot, it would be a ratchet. And the notion is you do a little bit of work and you get a click and then it’s clicked. You’ve, you’ve, you’ve made a change and it’s clicked. And then when you’re ready, you can do a little bit more work and get another click. And sometimes it’s really hard to get a click. Sometimes you gets some really easy clicks. But you know, that approach is, is half half of the answer here too, to think about places where in your practice, whatever it may be, you use the same product or product type again and again. And again, I don’t know of a building that doesn’t have drywall. So Rather than think of this as a problem that needs to be solved all at once, we can just say, let’s make sure we’re using drywall we feel good about because we always use it and we often use a lot of it. So we’ve reduced the hundreds of products that we’re worried about to that single one. And then we ask the question, well, what’s the right drywall to use? And if we can figure that out for a single family residence and we can figure that out for a commercial retrofit, chances are we’ve covered 90% of the market. And then anybody who has that answer, any design team that’s incorporated that and developed confidence in whatever that product may be, can simply make that their standard or could make three good walls, their standard and exclude from future work products about which they don’t know as much. Then it’s onto the next the next segment. What are, what are the concerns with drywall? Well, a reason to focus on drywall and I’m going to get to your answer in just a second, Is that we use a lot of it. So you know, if you were to prioritize where changes in a material Palette should take place. I think about what arrives by train car, what arrives by, by tractor trailer, what arrives in small cartons in the back of a pickup truck. So, you know, drywall is not coming in the back of the pickup truck by and large. So there’s a lot of it when you’re in a building, it has it been, presents a lot of surface area to occupants. So if it’s good, it could be really good and if it’s bad it could be really bad. So sort of starting with the inside skin that is presented to occupants in working out you know, deeper into wall assemblies as is, is one approach. Thinking about volumes you procured is another way to prioritize. And then, you know, back to thinking about mastics, wet applied products are different because the curing happens in the space. So whatever, whatever solvents or whatever chemical reaction makes it cure that’s happening live in the space that you, you care about. So to the specific question, there are excellent dry walls and many commodity dry walls are, are fully disclosed, are tested for offgassing and pass with flying colors. So, you know, you can, you can go to the major manufacturers, USG, national gypsum, certainteed, and you can ask and receive a red list, free or Red List compliant drywall. Excellent. paints are another good example. You know, it, it, first of all, there’s often a lot of them in a project and they’re wet applied. So what they have for chemical activity can be significant.
Charley: (05:45) It’s nice that paints had been the subject of LEED scrutiny for a couple of decades. So it’s a pretty mature market, at least as far as volatile organic compounds are concerned. You can add the question of whether it’s red list free. So I think to a major manufacturer that we all know, and you know, it’s been prevalent in the, in the industry for, for decades, if not a century. You know, eight years ago a colleague of mine call to ask what was in their paint and he kinda got a laugh back from that manufacturer to say, you know, that’s our, that’s our secret recipe. There’s no way we’re telling you what’s in that paint. You know, from, from his perspective, that made perfect sense. Now have a declare label for not one, but many products which means that over time, there’s been comfort in disclosing and there’s a recognition on their part that they gained value by revealing their chemical constituents. So the declare label, for first steps is a very effective way for project teams to identify places where there are simply good answers to the question, What product should I use? So the declared product database is it’s a prescreened list of products that the screenings they actually done by the international living future institute. So products earn labels and then you can search for them and simply see which, which products are preapproved for use on an LPC project. And there’s an awful lot within division nine. So if you’re looking for interior finishes, carpet, paint, floor finishes, ceilings, you can, I won’t say entirely, but you’re, it’s getting close to the point where you could simply pick products that pass muster just by looking for them in a, in a pre-published list.
Robb: (08:07) Nice. That that has struck me as well, that there’s much more, I guess, awareness of a healthy finishes. I think it may be because you said it’s, you know, many of them are white applied in space and that’s a big deal. But it’s also, you know, homeowners going out to buy stuff for their home and really wanting to kind of, you know, making much more personal decisions. I wonder how much that drives the manufacturer in that direction.
Charley: (08:43) I think that’s a lot. I think the fact that interiors have been the subject of LEED credits for 20 years has driven that a lot. So it’s a mature market. when I think about the reason to focus on material health or the health impacts of materials, it’s a nested set of concerns. So at the core is just that issue, you know, what impact will these material decisions have on occupant in building user health? So that’s a very natural place, you know, as you speak of a homeowner please don’t let me renovate my child’s room to the detriment of my child’s health. If we go out one layer, we asked the question of installer health. So you know, you know, here’s a place it makes sense that trades people would be concerned and you know, they’re the ones who are working with these materials in the building at that period of, of maximum chemical activity. So that’s the next layer. shouldn’t we ask that the question? What products can I select for installation that won’t have a negative impact on those people I’m hiring to install? The next layer is the manufacturing process. So an example here is neoprene. You know, I have, it’s not here at my desk, but before I got into this, I had a toddler and she wanted a colorful lunchbox and it happened to be native made of Neoprene, which has all sorts of fantastic properties and she could spill in it and I could wash it out and it would dry and it was good to go. It is annert, I wouldn’t mind her eating spilled apple sauce out of it. But I’m awfully glad I don’t live near or work in a neoprene factory.
Charley: (10:52) So it turns out that the production of neoprene has a terrible localized impact. It’s not healthy. You know, the act of producing Neoprene produces some pernicious, in fact, immortal, pernicious chemicals. So those impacts are felt by the workers in those factories. They’re felt by fenceline communities. And then once, once out in the wild those, those chemicals persist. So it’s not the case that we exclude neoprene from projects because it’s harmful in the building, but there’s no way to have made neoprene in a responsible way. So it makes sense in an, you know, with that lens to avoid consumption of neoprene because necessarily that meant production of neoprene, which meant harm.
Robb: (11:48) I was not aware of that I’m going to have to rethink some duct liners and installation.
Charley: (11:58) Well in this goes back to, you know, here I am, you’re asking how to do this simply.And I’m not making it simple, but you know, so that’s maybe a you know, a 200 or 300 level question, but, you know, it goes back to this idea of defining what success looks like and once in my world, once I’ve seen that question of how do I keep occupants healthy is a, can actually be optimized, but it may be optimized at the expense of other people or other planetary systems. So, so this iterative process has us expand our scope of concern to the point where we’re asking how do we minimize harm across the entire system? Not just for the building end users. And, and that goes to you know, it goes to volume as well. There’s not that much neoprene that goes into a typical building but there’s an awful lot of paint.
Charley: (13:03) So if resources are limited as they always are, you know, picking those areas where you can have the most impact or flip that around have the least impact with the least amount of work. That’s to say bring the most benefit with the least amount of work, you can get a few clicks on the ratchet there. And then you’re thinking about little wins. So if you can think of where there’s neoprene in a vibration isolation hanger if everybody that specifies that asks their typical manufacturers, whether it’s available with an EPDM gaskets, so sort of the you know, benign rubber gasket instead, you know, neoprene is lovely because it’s resistant to absolutely everything. If you’re not exposing those gaskets to oils, an EPDM gasket would have a comparable surface life. So sometimes the one size fits all solution is very harmful. And if, if you could identify within your practice where a different gasket type is, does not risk exposure to chemicals, that would cause it to degrade, then perfect. That, that, that one inquiry, that one substitution, you know, ripples through a pretty wide swath of materials procurement and you don’t have to ask the question again.
Speaker 2: (14:34) Yeah. So I definitely understand the point about volume. So drywall and paint and flooring, roofing, just the sheer mass, there’s so much of it and that’s a reasonable place to start. Are there some kind of pernicious elements that people don’t know too much about, but they’re relatively easy to avoid or, or choose better, make better choices?
Charley: (15:14) So I would say often we can achieve results through deletion of products or expectations. So examples of that would be antimicrobial finishes or stain resistant finishes. Or flame retardants.
Robb: (15:36) So flame retardants is, you know, fire alarms, as you said, was good. Flame retardants also sound pretty good.
Charley: (15:46) So that’s they do until you find out where they are and why they’re there. So flame retardants, if you have an upholstered piece of furniture, chances are it has several pounds of known carcinogens soaked into the foam. And you know, the idea is we don’t want this phone to catch on fire in. I think in everybody’s experience before the foam can catch on fire, the fabric has to catch on fire cause you can’t, you can’t get the F can’t get the flame through the fabric without getting through the fabric. So you know, here’s a case where the history is that the notion, you know, the history of flame retardants is people falling asleep on couches with lit cigarettes. And so we want the fabric not to catch fire and then we want the foam not to catch fire or rather it’s not a flame preventative, It’s a flame retardant. We want it to burn slowly enough that there’s time to get out of the building, there’s time for the alarm to get off and there’s time to get out of the building. So interestingly, those flame retardants don’t prevent fire. They just slow it. But they do it in an awfully smoky, billowy, black toxic kind of way.
Robb: (17:30) So it’s to the, so it’s toxic before it burns and it’s even more toxic when it burns.
Charley: (17:37) Right. And if we just had something like a wool or you know, a, a natural fiber, you know, flame retardant upholstery over it, we don’t have to worry about if we can slow the flame getting to the foam, we don’t need to slow the flame in the foam.
Charley: (18:01) Now this is, this has been a terrible nontechnical way of describing it, but its an example of a place where in many jurisdictions, the, the flame retardants aren’t actually required. And when you look at what those flame retardants provide, it’s marginal safety, even in a fire, at the expense of known health harm up until the unlikely event that there’s a fire. Right? So in those tradeoffs, we can either try to solve the problem without introducing chemicals of concern. And that the same would be true of antimicrobials. You know, anti-microbial finishes are typically endocrine disruptors. So and by design, there are things you’re touching a lot. So the very presence of those endocrine disruptors, you know, a classic example is on a baby changing station, right? we’re taking our most vulnerable and will undress them on a plastic surface coated with endocrine disruptors right? So, you know, put in those terms, maybe we could come up with a better plan. And it the same would be true of of stain retardant finishes. So these are typically Teflon derivatives. And you know, they are impactful at every point in their life. They’re, they’re terrible to produce. I happen to live in Northwestern, Massachusetts and there are three or four towns, four towns near me. All of which have municipal water supplies contaminated by precursors to Teflon. And yeah, there’s no getting it back out of the groundwater. So, you know, it’s just across the board, great to reduce Teflon production because that reduces this unavoidable ecological damage. Then, you know, further down the line, it’s you know, these, these are present in effectively all life because these are immortal chemicals. What makes them stain resistant makes them resistant to everything. So both in terms of interaction with, with living systems and then they’re indestructable. So every Teflon molecule that we’ve made will remain a Teflon molecule through geologic time. So we don’t know all of their consequences
Robb: (20:58) its the precursors that have health implications, is that correct?
Charley: (21:06) The precursors certainly have health implications. The use of Teflon compounds in certain applications also has health implications. So there’s typically a Teflon coating or Teflon derivative coating in microwave popcorn in the bag for the microwave popcorn. And There’s literature on people who eat more microwave popcorn than typical, suffering health effects. Not just from eating so much microwave popcorn, but from the, the Teflon compounds that they ingest with their microwave popcorn. You can kill certain sorts of birds by heating a Teflon pan too hot before you put food in it on that stove. And you know, it’s the canary in the coal mine in the sense that, you know, you know, it’s, it’s largely an immortal product, but it will interact under certain conditions. And, and that’s revealing to us that, that many of these compounds are in fact, biologically active. And therefore worth worth knowing about.
Robb: (22:35) Going back, focus on the big quantity items like drywall and flooring and paint. Also the, the coatings or the treatments, the fire, the fire flame retardants, stain resistant materials antimicrobial finishes
Charley: (23:04) places where you can avoid through elimination Rather than through substitution. And this has potential health benefits. It also has potential embodied carbon benefits. You know, how do you reduce the chemical load in the building? You reduce the volume. And the number of products that you’re bringing in. So, so lighter buildings with a smaller pallet require, well, less research and in many cases less, less just sheer volume of, of product. So you know, places where you can have exposed structure, places where you’re not putting a drop ceiling beneath another you know, exposed mechanicals. Many of these are sort of modern design directions that teams will go anyway, but there’s, there happened to be ecological benefits to these on, on many levels as well.
Robb: (24:02) Cool. Yeah. How about insulation?
Charley: (24:11) So again, knowing that saying we’re gonna use cellulose insulation, has other impacts as far as you know, the other detail and the construction quality, having to play a bigger role. Natural insulation products can be seen as carbon sinks rather than carbon sources. So cellulose is sort of, I mean, in many ways it’s optimal on many levels. You know, many manufacturers are treating just with Boron for both insect and and flame resistance. So, you know, annert chemistry. And then, you know, as far as the source is concerned, you’re taking a significant source of carbon in the world and you’re putting it into a building for 50 or a hundred or 200 years. That’s a low tech carbon sequestration strategy contrasted with a spray foam or a rigid foam insulation product, which you know, they’re chemically complicated. Many of the blowing agents, though this is changing, Many of the blowing agents are still powerful greenhouse gases. And often in the formulation there is a, a halogenated flame retardant to, to meet certain code requirements. So there’s middle ground in some of the wood fiber board insulation products. There are an increasing number of that products, both fiberglass and mineral wool that are formaldehyde free. and again, these are not high weight, but typically high volume, large surface area products that go into a building. Another, another thing to think about is just stuff you touch every day. So I’m looking at it, oh, in the buildings, where does your food land? If you’re going to pick it up and you know, eat according to the five second rule? You know, what’s your door knob finish? Just the things that, that, you know, you’re, you’re physically in contact with. You know, those are places where it makes sense you in terms of, in terms of bang for the buck or, or health return for the effort. Those are places where it can make good sense to, to pay a little bit of attention. You know doorknobs. An example of something that does also repeated, you know, through a building. There might be one doorknob type purchased 20 or 30 or 50 times. Yeah. So if you can, as opposed to the kitchen sink where there’s only one kitchen sink.
Robb: (27:23) Gotcha. I remember reading, maybe it might’ve been a year ago, somebody’s doing some research where they replaced all the handrails and doorknobs with, I think it was copper just with copper because copper has kind of innate anti bacterial properties.as I understand it, and, and trying to ascertain if there was any reduction in God, I forget what it was. Communicable diseases or, or what, but I mean stuff that you touch every day. I, you know, some people would think, oh, great place to have lots of antimicrobial to prevent bacteria spreading. But that’s not where you’re going.
Charley: (28:02) No, well you know, many things have bronze or a chrome finish. Well, there isn’t bronze without low levels of lead. So, you know, if you look at a lot of hardware, you’ll see that it comes with a California prop 65 warning, which is to say, okay, this product contains known chemicals of concern. And when I see that prop 65 warning I’m usually doing, in the case of metallics, I’m usually thinking that it contains trace amounts of lead. And yeah, so that’s an example of a place where you could consciously move in the direction of not having a, I’m looking at an antique doorknob here in my office, which I’m quite certain is bronze and it’s polished, which is to say that every day I use it and I clean it off a little bit with my hand. And then I could eat lunch. So you know, the purpose of this conversation is not to induce paranoia but to, to sort of give frameworks for thinking about this because there are many small steps, which taken incrementally, will move us in the direction of sensible solutions.
Robb: (29:36) Excellent. One thing I liked to ask is where are we going to go from here? If we talk about this again in five years, what do you think we’ll be talking about?
Charley: (29:48) That’s a great question. I see in the eight years that I’ve been working with healthier materials, I’ve seen night and day changes. You know, engagement from manufacturers who are completely resistant, you know, three and five and six years ago. You know, new levels of awareness and engagement from the full spectrum of project types. This topic of healthier materials has had remarkable growth and yet it’s still the early days. So I think five years from now we’ll see a much greater public disclosure and we’ll see a much broader awareness. You know, take BPA. As an example. You know, it had its moment in the spotlight and, and not favorable in the spotlight a few years ago. that’s an example of the kind of market change that can happen when when there’s a lot of, you know, broad scrutiny on a particular product. The, the problem that that can create and we haven’t touched on so I’m glad we are here, is what’s known in the industry is regrettable substitution. So if you have a water bottle that says it’s BPA free, chances are it’s chemically very similar to a water bottle that contains BPA. It might just contain BPS, which is to say it is literally BPA free, but it contains a different bicephenol compound, which is chemically similar to BPA. And in many cases, what this means is that, you know, people use the term whac-a-mole, that we identify this problem BPA, we push it out of the system and we replace it with a closely related chemical compound, which hasn’t yet been tested, which is to say it hasn’t yet been implicated in the studies of hormonal disruption. But there’s an excellent chance that it will be. So, you know, we want to be very careful that we’re taking a class base approach to this rather than an individual compound by compound approach. So that, the notion is not to eliminate BPA, but the notion is to reduce any BPX compound. So there’s been tremendous advancement in this discussion at the industry level. I think thought leaders like healthy building network and the health product declaration collaborative sixclasses.org. You know, there are a lot of unbelievably smart not for profit groups making tremendous strides here. And, and really what will continue to tip it is engagement by a growing number of practitioners and building owners making this, even at the simplest level of requirement for their projects. Because indeed it’s those market forces that bring about the most rapid and permanent change. So we just want to make sure that we’re asking the right questions so that we get the right outcomes, not just elimination of single compounds, but the unit reduction and elimination of whole families of chemicals of concern.
Robb: (33:49) And continuing the trend of more and more engagement and more and more demand on, on manufacturers.
Charley: (33:57) Right. You know, I think manufacturers are absolutely partners in this and you know, from a risk mitigation standpoint, they have the most to gain. You know, they’d stake their reputations on the quality of their products, and none of them want to be implicated in longterm health impacts. So there’s great alignment around this and it’s really a matter of raising the consciousness among all sectors of, I’m saying the building industry, but this entire conversation could port over to home electronics, it could port over to clothing, it coud pour over to personal care products, you know, these, all of these same factors are at play. And I think as we have a common language, a common set of goals and a common set of tools we’re, we’re poised for rapid transformation. And really it’s new chemical compounds that we need because no one wants formaldehyde. No one wants carcinogens. They do want strong glues. So how do we achieve strong glue without the you know, without the harmful side effects.
Robb: (35:10) Excellent. Makes Sense. And it’s an optimistic note to end on. I think that we’re moving in the right direction.
Charley: (35:18) Oh absolutely, and I think we’re constantly talking here at the office that we don’t need breakthroughs. We just want little clicks. We want incremental change. And the more people we have exerting this pressure, the more the market will move in the direction. That makes sense. So I, we’re, we’re fortunate to have powerful, brilliant thought leaders that can point us in a rational direction and then we can in small ways, but in constant ways, exert these forces and, and help move the market. And where, where can people find out more about you and your work? We’ve launched a new website that’s called materiallybetter.com.
Robb: (36:08) All right. Awesome. Thank you very much charley.
Charley: (36:11) It’s a pleasure. It’s fun to talk about. I’m grateful for your time and attention and I look forward to continuing this conversation.
Speaker 4: (36:25) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today. Visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings that beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Healthy & Sustainable Building Materials with Charley Stevenson, Part 1
Jun 11, 2019
Featuring
Charley Stevenson, LFA, LEED AP
Charley Stevenson, Principal, Integrated Eco Strategy (IES), is a sustainability consultant and green building entrepreneur with a particular focus on helping others understand and implement their healthier materials goals. IES is a pioneer in assisting project teams in creating Full Living buildings, specializing in the Living Building Challenge Materials Petal.
Since 2010, Charley’s North Adams, MA, company has managed the green aspects of projects from 1,000 to 500,000 square feet, including the Williams College Environmental Center, Hampshire College’s R.W. Kern Center, Hitchcock Center for the Environment and Yale Divinity School campus. To facilitate materials compliance, IES created Red2Green (R2G), a comprehensive platform for building materials evaluation, selection and management. R2G is available to project teams by subscription and currently in use nationwide.
The advancement of building materials has allowed professionals to achieve new heights when designing and constructing high-performance buildings. But, the topic of building materials is not discussed enough, and more consumers are asking important questions. How do we know where these materials come from? What effects do they have on human health and the environment? How are standards for responsible building materials being enforced? The list continues…
This two-part episode features an interview with Charley Stevenson, a sustainability consultant and green building entrepreneur who has devoted his career to helping others understand and implement healthier materials goals. The discussion begins with a look at the Living Building Challenge, a program that pays particular attention to healthy building materials, and continues with a review of some of the resources that are intended to help consumers learn more about materials and their make-up.
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.
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 KellyWestby.
Robb: (00:22) In this episode I talked with CharleyStevenson from integrated eco strategy about sustainable materials and healthy materials. He’s been looking at this for a decade or more- healthy materials and buildings, and I really learned a lot. This is something that I am finding that I’m more and more interested in. We talked for a long time, quite a long time, so long that we had to edit it down and break this up into a couple episodes, but I’d learned tons. I hope you get something from it too. In this episode, for the first 10 or 15 minutes, we talked about mostly about the living building challenge, which is a program that I’ll let Charleydescribe in more detail, but healthy materials is a big piece of the program. And then we talk about how to find out information about materials, what databases are out there, how to source sustainable materials, what to ask manufacturers, who is keeping track of all this info. And listening back to the episode, actually I realized we threw out a few abbreviations that I thought maybe would be good to define up front. HPD is a health product declaration, ILFI by International Living Future Institute, which is in charge of the living building challenge program, and SDS’s or MSDS’s are safety data sheets or materials safety data sheets. I thought those might be helpful if you are not familiar with those, but here is part one my interview with CharleyStevenson.
Robb: (02:03) Well first of all, thank you for being here. This is an important topic. Healthy materials, sustainable materials. And I know you are very involved with living building challenge projects. Yes?
Charley: (02:17) Correct. We started our first living building challenge project in early 2011. And that seems like a long time ago.
Robb: (02:30) Yeah. Right. And I listened to the green architects lounge podcast and they talked about the living building challenge project or two and they mentioned you and they mentioned that the materials pedal, the materials piece, is the toughest. Do you hear that a lot?
Charley: (02:50) so I would put it this way, the materials pedal is the biggest surprise among the challenging pedals. So you know, in living building challenge there are seven pedals, three of them are highlighted as particularly challenging energy, water and materials. The energy pedal requires net zero or in some cases net positive energy. And I think there are lots of rules of thumb that have evolved over the, over the years. And project teams can look to a pretty substantial set of case studies and understand, you know, generally things are converging toward heat pumps and triple pane windows and you know, certain levels of, of air infiltration. And in so doing they can pretty reliably get to net zero energy. The water petals is a different kind of a challenge simply because it’s a regulatory challenge and an operations challenge. You know, the requirement that a project produce and treat all of its own water on site, by and large from rainwater, theres a way to do it, if youre outside of a city, with groundwater and and a pretty standard septic system. But in places where there’s municipal water and municipal sewer convincing first a client and then later a regulator that it’s a good idea not to use that system water is an effort. So I think the water pedal will remain a challenge for the reason that you’re replacing, you know, small sections of pipe with technical systems that need to be designed well and then really relying upon rainwater, other precipitation and, and then sort of continuous operation issues. And again, there’s practice there and there are precedents there. That’s a bigger lift in terms of scope than net zero energy is at this point are net positive energy is at this point.
Robb: (05:25) Yeah, that also makes sense. It seems like a bigger, more non traditional systems and approaches.
Charley: (05:32) right, at the single family level it can be very straightforward. I mean there are a lot of LPC projects in suburban or rural areas where it looks a lot like a conventional drilled well in a conventional septic system and that meets the intent of the living building challenge, presuming that there’s enough rainfall on site to demonstrate aquifer recharge. The materials petal on the other hand sounds simple in principle- avoid carcinogens and endocrine disruptors and biocumulative toxins when possible. That unpacks to be a task that touches 100% of products or very nearly a hundred percent of products that go into a project.
Robb: (06:22) Is that it? Is that like the whole requirement of the pedal that you in that one phrase?
Charley: (06:28) That’s the, that’s the red list portion of the pedal. So the pedal in living building challenge is the sum of one or more imperatives. So the energy pedal is the single imperative- provide 105% of annual energy needs from onsite renewables without combustion. That’s not verbatim, but, but it boils down to that. The materials pedal has a couple of different facets. One of them is the requirement I just mentioned. To avoid so called Red List Chemicals. These are chemicals of concern, about 800 specific chemical abstract service numbers, on the order of 25 chemical families of concern. So that’s one piece. Another piece is net positive waste. I don’t, I’m not, I’m not reciting these in order. That imperative looks at really four phases of the project. It looks at the design phase. Is it designed to minimize waste? It looks at the construction phase. Are our resources brought to the site, repurposed, and salvaged and diverted from either landfill or incineration to the highest extent possible? The third is the operations phase. Asking the question of sort of responsible resource stewardship. You know, that’s onsite recycling, that’s composting, that’s sort of making sure that as the building is used, it’s not contributing to a waste stream. And then finally end of surface, you know, 50,100, 200 years down the road. What care has been given in the design and construction phase to ensure that the, the materials aren’t destined for landfill or incineration down the road. So some of that’s designed for disassembly, some of that is flexible structures so that if a building is set up to be adapted for future use rather than demolished and replaced. So that’s that’s another piece of the materials kettle.
Robb: (09:09) So I guess the healthy materials piece is the red list, as you mentioned, but then there are the three others.
Charley: (09:18) And then there’s him embodied carbon.
Robb: (09:21) Oh, there’s one more. Ah, I was wondering, I was going to ask you about that. I thought you said that was the last one.
Charley: (09:27) I’ve learned not to, I’ve learned not to number my lists before I start talking cause I’m always wrong when I do that. You know, embodied carbon at this at this point requires project teams to, using tally within revit or using the Athena tools to calculate embodied carbon for the project and its renewable energy system and then purchase a one time carbon offset at the start of the project effectively to pay back the carbon debt so that embodied carbon is covered. And then the operational carbon is covered by the onsite renewable systems so that the project truly is a carbon neutral in construction and operation.
Robb: (10:23) And that includes extraction and processing and shipping. That piece of the pedal?
Charley: (10:28) It does Using libraries. So we’re not studying, you know, how many trucks come to a project on a given day or how many hours are put on an excavator that’s all covered in tons of concrete and square feet of drywall and basically don’t get, you know, in the, in the simplest terms, looking at the assemblies and then using industry standards to assign embodied carbon impacts to the, the volumes of each assembly type.
Robb: (11:03) That makes sense. That makes sense. And I mean, there’s a lot to it. And this is, correct me if I’m wrong, but this is the most rigorous formal program looking at sustainable materials, Yes?
Charley: (11:21) It’s the most rigorous one I know of. I’m imagining there’s something out there. I mean, the way I see living building challenge, having evolved, it certainly wouldn’t be possible without USGBC and LEED, if we accept that lead is an evolutionary process and it certainly has evolved, you know, continues to evolve. And in each iteration LEED gets more stringent with the idea that it’s moving toward sustainability. Over time, years, decades, it moves to a place of positive impact that no harm is allowed to be caused by a LEED project. So certainly there are LEED projects that are net zero energy for instance, but if there’s no requirement, so then the notion in LBC is to say what’s the logical extension? What would true sustainability or regenerative design look like? It wouldn’t necessarily be that we stopped at a project that’s 30% better than code energy use or 50% better than grid energy use. Let’s take that to the place that looks truly sustainable or it looks future-proof and that would be net zero energy. So effectively in each sector of green building consideration, we follow that evolutionary curve to the point where it looks neutral or positive and that’s the starting place for the living building challenge.
Robb: (13:01) Makes Sense. Kind of going all the way. And I personally have been involved very only tangentially in a few living building challenge projects. I know others in our office have been much more deeply involved, but it’s ambitious. It really is. And it’s off putting, I think many of the petals can be off putting, the materials one maybe more than the others.
Charley: (13:33) Yeah, someone described it as a Trojan horse. It seems really straightforward and then you welcome it in and it starts to unpack inside the gates of a project. And you’ve committed to a lot and you might not even, particularly in the early days, you might not have realized quite how much you committed to.
Robb: (13:58) But and this is what we discussed talking about perhaps, the red list and LBC. I think you used the phrase waiting into LBC, not diving into LBC. There are some less heavy lists lifts that can make a big impact to indoor health, to overall carbon and bodied carbon of projects. And I think that some more accessible pieces might be well more accessible.
Charley: (14:30) Right? So I think that’s, that’s one thing I’m really looking forward to talking about. Another piece is that the market has evolved a tremendous amount since the advent of LBC. So you know, the way projects work most have an LBC projects in particular, they may have a three year five life cycle. So the stories that current projects are telling are quite different than the stories told by projects Five and 10 years ago. Back in 2011 and 2012 we were a smaller operation and there were two of us and we could hear one another in an open office and it generally took five or 10 minutes on the phone to describe to a manufacturer or you know, an engineer, product engineer at a manufacturing firm. Just what the living building challenge was. So if we were on a research task, we had to plan on stopping and giving background. It is no longer the case, or It’s very seldom I should say the case that we call a manufacturer and have to explain LBC. So just that fact alone means that the, you know, the effort required by a particular project team is, is vastly reduced because there’s familiarity. So that’s one thing I would want to make very clear is that while it remains a challenge, a lot of the war stories from early projects are now somewhat outdated in the sense that it has gotten significantly easier. And another piece of that, is that unlike say the water pedal, where it’s a new regulatory lift for each new project, materials can be fairly consistent from project to project. So once a single project team has determined a good drywall or you know, an appropriate non flat interior latex wall paint, that is a really good starting place, if not a good solution for subsequent project teams. So because information can be shared and because there’s the possibility of reuse of compliance information from project to project, the community of practitioners can facilitate future materials, project compliance paths for all subsequent projects. So there’s that, that idea of data reuse and information sharing is I would say much more significant in the materials petal than it is in others.
Robb: (17:36) And you manage a database. The red to green database I believe, is your product that you have kind of compiled over the years? Is that true?
Charley: (17:47) Yes. So I think almost all LBC project teams begin with a spreadsheet. So the international living future institute has a template spreadsheet that’s effectively the reporting form that that needs to be submitted for audit at the end of the project. So everyone begins there, there’s certain information that gets tracked and it’s a subset of all of the information that’s collected over the course of researching a product for LBC compliance. So the quick story of red to green is that we had our first living building challenge project at Williams college and then about two years later signed on to do one at Hampshire college just about 40 miles away. And we thought it would be really easy because we had all these answers from the first project. And Lo and behold, we’d fought, forgotten a lot of what we’d learned because we didn’t write it all down. And then we started our third project, the Hitchcock Center also on the Hampshire College campus. And those two projects had the same construction team and were overlapping in design and construction. There again, we ran into the limitations of a spreadsheet. First of all, it didn’t contain all the information that we’d learned. And then on top of that, there weren’t enough dimensions in the spreadsheet to keep track of what was consistent from project to project and what had changed from project to project. So we started a database development process to take advantage of the many dimensions that a database allows. And over time that’s evolved to be a software platform that’s focused on LBC materials compliance that we call red degree.
Robb: (19:37) I hear quite a few people mention the red list, but the red list is not a list of products. It’s a list of chemicals that are not allowed in any products that you use in an LBC building, is that accurate?
Charley: (19:50) That’s correct. So the red list is you could say worst in class chemicals. So you’re familiar with some of them asbestos, led, you know, others by name, BPA or p Foss, even something like BPA isn’t a single chemical that’s a chemical family. So I won’t really know the numbers off the top of my head, but there are dozens of BPAs, there are polycarbonate VPAs and so forth and so on. So we sort of start with the idea that we’re going to avoid BPA and then need to delve much deeper to find specifical chemical compounds revealed by manufacturers, which may or may not be BPA. So there’s a lookup process that we do when, when screening a product.
Robb: (20:48) Gotcha. Basically all the products in that database do not contain any red list chemicals. It’s that accurate?
Charley: (21:11) It’s not quite so simple. So we’ve looked at something over 9,000 products and we sort them into categories. There are a couple of different ways of sorting. Sometimes we know all that we need to know about a product to make a determination and other times we don’t. It’s still the case that not all manufacturers will reveal 100% or anything approaching 100% of the chemicals in their products. And there are a couple of reasons for that. Some valid, some arguably less valid. Sometimes they just don’t know. So I’m sitting in a chair which has, you know, I’d guess 150 parts, you know, they’re the arms and they’re the screws that hold on the arms and they’re the little plastic levers that let me adjust the arms. It’s quite possible that each one of those comes from one different sub supplier. And it’s also possible that like a screw that has a black coating might involve two or three suppliers. So just the act of figuring out what’s in a chair sounds straightforward. It’s nontrivial. Yup. And then sometimes it’s just a data acquisition problem and we’re totally sympathetic when manufacturers face that. Other times we’re also sympathetic, but we when there’s a concern about proprietary information. That’s to say a company has invested significant resources in figuring out how best to make whatever, a flexible coating that could go on a, you know, the arm of a chair in this example. And they, they don’t want to reveal how they made that because understandably if they, if they gave the chemical recipe, someone else would have a shortcut to replicate their high-performing chair arm coating. The trick in all of this is that, you know, as a, as a consumer or as a designer, that’s, that’s recommending products to consumers, we want to begin from a place of information that allows us to make informed decisions. So it’s very different to say, you want me to indicate that you, if we switched to food as an example you know, the difference between, trust me, it’s organic and I have a third party seal from the Oregon tilth saying that this fruit bar was produced organically and it contains only fruit as opposed to, you know, preservatives or other synthetic chemicals. So, you know, I think I take materials health to be a two step process initially. First obtaining disclosure, so that information sharing and then second, a screening process to understand it, judge for myself, using sort of established rules of health and potential health impact to understand if a product screens positively or negatively against those lists of chemicals of concern.
Robb: (24:47) Yeah. Okay. And so where’s the best place for looking for HPDs, which stands for?
Charley: (24:58) Health product declarations. It is still early days for getting this information and there isn’t a standard standards. So there are multiple standards for ingredient disclosures, all of which are good and maybe none of which are perfect.
Robb: (25:22) Yeah, no, it’s, it’s very confusing. There’s all kinds of different sustainable product certifications. It’s a little alphabet soup that I, for one don’t know exactly what to make of them.
Charley: (25:35) Right. and I wouldn’t claim that I know what to do with them either. I think the, you know, the way we approach it and we talk about waiting into this, potentially overwhelming pool just pick a couple of criteria that seem to make sense. So, you know, on the simplest level, is it good to know what’s in a product? Better, that is, than not knowing. So yes. And then it doesn’t need to be a hundred percent disclosure, is it good to know something rather than nothing? Sure. So if you look at a safety data sheet, for instance that does not reveal 100% of material ingredients now, but it will flag certain chemicals that are known bad actors. So that’s to say there are, there are regulatory requirements to reveal certain things. Now, there are other bad actors that aren’t subject to requirements. So if a product contains Formaldehyde, for instance, it will show on the SDS. Gotcha. If it contains BPA, it may or may not show on the SDS. Someone could choose to put it on the SDS, but they’re not required to put it on the SDS. So that’s a good first screen because a product, or many products are required to have them. So anything that’s any chemical constituent, that’s a proven carcinogen, will be revealed through the safety data sheet. If we move on to something like a health product declaration, that’s a voluntary standard, it’s fantastic because it is a standard. So there is an increasing level of consistency from manufacturer to manufacturer. It’s good that it’s an evolving standard. So, you know, the health product declaration collaborative does tremendous work in industry helping manufacturers understand the benefits that accrue from disclosure.
Charley: (28:00) And then over time, that standard evolves, you know, moving toward higher levels of disclosure, which is to say you know, moving from say a thousand parts per million as the threshold for disclosure to a hundred parts per million as the threshold for disclosure. So there’s fewer places for chemicals of concern to hide as you move toward a more stringent screen for ingredient disclosure. So all of these resources are tremendous. What they do is they bring information out into the light for review and reflection by project teams. So as we reach higher and higher levels of ingredient disclosure, we now that get to the next question, great, I know what’s in this product, should I use it? And that’s an entirely different question because that we presume some knowledge about chemicals of concern in order to move from the factual question to the, the guiding question. Andagain, there are lots of tools. Something like the red list gives us a way to ask the binary question, does this product have a chemical that someone else has said I should avoid? So in the case of Formaldehyde, it’s a carcinogen I understand intuitively that given a choice, I wouldn’t use that in a building.
Robb: (29:59) Yeah. I ran across something in an article that was a pretty general article or paper that advised avoiding mastic for duct sealing, use tape instead of mastic for duct sealing because mastics contain many chemicals of concern and they were talking about just generally. And so this kind of floored me because mastics are so much better at duck ceiling then tapes usually, that I was a little concerned. So I went through, I looked up a few SDSs from some mastics that I had used that I knew about. And you know the compounds list on the SDSs accounted for something like 17% of the volume or the weight of the product. And then, so I dug a little more, tried to find some duct mastic with product declarations. HBDs and did not find any. So it’s frustrating.
Charley: (31:00) Right. Well, I mean, you can’t unthink these thoughts. You know, we might change our diet if someone said to us, what do you have for breakfast every day? I can only tell you 17% of what’s in it. And that leads to that question well what’s the other 83%? And if someone were unwilling to tell you, you might go looking for a different breakfast. And it’s possible that the other 83% is a nerd, but wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if you knew that? Absolutely. And it gets to a really good point, robb. That A consideration in design is to avoid single variable optimization. So it is absolutely true that mastic produces, you know, duct leakage with a higher effectiveness rate. Lower duct leakage at a known installed cost. Right. if you asked the question, what’s the most cost effective way to reduce duct leakage? The answer is mastic. If you’ve asked the question, what’s the most effective way to deliver uncontaminated air to building occupants? You’re introducing a new variable in the discussion and that’s uncontaminated. Leakage reduction is great, but If it comes at the expense of a contaminant load it may be less great. And noq you know what the optimal solution focused on leakage alone might be mastic. We may be willing to accept a higher leakage rate in exchange for our production and in chemical load. And now we’re really asking a different question.
Robb: (33:37) Or somebody can step up and make a mastic without any red list chemicals.
Charley: (33:41) Exactly. And that’s really, you know, the entire premise of the living building challenge is precisely that- no one stepped up and delivered a red list free. If someone hasn’t delivered a mastic mastic that’s free of red list chemicals, it’s probably because no one has asked them to yet. So what we end up doing as practitioners in this realm is just asking the question, Hey, what’s in your product? I’d really prefer a mastic that contains no red list chemicals and that does a couple of things. First of all, it alerts the manufacturers that there’s an interest, you know, that there’s a market here for a red list free product. It alerts them to something that they can act upon. So it’s not just that I want a healthy product, it’s that I want a product that doesn’t contain anything in these 25 chemical families. Some of them are going to be easy. Yeah, we don’t put asbestos in our mastic. though it might be legal, we don’t put led. But there may be some plasticizers that we’d have to look at and come to a better understanding internally speaking as the mastic manufacturer, to know, do we have it now and can we reformulate without. And to a topic you touched on a little bit ago, there may not be a perfect mastic and then a design team is left with the question, are they better off with a leaky duct or a duct that uses mastic to achieve a certain level of sealing and that decision left to the design team. So I don’t think in terms of absolutes, but rather think in terms of the best that we can do for a particular design problem. So when we’ve finished an LBC project, as much as we’d love to say it’s red list free, really what we’re saying is that use of red list compounds has been minimized. So we’re using them in known places for known purposes. So an example of that is a fire alarm. We have not found a red list free fire alarm annunciator, but we believe there’s very good reason to have fire alarms in buildings, and code officials agree. So what we’ll do in that case is we’ll advocate to the manufacturer and say, you know, we have this red box. You didn’t tell us what the, what the coding was on that box. And we can deduce that it contains led. That’s fine. We accept that this is the state of the market for now. And to have a safe building, we want a fire alarm system, and to have a fire alarm system, we accept these shortcomings and current disclosure and compliance. Please know that when you or one of your peers has a product that does better than this from a chemical perspective, we’ll shift our purchasing there. So we’re engaged with the market as it exists, but we’re telegraphing what we want the market to be in the future, in an effort to tip the market toward optimization. And the idea there really is the living, building challenge teams individually may or may not have a lot of power, but collectively they define the terms red list, red list free. And they commit in the abstract toward buying better products in the future. So whoever’s making the case for better paints or better coatings or better what have you, can be accumulating this information to say, boy we’d own market share, if only we had a red list free solution in this particular building product sector.
Robb: (38:03) It makes sense. And we’ve seen the market change in this way and in other and other aspects. Our accessibility group I know has had issues with high tech windows and doors, not having the proper clearance to get into in and out of buildings and working with manufacturers to get products that satisfy everybody. And if there’s big enough demand, it’s worth their while.
Charley: (38:36) Right. Absolutely. We internally track what we call success stories, which are these breakthroughs with manufacturers. And you know, many go to great lengths and we appreciate, you know, their their knowledge of their products, their knowledge of the manufacturing process, and they alone can pinpoint the shortcomings and then work within their supply chain and work to innovate in ways that addresses these concerns. And it moves either in large steps or incrementally toward better products. Where in this case better is holding the line on all of the other performance criteria, durability, what have you, and increasing awareness of health impacts and really making efforts to reduce those.
Robb: (39:34) Yeah. If anybody knows of a good mastic with HPD, let me know. I’d be very keen to find one.
Charley: (39:42) So that’s effectively what we do, is we’re just cataloging what we find. So when I go back to those 9,000 products, you know, some, we have full disclosure, some we don’t, you know, in every case if we’re trying to ratchet toward fuller disclosure and then certain products are red list free, certain products or Red List compliant, certain products or red list unknown and certain products are red list noncompliant. So that gradation, red list free I think is obvious. Red List compliant, you know, there are what ILFI calls temporary exceptions. So exterior sheathing, so plywood sheathing, It needs to be weatherproof for a few months and no one has yet come up with a resin that let’s you know, cdx plywood, weather for a few months without delaminating, without using fetal formaldehyde. So if we want buildings to be durable, they have to stand up through the construction process and they need to tolerate a certain amount of moisture.
Charley: (41:03) So the chemistry, the green chemistry isn’t there to give us exterior grade plywoods without fenal formaldehyde. So we’d love one, but for right now, ILFI has given us permission to use that chemical of concern in this limited application until the market has transformed.
Robb: (41:24) All right. So that’s an explicit quote exception for now. That’s something that design teams have to judge, right? But ILFI themselves have given stated permission.
Charley: (41:37) So there’s dozens of exceptions that reflect temporary market limitations. So part of what we’re doing is we’re attaching that exception to a particular product so that the next project team that comes along can see it’s okay to use this. There’s nothing better than this product in this particular market segment for the time being. And then, you know, further down the list of the products about which we’ve not gotten enough information to make a judgment, there’s something that’s called the due diligence case. So if we reach out within the bounds of a particular project to three manufacturers, none of whom will answer our questions, and we know of nothing else that can be used to meet the project’s requirements, we can go ahead and use one of those products of uncertain compliance, because the work can’t stop either in design or construction to wait for the market to transform. And that’s equally true for noncompliant products. So, you know, back to the fire alarm, they contain lead. We wish they didn’t contain lead. But we, we need them. So, you know, as we look at the library, it’s about a third products that are compliant. A third products that are unknown, and a third products that are noncompliant. And where it gets interesting is when you have a particular design need or performance need that can be met either by a compliant product or a noncompliant product. Now you really feel yourself pushing the market or moving the market to say, no, we’re not going to buy this thing that is noncompliant. We’re going to favor this thing that’s compliant. And I think back to your mastic example, you know, this is where, you know, it, it’s an interesting process for designers to ask what products are necessary in a building. Is that the case that mastics are necessary? Maybe, or there may be a creative solution that says we can achieve an adequate level of duct sealing without mastic. And now we’re asking the question, well, what would replace mastic to achieve the desired performance level? So a lot of what we end up doing is, we feel most impactful at the beginning of design where we’re able to broaden the question, you know, to steer away from say, spray foam solutions into bat or loosefill solutions. Because you know, these are places where you can make a huge step away from chemicals of concern. You can also make a huge step away from embodied carbon. And now, we’re focusing on the performance and the abstract rather than the particular performance characteristics of a material. So it may be those are different air barrier solution. It may be that there’s a whole different wall assembly. But with openness in the early days you can often move toward products that meet multiple at the optimized and multiple criteria.
Robb: (45:21) That’ll do it for part one of my interview with Charley. Next time we’ll talk about where to start with healthy products or sustainable products. If you’re not going to go whole hog with living building challenge, where does it make sense to start spending effort to look at healthy materials and buildings? I also wanted to mention Charley’s website materiallybetter.com there’s links to that on our show notes, but I wanted to give you a shout out for that website too. Thanks and I hope you tune in next week.
Speaker 4: (45:54) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. Our production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex [inaudible], and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
The Importance of Climate Policy in Cities with Laurie Kerr
Jun 04, 2019
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.
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.
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, that our industry is focused on these big, big buildings, even though, you know,, there is some efficiency benefit to having a larger building with less envelope per interior area for example. But I think getting to that point of, well, it’s actually just easier to address climate change when you’re talking about 20,000 buildings covering most of the square footage versus the whole million square build a square feet. Well, million buildings that you mentioned that, that have all these individual owners and individual points of points of entry and might have be less cost effective to do anything about.
Laurie: (09:32) Exactly. I think some of the press coverage on this that seems to imply that big is bad was not our thinking at all. A big as good in many, in many, many respects, density is very good in terms of reduced carbon footprints per capita. So it really was about being effective. Yeah, from a policy point of view. So, you know, one of the things we realized is that you know, you go to buy a refrigerator or a car and you get some information about how efficient that is, but these really huge objects that we have that use so much energy, buildings, people don’t know. There’s no tag on those buildings that tell you whether the building’s efficient, even the building operators and building owners don’t know. So we felt that we needed to start measuring the how much energy buildings used and we needed to make that public.
Laurie: (10:41) And the idea was that if that you can’t manage what you don’t measure. And so benchmarking, which is the process of doing that measurement was kind of the foundational policy. We didn’t exactly think it would do anything, but we thought we needed it to build on it. It turns out that it actually might do some things. And, and you know, in the reports on energy consumption that are come out every year in New York City from the benchmarking and now the audit ordinances. We see about a 2% energy reduction year on year for buildings that consistently benchmark. So it’s a correlation. It’s not necessarily causal, but it’s very promising. And it, it accords with data from EPA and from other cities that have passed benchmarking ordinances. So that policy may have done somewhat more than we actually anticipated.
Laurie: (11:45) That’s great. But we also wanted to require cost-effective retrofits even in this first past, so we drafted this ordinance that required that buildings do audits and then they had to do the package of measures that paid for itself in five years. We decided on a payback horizon at that point that seemed fair. But as we delve deeper, we realized it wasn’t fair because building owners would have to pay for retrofits to central systems, but because of a split incentive problem in leases, the tenants would accrue the benefits of the five year horizon wasn’t realistic, wasn’t paying people back. So we had to go back and correct. We came up with the energy aligned lease clause which fix that. And so so we replaced the mandatory upgrades with a requirement that lighting systems be updated to meet code and that commercial tenants be sub-metered for their electrical use.
Kelly: (12:50) Great. And did we have any results? Was there any other successes besides you mentioned that you saw that even just benchmarking could kind of move the ball forward. Did you see any other successes through the work that you did?
Laurie: (13:09) I think that one of the biggest successes was the data that we captured. At the time that we, after we passed the audit ordinance, I started thinking, you know, we shouldn’t really let these audits just pile up at the department of buildings. Why don’t we collect the information systematically and then we can have an electronic database that we can actually study and learn from. And then we brought together all the great brains in New York and created a good matrix of information that we wanted to collect. And that’s turned out to be a gold mine. We now know not only how well our buildings are performing from benchmarking, but we can look under the hood and see why and we can see what systems are more or less efficient. We can see where we have opportunities citywide to make improvements. So that I think was has been a really exciting success. Another one was the Mayors carbon challenge program, which we originally launched for just universities and hospitals. But over the years it’s expanded and it’s now covering 10% of the square footage of the city. I mean, it’s just taken off.
Kelly: (14:31) So 10% of the square footage is participating in the carbon challenge?
Laurie: (14:35) Exactly. And those participants are required to reduce their carbon emissions by 30%. So that’s been just a runaway and surprising success.
Kelly: (14:49) Great. And those those participants are achieving those savings?
Laurie: (14:54) Some have some achieved them in like five years. Some are on the road. Some of the great success stories have been FIT, NYU, you know, so those are some of the early players who achieved their carbon emissions very quickly and then signed onto a 50% carbon reduction. So some have gone to the next level. So I don’t, we didn’t expect that at all.
Kelly: (15:21) Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. And I know those guys have been doing a lot of work, especially the universities we’ve seen making a lot of movement towards this, these goals. So that’s great. And were there any disappointments?
Laurie: (15:32) Yes, I would say the audit and retrocommissioning ordinance has been a real disappointment. Building owners in general. Sod is a box they had to check and they wanted just to pay less money. So we got to kind of race to the bottom in terms of the quality of the audits and maybe even the retrocommissioning. So, you know, right now there’s a effort underway to improve the retrocommissioning requirements. I think that can be fixed and I think there have been benefits for that piece. But the audit piece, if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t put that requirement in. And also in the meantime, people have developed strategies to tease out more actionable information from audit, from benchmarking. So we don’t need to make the building owners go through that trouble and expense anymore, I think.
Kelly: (16:29) And so I guess there is always this concern with, I’m a little bit going off on a tangent here I think, but with data integrity from the benchmarking data. So how do you see kind of pulling out information on building systems from the pure kind of energy data versus getting it from an energy audit or some other kind of system of someone actually going into the building and looking at the different systems? Potentially both could have data integrity issues, but kind of where are your concerns around that?
Laurie: (17:12) We studied the data quality issues extensively after the first year of benchmarking. And what we found was that there were a lot of mistakes because people were new at the process. We didn’t see any evidence of large scale manipulation or cheating. It really seemed to be mistakes and people needed to be better trained. That said, my biggest concern on data quality is not inaccurate submissions or fraud, although I’m sure there’s some of that, I don’t think it’s large scale. My biggest concern is the accuracy of building square footage. And I think that data is not good and it’s really important. And I would love to see in new laws going forward, particularly if we’re looking at a per square foot carbon cap that people actually have accurate square footage that really is foundational. Right. And it only needs to be done once, but it needs to be done once.
Kelly: (18:19) Yeah. That’s interesting cause I was saying to a colleague, even in new construction, it’s hard to tell what the square footage is, that there’s six numbers probably on the first sheet, depending on whether you’re talking about the zoning’s square footage or the residential square footage. And so even internally people might say square footage of a new building and there’s six different answers. So kind of nailing that down.
Laurie: (18:41) The EPA has a very specific definition. And the reason the EPA matters is that they’re the people that created and run the benchmarking tool that the city uses. So that definition is the definition we need to be using.
Kelly: (18:59) Great point. So there were some good things, some, some maybe things we would do a little bit differently next time. What are the next steps from, from this?
Laurie: (19:09) Well five or six years ago when the Bloomberg administration was coming to an end I thought, you know, the next big thing would be to, if we want to have a national impact with what we’ve done here, is to create replicable policies that other cities can use. So, you know, cities are wonderful in that they’re politically proactive. They’re engines of creativity. But the downside is they’re so damn many of them. So if they all try to reinvent the wheel, we’re not gonna get anywhere. So I thought, let’s create basic policies that cities can adapt, but they have kind of a lead like handbook of you can do this policy or that policy, you’re a range of proven policies that you could utilize. So I proposed that we got 10 million in funding through NRDC and cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Atlanta signed on. And that program was called City Energy Project. And five years later, it’s been re-upped several times. And now 35 cities across America now, including San Jose and Saint Louis, New Orleans, they’re all pursuing some of these foundational policies.
Kelly: (20:36) Great. And which of the policies are really taking off among the 35, do you have a sense of that?
Laurie: (20:44) The biggest uptake is certainly benchmarking. It was required really to be part of the program and to get funding. So you basically had to do benchmarking and a lot of cities that aren’t in this program are also doing benchmarking.
Kelly: (21:00) And I think I even saw L.A. Is, is kind of going down the path of the carbon emissions caps that we kind of looked at in New York too. So it seems like there are kind of other cities following the footsteps or kind of moving forward in a big way. What, what have you Learned? Your work was really very much focused in New York City and you were working with all of these different cities to develop policies that were replicable. What did you learn and kind of moving beyond New York borders and how other cities might be different or it might be similar?
Laurie: (21:39) Interestingly, city profiles are surprisingly similar. So in most cities, buildings are the dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions between about 50% and 70%. Even in a sprawling city like L.A. where you might not expect that. The only city I think that falls out of that is Seattle because they have so much carbon neutral electricity. And that varies quite a lot from the national average, which is 38 or 40% coming from buildings. So there really is a city strategy that focuses on buildings or it makes sense. The other thing that was surprisingly similar is that concentration of square footage and energy usage in the largest buildings. So it might not be 2% of the buildings and all the cities, but it’s not more than three or 4% to capture pretty much half the square footage and energy use. So those basic strategies of focusing on buildings and focusing on larger buildings turned out to be, you know, very applicable across most of America’s cities.
Kelly: (22:55) But with like a different square footage threshold by city?
Laurie: (22:59) Yes. So we went to 50,000, L.A. Had to go to about 35,000. L.A. Was not able to get to 50% even with that because they really do have smaller buildings. But of the 10 cities in the initial cohort, they were the only one that didn’t really fit that profile that you could fairly easily capture half of the square footage. So I think in terms of differences between cities, of course every city wants to have its own flavor of what it does, but that hasn’t been that dramatic. I think the biggest difference right now is going to be timeline. You know, what has a city already done and where is it now on the path. And that really matters because time’s getting short. So in New York, we started early, we had the luxury to think and study our building stock. And I think other cities don’t have that luxury anymore. The ones that are coming down the pike right now, they probably have to start with the foundational policies, but they’re going to quickly have to pivot to deeper requirements.
Kelly: (24:15) Okay. And so if I’m a mayor then in one of these cities that maybe hasn’t gotten started, maybe isn’t even on your list yet, what would you recommend for me?
Laurie: (24:28) Well, I would still start with the foundational policies, such as benchmarking, leading by example programs, so that the city government is, is reducing its energy first carbon challenges. Those are great in terms of engaging the community. And in the course of designing and implementing those policies the real estate community becomes involved, becomes educated, you know, and I just can’t emphasize that enough. I think one of the biggest things that we did in New York and other cities are doing to make this work is really creating a community of educated professionals by and large who understand the issues and are becoming kind of thought leaders in terms of how to solve them. Would you say
Kelly: (25:25) That is sort of spurred on by the building energy exchange or is there, are there other sort of policies or things you put in that were put in place that kind of moved the industry towards an educational?
Laurie: (25:36) I would say it’s been a whole range of things, but primarily it’s been the dialogues that have been created. So in developing the greener, greater buildings plan, we brought in industry to advise in creating the, the, in every single thing that we’ve done, we’ve brought in the industry to advise because we didn’t know enough that, I mean quite honestly, we didn’t do it to be a, to create a community. But I realize in retrospect, that’s been a great thing. So, when the Department of buildings wants to change the energy code, it brings in the experts. There’s a dialogue, there’s a conversation. And with every single thing that we’ve done, it’s been that way. And you know, all the nonprofits from urban green to ASHRAE, to the American Institute of Architects to building energy exchange, they all have programs. They all have a conversation. So that conversation building that conversation is critical. And so I think any city has to start with the foundational policies, build the conversation, and then they will be in a position to start to require some of these more ambitious requirements like you know, energy reductions, however they’re shaped. I think you’re not going to do that without building building support and knowledge about what the capabilities are. Otherwise it’s just frightening.
Kelly: (27:16) Right. Sort of retrofit all of this in the dark with no understanding of how buildings work. That could lead us to down the very wrong path for sure. Okay. So now, if I’m an energy efficiency proponent in a city that hasn’t gotten started yet or maybe hasn’t made a lot of moves yet, I know my friend from Australia complaints that they’re behind us in the U.S. Even, what, what should I do as a proponent to get started? Is there anything I can do to move the industry forward?
Laurie: (27:52) I think it’d be pretty hard at the individual level. So, you know, I would get involved with a local institution that has some clout, like the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects or US Green Building Council or Boma, any, any one of those groups that convenes. And then I would try to use that that venue really to create a citywide discussion. And, you know, maybe that institution could start inviting people from other cities to come talk about what they’re doing. They could maybe do programs on success stories in the cities. They could invite people from the administration, people from city council to come to those meetings. So you have to kind of create a, you have to create interest. You have to start educating people. You really have to prime the pump.
Kelly: (28:55) Yeah, that’s a great point. And it’s actually interesting. I think we get stuck in our own bubble in all of the different bubbles that we might be in, whether you’re in la or, or another city or, or New York. I’ve definitely been stuck in my own bubble before. But one thing that was really interesting for me when we were on the advisory committee for the energy code here, we brought in someone from the city of Seattle to explain, because, you know, we, we’ve developed some existing building laws, but actually Seattle’s new construction laws are somewhat ahead of ours. So we brought them into to educate us a little bit about about building blower door testing and a couple of different elements that we were looking at. So I think that’s a really important point to say that the, there’s a global network of people about these things and of cities doing these types of things and, and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
Laurie: (29:46) Absolutely. And there are a number of programs. The city energy project was one, but there’s the C40, which is a large cities around the world sharing best practices. There’s the urban sustainability directors network that is a platform for a lot of exchange of best practices across sustainable urban sustainability policies. But buildings is certainly a big piece of that. And I think there’s all, there are others.
Kelly: (30:26) Yeah. Great. We’ll throw a couple of links in the show notes. So we talked a little bit about energy efficiency, but after kind of a carbon neutral future, what do you think are a few key elements to getting us towards this carbon neutral future?
Laurie: (30:44) Well, I’m going to stick with the building sector because it’s what I know. And assume that people working on transportation and wastewill figure their, their pieces out. But within the building sector, you know, I think everybody’s come to a consensus that there are three big things that have to happen. One is pushing efficiency as far as, as reasonably possible. The second is we’ve got to decarbonize the grid. The third is we have to electrify as much as we can. The fuel use. In other words, we have to get off fuel for heating and hot water as much as we it fossil fuel for heating and hot water as much as we can. But that’s very rational. But it’s actually a really tall order and I’m afraid that is not practical to get us all the way there. I think practically we could use those strategies and we could get to maybe 70, 75, 80% reductions particularly in the colder and older regions of the country. So California or Hawaii, which is already highly electrified, they can probably get to carbon neutrality with those methods and they’re probably on the path to do it. But in places of a country that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels electrifying the tens of millions I’m talking tens of millions of buildings would have to be electrified in that swath of the country that goes from North Dakota to Maine and from, and all the way down to, you know, Virginia or even a little further south. That’s gonna cost a fortune and it’s a Herculean job. You know, the other problem with it, the other problem will be in this broad swath of the country, is that even if we achieved full electrification, can the electrical grid support it without massive infusions of cash in order to grow the electrical grid to, to handle the increased load.
Kelly: (33:05) And adding all the renewables and all these things to get the grid off of fossil fuels as well.
Laurie: (33:11) I think, I think that maybe is a little bit easier, although maybe not, I’m not a grid person, but absolutely there has to be a lot of storage. I think that goes without saying that we have to decarbonize the grid or mostly decarbonize the grid. But it’s really the growth of the grid that worries me the most with these new strategies, particularly if we’re looking at electrifying vehicles, which I think we are. So so I’m going to go out on a limb here. I’m going to say that we need a fourth strategy and that, or we might need a fourth strategy in our back pocket and we should be looking at carbon neutral fuel. And I don’t mean by this, you know, waste to energy, although that needs to be a piece of it. And that could be a starting piece. Like the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant that takes New York’s waste and turns it into methane and now is, is selling that methane or using it. That’s a start, but it’s not going to be enough for what we need. There are scientists working at the national labs and in universities and some entrepreneurial situations that are looking at creating methane from water and carbon dioxide using sunlight or carbon neutral electricity. And right now, of course it’s very expensive, but solar energy and wind energy were very expensive. So before we really started to make the policies that supported investment in, in those areas. So I think we should start going down the road with carbon neutral fuels on that, you know, promoting the science, promoting the early technology, and maybe even starting to layer in a carbon a renewable energy standard for fuel.
Laurie: (35:19) So we did that with electricity, so a renewable portfolio standard for fuel means that the grid has to have a certain percentage of carbon neutral energy. And we did it for electricity, I think it helped fund, you know, a lot more solar and wind in that brought the price down. So if we started to do that with fossil fuel, we could start, of course, with waste to energy and then expand as these other strategies hopefully are developed. The reason I think this makes sense is that, look, we already have billions invested in our gas grid. Our buildings have billions invested in terms of their fossil fuel burning equipment. So, you know, reutilizing that for low carbon or, or no carbon fuel is, you know, in terms of the infrastructure a very cheap way to do this. So as I say, I’m going out on a limb. I don’t know that this is the answer, but I’m very worried that the other solutions won’t get us there. So all of that’s to say we, we should be exploring this, but it shouldn’t be something that deters us from aggressive action on the big three that we know we have to do.
Kelly: (36:48) Right. And you know, that’s an interesting point. It reminds me, I actually, fun fact, when I was at Columbia, did research in waste to energy and one thing that people thought about is, well, if we have a lot of waste to energy plants, will it deter people from recycling? Now I think there’s some new information from different places. I haven’t been in the industry for a decade, but but at the time when we looked at waste to energy versus recycling cities across the world, that there was actually a positive correlation. If you recycled more, you also did more waste to energy. So there wasn’t this negative. Yeah, that’s a little fun fact. I’ll have to see if there’s any new information on that and link to the show notes. So that was a a great and funny twist at the end there. But in, in terms of kind of everything we talked about from everything that you, you know, from your deep bench of experience and buildings, what do you think we’re going to be talking about in five years when we have you back on the podcast?
Laurie: (37:53) That’s a good question, which I’m going to dodge. I am gonna say that I’m more optimistic about us getting to these goals than I used to be. And I think that’s for at least two reasons. One is how how quickly the a net zero electricity revolution has moved forward. I just, I didn’t see it coming. And suddenly New York state is in a position to commit to 100% carbon neutral electricity by 2040. That’s just fantastic. And Yeah, none of us saw it coming. So that’s, that’s a great thing. The other great thing is I think the political winds have changed on this subject over the last and over the last year or two. I think, you know, the IPCC report really got people frightened in a good way. And I think AOC throwing out the idea of the green new deal, there might be pros and cons, but I think the energy that she spurred by doing that has been a really positive thing. So, you know, I’m, I’m seeing a lot of positive movement. A lot of players getting into this who weren’t there before, who are, you know, coming up with great ideas and moving this along at a nice fast clip. So that’s exciting.
Kelly: (39:31) That is a wonderful note to end on. And I just want to thank you for being on our podcast today.
Laurie: (39:38) You’re welcome. It’s been a pleasure.
Speaker 4: (39:43) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Martello, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Developing Boston’s Tallest Passive House with Brad Mahoney
May 29, 2019
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.
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.
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 vision spandrel framework, what that vision of wall ratio is and kind of optimizing that. The other thing that obviously appeals are the energy savings, the utility savings. Not only today, but long term. Right.
Robb: (10:47) And that does appeal to the tenants?
Brad: (10:51) That does appeal, that does appeal. I mean, you know, the traditional, “let’s sell on utility savings,” that’s maybe what people traditionally start with as the key marker for passive house. And I think in some respects, that’s where it starts. But when you look at everything else, and you look at what I was saying earlier- how to optimize the vision to spandrel framework. You know, we have 10 foot high windows, right? And we’ve optimized those for views, right? Because we know the benefits of daylight. And when you look at the overall floor plan, you know, 95% of the overall floor plan is within 35 feet of one of those windows. It’s so everyone has that opportunity and everyone really plays in that.
Robb: (11:54) Cool. Yeah that totally makes sense. Can we talk about those windows in more detail? What are they, how are they constructed? What are the big differences between this construction and past big projects that you’ve worked on?
Brad: (12:13) So I think taking a step back, right? So this idea of integrated design, right? And I think with integrated passive house design, you start the project and you kind of set certain parameters- this is what we’re doing on the project, we are moving forward with a passive house design. So that’s really kind of the baseline, right? And you always need someone that raises their hand and says, this is what we’re doing, this is what we’re driving to. And it’s our job to make sure that everyone’s committed to achieving that mutual goal. Everyone on the team is fully committed to it. And it kind of permeates everything. It permeates the modeling on the MEP side and the integration with the PHPP. It permeates the design and the facade when you get into the procurement of the facade in 80 to a hundred million dollars on a project of this scale and size. And I mean there are very real, commercial, financial aspects to this, you know? Like what premium are you spending on that facade? 10 to 15%? Right? And what does that relate to on the overall? And so, you talk about modeling, talk about the facade, talk about the MEP systems and the commitment in driving through that and flowing it through from initial design into design development, into procurement, then into construction. So integrated- everyone is working towards the same goal. And you look at the differences between another high rise project and this, when you look at the facade, it’s curtain wall, unitized system, third layer of glass, right? And with input from our passive house consultants, Steven Winter Associates, we’ve come up with the optimal solar heat gain, the U value, the R18 spandrel insulation. The R18 is a big driver. That’s a big difference, over a traditional curtain wall. So it’s all of those things. It’s the triple glaze. The R18, the ceiling, the perimeter ceiling. That’s inherent, that’s where a lot of old leaky buildings lose their energy. Right? Well, on this one, that’s where our primary focus is and making sure that within that passive house envelope, the collective envelope, we are sealed.
Robb: (15:22) So I mean, yeah those are a few big ticket items. You know, the triple pane glass, the higher R values, the air sealing. And there are some pretty large numbers associated with those features. But would you say the first thing you came to when I asked you about it, what was the coordination, was the integration. In your mind, is that a bigger change or a bigger challenge than any of these line items? Does that make sense?
Brad: (15:58) Well, yeah, in some respects it is, because, you know, we’re talking about something that hasn’t been done before. And so you really need to shepherd that. You know, the supply chains are not there. And supply chain starting from, look, this is in its infancy, right? So Handel has done this before, but when we talk about supply chains, it’s not just the architecture, the engineering, the construction managers, the facade manufacturers, the equipment manufacturers. So you really need to watch through that and make sure that everyone has their eye on the collective goal because, you know, you don’t want to bring it to a point and then have it fall down because someone wasn’t paying attention. Right. It’s more a matter of making sure that everyone’s working together. And so in some respects that is bigger than the upfront capital cost. The ability to say, “we’re committed to this and we’re doing it,” that really got us out of the gate, and now we’re off and running. We’re committed to it. We’ve looked past that and now we’re focused on delivering
Robb: (17:20) Right on. Yeah. And obviously in a project that is this big, you need really good coordination and communication. But passive house adds another layer. I guess it’s even more important with passive house.
Brad: (17:41) It definitely is. And that’s why really having the right team members, people that are committed to this and we absolutely have that from top to bottom.
Robb: (17:54) I mean you’re asking for some wacky curtain wall, something new, have they have their suppliers ever done that before? Anything like that?
Brad: (18:05) So at this scale, no. And you know, I mean adding a third layer of glass is nothing really that novel, right? I mean you’re just adding, however, when you’re talking about producing this many square feet of current wall, it is a challenge. So Cariss + Cariss and Soda Wall, have been working with us and they understood from the onset that this kind of was the Bible. And they have been excellent. I mean we’ve been working through Design Assist now for a couple months and they’ve been pressing hard on the facade and the facade opportunities and the early signs are very good. I mean, they’re very committed to it and it seems like we’re going to be in production soon.
Robb: (19:02) Excellent. So what’s been the biggest challenge? What’s been the biggest nut to crack so far?
Brad: (19:12) I think the biggest nut to crack its really- what is passive house. And when I say that, I mean kind of from top to bottom. You know, you’re starting something new, hasn’t been done before, hasn’t been done before at this scale. Its new to the industry. But you can see beyond all of that, and you can see the outcome, and it’s a matter of getting everyone to feel that. And I think once you do that and you realize that we’re committed to this because sure, maybe the first couple projects in a region that go passive house, maybe they have some cost premiums. Over time, as those supply chains open up, as more construction managers are exposed to it, as more designers in teams realize how to build passive house, those premiums go down, and we’ve seen that in other states, Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh area, other communities that have been committed to passive house, and we’re starting that here in Boston and we hope and think that others will follow. And we’re fully committed to it.
Robb: (20:46) So are you looking ahead to future projects yet?
Brad: (20:49) Not yet. This is a big one. It’s super fun because there’s a lot at stake, right? There’s a real lot at stake when you think about where we are today and where we have to go tomorrow. And that’s a huge part of it. And that’s a huge appeal to tenants, to people that want to be in a space that cares about the tomorrow. Right. All the while bringing them just a greater experience within their work environment.
Robb: (21:31) Is there going to be any premium, do you think, compared to other comparable office space in Boston, in downtown? I mean there’s certainly a lot of demand for office space in Boston.
Brad: (21:49) The honest answer is I think it probably remains to be seen. I fully believe in it. When you believe in something, you’re creative with it and you say, look, this is how we’re going to put our money where our mouth is, so to speak. We’re fully invested in this and we believe in the outcome and it’s going to be to your benefit.
Robb: (22:13) Who’s going to manage the building? Who’s going to run the building?
Brad: (22:16) So we will manage and run the building. We will hire a team, when we get to that point, which we still have a couple of years, but we’ve already started those conversations, because it doesn’t just start from scratch, that understands what we’re trying to do collectively on this project.
Robb: (22:45) Gotcha. Yeah. So you’ll be reaping the benefits down the road of the lower the lower energy bills, the durability, the demand for healthy, a comfortable space.
Brad: (23:01) Absolutely. And this only becomes more and more in demand as every year it goes by. That’s my firm belief. That this is not a blip on the radar. This is something that is going to be the new standard and we’re just, we are helping to define that and helping to usher that in.
Robb: (23:30) So, if we were to talk again in five or 10 years, what do you think we’d be talking about? Would this be standard? Would there be something bigger and better?
Brad: (23:43) So I think if we’re talking five to 10 years, let’s see, where does that put us at? Close to 2030. Right. Or 2025. So we know that the direct path to carbon neutrality in the urban core for large downtown projects, it requires passive house, it requires high performance. You can’t get there without this. So I think in five to 10 years we’re really talking about some something else, I think passive house is the talk of the town. It’s something that people are familiar with and integrating into their projects. But I think in five to 10 years, hopefully we’re talking about the next innovation. And that’s what this is. It’s an innovation that is so very simple at its fundamental level, at the scientific level, and it just needs to be brought out and explained in a way that people grasp and understand it.
Robb: (25:20) Brad, thanks for coming on.
Heather: (25:27) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast And check out the episode show notes, buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. Our production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
NYC’s Green New Deal? Diving into the Climate Mobilization Act with Marc Zuluaga
Apr 23, 2019
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.
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.
Universal Design with Mary Jo Peterson
Apr 16, 2019
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.
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.
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 to bring in that we don’t only want to do as minimal as possible to do the ADA compliance. We have to integrate it in a way that’s beautiful and, and compelling.
Mary Jo: (07:26) And that sort of speaks to health and wellness because it speaks to the fact that it isn’t just our physical being that needs to be cared for, but it’s our emotional and our spiritual wellbeing. And if we create, especially in our homes, if we create a space that is a comfort to us, it needs to be attractive. It needs to say who we are and and that you know, contributes to our health on all levels. I think that another thing that universal design has to be is smart, and there are some great examples in small products. You know, it’s just thinking through what are the core different people who would use this and what can we do that would make this product or space work a little bit better. One example is the ketchup bottles now that are upside down, the labels on so that you keep it upside. If we can get used to it, if we can just believe that it’s not going to leak, it works much better. You know, or Oxo Good Grips has that Measuring Cup for liquids, and the measures are marked on an angle so you can stand up and look at it. You don’t have to bend over to look at it. So you know, those are examples of somebody was really clever there. And that’s really what we need to do.
Kelly: (08:41) That’s actually interesting cause I was listening to, I think a ted talk on universal design and they mentioned the disability, we don’t have to focus on it being a lack of ability, but we can focus on it as being the cause for innovation. So like you said, maybe someone who doesn’t have a hard time bending over wouldn’t innovate and think about creating a measuring cup that you don’t have to bend over. But now when that is a real challenge for you, you’re incentivized to do it and it actually helps everybody.
Mary Jo: (09:15) Thats exactly right and I’ll give you a another example. When I started in this business focusing on universal design 30 years ago, I worked with one of our major appliance companies and I said, we really need to do front loading, front control washers and dryers, like the commercial ones, and elevate them. So the idea was that a person who used a wheelchair would be able to roll up under that door and be able to access both the controls. And the appliance. No, no, no, we’ll never do that. It costs too much money, whatever. Now look, today we have on pedestals, front loading, front control washers and dryers. And the reason is that that’s sort of an interesting thing about how access moves into being universal design. The initial reason can be something that has to do with a particular disability, but we find out that it’s that A-ha again, we find out that Oh gee, this just really actually better for everybody. And that’s a wonderful part of this. You know, working with clients, private clients, sometimes they are my best resource for ideas. I know the parts and pieces that can go into this space, but they know the need that they have and what they’ve done, sort of Jerry rigged to make something work and then we can make it more beautiful and more integrated.
Kelly: (10:34) Right, right. Working together with the entire team you can create something better. Yeah. And we talked a little bit about this, what are some examples, maybe more specific examples. I know it’s a different design approach. So maybe there are different examples from different projects, but that people can kind of use to wrap their head around what this really means when you’re looking at it from a universal design perspective.
Mary Jo: (11:01) So if we start outside, you know, all of my experience really with very little exception is around the home single or multifamily home design. So if we start outside and the approach and entry to a home, we have to think about clearance and we need to think about the level of things- that sloped walkways is one of my favorite examples. You know, we typically have a couple of steps up to the front of a house, whether it’s a porch or an entry. And sometimes that there’s a reason for that. That has to do with climate as well. Sometimes there are code issues that have to be dealt with in order to be able to make that a level entry, find a way to make a level entry. But so, so we need to look at level entry at least one level entry into a space.
Kelly: (11:53) And that’s actually interesting. We’ve looked at that too, from accessibility versus passive house compliance, because making it level but also making it energy efficient and making sure you have a thermal barrier can be an issue. So thinking about all aspects.
Mary Jo: (12:05) Exactly and new products have been created to help make that thermal barrier. So it’s much easier today than it once was. But this is a perfect example of how universal design is really a thought process. It’s not one answer. So thought process here. If we have a space, if we’re working in Alaska, I’ll just tell you this, you can cut it out later, but Peter Stratton and I did a program, teaching native American housing authorities how to house their elders. So I talked about about universal design and how to incorporate it nicely into the home. And he talked about compliance and one of the things in order to comply with for government funded housing was that you had to have a level entry and these native American housing authorities are nodding and being polite and then at the break we’re talking and they said, you know here in Alaska in the winter we get standing 13 feet of snow. So most of our houses have to be on stilts because otherwise you can’t get into it. So you know you have to work with each space. But with that in mind, in a less extreme example, if we’re looking for that level entry and we’re trying to comply with passive house and efficiency requirements, maybe the level entry is the one that’s inside the garage. Maybe it’s the one that the family uses all the time. It’s not the second. It’s not to say if you need a level entry you have to go to the back door. That’s not the purpose. The purpose is, the one that you use the most is the one that gets the level entry and that way it’s covered. So you know, there are ways to deal with it. And that’s that thinking process. So we got stuck on that, but so outside we need to have clearances, we need to think about level path passageways to the things that we enjoy outside. How do you get to the barbecue, how do you get to the mailbox? How do you take the garbage out? How do you read the meter? All those kinds of things. You know, how do we create it comfortable, not just level, but what’s the surface. So a few things outside. I think that how we inform people on the outside of a house is, what kind of lighting we have around the entry, how big is the number that says what number the houses are. You know, things like that. So having a package drop outside of a house so that if I have to stop to unlock a door, if I don’t have some kind of a smart door and I have to actually unlock it, there is a place to set things down so I can do it. So those kinds of things outside. I think when you come inside in general, that level in clearances I look always to see if I can cut down on a plan. If I’m looking to incorporate more universal design in a plan, I look to see if I can eliminate as many hallways as possible, make them passage through a room as opposed to a hallway because it’s much easier to move and turn. Regardless of, or with respect for whatever mobility aids I might be using, however much space I take up, it’s easier for me to do what I need to do.
Kelly: (15:20) And it’s interesting, the open plan concept is very popular now. And I guess everyone else is getting on board with, Oh, this is actually better.
Mary Jo: (15:28) When I started, so 8 million years ago real estate agents used to call me and say, do you know of any homes that have been designed with an open plan? Because I know you pay attention to access and I have a client who is looking for that, so now and today it is every house. There are so many examples of that, but that is, that’s a good one. I think that another thing that I look for in a home is how many places can I eliminate a right angle turn? So we come to the end of the hallway and there’s a doorway to a bedroom and a bedroom. Maybe we angle that so that it’s not a 90 degree turn, but a 45 degree turn because that makes a much easier passage if I have any challenges in terms of mobility and balance, it’s just easier to manage. We have to look at the width of doorways and the amount of space. These are all the same things that will come up when you’re talking about accessibility. But the beauty of talking about universal design is that we’re doing it not just to comply, but we’re doing what is the best for the space. And you know, maybe in the entry to a bathroom, maybe the best for that particular master bathroom in a master suite is that we don’t have a door there, you know, or that we have a sliding door or barn door hardware, because that maintains the integrity of the wall for the support in the bathroom. You know, it’s a thinking process. Universal design is totally about thinking.
Kelly: (16:57) So what comes up for me actually with that example and an interesting thought in comparison to other spaces right now, is that accessibility is kind of a prescriptive based requirements. And whereas universal design is more performance, how does it feel once you get in there?
Mary Jo: (17:18) There are a number of people who have created universal design standards/programs so that you can earn a good housekeeping seal of approval. I won’t name any of the programs that are doing this, but so if you comply with these things. But what are those things? Because they’re really performance based. How do you measure? Well sometimes on a hill it’s really not worth it. And sometimes it’s more important than you just add some kind of a lifter or elevator, but you’d make that attractive.
Kelly: (18:05) Theres an analogy here I think to where the sustainability standards are going across the country, but also in the codes, right? Everybody, it seems like, we’re trying to move away from prescriptive and get a little more towards performance.
Mary Jo: (18:25) That’s right. Yeah. And I think it’s such a good thing because it allows us to make the best decision given the parameters of a job. The budget, the budget of space, the people who are either targeted to live there or who are the known clients. You know, so I love that we can work towards that performance space. That’s a good thing.
Kelly: (18:45) Great. Any more good examples?
Mary Jo: (18:46) You know, we can go into the kitchen and bathroom and I could talk for days. So in the bathroom, in the toileting area, one of the beautiful things that we have today is an advanced design of the toilet. Yes I know nobody ever wants to talk about the toilet and I get to talk about it all the time. I know that my Irish grandmother turns over in her grave every time I say toilet out loud to you know, a group of people. But, but here we are talking about the toilet. Yeah. So we haven’t even mentioned the term aging in place, but aging in place is a very popular term and it’s helping advance the cause of universal design, mainly because of the boomers, the number of people in the age boom.
Kelly: (19:44) Yeah. I think you talked about this in your book, right? That now we have to really be thinking about this or now it’s on more people’s minds when they’re buying or renovating.
Mary Jo: (19:54) Yeah. And that helps. That helps drive the cause. It’s better for everyone. So in terms of aging in place, one of the features of the toilet today is a washlet or a bidet system that can be built into the toilet. And while some of us may think of that as a more European approach and something that’s kind of a luxury or a convenience. As we age, that can become an essential aspect of life. And that sometimes is true of a lot of things in universal design. We add accessories in a kitchen cabinet to make it easier to reach things. Well today it makes it easier a time may come when I’m not able to bend. So it makes it possible. It becomes essential. So the bidet system built into the toilet- Great idea. Universal design maybe won’t include a bidet system on everybody’s toilet, but an outlet in that area or grounded outlet would provide for the addition of that later. And that’s really good universal design too. A wall hung toilet is another thing, I can put it at whatever height, it saves clear floor space in all the post World War Two, five by eight bathrooms that were redesigned. In your new home, probably you have one of those. And given the age of your home, probably you do. And so we’re looking for some clearance in a very tight space. That wall hung toilet will give us back maybe five inches of clearance across the room, which is huge, and it’s easier to clean around. It’s also easier, again, as I advanced in aging, if I can tuck my feet under myself to stand up, as opposed to having to have my feet out in front of me, and with that wall hung toilet, I can get my feet underneath that toilet bowl and stand up more easily. So lots of reasons why that can work. Well, actually sometimes people want to talk about the cost. Is it more expensive to do things that are universal design? If it’s a new space, it’s not more expensive, doesn’t have to be more expensive. But if we were renovating, that wall hung toilet might bring an added cost because we’d be looking to move a waist-line and that’s a pretty big ticket item. But in a new space, adding a bathroom is a wonderful thing to consider. Then we could go into the tub/shower area, and the most beautiful thing to talk about there today is the linear drains and the north threshold showers. I used to say that if I could get all of my production builders in the southwest, they had huge tiled showers, huge, but they would never give up the threshold. And I finally got them to give up the threshold. Then they did a step down because they want to contain the water, and we do have to contain water. But now with the creation of attractive linear drains, people are doing no threshold showers. It’s great from the vantage point of aesthetics because it means I can maintain the same flooring throughout small space looks great. It makes the space much more open,but it also is of course, wonderful for clear floor space and maneuvering in terms of mobility issues.
Kelly: (23:09) Yeah. My grandfather was in a wheelchair actually, now that you’re mentioning it, and my parents redid their house years ago and wanted to make sure that it would be accessible for him and we had a roll-in no threshold shower and we actually had an elevator in the house to the second floor to make sure that he would be able to live there and age there.
Mary Jo: (23:30) That’s beautiful. It’s an expensive proposition to do it the way they did it. So that’s why if we’re thinking in terms of universal design, every time something changed, you’d look to see how much can I incorporate better access, improved access and flexibility every time, or in new construction, what can I do from the onset, so that it doesn’t cost as much. I think also, you know, you mentioned sustainability and of course this is a major focus of our lives and if we can incorporate universal design when we build or renovate, it means that that home will not have to be renovated again as much because we will have prepared for the changes that occur in the life of the house.
Kelly: (24:16) Right. I love that. And we talked a little bit about the kitchen renovations and reusing cabinets from before, which I love that idea. And why not create a space where you don’t have to Redo every five years or as you age or as your life changes, as you have kids, as you get pregnant, whatever.
Mary Jo: (24:38) That’s right. Well, so we started talking about the kitchen. Maybe I should move to the kitchen with a few things. We kind of skipped the vanity area, but we did some things on the bathroom. So in the kitchen, one of the things that people don’t always think of, but it is a great universal design thinking process approaching the kitchen, is the heights of things, not just the heights of work surfaces and storage, but also the heights of appliances. You know, traditional multiple ovens in a kitchen, or an oven in a microwave or an oven and a steam oven would be stacked, a tall cabinet. And today we see sort of mid height cabinets with those appliances being designed to fit across. So it creates that strong horizontal line that’s good in design, but it also puts all those appliances at a comfort height. For most people you can choose the height, you know? So thinking about non traditional heights of traditional items in the kitchen is I think one of the less obvious things that goes a long way into making life easier. And if you don’t think so, I want you to think about it the next time Thanksgiving hits and you’re taking the Turkey out of the oven at your age.
Kelly: (25:50) My cousin actually has a microwave that is so high up you have to get on the stool every time you go in there and whatever you get out is probably piping hot. So it’s also dangerous for kids and regular adults as well.
Mary Jo: (26:07) Well and who uses the microwave the most? Its kids, right? So it’s one of my arguments against the over the range microwave. I know it’s great when you can save space and when you have to save space, but for those of us who aren’t super tall pulling something that might be liquid out and towards me, there’s a definitely a safety risk there.
Kelly: (26:28) Right. It’s a good thing to avoid and fun fact: they’re not as good at exhausting the air when you use that for your exhaust. So we actually have a separate episode that’ll, that’ll come out at some point about that.
Mary Jo: (26:40) Well good, the kitchen is a big space to talk about that.
Kelly: (26:44) Right, right. And that has to do with healthy homes and making sure we’re not creating more disabilities by having people live in the spaces that we’re creating, as as designers and as consultants.
Mary Jo: (26:55) That’s right. Exactly right. So in the kitchen, we talked about heights of things, also heights of work surface, you know in an ideal world, work surfaces might be adjustable in height and occasionally that is done especially where there is a work center, a cooktop or a sink. But more often, especially in the size of kitchens today, we’ll find a way to have different heights at different places in the kitchen. So the tall person is more comfortable working over here. A shorter person might be more, or a seated person might be more comfortable over there. And if we were ever going to double up on anything, the thing that people most often will have two have of in the kitchen is the sink, right? Because that creates two full work centers. As long as there’s water and a surface next to it and some storage. And sometimes that works out to be the cooking center over here, or the prep center, and over here it’s the cleanup and table setting and all that, so it is great for the function in general of the kitchen, but it also is flexible for the different sizes, shapes, abilities of people. I think lighting is something we haven’t talked about in both rooms. There’s been so many advances in lighting that it becomes a great aspect of universal design. You know, we can take a tiny strip of L.E.D. Lighting now and put it absolutely anywhere
Kelly: (28:16) Or everywhere!
Mary Jo: (28:21) Right and so its wonderful that we can eliminate shadows in our functional areas, kitchen and bathroom, both being high function areas. It’s also important to have adjustability in that lighting. You know, if I’m cleaning the room, I’m going to turn all the lights up so that I can scrub and see the corners and whatever. If I’m trying to have an intimate dinner, I’m going to turn the turn the lights down. So it’s nice just in general, but it’s also, there are conditions that are common to us as we age. And if we can adjust the lighting in the right ways, we can reduce the impact of those conditions. So adjustability is good too.
Kelly: (28:58) Great points, do you have any more good examples?
Mary Jo: (29:04) We haven’t said much about technology, and there’s so much happening in technology that really speaks to universal design. It is the story of, it’s a convenience or you’ll say, oh, isn’t it ridiculous? Look what you can do. But the day can come when it’s no longer so over the top, it’s more essential. Things that have to do with controlling appliances, you know, almost all our appliances now can be connected. And when they’re connected, that creates the possibility of a remote control, even just in your telephone, you know, so I can, through my telephone, know what’s in my refrigerator. I can pass that along to one of my shopping services, and the groceries can be delivered, so when I get home at night, it’s all done. But if I’m not able to get around as much, those things become all the more imperative. And the good example of that is the venting over a cooktop. You know, even for an average height person, you know, we have to reach high to reach the hood. If I’m a seated person or a shorter person, I can’t reach it. So that was the first place where we saw those remote controls built in or no, of course in our phones.
Kelly: (30:18) Right. Those are great points. And I think the technology piece is interesting, bringing me back to a previous episode, I joked about having the refrigerator walk to the store for you.
Mary Jo: (30:33) It practically does, we have the option.
Kelly: (30:38) Yeah, and it never occurred to me to think about it this way, but thinking about it from a health perspective, if you can make it more convenient for you to get those kinds of groceries that are healthier, but it’s not out of your way. Or maybe you don’t get home until late and only the corner store is open. If you can have something that gets delivered, but it can be a healthier option, maybe that could actually improve things. I’m not sure if that statistically is what’s happening with this
Mary Jo: (31:09) So I have a good friend who is a naturopath and she focuses on all the ways that we can enhance the eating experience, and improve the healthy aspect of what we do and eat. And that’s one of the things that she mentions that if a person can plan ahead it’s much more likely that they will eat healthy. And that allows that, without taking quite as much time. So I think it does make a difference. I think sitting just like the way you and I are around the corner from each other is another social aspect of eating. So our long island with all the seats on the back of the island, maybe if we could wrap those seats around the corners, it’s a design concept that just makes it a little bit more of a social experience. It’s a good idea for health in general, it becomes much more of an imperative as we age because we isolate, you know, and we can lose interest in healthy food or food at all.
Kelly: (32:03) Actually I was just listening to something about technology and the impact of technology on social interaction. And they were saying that millennials are having issues with social interaction in the workplace because they’re so used to just being on their phones.
Mary Jo: (32:18) Absolutely, you know, sitting next to each other texting instead of talking. I think about that how we were talking about, WeWork earlier and the WeLive concept. One of the beauties of it, it’s an instant social network for people. You know, you go into the communal center, you can bring your computer or you can sit and talk, but you have instant community.
Kelly: (32:40) And they’re very conscious about creating space, and some offices are like this too, but creating spaces to channel people together into central locations.
Mary Jo: (32:50) I think it’s why it’s so popular with millennials because it makes it easier.
Kelly: (32:55) Yeah. So as we’re sort of getting towards the end of our time here, is there one key takeaway that you think we should all leave this conversation with?
Mary Jo: (33:07) Well, if I had to take one concept, one thought and send it forward. If people changed the way they do things in one way from our conversation it would be to understand that universal design is a goal and a way of thinking, not a prescriptive list of details that need to be done, but an approach to design. And it should be part of everything we do.
Kelly: (33:33) That’s great. And the last thing that I like to ask people or that we like to ask people on this is when we have you back on the podcast in five years, what do you think we will be talking about then?
Mary Jo: (33:47) I think that one of the things we’ll talk about is technology and how much it has impacted the way we live. I’ll give you an example. Our aging boomers, a group that I belong to, and I’m happy to belong to, but as we age, you know, everything that has a chip in it can be a monitor as well. And so integrative health and the ability of our homes to help support us and maintain us as we advance in that aging process, I think that’s going to be a significant part of what’s going on in the world. So it’ll be interesting to watch.
Kelly: (34:25) That’s a great idea. And you were just talking to me before we started recording about a robot that makes your home healthier without you even having to flip any switches. You don’t have to control it remotely or at all.
Mary Jo: (34:38) He’s thinking for us. Right. That’s a little spooky, all of this is a little spooky. You know, on the one side I want my privacy, I want my control. But on the other side when it comes to home health, would I rather have a person hanging out at my house with me or you know, monitors that can let somebody know if I’m in trouble? Right. So it’ll change how we live.
Kelly: (34:58) Yeah. Well I think that is very a great statement or sentiment to end on. Hopefully on the better side of that. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 4: (35:20) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/Podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
High-Performance Schools with John Balfe from NEEP
Apr 09, 2019
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.
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.
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 them pretty easily. And you know, some schools may charge community for those uses. Some may not. You know, it might depend on if you’re a nonprofit or a for profit. They might charge different rates there, but we’re also seeing that it’s a great way for some schools if they are charging to get a little bit extra money that way. So it’s something I don’t think everyone thinks about when they’re building a school, but, you know, it’s something the community is really invested in it and kind of wants to show off and this is one of the great things about chps is kind of gets you thinking about how your school can be used by others as well.
Robb: (09:02) Cool. Yeah, that’s pretty neat. That’s something that I hadn’t, I hadn’t thought about discreetly, not in that way.
John: (09:08) Yeah. And sometimes it can be a bit of a challenge because you don’t necessarily factor in that the school is going to be used a lot more than just regular school hours. So you know, things like energy modeling, just taking that into account is really important so that you can have accurate models and really try to understand, you know, how much the school will actually be used. So it’s things like that that we’re trying to share those stories with folks that are going through the process and make sure that they’re aware of it if that’s kind of the route they want to go down.
Robb: (09:44) How about new technologies or systems? Or maybe not new, but stuff you’re seeing more and more? I mean, personally I see lots more PV on schools everywhere. Kind of great high visibility place for solar and a tool to teach kids about solar. But are there other kinds of different lighting technologies or ventilation approaches or are there any kind of new technological trends you guys see in chp’s schools?
John: (10:14) Yeah, I think definitely we’re seeing a lot of renewable energies, probably solar being the biggest one in schools. And like you said, it’s definitely an opportunity to kind of teach students about what renewable energies are. But also on the energy efficiency side of things. You know, there are ways to kind of integrate that into the curriculum as well. So in a lot of the schools I have toured, and you know, just been in I guess over the past couple of years, LED lights are obviously very common, controlling of those lights. Some schools will have some really good day lighting features. So there’ll be sensors in classrooms that will dim the lights automatically when enough sunlight is being introduced into that room. And conversely, if you know, there’s not enough natural daylight coming in, then the lights will brighten. So it’s kind of smart control, smart building type features that we’re seeing in a lot of other building types are now going into schools too, which is pretty cool.
Robb: (11:17) Let me stop you for a second, but are there actually credits in the CHPs programs for incorporating high performance features as part of the curriculum for students? Is that strongly encouraged?
John: (11:33) Yes, there is a whole section and we often reference it or talk about it as kind of using the school as a teaching tool. But yeah, integrating that into the curriculum, it gets you some extra credits in CHPs and there are a lot of good other organizations that kind of focus specifically on working the building into the curriculum, so there are a lot of good case studies and you know, things that you can follow out there. But yeah it’s certainly built into the chps criteria as well.
Robb: (12:03) Nice. That’s very cool. Yeah, I think it’s a great opportunity to kind of just engage and educate students. I’ve been in a few schools where the design team will really accentuate or highlight the HVAC equipment in a building. Like, you know, the ducts and things like that, they’ll really try to paint them, you know, unique colors and bright and vibrant so that they kind of piques the interest of students and then, you know, maybe gets them asking questions about that. And getting that conversation started, so that’s pretty cool. And, you know, it just makes for kind of a nice environment with those, those types of colors. But that’s Kind of one unique way. Another technology that I’ve seen in a couple of schools now you know, with technology just changing so much, textbooks aren’t as prevalent in schools and libraries are a little bit different than they used to be. When I went to school, we were seeing a lot of students with iPads or laptops owned by the school district potentially. So one thing that I’ve seen a couple of times are laptop carts or device carts that are used for charging the equipment at the end of the day or you know, whenever it runs out of battery life. But basically, these laptops or iPads or whatever they might be, are stored in a closet. And there’s this electric supply to the cart, and once all the iPads are done charging, the electricity just kind of shuts off there. So you’re not plugging in individual iPads or laptops in classrooms, you know, all over the place in the school anymore, which is nice to see. And you’re not seeing kind of those phantom loads that are just draining a small amount of energy throughout the night.
John: (13:59) But collectively with all the iPads and all the laptops over the course of a year that that can amount to a lot of energy. So things like these laptop carts are pretty cool that we’re seeing that kind of help to navigate that issue I guess.
Robb: (14:13) Yeah, it’s interesting. I was at a meeting recently, this is related to schools, but they recently reset the benchmarks for commercial buildings for energy star through the portfolio manager tool. So the benchmark for schools, one of the big challenges was computers from the last time they set the benchmark, I don’t know if it was six years ago or 10 years ago, but you know, they used to have this energy allotment for computers in schools and you know, a school might have a few dozen computers. Now they have hundreds and hundreds of computers and they’re much more efficient, but they’re so much more prevalent. It’s an interesting challenge and just an interesting exercise to see how these energy usage patterns change.
John: (15:06) I think plug loads, you know, just in general or you know, through the roof and a lot of these, these types of facilities, you know, people plugging in and charging their devices. Maybe that happens less so in schools, but laptops and iPads for sure that’s huge in schools. And then whatever the teachers might be bringing into the school as well, you know coffee pots or mini fridges, those sorts of things. So managing all that I think, you know, with some of the technology we have today is probably a lot easier than it was. And one other last kind of technology that I’m seeing a lot, and this is more on the student educational side of things, are building energy dashboards. So a big monitor right when you come in the school or in a kind of high visibility place that get students interested in how much energy. Maybe it only impacts a few students here and there, but I think, you know, it gets people thinking about how much energy they’re using and sometimes those can display tips for reducing energy. So we’re seeing that pop up in a lot of building types, but especially schools where, you know, there’s that educational component as well.
Robb: (16:20) Excellent. Excellent. So the programs themselves, I know you can go online to the chps website, chps.org, and you can sign up for a free account and download all the info. Does NEEP have similar website for the northeast?
John: (16:38) Yes. So neep.org is our website. And we have a ton of good resources and case studies on high performance schools. And that’s where actually the northeast chips criteria lives. So that’s pretty easy to navigate if you go to our school’s page. And all our resources are free to use, and they are meant for the northeast and mid-Atlantic states. So we work everywhere in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, down to DC, Delaware, and West Virginia now as well. So they’re specific to those states.
Robb: (17:19) So that all that info is there and free to use. If somebody wants to go through the process of certification, how does that work and who was it that actually decides to sign up? Is it the designer, is it the school board? How does the process work for getting certified?
John: (17:38) Yeah, that’s a good question. And it’ll depend, I guess on the state and the community. You know, who actually kind of pushes for chps. You know, sometimes we’ll see a school board member will be really familiar with northeast chips and they will want to really push for that. Sometimes it’s the architect or the engineer bringing it to the community saying that these things are achievable and we should be looking at that. Usually it’s the architects or the design team, I guess I should say, kind of going through the process and, you know, doing all the paperwork and making sure that the credits line up and that sort of thing and submit in documentation. But it really can depend on who’s pushing for it. We always try to get some language in the RFPs when a community is going out to bid for a school project. We try to get language in there about targeting a low energy building or specifically northeast chps. So it can definitely depend just kind of where the process is taking place. On the CHPs side of things, it again, will depend on the state because, you know, in Rhode Island, they do in house reviews of all the documentation that comes in. So they actually have the school building authority there in Rhode Island that reviews all the forms that were filled out. And then they’re the ones that actually, you know, say that yes, you met the chps criteria or no you didn’t because of these reasons and you know, this is what you can do next. In other states it’s submitted directly to chps, the organization itself, and they have reviewers on staff that, you know, go through all this paperwork and figure out whether you met the criteria or not. So, you know, kind of depends. There are different rules in different states, I guess.
Robb: (19:35) Earlier is better in any kind of design process to make sure you get the details right, I’m sure. I mean, you don’t want to be ready to start construction and then, hey, let’s make this high performance. I’m sure that this is even more the case for schools and then some other buildings.
Speaker 3: (19:53) Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think these projects sometimes take years and years. So the earlier you can get in and the more planning you can get done, and just kind of the more information that you can gather as a community or as a design team on, you know, how to accomplish these goals. The earlier the better for sure. We try to tell that to all our communities. And you know, a big piece of this is engaging with your local utilities. And that’s actually one of the prerequisites in northeast chps is, you know, making sure you’re working with utilities and getting the technical assistance in the financial incentives that they might have available to you. So that of course has to happen early on as well. So we’re always trying to push for schools to think about these things early and get the process started as soon as they can.
Robb: (20:37) So what’s the result? I mean, we mentioned earlier that, you know, good indoor environmental quality is great. It makes sense to want that in schools, but are there meaningful studies that show that, “hey, kids learn better, they actually do better” have people looked into that?
John: (20:57) Yeah, there are definitely a bunch of good studies out there. There’s a lot of like anecdotal evidence from maybe one particular school that’s seen reduced absentee rates since they opened up a high-performance school. And, you know, one example I can share is the Concord school district in New Hampshire. They actually saw a pretty significant absentee rate reduction, and they opened up a few new high-performance schools back between 2010 and 2013, somewhere in that range. And they saw those reductions. So, you know, there’s a lot of things like that, but there are definitely some more kind of scientific formal studies out there. The Harvard, T.H. Chan School of Public Health is doing a lot of great work in this area right now. They have a couple of publications out there already that, you know, talk really in-depth about how the indoor environment impacts student thinking and health and test scores. So there’s certainly a lot of good information out there. The EPA actually has a lot of good resources on this as well. I think they have a whole webpage kind of dedicated to high performance schools. I’m not sure the exact title of that webpage, but you know, EPA and schools.
Robb: (22:16) Yeah, that’s cool. We can dig it up and we’ll put it on the show notes page as well as the link to the Harvard studies you said. And do you have cool case studies?
John: (22:30) Yeah, we have a number of them on our websites. You know, I’ve done a bunch in the past few years. But yeah, we’re always looking to add to them too. So, you know, if you are ever working on a high performance school and want to create a case study I’m happy to work with whoever on that as well.
Robb: (22:46) Cool. How, how about existing schools? I mean we’ve been talking about new construction so far, but does chps or NEEP get into programs/methods to improve existing schools?
John: (23:00) Yeah. So you can use northeast chps for new construction, for major renovation projects, or kind of in a phased approach. So, if you’re just kind of doing capital improvement projects here and there, over time you can actually become, chps verified. But the existing stock is obviously much larger than, you know, new construction buildings, so that’s a super important thing to be targeting on the NEEP side of things. We do a lot of work with facility directors. You know, we have a lot of strong connections with facility directors throughout the region. And we’re trying to help them understand what they can be doing to improve the efficiency of their buildings. We have this guide called the regional operations and maintenance guide for public buildings. So it goes beyond schools, but you know, a lot of it is targeted directly at schools and it provides a lot of best practices and lessons learned and kind of checklists. It’s a user friendly guide to help facility directors or others within the community really improve the efficiency of their existing building stock. So I think we have a lot of work to do as an industry as a hole on existing buildings. If we want to really improve some of the carbon emissions and our talk about climate change, you know, if we want to really improve those things, targeting the existing building stock is so important.
Robb: (24:31) Yeah. There’s a lot of them out there. It’s a big deal. And that’s a frustration. I mean, we work with a lot of designers and developers of new buildings, and they’re much, much, much, much better. And this is everybody’s scratching their heads about what we do with the 99% of buildings out there that are old?
John: (24:51) Exactly. And one of the things that we always say is you got to start with understanding your building’s energy use. So, going through the benchmarking process, you know, using that portfolio manager tool that you mentioned earlier, that’s really kind of where you got to start. You got to take control. It’s just like, you know, if you’re trying to get control of your finances and your personal life, you kind of budget things out. And that’s kind of how I see looking at improving the energy in existing buildings. You know, you got to dive into it and try to figure out how much energy you’re using and where’s there’s some room for improvement. So that’s really the key first step to me.
Robb: (25:29) Yup. Fantastic point. Absolutely. I definitely agree. So what’s next? If we talk about this in five years, 10 years, any trends? Do You think that there’s some big changes happening? What ?are high performance schools going to look like? Or what the program’s going to look like down the road?
John: (25:48) Yeah, it was interesting, I was listening to some of the earlier podcasts that you guys have produced and you know, you’re talking about zero energy buildings. and to me, I think that’s a really big one that’s being talked about really all over and in kind of small pockets of the region, these conversations are definitely happening. And depending on who you’re talking to, you know, you’ll get varying levels of, “oh yeah, that’s definitely possible at a similar budget to a regular or high performance building.” Others are a lot more skeptical and think that, you know, it costs a lot more. So, I think there’s certain tradeoffs, you know, specific to each project that can make projects a lot more if you’re targeting zero energy. But to me the important thing is really targeting a low EUI building. So just making sure that, you know, the building is conserving energy and using energy as efficiently as possible. And then tying in some of those renewable energy components into it as well. So yeah, NEEP is having these conversations across the region. I’m involved in conversations in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, so really, you know, it’s happening all over. There’s a couple of good examples down in Maryland, they had a zero energy pilot program where they selected three schools with some state funding there to get to zero energy. So I think there’s one school open now that’s, I’m not sure if it’s exactly at zero energy, but you know, I would imagine it’s pretty close if it’s not truly zero energy. And then there’s two more kind of coming online later this year. So, you know, we’re seeing more and more of these buildings pop up and I think schools are on the leading edge of this kind of zero energy movement. So, it’s really good to see, and hopefully, you know, with education kind of all-around across the market, we’ll be able to make this possible over the next five to 10 years for new construction at least.
Robb: (27:52) Awesome. Yeah. Schools may be a hot topic with zero energy buildings because they’re high visibility. People want high performance schools for all the reasons that we’ve been talking about. And they’re often fairly large low rise buildings with lots of roof area for solar. So yeah, I think it could be a winning combination. We’ll stay tuned for more zero energy schools.
John: (28:18) I hope so.
Robb: (28:20) So, thanks John. Where do people go? I think we mentioned chps.org is the chps website
John: (28:28) I think it’s actually chps.net. But no big deal. You’d probably get there either way.
Robb: (28:34) thank you for the correction, we’ll put the right link on our website and, and NEEP is .org right?
John: (28:43) Yup, NEEP.org. You got that right. And I’ll just throw a plug for one of our tools that really helps communities kind of figure out what they should be taking on. It’s a tool we released early last year and it’s kind of a user-friendly guide for anyone in the community to walk through and, you know, point to specific projects that they should be taking on. So it’s called community action planning for energy efficiency. So if you’re, you know, listening and trying to figure out where your communities should be, kind of thinking about energy efficiency and what to take on first from forming an energy committee to building a high performance school. There’s all this information built into this cool new tool. So I just wanted to throw that out there as a good starting point for a lot of folks. If you know they’re overwhelmed with the mass amount of information that’s out there.
Robb: (29:35) Oh, cool. That sounds like it could be a great resource and that’s on the NEEP website and you can get to it from the NEEP website?
John: (29:42) Yup, that’s correct.
Robb: (29:42) And we’ll link to that directly in the show notes too. Thanks very much, John.
New Speaker: (29:55) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcasts and check out the episode show notes. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex [inaudible] and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Why is Kitchen Ventilation So Important? With Dr. Iain Walker from LBNL
Apr 02, 2019
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.
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.
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 hood, you’ll see this sort of metal grate and so it might stop some of the grease getting circulated your kitchen, But for the other stuff, it doesn’t do much. So first of all, you need to have something that vents to outside. If it’s just blowing back and greasing your forehead, then I’m ambivalent about whether you use it or not. It’s totally up to you. But I don’t think it’s doing very much. So As long as vents to outside, the first thing is to turn it on. And even the very worst hood is going to be better than not using it. So even if you think you have a bad one, try using it. The next thing is, if we’re talking now about a cooktop that’s up against the wall with a hood above it also mounted on the wall, they always do better at capturing from the burners at the back than the front. So if you can cook on the back burners it’s going to be way better. Of course, that’s also the most awkward way to cook. And so most people cook on the front burners for convenience. And so it’s always gonna be a personal tradeoff, but certainly using the back burners is going to be better for your range hood for getting it to to capture what’s on the cooktop. So even if you do nothing in your kitchen, you can at least turn it on and cook on the back burners. And, and that’s, that’s a big step forward.
Kelly: (08:18) Awesome. That’s great. That’s great advice. And then I guess taking the next step, if I’ve maybe convinced my partner that we should decide to renovate our kitchen and we maybe have some renovation budget now, what should we look at or what should we talk to our builder about?
Iain: (08:36) So here you’re talking about how do I pick my new range hood effectively? And there’s a couple of things you can do, that when you’re browsing through catalogs or you’re at the hardware store looking at these things. One is to simply look at the physical geometry of the hood. And the key thing is, does it come out far enough from the wall to cover all the burners? And basically the further out from the wall it comes, the more coverage it has generally speaking, the better it will perform. And this is just a simple sort of common sense exercise. If you imagine the hot air and the hot balloon that’s coming off your cooking it, it basically is going upwards. And if the hood doesn’t come out and cover that part of the cooktop, you can imagine that sort of hot air and plume and all the moisture and everything, it just goes in the kitchen and doesn’t get captured. It’s sort of a straightforward geometry thing. So if you can pick one that’s larger that that covers more of the cooktop area, that’s better. The other thing you’re deciding is what height to mount it at and you might think, well, the lower I get the better. Right? But that’s not always true. There’s sort of a range of mounting heights where we get reasonable performance. But you’re often going to be restricted by the cabinets that you choose also. And there are stock cabinet sizes that kind of limit your options there if you’re remodeling. But we usually want to aim for a height above the cooktop of something like 24 to 30 inches, if you will. That’s sort of measuring to the bottom of the hood. And it turns out that most modern kitchens with typical cabinetry, they’re going to have something in that sort of range.
Iain: (10:31) If you’re using a microwave device, though, that that’s kind of different. The ones with the built in microwave tend to be mounted lower, for starters, and some of that simply because they are physically deeper top to bottom, right. If you’re mounting them under the same cabinet in your kitchen, it comes down lower. They also tend to not stick out very far and that means that they don’t have the greatest performance, honestly. And also they tend to suck air not just from underneath where the cooking is happening, but they often have vents around the top and the sides. And that’s what I would call more like general kitchen ventilation. So they are exhausting air but it’s from the kitchen, It’s not from directly over the cooking, So they’re less effective in that sense. So these microwave devices, sure you free up some counter space, but they are less effective as exhaust hoods for, for your cooking. Although I realize the popular in people liked them. So I would not say never install one, but you should understand that it’s not going to be quite as good as one that doesn’t have a microwave stuck in it.
Kelly: (11:35) Just consider your alternatives in that case.
New Speaker: (11:38) Right. And the last thing is that there are some ratings for hoods that are put out by an organization called the home ventilating institute or HVI and anyone could go to HVI.org and look at their ratings. And one of the key aspects of the ratings is to look at the the sound level, how noisy they are. Because in our research we found that as you can imagine, if a range hood is too noisy, people use it less particularly in a, in a modern kitchen, which has no wall between you and the dining room or living room. Like most modern homes are this open plan layout and the ferociously loud range hood, you can’t use it if you’re trying to watch television or the family’s trying to eat and have a conversation or something. It doesn’t work. Right. So you can try and look for quieter hoods. And in the future, those ratings are going to become a bit more advanced. And what they’re going to do is they’re going to start including something that we’re probably going to talk about for a couple of minutes here, which is something called capture efficiency, which is a rating for how well the cooking contaminants are captured and exhausted by the device. That’s not available yet. But a year from now when you’re shopping you should be able to pick a higher capture efficiency rated device also for exhausting your kitchen.
Kelly: (12:59) Great. And can you dive into that a little bit? You’ve been doing some research on what the capture efficiency is of current range hoods. What does that look like from what you’ve seen in the market now?
Iain: (13:13) Sure. So maybe I should define what we mean by capture efficiency first. Basically what capture efficiency is about is, when you emitting stuff from your cooking, what fraction of that get sucked into the range hood and blown directly to outside? So a poor range might say it only captures a third of all those cooking contaminants and it’s capture efficiency would be 33% or about a third. A very good range hood might capture 80 or 90%. So almost all of the cooking contaminants get sucked into the range hood and blown outside. And so capture efficiency is that rating that says how much of what I’m emitting from my cooking gets blown to outside. And we’ve done lots of experiments both in the laboratory at LBNL and also going out to people’s homes and testing, and there’s a huge range of performance for capture efficiency. And I touched on some of this earlier. It depends a bit on the geometry. You know, the physical dimensions of the hood in terms of how well it actually covers the cooktop. But as you listeners might imagine, often you have a switch that that changes the fan speed on your hood. And as you increase the fan speed, more and more air flows through it, the capture efficiency goes up. So you get the best capture efficiency at the highest flow rate. Unfortunately, that also tends to be the noisiest way to operate it. So there’s going to be a trade off in your kitchen, about how much noise can I stand. Generally the higher speed, the higher the airflow, the greater the noise and the better you will capture things. And at lower speeds, maybe you can still carry on a conversation, but it’s not capturing so well. And we have developed basically a standardized test method for this that is going to be adopted by HVI and other organizations so that everybody tests the same way. So that, you know, we standardize on things like what is the heat output of the burner that you’re looking at, and what method do you use to measure this capture efficiency and we’re using a tracer gas system for doing this. But it’s all in a very standardized, very controlled way. So all the test labs will get the same result if they test the same device in the same way. It’s all been engineered out to be very, very consistent. And theres several other test labs in the country that have been trying out this test method and also some European test labs also because we think that this way of rating for capture efficiency will probably find its way into international standards as well as being used here in the U.S.
Kelly: (16:03) That’s great. So you’re working on that now. But can you talk a little bit about some of the other things that we can look for? You know, if I’m going to buy my range hood tomorrow, you spoke about noise and flow rate. What would you prescribe if I was going out and looking to pick something tomorrow?
Iain: (16:25) If you’re picking something tomorrow, there’s sort of the minimum flow rate below which the devices don’t work particularly well. And some minimum flow rates are actually put into ventilation standards. For example, the U.S. National standard for ventilation says that the minimum flow rate should be 100 cubic feet per minute as a minimum flow rate. So if you’re looking at the flows that you’re going to get for your range hood you want to at least beat that minimum. Of course that’s the minimum, you can always do better. And if it was me picking a flow, I’d want to have at least 150, maybe 200 cfm as sort of the minimum flow rating that I would operate at. It’s a little complicated by the fact that almost all range of type of switch that lets you change the speed and change the flow, right? And on the very lowest flow, they might not be having that 100 cfm, but you probably get that on the medium. And then on the high flow rate you get up to 150 or 200 for a typical device. So you know, there’s always going to be a range of flows at the, at the more extreme end though for high end kitchens we see devices that are essentially looking at look like they should be in a commercial kitchen. Whether air flows are several CFM, maybe six, 700 cubic feet per minute. So like five times or six times what the minimum is. And that, that all seems like, hey, that should be awesome, right? Because now I’m going to get really good capture efficiency and all that sort of stuff, which could be true. But you pay a price in terms of noise for a start.These tend to be noisy to move all that air and the fact that all the air has to come into your house somewhere else, right? All the air that goes out comes in somewhere. And at the very high flow rates, that can be a difficult thing to manage for your home, and you can easily run into comfort issues. For example, if you lived somewhere cold and it’s winter time, all that extra cold air coming in has to be heated, which is, you know, going to cost you some energy. And if you have what we call makeup air, which has a deliberate duct to bring that air in, you have to be careful about where that air comes in. Because if you don’t heat it up in the winter, you get a horrible cold draft on people, so these very high end, very fancy higher flow devices bring a whole world of problems with them that currently the industry is not dealing with very well I would say. And it’s important when you’re picking these things to be aware that it’s not so simple as buying the biggest thing you can and turning it on, there are other consequences that we have to deal with when we do that, but that’s only for these very large, very high end devices. For your more typical thing that you might put in your kitchen, those higher air flows are less of a concern because they simply don’t move that much air.
Kelly: (19:22) Right. Compared to the overall building size?
Iain: (19:24) correct, yes. Well it’s not so much building size. It has to do with things like if you are living a very energy efficient home, they tend to be what we call very airtight homes. In other words, they don’t have very many leaks in the building to let air in or out. And if you have one of these very big exhaust fans, often they will actually move a lot less air than they say, cause it’s simply so hard to suck the air in through the very tight shell of the home. And sometimes we also have concerns about what about if you have a water heater in your house that takes its combustion air from your home? So this is not a sealed off unit. It’s not outside or in a garage or anything, It’s actually in the home with you, and that there are plenty of homes that have this, right. If you exhaust too much, you might pull the exhaust from the water heater into the house with you. So, you know, all of those combustion products that I talked about from the cooking, from your water heater, are coming in the house, which is, you know, water vapor and particles and, and carbon dioxide.All sorts of stuff. So there are some issues that we do have to think about if we install very, very large exhaust systems in homes that have what we call these natural draft combustion applIainces in the home with them. I will say though that there are tests you can do to make sure that those devices are not overpowering the ability of your say water heater to draft properly. Organizations like the building performance institute and others have got, you know, test test protocols to, to evaluate this sort of thing. But, but again, I would argue for keeping your life simple and not buying a gigantic hood with a lot of flow, and going with something more moderate.
Kelly: (21:23) Right. Yeah. And actually it’s interesting anecdotally obviously, but I’m up in Vermont this week and we have a lot of fireplaces and we actually had a situation the other night where the fireplace was running and somebody went into the bathroom and turned the fan on that’s integrated with the light switch. And there was a series of circumstances that made it such that we back drafted from the, the fireplace and smoke kind of came into the room.
Iain: (21:59) Yes, it’s, it’s a real issue and it can happen and we should avoid it if we can. And again, I think this is an argument for using a more moderate airflow for your kitchen range hood if you can, and I realized that sometimes these are lifestyle decisions, not building science decisions and who am I to decide I can only, I can only advise people to avoid bad situations.
Kelly: (22:24) Right. Of course. It’s one perspective of the whole construction game.
Iain: (22:29) Well, I mean this is often the case when we talk about people’s homes is that a lot of the things in a home are inter-linked in these ways, right? The exhaust from the kitchen does great things to get rid of the contaminants in the kitchen, but we have to make sure we’re not messing up the home somewhere else.
Kelly: (22:48) Right. That’s an excellent point. Thinking about that everything that you’re doing in the home as a full system. And what’s the impact on the whole system?
Iain: (22:57) That’s right. Your house is a system is sort of a something we often say.
Kelly: (23:01) And and were the building doctors or something
Iain: (23:06) Possibly. And as any good doctor, we always have to firstly do no harm, right? We have to make sure that the things we do don’t end up making things worse. Right? But it’s a, it’s important thing but, but, but generally for most circumstances, you’re a moderately sized kitchen exhaust hood is not going to create very many problems in your home unless, and I s as I say, there are exceptions, but you know, some of this is becoming less and less important. This might be aside, but it’s certainly with thinking about, that most high-performance homes these days, they don’t have these gas fueled applIainces that are actually using the air from the house. They’re either using what we call sealed combustion and most high efficiency furnaces. They’re taking their combustion air from outside through its own little duct.
Iain: (23:58) It gets burned and then the flume goes back outside again. And that furnace isn’t communicating with your home in any way. And so it doesn’t really matter very much if you depressurize the house was an exhaust fan because that furnace is not communicating with the home. Or if you have a, an all electric home with say, heat pumps for heating and cooling and for hot water, then again, you don’t have to worry about it. But, but, but you crazy folks that want to burn wood in a fireplace. I mean there are solutions there too. I mean, again, in a high performance home, a good idea is to have what we call her a sealed fireplace. Where the fireplace is taking its combustion air from outside burning the word and then the, yeah, the smoke and everything goes back outside again and it’s not communicating with your home. And often these things will have, they have a, you know, a nice glass front on them so you can see the flames and the warmth comes through. But you couldn’t reach out your hand and touch the flames. But older homes, you know, like the one I live in, I don’t have that. I just have an open fireplace because I live in California so I can’t use it very often. But you know, you take your chances.
Kelly: (25:10) Yeah, those are great points. Circling us back to the kitchen a little bit and cause I think that this is actually of interest to a lot of people. And not exactly kitchen hood exhaust but the cooker itself. So can you talk a little bit about our cooktop options and what your thoughts are on those?
Iain: (25:29) Definitely. So, so they broadly fall into three categories if you want to do some cooking, right. There is a gas burner. There’s what we call an electric resistance element. That’s usually the spiral thing. You can see that glows red hot. And the third one is what’s called an induction cooktop where there’s nothing that gets hot and instead an induction field is induced in your metallic Cook Pot and the pot is heated directly rather than having gas be burned or a hot spiral element. And they are quite a bit different in terms of what happens when you turn them on. And the gas cooking is the one that produces the most contaminants because when you burn natural gas, you get a lot of water vapor which you need to control. There are also lots of particles generated, which are a health concern, oxides of nitrogen that again are a health concern and possibly some other volatile organic compounds that come from the combustion process. And so there’s more contaminants produced the gas cooking than the other ways. So the hot electric element is sort of halfway in between it. We’re not burning anything anymore. So we don’t actually produce any water vapor or oxides of nitrogen, but you never can get those heating elements so clean that they don’t admit some particles, and the particle emission is not as high as burning the natural gas, but there’s still plenty of small particles emitted when you use electric cooking. And finally the induction cooktop because effectively there isn’t something that’s super duper hot. You need heat to volatilize things to create the particles, it creates by far the least particles. It doesn’t create any water vapor, no oxides of nitrogen. So if you’re looking to cook in a healthy way that isn’t healthy because the food you’re cooking is healthy, but because you’re not putting contaminants in the air, an induction cooked up is definitely the way to go in all our testing and testing that other people have done, Induction cooking is definitely the cleanest. There is one other thing to think about though, and that is the oven and we don’t really have induction ovens per se, right? They usually either electric or gas and again, you sort of have the same breakdown where gas is going to produce the most particles and so on and, and the electric less so. They, they can be a little trickier when we’re thinking about venting. When we talk about the capture efficiency for hoods, we’re just looking at what happens on the cooktop. We’ve not looked at including in the rating what happens from the oven. And some of that is because the way the ovens are vented depends on a lot on the particular construction of the oven you’re using or the range that you’re using and where the hot air comes out. Sometimes it’s at the back, sometimes at the front, sometimes it’s a bit of both. And so it was sort of hard to standardize a way to think about capturing from the oven. But even if you’re not using the cooktop and you’re baking some bread or something, it’s still a good idea to turn on your exhaust hood because you’re still getting contaminants emitted into your kitchen. Maybe not as much as a very, very hot stir fry. Right? But they’re still there and you should still vent them. And maybe you just, you just leave it on low or something and do that. So it’s, it’s an important point to notice that, you know, when you’re cooking in the oven, things get emitted too, and the last thing I’ll say about this is sometimes in very, very fancy high end kitchens, you might have multiple ovens and maybe you have a cooktop with an oven underneath it with a hood over it. But on the wall next to it is a second oven. Well it’s not underneath the range hood anymore, but that’s okay because once again, turning your range hood on, it’s also ventilating the whole kitchen. Right. And it’s stopping the pollutants from traveling from your kitchen to other places in the home because as you exhaust out of the kitchen, the air has to come from somewhere and that airflow into the kitchen tends to control the transport of these contaminants around your house. And so even if what you’re doing isn’t directly under the hood, when you turn on the hood, you’re still sucking air out of the kitchen and ventilating the kitchen and moving those contaminants. It’s not as efficient as it is when it’s directly over the cook top, but it’s still something that’s worthwhile. And indeed, there are many other kitchen ventilation approaches that don’t use a range with per se. Right. Sometimes there’s just a fan in the wall or a fan in the ceiling that exhausts the whole room. And again, they work, they’re just not as efficient as a range hood and in order to get to the same levels of contaminants in the kitchen, if you just generally ventilating in the kitchen, you have to ventilate a lot more than if it’s just the range hood, and so those are less effective but it’s not like it has zero effect.
Kelly: (30:52) Right. Great Point. Yeah. So thank you. There’s a lot of key takeaways here. I would say some of my top ones are number one, use your exhaust fan. Number two, vent it to the outside directly. And my number three is I should get an induction stove so I can make a bacon cheeseburger and call it healthy cooking.
Iain: (31:21) I wouldn’t, I’m not sure I’m going to agree completely with your point number three about whether what you’re eating is healthy, but in terms of what you were emittnig and what you’re breathing. It might be slightly healthier. And, you know, I’m not against gas cooking, I cook with gas myself, right. But I use my range at a lot. And I understand that, that there are people that have, they love to cook and they have an affinity for using gas and I’m never going to tell them to not do it right. But I’m gonna tell them, you know, the air in your kitchen is going to have less contaminants if you use the induction, I mean I think my next cooktop will be induction even though I like to cook a lot.
Kelly: (32:03) All right, good to know. So, we like to ask this, if we have you back on the podcast in five years, maybe 10 years, what will we be talking about then? Besides how awesome your induction cooktop is
Iain: (32:20) I think we’ll be talking about a couple of things. I think that the design of range hoods is going to get better. And by that I mean we’ll get the same amount of the contaminants captured and exhausted from the kitchen at a lower air flow. And I like that because it means it’ll be quieter, which people are much more likely to use their hoods. And it means that if we move less air that’s less air we have to heat up or cool down, you know, that goes in and out of the house. And so that’s going to be something that I think we’re gonna see the range of manufacturers looking into. The next thing is, is, is automation, which is, you know, we made this point about range, that it only works if it’s turned on right. But once we have got good designs that capture well and arent noisy because they move less air or else theyre better aerodynamic designs, then I think we can move down the path of let’s automate these devices so they will sense that you’re cooking and turn on automatically and they’re likely to turn on at, at a low airflow and there’ll be a switch that you as the cook can still use. Like if you, if you start to burn something, you could turn it on to high. Right. But they’re gonna automatically operate. So it’s not dependent on, on the cook to turn it on. It’s going to be automatic. And the automation is an extension of, there are some high end hoods out now that have what I’ll call an emergency switch in them. If they get very, very hot, they’re intended to detect a cooktop fire and go into high speed. It’s a safety thing. And those controls strategies are going to get adapted to be more sensitive and use some different ways of sensing the cooking, not just the temperature of the air, but maybe some infrared sensing and things like that. And we’re gonna automate range hoods and I, and I think that sort of performance improvement and automation are going to be the two big changes that we see in sometime in the next five years. These things are going to become relatively mainstream.
Kelly: (34:25) Okay. That sounds great. You did mention three things at first, do you have a third or are we going to have to wait and see?
Iain: (34:34) There is a third one and this is something that may be a bit of a stretch and that is that there are some applications where people would like to recirculate. And the reason why I was gonna say it is third and then then I changed my mind is that I understand that with these devices you could certainly put in a good particle filter to move the particles. You could put some active charcoal carbon filters in there to remove some of the vcs, but youre still gonna have a hard time with removing the water vapor. Right. And that’s always gonna be an issue if you cook a lot, you know, and you don’t want condensation and we don’t want higher moisture levels in our homes. And it also has the issue of, it’s really relying on the homeowner to regularly change out all those filters. And from what we know from how people use their homes in particular, looking at how often people change the filters in the heating and cooling systems, we’re pretty sure we can’t rely on people to do that. So this, this is a third option and it’s being investigated mostly for like Super Duper, super tight homes where they want to keep the heat in. If you’re familiar with the, the passive house system where houses are very, very airtight and they are doing an amazing job of controlling all the heat flows. In the winter, they want to keep the cooking heat in the house as heat because they don’t want to turn on the heating system. And so they would like to have recirculating systems that allow them to do that. But I think there’s still, you know, a couple of really serious issues with those where I would be comfortable in recommending them. So they could be the third thing, and there’s certainly a bunch of work being done right now on how do we improve the filtration of these things. How good a filter do we need? And so on. But like I said, they have a couple of key drawbacks, which is they don’t remove the moisture and they do require a lot of maintenance. That means that- I won’t say they’re terrible, I’m just not their biggest fan.
Kelly: (36:41) Right. That sounds great. So maybe we’ll put that on the 10 year horizon and we’ll check what they’ve got going on then
Iain: (36:49) Maybe we’ll see. I just always prefer simpler things because they’re harder to break. Right. And you know, you want to buy something that’s gonna work for at least 10 years. And so the idea of, you know, robust things that don’t require you to maintain them all the time seem like they’re much, much more likely to be working in 10 years.
Kelly: (37:11) That’s an excellent point and I think it is a good end note. So I want to thank you so much for your time today and for coming on the podcast and coordinating this remote recording with our team. Thank you so much Iain.
Iain: (37:27) Well thank you Kelly. I’m happy to talk about these things as you can probably tell.
Kelly: (37:31) Great. We’ll have you back on soon.
Iain: (37:35) All right. Thanks, Kelly.
Kelly: (37:42) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast And check out the episode show notes. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
High-Performance Building Enclosures with Bill Zoeller
Mar 26, 2019
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.
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.
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.
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 item.
Robb: (09:10) So let me back up a little bit here. So my perhaps simplistic take is that most walls have some kind of siding. The siding should keep most of the water out. If water happens to get behind the siding, through some defect in construction, or just crazy horizontal rain or up flow rain or you know, then there should be some kind of house wrap or building paper or something that the water can’t get through. Which people often call it the drainage plane. I like to call the secondary drainage plane.
Bill: (09:51) Well in code speak that’s the weather resistant barrier. And if I’m cladding my house in shingles or clapboard or something else, all that material overlaps and it’s got gaps in joints and you’re going to get wind driven rain in there and there’s going to be pressure differentials on the lease side of the house or the windward side of the house, depending on what the weather’s doing, the water’s going to get back there. So it needs a place to, you know, to go to, whether it’s a secondary drainage plane or a weather resistant barrier, it’s all that’s all about bulk water management. That’s what happens in the outside of the building.
Robb: (10:29) Gotcha. And those come in the form of like in frame construction, which is, you know, very common at least in residential, house wrap building paper or like zip, I see more and more zip walls going up, which has the weather resistant barrier on the face of OSB. Are all those created equal, all those more or less the same function?
Bill: (10:56) Well, no. They’re all different. And you know, it depends on the overall assembly of, of the wall as to which is going to work the best. If you look at the old school stuff you know, good old 15 pound building felt, that was in essence the weather resistant barrier. And no way was it an air barrier. You can’t tape it, you can’t glue it, you know, like originally when the house wraps came out, they were lapped six inches according to the manufacturer and stapled. And it’s like, Hey, this is an air infiltration barrier, isn’t it great? Well, you know, if I take a one by one sample and test it in the laboratory, it’ll come out as a rated air infiltration barrier. If I put it in a house and I don’t bother doing anything with the seams and joints, it’s not an air barrier of anything. It’s just for leaks. It’s like a bucket with holes in it. Even though the plastic bucket is made out of material, it’s got holes in it. So it’s not going to do any good in terms of holding water.
Robb: (11:57) And this is, I think one of the newer things, because 10-20 years ago when people came out with tapes that tape all the seams of your house wrap of your building paper of your zip sheathing then, you know, nobody trusted that those tapes would hold up over decades. And you know, they would decompose, the adhesive would break down and they’d fall off and then you’d get leaks, air leaks, water leaks, et cetera. I mean, do you agree? I mean, that seems like very new.
Bill: (12:25) Well, those concerns were well founded. They didn’t work. You know, in terms of longterm durability, there was issues.
Robb: (12:35) Okay, but now?
Bill: (12:35) Well there’s different materials on the market. Tapes are a lot better Generally. Some are still better than others, but you can get tapes and systems that absolutely work to air seal your building on the outside. And, and truly that’s the place you should air seal your building on the exterior sheathing plane. You want to air seal where the air movement is, the air movements on the outside, not the inside. So that’s your first line of defense. That’s where it ought to go.
Robb: (13:04) Alright. So keep the water out. Flashing details, you know, more important now than they ever were.
Bill: (13:11) Yeah. Because the drying capabilities lower.
Robb: (13:13) Because there’s low drying, and getting that weather resistant barrier, seamless, really impervious, is the way to go. You got to do it in a high performance wall.
Bill: (13:27) You have to do it in a high performance wall. A little bit of a problem in that barrier can cause big problems in the, in the overall wall assembly.
Robb: (13:35) So r-value. Higher our values. How do you do that in the best way? And again, in a framed wall now?
Bill: (13:41) Well there’s different approaches. There’s obviously the standard traditional way, is to fill the cavity with fiberglass insulation. That’s what we used to do. That works up to a certain point. It still keeps a lot of the thermal bridges in the form of the wood studs, for example, in place. So where the wood studs are, I don’t have any installation at all. I have wood studs.
Robb: (14:02) R-3 or whatever. Less than five.
Bill: (14:06) So really now the more effective approaches utilize continuous exterior insulation. A layer of insulation that basically blankets the entire building around the exterior, covering all the thermal bridges. So that for as an example, I’ll have a and r-5 or r-6 or an r-7 continuous around the entire building envelope. That’ll be directly integrated with my air sealing. Then if I put cavity insulation in place the cavity insulation will actually be effective to its rated value or close to it, because the thermal bridges essentially been defeated.
Robb: (14:46) Okay. So continuous installation is the way to go, you think?
Bill: (14:50) It’s one of the better approaches. Again, there’s different approaches, but that absolutely is a preferred approach, I’ll call it.
Robb: (14:59) And the material? Foam is what I see mostly. Rigid foam?
Bill: (15:05) Rigid foam works. You know, if you use rigid foam, you could do your air barrier on this and the weather resistant barrier that we talked about before. The secondary drainage plane as we called it, on the surface of the foam. There’s other materials I could use like mineral wool, rigid mineral wool for continuous installation on the exterior, in which case I have to use the sheathing below it, underneath it, for the weather resistant barrier and my air ceiling barrier, because the mineral wool is not an air barrier. The cladding or siding needs to be installed on furring strips of some sort, because you can’t nail directly through the mineral wool because it’s a compressible material, but it’s drainable. So you know, if you’re going to do a rain screen, which basically puts a gap between the sheathing and the back of the cladding as a siding approach, then the mineral wool works just fine.
Robb: (16:08) Rainscreen is any gap? I mean, furring strips constitute a rain screen?
Bill: (16:12) Well, you could do a rain screen multiple different ways. Basically, it’s an air gap or a capillary break between the back of the sheathing and whatever the sheathing is attached to. So if I have a drainable insulation, like mineral wool, the back of the cladding, whether it’s clapboard or something else, will be spaced out at least typically a quarter of an inch from the face of the insulation, so that if water gets back there, it’s got a place to drain. It doesn’t cling to the back of the installations, there’s a little air movement up in there. And we talked about, you know, the second law of thermodynamics before, if I’ve got some air movement, I’ve got some higher drying capability. So I’m introducing some drying capability within that wall cavity.
Robb: (17:04) So the double wall systems, you know, dub two, 10 inches, 12inches, packed with cellulose.
Bill: (17:08) What you have is basically two parallel stud walls separated by a few inches. So the total dimension of the walls, as you said, is 10, 11, or 12 inches. Then the whole thing is, is packed with dry blown-in, dense pack cellulose. That’s a lot of insulation, you know, at at 3.2 inches, r-3.2 or 4 per inch or whatever, times 10 inches, you know, r-30 r-30+. So what you’ve got there is a whole lot of thermal insulation. So you’re stopping the energy heat flow, and you’re getting some air sealing, but it’s not a complete vapor permeable solution. So that if there are air leaks, which there will be a little bit, there always are. Interior, more moisture ladened air can get into that wall system, find its way to the exterior sheathing and potentially condense, because the exterior sheathing does not have the continuous insulation we talked about. So it’ll be colder. And if it’s colder and my interior air gets to it, the relative humidity goes from 50% to 100%, because the air goes from 70 degrees to 10 degrees. I can get some condensation issues, some dewpoint problems and end up with a big problem. So if you are going to do the double stud wall, there are some products in the market that are highly recommended to make it safe generically called Smart Vapor retarders that you would want to install on the inside of the wall behind your drywall to make that type of a wall system basically a safe wall system. Without that, it’s potentially problematic.
Robb: (19:05) And a rainscreen or vented siding is even more.
Bill: (19:08) In combination with the vented siding, the rain screen. Yeah. You know, we talked about the continuous insulation a little bit before. And what the continuous installation also does, just to sort of amplify that a little bit, is that it’ll take that same exterior sheathing and raise the temperature of it, because you’re putting your continuous thermal barrier between the outside weather and the exterior sheathing so that the temperature of that sheathing remains above the dewpoint under all design conditions. So, even if I have air leakage into the cavity with say, you know, two inches of xps or poly ISO insulation and say in r-19 or r-20, in a two by six cavity in most climate zones in the U.S., that’ll be a safe wall, because the sheathing stays above the dewpoint. So any air that leaks into that assembly still will not condense.
Robb: (20:05) It makes sense. I mean, it all makes sense. I see people wanting to stay away from petrochemicals and most of the rigid installation, continuous insulation is foam. But you said there are alternatives. There’s some mineral wool or there’s some cellulose based rigid insulation.
Bill: (20:22) There’s some European type products that are finding their way into the U.S. Market slowly that are essentially wood based, but they perform more or less like a mineral wool, rigid installation and they have the same drawbacks. You know, You don’t want to nail directly to them. You want to provide a capillary break, you want to give them a chance to drain behind your cladding and so on. But there’s plenty of options.
Robb: (20:45) And more and more. It’s hard to keep up with it all, but more options.
Bill: (20:54) More options is good, but includes more confusion on the part of the designers and builders that are using them. Because if there’s a lack of basic understanding of some of the building science involved they’re relying on your particular marketing information, which is always going to be a little bit incomplete because it’s designed to sell stuff. You know, let’s be honest.
Robb: (21:21) Yeah, definitely. All right. Switching gears a little bit, masonry, what’s different in masonry?
Bill: (21:30) Well, let’s start with what’s the same in Masonry? And in masonry, if we’re talking about new construction, you really want to employ the same strategies you’re doing in frame construction and that’s the continuous exterior insulation barrier outside the whole thing, jacket the whole darn thing. And some sort of an insulation jacket, be it xps, mineral wool or poly ISO, or something else, to the point where the inside surfaces of the masonry, if it’s a CMU block and plank building for instance, stays above that dewpoint. Same rules apply. If I don’t have enough continuous insulation on the outside, and my CMU backing gets below the dewpoint, my warm interior air at 50% relative humidity can get in there, contact that masonry, get down to 50 degrees, and 100% relative humidity, and I have a moisture problem. So there it’s the same. In terms of continuous air barriers and weather resistive barriers, the place to put that typically is on the direct face of the concrete masonry units. The CMU- I’m sorry for using the jargon, I get carried away sometimes. You know, that kind of a system you’ll see with either a brick veneer exterior, we’re seeing a lot more rainscreen cladding systems, metal panel systems, terracotta panel systems, we’ll employ that sort of a strategy. So we’re seeing a lot of different approaches that actually work now that the building science is a little bit better understood. And there’s more products to provide more variation that are, you know, desired by designers.
Robb: (23:21) So the weather resistant barrier, on the outside of the masonry, and most if not all the insulation outside of that.
Bill: (23:30) generally that’s going to be a higher performing approach. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, you could, you could come in with some like age still framing inside your concrete block with some, you know, essentially auxiliary installation material, to get a boost in r-value or meet energy code or whatever you’re going to do with it. But it’s really that outside continuous insulation that’s performing most of the work.
Robb: (23:53) And this is typical in the northeast for multifamily, new construction, some commericial?
Bill: (23:59) In urban locations, yeah.
Robb: (24:00) And then in the rest of the country is, I mean, we’ve been talking about colder climates generally, does the same hold true? I mean, the r-values are lower required by code as you get further south, as you get warmer. I mean, are there different challenges, similar challenges?
Bill: (24:20) Well, the challenges are, are, are different all over. In general, the masonry buildings are going to be safer in terms of moisture performance cause they’re a little bit more idiot proof. You know, if we look at frame construction, when you get down into the south, the rules are a little different there. If I’ve got a cooling dominated climate, and the interior temperature is kept at say 70 degrees, and it’s 95 degrees and you know, 80% relative humidity outside, and I have any moisture drive at all, the thermal dynamics doesn’t change. It’s just that the flow of energy is now different, and it wants to flow from hot to cold. So in that case, it’s outside to inside. So now if I have air leaks, I’m drawing the exterior of the hot sticky air through that wall assembly to the inside. And if I have a vapor retarder on the inside, even if it’s by accident, like vinyl wallpaper, I have a big problem because that’s where the moisture stops. I’ll get condensation, I’ll get mold, I’ll have all sorts of problems. So it really is climate specific, how you deal with it. When you’re looking at climates in between, that can be both, say Washington DC, you know, it can get New York cold or it can get Florida hot. So, you know, you really have to understand the dynamics in designing high-performance wall systems, especially in those mixed climates.
Robb: (25:47) In Phoenix, the risks are lower, I imagine.
Bill: (25:51) In Phoenix or you know, most of California, the risks are lower because yeah, the enemy is water, and there’s just less of it in the air. So it tends to not be as much of a problem.
Robb: (26:04) So if your brother called you up, said he’s building a new house and asked you what kind of wall he should use in a single family home in Connecticut, in New York. What would you tell him?
Bill: (26:15) I just had this conversation with my brother yesterday. No, I didn’t. But I mean, you know, in a typical northeastern climate zone five scenario, likely be a two by six wall, it could be maybe 2×4 wall. Builders don’t want to do that anymore, but there’s nothing wrong with it because structurally it’s fine. And if I can get my continuous insulation on the outside, do my air barriers out there, do a continuous, r-15 on the outside, which is, you know, two and a half inches of XPM of poly ISO, three inches of xps and do an r-13 bat or an r-15 bat, that’s an r-30 wall and a two by four wall. Nothing wrong with that. So if you’re looking at low cost, high performance, that is probably a really good approach. A lot of builders will just say, I’m not going to do two by fours because blah, blah, blah. So they want to do two by six. And I’m like, okay, well then do you know r-10 continuous outside and then do r-19 batts. You want to make sure that the continuous insulation stays within a fairly high ratio of the total installation. You know, like 33% probably is a minimum for condensation control. So that’s, you know, basically a rule of thumb. You’d want to look at the actual attributes and parameters of your materials before making that decision. But that’s a pretty good rule of thumb to start with for basic planning purposes.
Robb: (27:48) Okay. And further south, is there a line where continuous is really kind of not really required? I mean, in Georgia, do you really need continuous insulation? The code doesnt require it?
Bill: (28:01) No, the code doesn’t require it. And you know, again, if you don’t do the continuous installation, you’re still gonna have the thermal breaks. The thermal bridges rather, but the thermal bridges will be less important because the temperature differential is less. If I’m 70 degrees on the inside, 90 degrees on the outside, that’s a Delta t of 20 degrees, not a big deal. In New York, if I’m 70 degrees on the inside and 10 degrees on the outside, that’s a 60 degree temperature differential three. So, you know, the, the thermal drive is three times greater, but you’re still not getting the complete performance package. If you do continuous insulation, you know, again, you gotta pay attention a little bit differently to the dynamics, but you can still do high performance wall. You could do a high performance wall without the continuous easier in the south than you can in the north.
Robb: (29:00) Yup. Okay. All right. So I mean, keep the weather out is number one. Bulk water management, siding, drainage, probably number one. Air tightness, probably number two.
Bill: (29:07) Agreed.
Robb: (29:12) And then from there it’s designing for forgiveability or if something does go wrong, you’d get a little bit of leakage or you get a little bit of water leak.
Bill: (29:32) Yeah. it’s understanding what the vapor control issues are. Dewpoint control, Condensation Control, vapor dynamics, and it all changes a little bit based on how much r-value you put in because of that very unforgiving second law of thermodynamics.
Robb: (29:52) Alright, so Okay. If we talk about this again in five years, what are we going to be talking about? Any new systems you think new systems, new products?
Bill: (30:01) Well, the physics will not change. I can Pretty much guarantee that. There’s always going to be new systems on the market introduced about half of which will make it, half of which will make it, half of which won’t, and 10 or 20%, that’ll be pretty good. The other 30% that make it, that aren’t pretty good, will make it on behalf of their marketing strength, but that’s okay too. I don’t see anything really new and upcoming that’s going to be earth shattering. There’s a lot of stuff that people always think is going to be, you know, we saw, you know, panelized construction, sip construction and all that kind of type of product. They’re fine. You know, you just have to understand how they work and where are they working, and what to avoid in terms of problems.
Robb: (30:54) But they haven’t taken over the world.
Bill: (30:55) Yeah, yeah. No, they’re, you know, the 2% market share or whatever it is and they’ve been around for a while so they haven’t, you know, there’s a reason they haven’t taken over the world. You know, but they’re perfectly fine product and perfectly acceptable for use in modern buildings. Whether something new comes along that, you know, usurps, all of that, you know, that’s crystal ball time. I don’t see it right now.
Robb: (31:17) All right. Awesome. Thanks very much.
Bill: (31:22) Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: (31:27) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 in the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile , and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Electrifying Buildings with Richard Faesy
Mar 19, 2019
Featuring
Richard Faesy
Richard Faesy is a principal and co-founder of Energy Futures Group in Hinesburg, Vermont. With more than 30 years of experience in the clean energy industry working with hundreds of clients and programs throughout the U.S. and Canada, he is highly regarded as a national expert and reliable project manager. Richard helped create the national home energy rating industry, was the founding president of the board of the Northeast HERS Alliance and was a founding board member of the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET), including a term as president. Richard was featured in a national Dateline/NBC story on energy efficiency and was awarded RESNET’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He currently works with clients in California, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont. Read more
The electrification of buildings has become a growing trend in both residential and commercial sectors. Consumers that combine energy efficiency measures with newer heat-pump technologies can reduce both their utility bills and their carbon emissions. In fact, those with low loads can even achieve net zero when renewables are applied.
To discuss the goals of electrification we called upon Richard Faesy, Principal and Co-Founder of Energy Futures Group. Richard shares his experience with electrification projects around the Northeast. He talks about how programs and policies are taking advantage of new heat pump technologies and renewable energy to help meet climate goals.
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.
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: (00:22) My guest this time is Richard Feasy, who is one of the principals and founders of Energy Futures Group Vermont, they focus on energy efficiency and renewable energy more on the program side, more on utility programs and policy side. And they’re really involved with a lot of kind of cutting edge program design all around the country, but mostly in the northeast. And we talked about a growing trend that many people I’m sure are seeing, of electrification. Trying to forego fossil fuels on site, you know, don’t have oil or gas or propane at a home, at a commercial building. Instead use cleaner grid electricity or onsite renewables, combined with newer and much better heat pump technologies. A lot of this is driven by carbon emissions. Utilities, states, and many programs have mandates to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and with cleaner grids with more renewables, using really efficient heat pump technologies, can make that a reality. So Richard and I talked about this quite a bit in the interest of brevity, we’re going to cut in when we’re talking about one of the programs in Vermont they’re working on, called zero energy now. Retrofitting existing homes around the state, combining efficiency measures, heat pumps and onsite PV to really get very close to zero energy .
Richard: (02:00) So zero energy now program was one we were able to quickly design, gear up, rollout, in a limited period of time because there was a funding opportunity that came along and I’m a member of the Trade Association of the home performance contractors in Vermont called the building performance professionals association or BPPA. And BPPA is really the organization that represents the interests, and promotes the home performance industry in Vermont. There was some funding that was available from Green Mountain power, our largest utility here. And we went after it and want it to put in place and really to demonstrate that we can take existing older homes in Vermont and save 80 to 90% of their total energy use through those three elements, weatherization, heat pumps and, and PV. There were a couple of homes as well that incorporated some biomass and wood, either pellet or wood stoves as well too, which we consider renewable. But we had some pretty impressive results in less than one year, to get everything up and designed and recruit and train contractors, open the door, roll it out, complete the projects. We got approval in February of 2016, and we had to have the projects done by the end of that year. So we really had sort of a nine or ten months to get it all going. And we completed 22 projects that that will save, We’re in the process of doing the analysis and going back and looking at what they actually use now that we’ve got a couple of winters under our belt, but based on the modeling and we had trued the models up with actual field consumption, but were looking at about 79% total energy savings on average for these homes. So that’s significant.
Robb: (04:36) Is that site energy?
Richard: (04:42) Yeah. So you know, if you look at source energy, there’s some significant impacts there, saving that electricity at the source. But that would be customer site energy. And we actually are doing some analysis right now, going in and pulling the fuel records from these homes. The first one that we looked at, actually they saved more than 90% of their total energy. These people were generally true believers. They wanted to get off fossil fuel. And they’re the great customers to have, but this particular home that we just looked at, is probably 20 years old, 25 years old, I forget exactly when it was built, but we did a $10,000 weatherization job. So not building out walls and replacing windows, but really sort of basement, attic, air ceiling, hitting the high points and then put in a couple of cold climate air source heat pumps, and PV on the roof. And actually overloaded the PV on the roof because they wanted to also buy an electric car, which they have in the meantime. And so they’ve really sort of walked the walk in terms of getting off of fossil fuel. This is just one of 22 homes we did in the first year. In the second year we did another 15. So we’ve got these 35 homes out there, existing Vermont homes that range from 150 years old to 10 or 20 years old that are really saving a significant amount of fossil fuel through the electrification pathway.
Robb: (06:34) And the total cost to get there, I think I saw was somewhere in the forty thousands?
Richard: (06:39) Yeah, on average, while we had some projects that were more, some that were less, on average, it was about $40,000 package to do these homes. So that would be eight or ten thousand for the weatherization work. And it would be about $10,000 again for the heat pumps and then about $20,000 for the solar PV, but the resulting savings, the dollar savings for looking at the oil, propane, electricity that they were using at the time, ended up being about a $3,000 a year savings. And so we’re fortunate enough in Vermont to have some good financing programs that are available, some low interest rate financing for these kinds of types of projects from a couple of credit unions. And you looked at, while we weren’t necessarily asking people to use any one particular source of funding for these, some people would pull from their savings, but others would, a number of them would use the heat saver loan, which is what this is called. The energy savings, the $3,000 a year energy savings were in, in almost all cases, more than what the annual loan payments would cost. So even though these were $40,000 packages, the savings would offset that cost.
Robb: (08:25) Wow. Yeah. I mean, a lot of deep energy retrofits, you know, the costs start at six figures to really, you know, take old, crappy walls and make them R-40 and replace all the windows with triple pane windows, which was all good stuff, but very expensive. So this is a lower cost way to get close to zero. I wonder, have you guys looked at comfort and these homes? Is that part of the evaluation?
Richard: (08:53) That is part of the evaluation that we’re going through now. Earlier this week we were looking at the set of questions that we’d go back to the homeowners with. So we wanted to know exactly, you know, how is their experience, what’s their experience like living in these homes, are they more comfortable? Cause most of them, were homes that people had lived in before. Some of them they had recently bought them and wanted to do something about it. And we’ve got a little video online that actually is one of the participants who’s a young farmer and they bought an existing home, they’d been there for a while and they wanted to sort of move off of fossil fuels. And so most of these people probably have some experience before and after the weatherization work, but part of the evaluation, we’ll tease that out.
Robb: (09:57) Yeah. And I’m trying not to get too far into the weeds, but heat pump technology’s come a long ways, but I still see missed applications where the wrong system is installed in the wrong place and people are unhappy or uncomfortable with the results. So it’s something you’ve got to be careful of.
Richard: (10:19) It does blow air around. So yeah, there are those potential comfort issues if you don’t get it right. And so you know, addressing the weatherization component is important. So we want to make sure that that was part of any picture going forward. But really what’s enabled us to do what we’re doing here is the fact, it’s a couple things. We’ve certainly learned how to weatherize buildings, and we’ve become more adept and efficient at doing that over the last number of decades. But the heat pump technology is, as you alluded to earlier, has really enabled us to apply electric heat in cold climates. We’ve got, and, I personally have a couple of couple of heat pumps at home and see them operating down to 20, below zero. Actually we have them in our office as well too. And, last winter we had a string of days here that hit 20 below, and they continue to chug along. They’re not as efficient, certainly as they are at warmer temperatures, but they do work and it’s not electric resistance heat even, you know, they’re not getting the best COPs, but it’s certainly better than a COP of one. So anyhow, so the heat pump technology has really enabled us to this, and the cost of solar has come down. And we’ve historically had some really beneficial net metering rules and incentives. Those are changing a little bit as the market’s maturing, but the price of solar is really competitive with electricity. So having technology that works in our climate and then is affordable allows us to package these elements together.
Robb: (12:24) And you mentioned your office, your office is an almost net zero energy, all electric, new construction commercial building.
Richard: (12:33) Yes, it is. Actually half of it is 150 year old farmhouse that we did a deep energy retrofit on, on that. It and then we doubled the square footage and, and that’s, that’s new construction. But we’ve got our, our 60 ceiling, our 40 walls, triple glazed windows. Good, good insulation around the slab and one part of it, the base in the other and really passive house tightness levels of, of air tightness with, with heat recovery ventilation. But, and we’ve got only heat pumps in here to provide heating cooling. So we’re 100% electric.
Richard: (13:17) We snubbed the gas line that runs along out underneath the sidewalk out front so we don’t have to pay that monthly gas fee. And we needed to have electricity anyhow. And you know, it’s been almost at net zero, were 500 kilowatt hours short and we’ve discovered what’s going on and we are taking measures to change that and we expect we’ll have excess electricity next year as a result of that.
Robb: (13:53) Gotcha. Yeah. You’re revamping the heat pumps system, I think you mentioned?
Richard: (13:56) Yeah, we are. We discovered through a extensive monitoring of our two multi zone systems that a combination of them being oversized, and the fact that the multi zone systems in a tight high performance building don’t really, it’s a challenge with it turning down. It basically doesn’t turn down to meet the low loads of the building. So there’s a lot of cycling on and off and that’s really driven the performance of the, of the multi zone systems down. We are replacing the two outdoor multi site phone compressors with five individual compressors to drive each of the five indoor heads which will allow us better control and the ability to turn each of those down too much, much lower levels. So, we’re expecting to see a significant bump up in our annual COP and performance system over the next year. In fact, I just this morning scheduled the swap out happening beginning of February. So we will be monitoring these for the rest of the winter after they’d go in on February 6th and seventh. And so it will be interesting to see the comparison sort of before and after on a, on a per degree day basis, but our expectation and, and the anecdotal experience from others is that, that having the, the one to one units is going to improve the performance of what we see here.
Robb: (15:39) And people like you are letting other people learn. I mean you’re learning the hard way. And heat pump manufacturers now are acknowledging that these multi zone multi split heat pumps are probably not appropriate for a very low load buildings. It all depends on the application
Richard: (16:03) Yeah. Well, you know, I believe that that the manufacturer we worked with, I don’t know whether we named names here or not, but they I know that they’ve been aware of these issues for a while and, and it was really encouraging to, to see just last week coming out with a national bulletin going to all their contractors basically acknowledges this issue. And provide some guidance based on our experience and others about how to design, select, install and control these heat pump systems in low load buildings. So that’s, that was really encouraging to see that response and, and acknowledgement that this is an issue and providing some solutions for others going forward. So yeah, we feel a little bit like the Guinea pig, but that’s okay. I mean we’re, in it for, for trying to figure out how this works so we can let others benefit from that and, and not make the same mistakes going forward.
Robb: (17:06) Excellent. So this kind of new construction or, or dramatic gut rehab, I guess in the case of your office building, that’s something that I personally see that, you know, going all electric and new construction, very efficient, It’s almost a no brainer in a lot of building types. For a residential or some commercial. In my experience, if you can get the loads really low, then he pump technologies are much easier to employ and implement. Do you see that trend in programs? I’m not seeing it as much as I would like, I think.
Richard: (17:49) Well one of the projects that we’ve been working on recently too, is helping the state of Vermont update the residential building energy standards, basically the statewide energy code on the residential side and also the commercial building energy standards. So RBs and CBs, but our energy codes are being updated. They’ll go into effect a year from now. After that there’s sort of transition period over 2019 and, and training and well W we’re about to go through the rulemaking process and then there’s, we’ll, we’ll be training, and support materials that follow that with the implementation date January of 2020. But we’ve, we’ve had a lot of conversation and a stakeholder group advisory group meeting and discussion about where electrification fits into that. And there’s some tensions going on there, but generally the industry sees this exactly as you do, Robb. You know, it’s sort of the leading builders and developers and, and, and actually some of our affordable housing entities here who are looking at reducing operating costs further for their tenants buildings. As we bring the loads down, there’s a great match with heat pumps. It’s a technology that works well and it meets our state goals of 90% renewable energy by 2050 is sort of the overriding goal that Vermont’s striving for. But but the tension that I mentioned is that at the same time we have the state regulators and the those that are overseeing state policy, concerned about winter peak issues. And so how do we mitigate this, driving electric interest and drive towards electrification with this issue I mentioned before about needing to make sure that we have enough electric supply to, to meet shift our electric peaks from sort of balanced in Vermont, at least between summer and winter. We had historically been a winter peaking system, but we got most everybody off electric heat. And now that’s sort of coming around again and how do we address that? What are the appropriate resources, renewable resources to meet those needs. So that’s sort of the challenge and, and the tension that’s, that’s going on. You know, in some cases, almost in different sides of the same organization or you know, they’re out there trying to do electric planning and advocacy for getting us towards renewables at the same time.
Robb: (21:02) That’s tricky. No easy answers I don’t think on that one.
Richard: (21:24) No. Although, you know, so we, we some of the solutions could, could be around utility scale storage and, and or you know, or distributed Stuart’s storage as, as, as well. So as we see the price of batteries coming down, which, which it has rapidly, are there opportunities for us to have a container size batteries that that store renewably generated electricity from PV or wind during the day? Actually wind is a different issue cause A lot of times it’ll blow at night as well too, but at least we’ve got a lot of PV resources that don’t meet that nighttime heating demand and could storage be a part of that solution? I’d like to think that it is, and we need to get our, our, our incentives right. Or really our rates designed right so that we encourage that to happen. And that’s going to that’s going to help move things in that direction and and try to head off the peak issues. Avoid turning on those dirty peaker plants at night when it’s coldest out and people’s heat pumps and electric heater are all turning on.
Robb: (22:29) Interesting. So looking ahead, is that one of the things you think we’ll see or you hope we’ll see.? Is just evolving rate design to make all aspects of this more practical and more palatable?
Richard: (22:45) Yeah I think like a lot of things, it just the regulation to some extent sort of trails behind the innovators and, and the trends in the market that, you know, more market team sense tends to respond quicker than the policy and the regulatory environment does. And I know there’s, there’s a lot of conversation, at least here and I know elsewhere as well, at least in the northeast and the region about storage, as we the sort of overarching overriding goals that most of the northeastern states have, is some large percentage of the electric grid being renewable going forward. And so how do we get there and meet those goals? And I think that there need to be some signals to the market that support those sort of higher level policies. And a lot of that is, is going to be through rates and providing incentives to, to just, I mean, the reason that we have so much solar in certain states and not others is because of a net metering and feed in tariff incentives. And you know, so there’s policy and there’s dollars that went along with that policy to drive those market decisions that that market then responds to those situations that are put into place. But on the storage, I think it’s the same case, if we were able to value the time of day in the, in the rate design, you and you, and you had to you know, you were basically incentivized for not using electricity during peak times. There, there would be some, some more incentives for putting storage in place or for the market to come forward with storage solutions that would be cheaper potentially, Or you have incentives to, to store and use your own onsite electricity rather than relying on, on more expensive, dirtier electricity at peak times from the grid. Yeah.
Robb: (25:14) And I know some different utilities from different regulators are playing with things like that. You’re probably more familiar with them than I am, but there’s definitely a move in that direction in A lot of places.
Richard: (25:30) Yeah. There definitely is. California has been thinking about this for a while. They’re pretty aggressive in all of this. And they now have this time differentiated rate where at least every hour of the day, if not every 15 minutes of the day is valued differently. And, and so that, that gets pretty complicated. But as we get more sophisticated with, with controls and, and, and having algorithms that drive decisions, if they’re price signals that are built into rates that encourage people to use or not use electricity at different times of day, that that can get translated into real dollars. And it encourages people to make decisions that hopefully align with what the policies are in moving us towards renewables. So that any more than what we had at wanted to, you know, want it to focus on in terms of buildings and heat pumps. But really it’s all connected and it’s really interesting to see this push and pull between individual choices at the consumer level, with this technology that now works in our climates and it’s this cheap cheaper PV opportunities. And how that impacts our public policy and our rate making and our grid infrastructure. It’s all in flux and changing rapidly.
Robb: (27:15) And it always will be. So aside from storage, are there other kinds of technologies you’re hoping for, you’re wishing for you see in the near future?
Richard: (27:33) Well, you know, as we try to figure out where heat pumps fit into the building space as we’ve got these really lofty goals in our northeastern states around decarbonization and electrification and weaning us off of fossil fuels. I mean, there’s a tremendous amount of work to be done in the transportation sector, but we’re really focusing on the building sector here. We’ve got a lot of buildings in the northeast that burned fuels, fuel oil, propane. And if we can displace that with heat pumps there’ll be some significant savings there too. But we have yet to really figure out how to best integrate the heat pumps and the existing heating plants that are in our buildings, furnaces and boilers. And there’s some mixed messaging going out there about just run these things down to certain temperatures, you know, run the heat pump down to 25 degrees, then turn on your heating system, or just running during the shoulder seasons and run your traditional heating system the rest of the time. And then others saying, no, just set them and forget them, but set your thermostat a little lower and the central existing heating system will kick in to sort of fill in the gaps when the, when the heat pumps aren’t able to meet the load of the building. But we have yet to see sort of smart integrated controls that, that provide good economic outcomes for the, for the consumer. You know, at any given day it might be above 25 degrees, then below 25 degrees, are we expecting people to sort of turn their systems on and off? I don’t think so. And one size does not fit all, depending on whether you’re buying propane at 3 or 4 dollars a gallon. I saw more than $4 a gallon for small deliveries the other day, I was just outraged. So anyhow, with expensive propane and oil and relative to the electric rates, who’s sort of optimizing and at the same time we’ve got differing efficiencies, different COPs of the heat pumps based on the outdoor air temperature. So it’s going to cost more per btu delivered at colder temperatures from a heat pump than it is at warmer temperatures. How does that cost per delivered Btu compare to cost per delivered Btu from your furnace or boiler? We can’t expect consumers to make those choices. We need to figure out controls that optimize which systems to run and maybe prioritize the electric over the delivered fuels if there’s some sort of some sort of factor or value for carbon impact that somebody wants to layer in as well too. But we need to have better, smarter controls that will help optimize the performance of our systems, especially as we have multiple heating and potentially cooling systems in our buildings. And so I think that’s another area of opportunity that we really haven’t figured out yet.
Robb: (31:29) And maintain comfort I would add.
Richard: (31:31) And maintain comfort, you know, and that’s the bottom line. That’s one of the bottom lines to consumers, comfort and cost. So how do we deliver that in a way that’s simple and make sense and maybe it responds in real time to the cost of the fuels and the outdoor temperature, the efficiency of the system and signals. Anyway, there’s a lot of work to be done.
Robb: (32:00) So where can people find out more about you and some of these programs? We can link on our on our show notes page. Your website is?
Richard: (32:11) energyfuturesgroup.com. It’s a mouthful, but somebody already had efg.com.
Robb: (32:16) All right. And you mentioned the video showing some of the zero energy now?
Richard: (32:35) Yeah, our website does have some links to some of our projects. All of our projects on there. And there’s a page on the building. You can actually see our consumption in real time. Our engaged monitor feeds the data up to the web. And so there’s a link there. You can see how poorly it performs on a day like today where the snow is covering our solar panels, yet our heat pumps are on. But then in the summertime how much electricity kilowatt hours we’re banking waiting for the winter as we have no loads and lots of sun. Anyhow. energyfuturesgroup.com.
Robb: (33:23) Excellent. I will provide links to all that. Well this is a lot, Richard. There’s lots going on, but thank you very much for, for joining us.
Richard: (33:31) Good. Well, I appreciate the conversation. We’ve all got a lot of work to do and I think we still have a lot to learn.
Speaker 5: (33:43) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcasts and check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 in the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
The True Cost of Building Better Homes with Tim McDonald
Mar 12, 2019
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.
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.
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 in a ‘buildings are designed and built in this classic design bid build’ approach, I think it’s extremely problematic, because all that ends up happening is you design a project, you put it out to bid, it comes back too expensive.
Tim: (10:20) And they do this wonderful thing called value engineering, which essentially strips everything out of the project. We work exactly the opposite. We have the builder (us) in the room the exact day before any drawings are done. We set goals for what we’re trying to achieve. We develop strategies for mechanical systems before drawings are done before we even start drawings. So it’s all about building the strategies around construction, around insulation, around air ceiling, around larger issues of design, like urban issues, issues about community, establishing them first, having all the players, engineers, architects, subcontractorsGC not so much the bank, but the owner, in the room at the same time. And then going from there, because I can’t tell you how many times we’ve worked in the other structure with your kind of the typical arrangement where you’ve got an owner that hires the architect, the architect designs the building, then gives the building to the engineer, then the engineer designs mechanical system that is not integrated with the architecture. And then there’s redoing of that. And then there are contractors that haven’t done that kind of work. So when it gets to the bidding process, their numbers are jacked up because it’s because it’s a new process. And so when we say it doesn’t have to cost more money, the main way we achieve that is by having an integrated team.
Kelly: (12:09) Great. And it’s interesting you’re talking about that. I think the industry talks about an integrated process a lot, but we don’t necessarily get there. LEED requires an integrated process meeting, and so we have the meeting, and thats it. So that’s interesting that youre so fully integrated across the three entities there, that you can really be doing this on a continuous basis. It’s not an integrated design meeting, It’s really an integrated design process.
Tim: (12:44) Absolutely. And again, this issue of value engineering is a perfect example of the failure of the design bid build process. Because we have a similar thing that happens as we’re going through the process all the way through the construction process, but I really mean it when I say we hit those roadblocks and we’re able to step back and come up with an alternative solution that is very often, if not always less expensive, that we couldn’t have foreseen in the process. Now, that doesn’t happen when somebody has got a contract to do the mechanical system and they say, well, you know, this was missing in the drawings, so it’s just gonna cost more to do what you’re doing because I have to re tool. And that just doesn’t happen with us.
Kelly: (13:36) Right. And what we see a lot with my role in building commissioning is that there’ll be sort of side deals between the mechanical contractor and the GC or between the mechanical contractor and the owner, that the owner doesn’t even really fully understand what’s missing through this value engineering, all they see is that dollar figure. So you really have a better understanding of all of the different systems so you can make an educated decision when someone comes to you with that.
Tim: (14:06) And I’m sure you’ve experienced the more insidious structures, where maybe the GC isn’t all that interested ultimately in the kind of energy efficiency that you are. And so he or she is doing everything they can to kind of undermine whether the project goes in that direction or not, sometimes very subtle ways and sometimes really obvious ways to the point where the owner gets scared and says, and the GC says, you know what, I’m much more used to working with these mechanical systems, I’ve got a real problem with this new system that these people are talking about, scares the owner, and then all of a sudden the team starts to fragment. So that’s why it’s not just got to be an integrated team, but everybody’s got to be committed to the same goal.
Kelly: (14:59) Right. That’s a really interesting point. And I think something that I didn’t understand when I first started in the industry, how even when we say, oh, the GC and the owner, maybe they’re the same team, sometimes you really have them operating as two separate entities within the company. And definitely within different companies you might have. So how do we orient everybody towards the same goal? So how do you do that with subcontractors and other vendors and things like that? How do you really kind of show them your vision and orient them towards your same goal?
Tim: (15:31) In some ways you have to choose. So for instance, it’s not that hard when it comes to drywall. Right? I don’t need to tell my drywall guy the vision for the project. In other ways, it’s really just about really good project management. So for instance, when you hire an insulation contractor and you say it’s a blown cellulose, right? Dense Pack cellulose or even mineral roll in the walls, there are ways to put insulation in that don’t take any more time or any more money. And then there are ways to put it in where there are gaps. And so it’s all about having the right people watching the project very careful and just keeping people honest and doing the work that they’re supposed to do. I’ve found that the more you don’t talk, and this is going to sound very strange, but the more you don’t talk about how unique this building is, the better. The more cost effective your construction budgets are gonna be, and the better work you get. And I know that sounds strange, but if I were to tell my framer that this is a passive house project and it’s one of the most energy efficient buildings in the world and it’s extremely unique, all of a sudden that subcontractor starts getting scared and maybe he doesn’t understand what is going into it. Maybe he’s missed something in the drawing, so all of a sudden he puts a little extra in his budget. So I try to, this is gonna sound weird too, but I try not to sit down and in those meetings try to describe how unique this is. I just sit down and I say, okay, this is our air barrier and this is how we handle the air barrier. Every time you puncture this air barrier, this is what you do. Got It? Yes. Okay. Move on. Just really straightforward stuff. It’s just here’s the process of putting this building together, here are the joints that need to be dealt with, here are the things that really matter when it comes to the energy efficiency of the building, and here are the things that dont. The kitchen and floor finishing people anf the tile people, they don’t have to be a part of the vision. You really have to identify the critical subs that need to know and only on a need to know basis do they need to know.
Kelly: (18:17) Right, right. That’s really interesting and actually it brings up an interesting question in my mind of performance based SPEC versus prescriptive SPEC. You kind of talked a little bit about that. Do you have some thoughts? It looks like you maybe do.
Tim: (18:33) Well I just think it’s silly that it’s not performance based. I mean, why the hell can’t we just give a miles per gallon approach to a building in the same way that we do to cars and forget about energy codes? Just say this is how much energy your building needs to consume, it can’t consume any more. What are you going to do? You can do anything you want to make this happen. I don’t need to tell you what your r-values are for your walls, you’re gonna figure that out. I don’t need to tell you what your minimum this or minimum that is. You’re going to figure it out very quickly because you’re going to have to do an energy model and you’re going to have to make these numbers work. So I believe in design performance based rather than prescriptive. And then, the other performance side of things is how it actually happens. Like what actually happens? What happens when people move in? I like to say that your job is only half done when you build the building. The other half is about educating the tenants or the owners of your buildings, following up with them, understanding how their behavior has changed or not changed and how that’s affecting the performance of their building.So I mean, those are my thoughts.
Kelly: (19:53) Yeah. Great. And it’s interesting in contrast a little bit to how you were talking about how you’re presenting things to your subcontractors. You’re not necessarily saying to them, this is the performance Spec for your whole building air barrier, you’re giving them sort of a prescriptive approach. But from the design side, you’re taking more of a.. Is that accurate?
Tim: (20:14) Yeah I mean I’m making a couple of assumptions. So when it comes to critical subs, the framers are a critical sub, but I’ve already taken a lot of the questions out of the equation for the sub because I will never not work with a prefabricated wall system anymore. So I work with a panelized system that has the air barrier built in, that has the exterior insulation already on, that has the WRB already on and that has the windows and doors already installed.
Kelly: (21:08) So all they need is to see all those pieces together?
Tim: (21:12) Yes. So, I think that that the kind of broader context of that is about understanding how we need to change the way we build buildings in general because we’re still building buildings one stick at a time, the way we’ve been doing for a hundred years and we need to find ways to become more industrialized around how we do it. So I’m a fan of the idea of modular building, the idea of panelization, the idea of eliminating all of these typical areas where we’re failures can occur and they shouldn’t have to. So that’s the other part of this is, is that you have to rethink how you build, if you’re going to do it cost effective. That also relates to being cost effective, right? Because not only do I not want to trust guys to install windows on my site and have them airtight, I don’t want them to take the time to do that. So it takes less time to build these buildings if you think through these processes in a more effective way and it costs less money.
Kelly: (22:22) Right. So it’s actually interesting how you brought that up, because I think you’re almost saying, well if you were to build a passive house by just doing exactly what you’ve been doing and adding a couple inches of installation, that’s going to cost more. And it’s going to be more difficult. Maybe you take up more floor space, but if you take a step back and re-imagine the whole thing, now we can get to a better place.
Tim: (22:45) Yup. Mechanical systems are another perfect example.
Kelly: (22:48) Yeah, let’s get into that.
Tim: (22:49) So I can’t tell you how many engineers that I’ve worked with where they run their duct works in a passive house building. They run their ducts all the way to the exterior wall. Their heating and cooling or ventilation ducks. And I say, you don’t have to do that. You just pop it into the building, pop it into the room. You can save 12 or 15 feet of ductwork. They say they cant do that. Well, why can’t they do that? Because they’re used to having cold walls. And so they’ve got a wash those cold walls with heat and in the winter time. And so there’s this thinking that you have to break through when it comes to mechanical systems, engineers would say, oh my God, this is going to cost so much more money because I’ve got to have this dedicated air system. There’s an ERV/HRV that’s separate from the heating cooling? My God. And there are ways to design it that are cost effective and ways to design it where it’s twice as much. And so I spend a lot of time and I do a lot of research on how I can cost effectively do three things, heating and cooling, ventilation, and hot water, because those can be twice as much if you do them in the wrong way, right? So there are systems now, that are just becoming available where you’ve got, especially for apartments, small apartments where you’ve got heating, cooling and ventilation all built into one unit with no condenser to the roof, the condensers built into the unit, just imagine all those copper line sets that you would run for a mini split to an apartment, which everybody thinks is the cheapest way to go, isn’t anymore.
Kelly: (24:43) Great. And you have worked with these packaged unit?
Tim: (24:47) Right now I’m working with them. I’m installing 28 of them.
Kelly: (24:51) Great. And how did you get to that? Did you ever think about using central systems and did you try that and have some tiers?
Tim: (25:04) Yup, exactly. We just built and it’s literally about 200 feet away from where we’re sitting. A centralized Geo therman heating, cooling and hot water system for a 25 unit apartment building. And it’s great in theory, but ultimately what’s pushed me away from that is the complexity of it all. Without going into detail about it, the idea of having one unit in an apartment that does all things, if it breaks down, just go and fix it. If my geothermal pump stops, 25 apartments go down. If my VRF system loses pressure in the line sets in th refrigerant lines, the whole thing goes down. So it was a great experiment. And every single project we’ve ever done for the past 22 years has been an experiment. And I hope we keep making mistakes but they keep getting smaller. And so it’s ironic that I thought three years ago that this centralized approach to multifamily housing, especially when you’re building passive houses, including the electric, why have individual meters when you’ve got utility bills that are like 20 bucks a month? Like what? And if you’ve got PV to cover that, why would you have a separate room for just the individual meters? So centralize electrical meters, centralized systems. I thought this was the bee’s knees. This is what I’d be repeating for the next 20 years. Well, I’m not, now I’m going decentralized and probably in a couple more years I’ll have more evidence about the value of one versus another and they’ll all continue to work. But that’s what keeps me excited.
Kelly: (27:14) Yeah. There’s always something new to learn. Yeah, that’s actually really interesting because we’ve also been looking real data basically. I think in the existing building world, people have gotten on board with, okay, how’s this building performing after we make an upgrade? But in the new construction world, we’re really not holding our GCS, owners, and development teams accountable for the actual performance of the building. Kind of like what you said, your job really isn’t done. And that’s music to my ears as a commissioning person because turnover is sort of our big timeframe, right? So if we look at actual performance, how are these buildings that are so efficient, really working in the real world? And one thing that we found that I think is so interesting and just want to put out there to the industry, is that we’ve been seeing in New York City, we love Ptac. For some reason architects hate them, a lot of developers love them. And we’ve been saying these are giant holes in the walls. How are we going to account for that? Are these really performing well? Rated efficiencies are pretty low. But based on some buildings that we’ve started to look at data for, comparing the gas p tax, so it said 80% efficient gas furnace, clients are anecdotally telling us and we’re looking at some data now that indicates that actually maybe they’re performing better than your giant central VRF system in some cases. And so this sort of decentralized, you turn it on only when you need it, you pay for it kind of system,that doesn’t have distribution losses, and doesn’t have the opportunity to leak- by the way refrigerants are a greenhouse gas in and of themselves. Then, you know, actually maybe that’s the way.
Tim: (29:14) Well I’m putting this out there. It’s an idea and my dad used to say ideas are like noses. Everybody’s got one. It’s all about what you do with it. But my next kind of project that I’m going to take on, is I’m going to create the next level- we don’t even have a magic box yet in the US, and a magic for those of you who don’t know is a, it’s about the size of a refrigerator, it’s in some countries in Europe, but it’s for small houses and apartments, but it’s about the size of a refrigerator, it’s got a heat pump in it. It does heating, it does cooling, it does ventilation, and it does hot water. Now what that tells me is why wouldn’t we have a system that eliminates all the heat pumps in our apartments? Because there are more. I’ve got a refrigerator that has a heat pump, I’ve got a dryer that has a heat pump. I’ve got potentially a stove, not so much a stove that’s a heat pump, but there are at least two more heat pumps in an apartment. So I have this idea for an invention that essentially takes a magic box and then sends refrigerant to another box, which is called a refrigerator, sends a refrigerant to another box, which is called a dryer. So we’ve got to start thinking much more integrally and in a small way about the spaces that we live in and about the amount of mechanical equipment that we have. And I don’t think passive house is there yet because they’re still dealing with separate ventilation systems from heating and cooling systems, separate, separate heat pumps all over the place. So I think there’s a lot of room for invention when it comes to the mechanical systems. But I’m not surprised that a ptac works. Do you know that our first passive house project, we took a ptac because we couldn’t find anything cost effective to work with in an affordable housing three town homes. We took a ptac and instead of putting it through the wall, we put it on the third floor and we insulate, we ducted the supply to the building and ducted the supply from the outside, ducted and super insulated the ducts. And then we tied that into an erv. So we made this kind of Frankenstein mechanical system out of a ptac and it’s been working beautifully.
Kelly: (32:01) Oh, that’s really interesting. When you get creative, what you can do.
Tim: (32:05) Yeah. No, I wouldn’t do that again.
Kelly: (32:07) Yeah. We have some other solutions now. That’s great. And so we kind of got to this point, but when we have you back on the podcast in five years what are we going to be talking about then?
Tim: (32:24) Well that’s a good question. My kids going to college.
Kelly: (32:33) They’ll invent the magic box.
Tim: (32:35) So our company is in a real push over the next five years to develop property that we’ve owned for awhile and we’ve got plans on all of them and there’s, at the moment, about another 200 units that we’re going to be developing over the next three years actually. And so in five years, not only will they be built, but we’ll be able to really talk about performance and where we got things right, where we got things wrong. We’ve also just broken into the kind of client realm that is interested in this stuff at a very large scale, which I can’t really talk about, but within five years, this very large scale building in Philadelphia, I hope is going to be here, and I hope it’s going to be a passive house and I hope it’s going to be a net zero energy building. And I hope it’s then when the industry itself is going to say, hey, this isn’t an option anymore, and we’ve demonstrated there been plenty of people demonstrating that this is not only possible, but it’s intelligent and so it won’t be a crisis. You know,.
New Speaker: (34:02) I’m hoping that what we’re talking about here is standard practice. That’s what I hope.
Kelly: (34:09) That’s awesome and a really good and hopeful note to end on. Thank you so much for coming in and being part of the podcast.
Speaker 4: (34:21) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/Podcast and check out the episode show notes. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 in the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. Our production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Season 2 of Buildings and Beyond kicks-off on Tuesday, March 12!
This season, we are interviewing industry professionals from various backgrounds as we continue our mission to find ways to improve the built environment. Join us as we explore topics related to energy efficiency, accessibility, and health in buildings.
Episodes will be released once a week, so be sure to keep up with the latest by subscribing today!
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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.
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.
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 monitoring is okay, but control, he’s not so sure about. Audi came out with this commercial that was a little anti A.I., I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but we can link to it in the show notes. My mom refuses to drive her new Honda Crv because the lane assist is trying to tell her what to do. Right. So what, you know, you were talking a little bit less about smart homes and smart cars, but what are the top three concerns from building owners and how do you address them?
Dave: (08:17) Well, I mean, the biggest concern from a building owner by implementing a smart building is how much is it going to cost me and is it going to, you know, deliver some type of R.O.I. at the end of the day or either it’s going to deliver more income by allowing them to increase rent or decreasing energy costs. But, you know, the biggest concern after that is, I want to make sure this is actually used, right? A concern of people that get involved in smart buildings, is I don’t want to be overloaded by information. Because the tendency with a lot of the building management systems over the years has been to fire out hundreds and thousands upon thousands of alarms. As you identify problems with the building. Well, you know, one person can only handle so much. And so you want to make sure that you’re tailoring and designing your smarter system to help people and augment people’s lives in a way that’s helpful, not that creates more work for them. So that is a real goal in designing smart buildings in a way that reduces people’s workloads. Cause that’s what that should be for. So that’s a typical concern? I haven’t really gotten the concern that I’m losing control, although, you know, from an operator standpoint, you know, they know their buildings better than anyone. So if you come in with a smart technology and say, Hey, this is going to solve all your problems, it’s going to be like a magic wand and the computer’s going to do everything and you just have to sit behind your desk and you know, throw your legs up and, you know, play solitaire- that’s not really, you know, what it’s designed for. I mean, you know, the real way to implement a smart building is to work with the operators, to work with owners and to figure out what’s that proper balance of, you know, too much information versus the right information. And then also working with the operators who know their buildings, they know their buildings well, to let them know it even better so if they could get insight that they never had before, that they really feel they need, that’s what you have to address in smart buildings.
Kelly: (10:33) That’s great. And I love that you pulled the people piece there and I also loved one thing you said- smarter buildings. I think we’re always talking about smart buildings as almost a destination, but think about smarter buildings as always trying to be better. If you set up the framework, then you can then start to optimize one system at a time and you don’t need to be overwhelmed with all the data and the sensors. You can start and focus on one thing and then add in others as you have one system under control in your building.
Dave: (11:01) Yeah, that’s, that’s true. I mean the point of going from smart to smarter is like the effect of learning. So if a building could actually learn it because it becomes smarter. So in thinking about these things, once you have a fully integrated system, right, where you could holistically integrate the security system like I mentioned before with the energy management systems and look at these things from those points of view, then you could start learning about the behavior and patterns that happen in a building. Like when do tenants typically change the temperature in a space? How many people are typically in a room before they start getting uncomfortable? You know, things like that. You start learning the behavior, and the building starts to, and the building could adjust and learn from those behaviors in a way that’s not intrusive. But you know, really understand, you know, gets an understanding if you will, of what’s going on. That’s goal is- is how do you get there. And you know, it’s going to be a constant over the next, you know, I would even say 20 years to get to a place that where you have a fully reactive building that can react to its environment.
Kelly: (12:06) Right. And I want to dive in a little deeper to one of the things that you brought up, which is security. So connecting with the security system, I know that I’ve heard a lot of concern from clients about separating out the BMS- should not touch the elevators, should not touch other things. They’re worried about security concerns. I know there has been some situations in which BMS- building management systems- have been hacked, and elevators were controlled. How do you speak to that, maybe specifically for your service, but general as an industry?
Dave: (12:45) Yeah, I look, I mean, we’re living in a dangerous world right now, right. Cyber security has become a major, major problem in this day and age where, you know, our infrastructure’s exposed right now in ways that are scary. Right? And so how do you protect against that? And you know, unfortunately the building management systems industry is notoriously been bad at protecting security. There’s been stories, going back, you know, now four or five years, you know, the target breach was because of the building management system that was unprotected. So there are issues where the building owners and operators don’t want their building taken over by hackers and their elevators like all brought up to the top floor and a fire lit in the bottom floor where, you know, suddenly their buildings completely exposed and it’s very dangerous situation.
Dave: (13:43) So you have to really, as a smart building vendor in this day and age really think very carefully about how do you protect the building security as if it were a bank, right? Cause if you think about it, bank securities very strong too. Today, you don’t hear, you know, although it’s been done, but you know, you have to really protect the, the, the security systems those ways and that’s protecting the network, protecting the devices, making sure that your integration to different systems has some protection on it so that you can’t overstep your boundaries. And how do you create a system like that? You have to really think about it and build those security protocols into your network. Kind of think about it from the very beginning.
Dave: (14:33) Every single communication point has to have some layer of protection or a deep layer protection on it so it’s not open to the outside world. You don’t have any security holes in the system. How do you connect your system to the outside world, to the cloud or to other mobile devices? What are you exposing? How do you audit that? You know, most importantly is like, if somebody does breach your system, how do you know what happened? So you need all of these protections in place to ensure real security and buildings. And then, you know, I think what should emerge over time are some real industry standards around this, just like it’s happening in the health insurance industry with Hipaa. There have been other, you know, security initiatives on the banking side, so building automation systems really need to embrace the security standards and implement them system wide. And then also they need to, you know, work with companies that are experts in breaching those systems so that you know where your holes are, because you don’t know what you don’t know unless you really do some thorough penetration testing is what it’s called, to know that you can’t break into the building and do some damage.
Kelly: (15:42) Great. And so on your platform, are you running these tests regularly or how does that roll out?
Dave: (15:49) you know, it comes down to cost, , and I can’t say that we’re doing it every time because it really depends on how secure a building owner needs the network to be. And then also, you know, on a lot in lot of these cases- the security, if you can manually override a system or if you have manual capability on the ground, so if somebody does try to do some damage to the building, like shutdown the heating plant or do something like that, as long as you build some protection there, then you can cut this off from controlling being controlled remotely. You know, you build those protections which are probably the safest way to protect against real damage and problems that may occur from a hack
Kelly: (16:32) Right. I love what you said there about, you know, if something happens, then we have this resolution because I think that’s the same way we think about building science in terms of creating the proper wall. We make sure if water gets in well, then how will it get out of the wall? I think we have that same kind of alignment there. Right? If something happens, then what, what can we do? Right? Yeah. That’s great. So let’s get a little more specific. Are there some case studies, some buildings that you’ve deployed some of your technology in and, you know, give us the overview of what your technology means, what the different aspects of it are, and then a couple of examples of projects that you’ve been involved with
Dave: (17:16) Yeah. So, you know, our goal as Sentient Buildings is really to deploy a wireless network infrastructure that is designed for Internet of things or devices to communicate over. So our real objective is to deploy that infrastructure. How do you get a wireless network infrastructure into a building that will allow you to monitor and control points where ever you want to put them without having to worry about running additional infrastructure once the networks in. That’s really the goal of what we’re trying to accomplish at Sentient so that we build a standards compliant wireless device network that will allow building owners to expand and grow so that they can add control points. They can add monitoring points as needed, as their needs change, right? Because their needs are not always going to remain the same. Tenants change, you know, building ownership changes, equipment changes, things change, right?
Dave: (18:13) So how do you design a building network that can adapt to that change. And that’s what we do. And that’s, that’s our philosophy as a company. We know that things are going to change. And not only that, if you’re not standards compliant, you never want to lock your customer into a situation where they’re locked into a single vendor. And a lot of building owners, you know, through some of the bigger vendors, that happened to them over the years. You know, I’m not going to name names, but you know, there are a lot of big gorillas out there that lock their customers into a proprietary, building management systems. So our philosophy is how do you get standards compliant, wireless capable devices in a building.
Kelly: (18:58) And standards compliant, let’s, let’s dive in a little bit. What do you mean by that?
Dave: (19:03) Well just like there’s WIFI, which is a standard in effect, right? Ethernet is a standard, you know, there are standard communication protocols so that, you know, anytime you buy a car, a network communication card in your computer, you plug in an ethernet cable in your online. Well we have the same, you know, concept with when it comes to devices and buildings- that if you buy a thermostat and you put it in your building and you have this, you know, you, it’s a wireless network in the building, you can install that thermostat wherever you want to put it and it will communicate with the building network.
Kelly: (19:37) Got It. It’s not like, Oh, I have ABC company’s wireless thermostats, so I need ABC companies, other module to then go to ABC company’s cloud. Right?
Dave: (19:45) Right. You can select from a multitude of vendors that all comply with the standard so that you can get 10 different or 15 different types of thermostats, 20 different types of sensors, you know, so you have variety and you could go to different manufacturers, you know, at any point, so you’re not really locked in. Now WIFI is a standard. I brought that up as a wireless standard. It’s not a very good one when you’re doing device level building networks where power is a major concern in a lot of cases where you know, how do you power the devices? and you know, you don’t want to run 24 volt cable or get a transformer for every single device you want to put in a building. You need flexibility. So you want low power wireless device based networks. That will give you a tremendous amount of flexibility to wherever you want to put your sensors in your devices.
Dave: (20:33) And also you want to think about, well I don’t only want to get data from the device, I want to send data to the device. So you need networks that can do both, that can transmit and receive, and that way you have full control. You have full flexibility. So once that networks in you have a real building that can become smarter, right? We talked about how do you make the building smarter? Well you can make the building smarter through making the software smarter and building in artificial intelligence, but you also make the building smarter by having a lot of flexibility where you can put points. Cause you don’t know everything you want to measure when you start a project and you find that out over time. So you need that flexibility so that you can reduce your costs. So that, that’s our just like, you know, talking about our projects, that’s where we start, right?
Kelly: (21:20) So we want this flexibility. You like to provide these flexible pieces. So say I accidentally bought with the wrong guys a couple of years ago. We installed all these sensors and they are telling me they can only communicate, you know, amongst themselves. And I have to continue going to back to this vendor. Does that mean if I want to go with you, I have to rip out everything that I’ve already got installed in my building or how does that work?
Dave: (21:48) Yeah, well a lot of times it means you have to put it in other infrastructure. so, if you went with a vendor that was proprietary, and I’m not going to name names, but there are a lot of them out there, that are proprietary, and you put that in and you know, that’s great. You now have to, if your thermostat network is based on this proprietary system, you’re only buying thermostats from that company and that’s, that’s it. Unless you want to put in a new network. and if you put it in the new network, then you have two different networks you have to maintain because you have to maintain the old thermostats and the new thermostats and nobody wants to do that. So you want a network that you put in, It’s a wireless network that can support multiple different types of thermostats. So that one day you decide, you know what, I need some more features on my thermostat, I need to upgrade. This is compatible with this standard. We use a few standards. The notion is a standard that we embrace. there’s also zigbee. There’s low row, which is now becoming a big standard out in the market. so these are all different standards that as a building owner, when you’re evaluating technologies, you should be looking at what standards the devices that you’re interested in getting support. Right. so when, so then relating that back to case studies, cause you know, I want to talk about some of the work that we’ve done in the area. Primarily we work in multifamily residential. We also do a lot of work in commercial office buildings. And then we’ve started to get involved in hospitality and in hotels. So those are really our three major areas where we’re deploying our networks. Our networks can, you know, be anything from a very simple monitoring system. Where we’re monitoring points that are on a boiler plant or we’re monitoring meters so that we can pull an energy data to an advanced system that we’re controlling the central plant. We’re controlling all of the terminal units in a building, bring that in all into a central system and allowing owners and operators to control those systems remotely and from their mobile devices.
Kelly: (23:54) Right. And I want to break it down a little bit cause I know that we’ve talked a lot before, but about how there’s kind of three components really. There’s sort of the device- the individual thermostats, temperature sensors, whatever it is, there’s the network, and then they’re sending it to the cloud. Am I right in how I’m breaking that down?
Dave: (24:14) Yeah. I mean there’s you know, the end what we would call the edge, right? You have edge devices. And then you know, you’ve got this new term called edge analytics, which we can talk about but edge devices are at the edge of your network. They’re in the tenant’s space, they might be in an apartment, they might be in an office space, they might be on a piece of equipment somewhere in a boiler plant. But those are, those are your edge devices. And then you need a gateway of some kind to concentrate all that data. So you can do your data collection and you could implement local control, because you don’t want to control from the cloud. You know what if something happens with your Internet connection and you lose connectivity to your building, you want the control of that building to happen continuously without network connectivity. It’s something you really need to understand when you’re looking at smart building systems- that there’s nothing that is cloud based that would impact the control of your building. And then you have those cloud connected controls, I’ll call them where you have them connected to the cloud, but they operate independently of the cloud. And then those kept Cloud Connect controls can send data up to the cloud. Now the cloud is a place of infinite computing resource, right? It’s where, you know, you can do a lot of number crunching, you can have a data warehouse where you can warehouse and store all your data and then you could use that to make intelligent observations on the data and intelligence. And so those are three components of a smart building. So once you bring something to the cloud, now you could start integrating other datasets and evaluating what’s going on in the building to the weather and to other things that may be happening in the building- to an event calendar
Kelly: (26:11) dive in a little bit more into optimization rather than just sort of alarm management.
Dave: (26:16) Right? And that’s where you get into analytics and you get into this process of continuous commissioning. So that you have a way of analyzing the data for fault detection for other problems. And then you could gain insight into long-term performance issues with the building through your analytics and cloud-based systems. And then, you know, another advantage of the cloud is then you could start bringing in data from multiple sites and you could bring that into a central view and provide an executive level view to owners and other people who are involved in the building so that they can at a glance get real understanding of what’s going on with all their billing assets.
Kelly: (27:02) That’s great. Okay. Now our audience is saying, you talked about case studies three times and you still are talking really general. So let’s get into one of those.
Dave: (27:12) Yeah. Okay so we did a project in the Bronx. The building is owned by Hudson Valley Property Group. It’s Keith and Kelly. I think it’s Keith Plaza and Kelly Towers on southern boulevard in the Bronx. And they have electric baseboard heaters. They had 1500 electric baseboard heaters and they had no monitoring, no control, no capability to see exactly what was going on with the heaters over the heating season and electric heat as you know, as an engineer is very expensive. So electric resistance heat is very expensive and they wanted to gain some operational control over that. The new management came in and they’re like, you know, we don’t want, you know, the heaters running nonstop during the heating season. People opening their windows while all electric resistance heat is running, there’s no worse condition than as an owner driving by an electric heated building to see all your windows open. Right. During December. Right. So they’re paying for all the electricity. So we installed that every baseboard heater controller that was on a wireless Mesh network. So every device, every heater, communicated with the next heater to form a mesh network that all communicated to a central receiver. Each receiver can communicate to up to 500 devices. So we had to split, you know, we had to have two receivers in the building there, thousand in one building and 500 in another. So what we enabled the owner to now do, is they could see every heater in their building. They can see the thermostats, we gave the tenants thermostats, so that they could set their temperature, the owner could set the limit of those thermostats remotely so they can adjust the heat and say, you know, we’re only going to provide up to 74 degrees in all of our apartments so that they could limit overheating. But more importantly what we were able to do there is, we were able to identify problems like where tenants were, you know, plugging in auxiliary heaters or opening their windows or putting their thermostat in the freezer. Which is, which is an issue which could happen. And so we were able to analyze data and use data analytics to say, we know that the heat has not been running, it’s 30 degrees outside, so the temperature in your apartment should be dropping yet it’s going up. Well that means that some other heater’s plugged in somewhere. Another, you know, example of the analytics that we’re running there is the, you know, the window’s open. So the heat’s been running nonstop constantly for six hours and it hasn’t gone up a degree. Right. So, you know, you’re, in both cases you have a problem that you can identify remotely with the system.
Dave: (30:11) And at the end of every day we produce a report or you could log on online and get the report and just say, okay, these five apartments have this problem, this, these five apartments, have that problem. And then as a management, you can decide how you want to address it.
Kelly: (30:25) Great. So we’re going from 1500 units or 1500 heaters. I can’t remember what you said. 1500 heaters. To then down to the five heaters that are really causing problems.
Dave: (30:36) And then you have a good measurement of your average building temperature. And so what we’re doing this year, is a private project we’re implementing on top of that system. By the way we saved year over year, 23%, over the fire years heating season.
Kelly: (30:51) And what was building management doing with the reports that you are giving them? Did you get any feedback on that?
Dave: (30:55) Yeah, we got feedback. I mean, it was a process. I mean, you know, we learned a lot in working with the owners. Like we learned not to give them too much data, like really pair it down and give them like what are the top five offenders? Don’t give them all 50 of them. So you learn, you learn through the process so that they can, you know, have a set of data that they can easily work with. Right. So that was a learning experience for us in the process and working with the owners. And the other thing we determined by putting this project in place was we determined that you can actually control your demand in the building during heating season so that you can limit your demand with some intelligence so that you can rotate heaters off that are closer to set point for short periods of time. And then so that way you can shed load by 20%, So that you can do peak load shaving and manage your load a little bit and we’re going to be implementing that this season. So that was one project. We did another project in Astoria, Queens also on the heating system side. And then I’ll talk about a cooling system we did. This was a project that we worked in concert with con Ed on as an r&d effort, to control radiator valves like at the valve level to actuate the valves on steam radiators. Yeah. It was one pipe steam system. SWA was involved this year, we just did an orifice plate replacement there as well. But you controlling thermostatically the valves in each apartment, in each room. And so we had thermostats that were communicating wirelessly to the valves and also wirelessly to the building management system. We tie that into the boiler system so that all the thermostats can report whether or not there they were calling for heat. Right? So that way was a good way of determining if we have demand, is there a demand for heat right now, if all the radiators are closed and nothing’s calling, we’re shutting off the boiler. So, it was just a better way to control the building, without impacting occupant comfort. However, that building needs to have its risers insulated. Another thing that we discovered in this process, it’s great if you could turn off all the radiators, but then suddenly you’re heating your building just through your riser piping.
Dave: (34:27) So what we did is we install the system to do peak load shaving. Same concept as we were talking about on the heating side. But you know, during the summer months from the peak period, from one, 1:00 PM to 6:00 PM, we analyze the load of all of the units. We had meters on every single air handler and we had a meter on the cooling tower, so that we knew the kw in real time load of all the systems. So we did a predictive load control system where we watched, as we started to approach peak, it started to shed. The system intelligently reacted and would shed the second stage of the compressors on a select group of compressors. And then we rotate so that they would rotate through these compressors. So you wouldn’t hold them off for any length of time that could cause a noticeable comfort issue. But you would do it just enough to get three to four kw per compressor out of the peak so that you could shave that load in this case, you know, 50 to 75 kw.
Kelly: (35:27) Okay, great. And did you look at all at, you know, in that context we kind of have energy consumption versus, maybe cycling of the compressors. Did you look at all at making, you know, you had minimum run time on for the compressors and making sure that you’re not short cycling?
Dave: (35:45) Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. We would monitor the short cycling so that we’re not, you know, turning the units on and off constantly and there’ll be some delay times on the, on off cycles. So yeah, we were intelligently looking at that and controlling that properly and we were doing it holistically as well. So that way you can also do with this system is, you know, you don’t want to bang on all your compressors at the same time at 7:00 AM when everybody, you know, when all the air conditioners kick on at the same time, you want to stage them. So you can, you can build in intelligence staging of these units so that you don’t have a system where you get overloaded and you get a load spike and you know, that causes a peak demand issue.
Kelly: (36:24) That’s awesome. Well, I could talk for hours and hours about energy efficiency, but I like to kind of wrap it up with the question of if we invite you back on this podcast in five years, what are we going to be talking about then?
Dave: (36:36) Well in five years we’re going to be working in the field of artificial intelligence and the systems are going to start to self optimize. We’re going to have enough data. I mean, a lot of this comes down to how much data you’re collecting and how much you can interrogate and then learn from the Dataset. So you know, in in five years my goal at least for the company and where we want to go is to build real artificially intelligent building management systems that can continuously optimize the system and so that it doesn’t necessarily need human intervention and constant, you know, watching.
Kelly: (37:13) Right. Great. And then as a side Gig, if you could work on my refrigerator that gets the milk from the store, that would be great.
Dave: (37:22) Yeah, I would be happy to. Yeah, we’ll get the smart Samsung Fridge refrigerator working in your house.
Kelly: (37:26) Great, thank you. Well thank you so much for coming out and being on the podcast.
Speaker 5: (37:30) Thank you. Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Improving the Efficiency of Your Single-Family Home
Sep 18, 2018
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!
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.
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 up and that’s when I just, I’d had caught some information from the previous homeowners cause I was curious about their utility costs and stuff. So I had their information and I just sort of had an offhanded comment with them to talk about health. And I was just like, you know, it seems like there’s a lot of sort of pest issues in the house. Did your kids ever have any issues? And they had talked about the kids, which were in I think were five, seven years old. And they said, yeah, they were having a lot of asthma issues. And then I said, you know, I might understand why they’re having asthma issues. And they also just off handily mentioned that they sort of were reduced once they moved away. They moved into a new construction house, which didn’t have the same issues as their previous house. So it was definitely high on our list to take care of, as one of the priorities for any of the work we were doing
Kelly: (08:32) for your own family. And you’d mentioned kind of in the beginning a little bit about challenges with budgeting. Do you want to talk about what specific examples you have that came up that were issues that you maybe didn’t predict in the beginning?
Sri: (08:47) I mean, one of them, you always under budget, you think everything should be cheaper than it really is. Once you get into and you see all the details and you want to do a high quality job, it ends up taking more than you originally estimate. But one of the big things that I really wanted to originally do was adding exterior rigid insulation to the home. So I figured it’s two by four walls. If I dense packet, I’m getting into maybe R15, I can do a little better than that by putting an inch of rigid on exterior. So it made perfect sense. But once we pulled down the siding and we’re starting to look at it, we had done the dense pack of the cellulose from exterior actually. we didn’t want to actually take down any of the interior dry wall.
Sri: (09:29) So we’re able to do most of it not being so intrusive to the interior of the home. But when doing that, we actually noticed the windows on half of the house we’re essentially retrofit windows that they installed at a later date. And the way they installed it was actually incorrect. And so we were actually having water that was draining back into the wall cavity. so wasn’t something we originally anticipating having to deal with in terms of cost. And so we ended up doing a tradeoff there of buying half house of new windows and eliminating the rigid insulation.
Kelly: (10:07) Okay. Interesting. And did you find big issues? I mean, windows are obviously supposed to keep the water out, not funnel it into the wall cavity. So was there any major issues from that?
Sri: (10:18) we were fortunate. I guess one of the things with old 1960 homes is that they’re very leaky, so if they get wet, they dry out pretty quickly. so there was some evidence of water damage, but the real extent of it was really just changing some couple pieces of plywood to the exterior. so there wasn’t anything drastic.
Kelly: (10:40) But obviously the windows added a lot of costs?
Sri: (10:40) Yeah. And especially with us insulating and tightening up the home, it would have been a serious issue moving forward if we would have left it the same way cause It wouldn’t have dried out.
Kelly: (10:53) Right. And did you look at any monitoring? Do you know how much energy consumption was reduced by your retrofit?
Sri: (11:04) Yeah. So because we’re energy Geeks, certainly I wanted to know sort of everything about it. So as I mentioned, we reached out to the previous homeowners to get their utility bills. so we actually got two years of their utility bills and they are running roughly $7,000 a year for all their utilities. And we’d done modeling, but I really wanted to know a little deeper how much energy we would be using. so we had our own utility bills after a year, but I was curious really exactly where we’re doing it. So, we installed an energy monitoring system on our electric panel, and we took it a little extreme. So rather than just doing the whole house and the solar, we actually went to do every single circuit breaker, you know, just little bit of overkill, but I was curious. and so we ended up getting a lot of interesting data. I can certainly tell the patterns of my family and what they’re doing. Very typical.
Kelly: (12:08) When your children are out of bed, when they’re not supposed to be ?
Sri: (12:11) I can tell when he’s turning on the TV without me knowing
Kelly: (12:14) side benefits.
Sri: (12:16) But in the end, after the year of a monitoring and looking at utility bills, we were roughly 1500 annually. So it was a huge difference.
Kelly: (12:26) seven Thousand to 1500. wow
Sri: (12:28) Part of that is converting fuels. So we did switch from oil to natural gas, but a large portion of that is energy savings and then solar generation.
Kelly: (12:39) Right. That’s great. Did you get any incentives for any of the work, solar or otherwise?
Sri: (12:46) So we actually got, between state utility centers and federal tax credit, we got roughly half of the solar cost of the solar system covered by incentives. And then we got probably another 10% of cost for insulation windows, high efficiency, mechanical equipment. And one of the interesting things is, my house was the case study that we used to get the Connecticut multiport heat pump incentive. So prior to that, they only did a single air source heat pump, just a one to one unit. That’s what they incentivized. And I actually had a single outdoor unit to multiple heads inside and they said, well, you just get the incentive for one. I said that doesn’t make sense. And then they said, well, you can put as many, you know, one-to-one combinations as you want and get the incentive for each one that way. It’s like, what’s the difference? multiport or single, it should essentially be the same and I don’t want to have, you know, four outdoor condensing units for no reason. So we actually worked with the utilities to revise their incentive program and we got incentivized.
Kelly: (14:09) There you go. That’s great benefits of being the client and the consultant at the same time. Did you do anything in terms of automation? We hear a lot about smart thermostats and learning thermostats and did you do anything in that world?
Sri: (14:29) Absolutely not. I have enough frustrations in the day dealing with my computer at work and having to do control, delete and resets and network issues. And when I get home, I really don’t want to have to deal with another computer. I like a simple light switch. If I want light on, I’ll turn it on. We kept the most basic thermostats. they are programmable but I don’t program them. we did all the work to make it an efficient house and I just set it to what temperature I want and then it runs.
Kelly: (15:07) do you set it back manually during the day when you’re at work?
Sri: (15:10) No. I mean we set a higher cooling set point than probably most people. But I like it that way. So we’re not over cooling it during the day, but it’s just a simple, I want to at 68 degrees in the winter, 78/77 degrees in the summer. Let it be.
Kelly: (15:31) Awesome. Is there any difference between before you did this retrofit yourself and after in how you work with your clients or recommendations that you make to them?
Sri: (15:45) Certainly, working with the Department of Energy’s Building American program, it’s very much heavily focused on energy savings. Looking at site or source energy, but it’s Btu saved, kwh saved. And that sort of the main metric that we’re using and a lot of times for clients, it was always about the return on investment, simple paybacks, everything was sort of about the energy-saved aspect to it. And going through this process, especially on sort of the health side of it, made it very clear to me that the way we present the value of a lot of these improvements needs to change. And so certainly health is one of the key ones that I focus on when trying to explain certain decisions. And it may not have a direct monetary payback, right? But productivity, long-term health, there’s a huge value to that. And then the other one is certainly comfort, its huge one that we always want.
Sri: (16:56) You can always get comfortable with the house that sort of doesn’t work exactly as you want after a couple of years, but why? If you can make it comfortable for you rather than you adjusting to it, take the time to do it. And then the last one is really one I hadn’t really thought about before, which was noise. And making stuff a little tighter. Getting more insulation in the walls. The sound level significantly changes also. And so, especially with a lot of our high end clients, noise control or abatement is just as important as a lot of the other aspects that we’re trying to pitch to them. And so taking all those together, you can make a much fuller case to make a large investment into projects, rather than just focusing on energy.
Kelly: (17:47) Right. Yeah, I think that’s really interesting and I’ve definitely come across a lot more of a focus on noise recently. And I don’t know if our equipment has gotten noisier or people are just more attuned or are less comfortable with just giving into the noisy equipment. So that’s really interesting anecdote. Was there anything that you didn’t do that you regret? That you might go back and change later?
Sri: (18:22) I mean one we talked about was the exterior rich installation. And again, for that one, I think I do it more so than anything. I mean, I’m comfortable in the house, but from some other projects I’ve been on I’m certain there’s a noise benefit of having the exterior rich insulation. So I’ve gotten used to it, but you know, every morning we’re very much woken up by the birds chirping outside, and it’s like, well, it’s sort of nice alarm clock, but it’s sometimes it’s like, hmm, don’t really want that on a Saturday or Sunday morning.
Kelly: (18:54) You want to wait for your own alarm clock.
Sri: (18:55) The other big one is probably actually one that I’ve done quite a bit of research on. And so that was actually our kitchen range. The previous homeowners had done pretty extensive update on the kitchen, so I though it’s done. I don’t have to do anything more to it. But it was a microwave fan, and so its beautifully laid out, but it has a microwave over the range. And so I was like, oh, what are we going to do here? And it’s a vaulted ceiling, so you know, running a pipe also through the voltage, is just not aesthetically going to look nice, but we were able to figure out a way to duct it to the outside within the wall cavity. So it’s still a microwave range, but it is ducted to the outside. so it’s an improvement. It’s not perfect, but it’s an improvement.
Kelly: (19:52) Yeah. Yeah. And I would just bring up at this point that the NREL study that looked at particulates and exhaust and things given off by everybody’s range.
Kelly: (20:12) And that they recommend a minimum of, I think 200 cfm exhausts?
Sri: (20:18) somewhere in the 200 to 300 cfm range, and a variable speed one, but it’s there on the Max range. If you have that along with the very good capture hood. So you really want a hood that extends all the way over your burners. If you could do that, that’s CFM range works fairly well.
Kelly: (20:38) Great. Yeah. And I think they showed that a significant number of houses in the state of New York I think where the range was not operating properly
Sri: (20:50) range doesn’t operate properly and people don’t turn them on. I mean, for it to be effective, you got to turn it on.
Kelly: (20:56) That is an excellent point. And speaking of ranges, what are your thoughts on induction stoves?
Sri: (21:04) So this is one project that I’m still trying to convince my wife of. originally it was a propane range and we converted it back to natural gas once we got that line. but two out of the four burners don’t work. and so we’re like, it’s time to replace it and doing sort of the studies looking at different things, I’ve sort of gone towards the induction idea. So we don’t allow combustion, burning a combustion gas anywhere in our house. It’s all sealed combustion at this point except for ranges just because we like it for cooking aesthetic. And so we’re really looking at moving to induction range. The main difference really is the pot selection and the amount of stuff that’s available now, I even have a cast iron pan that works for inductions. So I think that’s the route we’re going to be going and it will take care of some of the additional pollutants that we have to deal with when cooking.
Kelly: (22:19) Right. Great. Yeah. And I think gas stoves are a big issue with passive house and I know that we have another episode on Passive House and Lois is not a big fan of those either. So, I also want to reference something that we’ve talked about, is the value of these improvements. And I know you wrote a blog post about the value of energy efficiency improvements on your house in terms of market value. can you talk a little bit about that and what your thoughts are?
Sri: (22:52) The value or the lack of value? it’s one of the things that the department of Energy and the appraisal associations are all starting to get on board with this. the number of homes that have now been rated as energy star has gone into capacity where it’s starting to make an impact in the market. So people are actually considering HERS index energy efficiency and seeing a benefit from it. so you’re starting to see it creep into stuff. but you certainly have still the case of aesthetics upgrades, being the primary driver of what the price is. I just read an article the other day, if you paint your front door a gray blue color, you’ll add $6,000 worth of value to your house. And I was like, but I just put a generator. Did I get $6,000 worth of benefit back? Or I improved my boiler and I might get the cost of it back, but did I get $6,000 back? Ya know? It really hasn’t got to that point yet. But the bigger part I think that’s going to start getting into it is as we get more familiar with the health aspects of stuff, that’s going to have a huge impact on how we really value these homes.
Kelly: (24:15) Yeah. I think that’s a great point. And I’ll, I’ll end on: if we are talking in five years on this podcast when we’re still around, of course, what would we be talking about then?
Sri: (24:34) I’m guessing we’re going to all be living in domes electrochromic windows that will change depending on. No, I’m kidding
Kelly: (24:42) Ah, you have a lot of big hopes for the next five years
Sri: (24:49) We’re going to be talking about the same stuff. The big part that we’re doing is rather than being sort of on the leading edge, the early adopters, it’s going to be mainstream. So energy star is now getting more of a foothold, you’ll then start seeing passive house zero energy ready homes. All those things are going to start becoming what is demanded by the market rather than the nice extra feature that somebody does. And that’s really where I think the markets going to be going.
Kelly: (25:17) That’s awesome. Great. Thank you so much for being on buildings and beyond.
Speaker 6: (25:25) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today. Visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Zero Energy Buildings – The Equation is Easier Than You Think!
Sep 11, 2018
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!
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.
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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.
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 mainstream and have it be more than a buzz phrase, it has to be something catchy, which is why zero energy or zero energy buildings has caught on. Even though we can see there’s many layers
Robb: (07:22) All right. Well there’s actually some papers. Maybe we can include in the show notes the different definitions if people want to dig into that more.
Paula: (07:30) Sure. And I think that one of the definitions is either the modeling approach or the actual utility bills.
Robb: (07:36) Oh good distinction. Right, right. So, and you guys both do a lot of energy modeling- and Karla, you’re, as you said, you focus on residential, single family all the way up to larger multifamily. And Paula, you’re on kind of larger multifamily and also commercial institutional, right? And Carla, it’s easier with single family. And you’ve worked on several?
Karla: (07:58) I’ve worked on several single family or duplexes that have done either approaching zero or zero energy and we have verified it in a couple of different ways, both with an energy model and then with 14 to 16 months’ worth of utility bills to show that they actually were energy cost neutral or negative in some cases. And for other projects just with the energy model that either predicted the usage and then test it out and gave it what we all know is the HERS index, the Home Energy Rating score index to indicate that it could be a zero energy building.
Robb: (08:32) So I’m sure we’ll get into this in future podcasts, but the HERS index, you know, a 100 is kind of like a mediocre average home and zero is theoretically a zero energy home. So lower is better
Paula: (08:45) lower is better. And in the northeast where we do most of our consulting anyway with the zero energy stuff, we have to get down somewhere around 40 or maybe even 35 to get to kind of the sweet spot to then put on Pv to get the HERS index to zero.
Robb: (09:01) All right, interesting. So what do you do? Those homes that have a HERS index of 30 or 45 before and in renewable energy, right? What systems do you see?
Paula: (09:11) Right. So, and we see this in the single family homes and duplexes and also the low rise multifamily. We’ve done a couple of projects, one in Ithaca and we have a few more on the drawing board that had been successful from 15 units in four stories to 60 units in three stories. Strategies are kind of similar. It’s usually a high efficiency assembly. And that can be either a double stud wall so that we’re doubling up on the insulation value or some rigid insulation on the exterior of the wall that’s then put siding over it. So obviously you don’t see it. So that’d be a high efficiency or a high performing wall assembly. And then in most cases we’re looking at triple pane windows. And then the roof in our region has to be really well insulated, sometimes as high as an R90. In some cases we can be closer to 60, but we’ve had projects that have had to go as high as 90 in the attics or on the flat roofs
Robb: (10:04) These are like passive house backs where some of these passive houses that got to zero energy?
Paula: (10:09) Yeah. So the Ithaca project I mentioned, the rest of the community, the duplexes and single family homes, some of them are passive house certified. Several of them were LEED for home certified. All of them were energy star, indoor air plus and the doe zero energy ready home program. And then the multifamily, the 15 unit, followed all the protocols but didn’t go through the certification processes.
Robb: (10:30) Okay. So programs, that’s another question for both of you. Zero energy programs. You mentioned zero energy ready home, which I always stumble over that name. That’s DOE. And that is in a nutshell- Can you give us?
Paula: (10:48) In a nutshell, that is a high performing apartment building or a home that has a HERS index of 45 or lower.
Robb: (10:58) Is that a hard line or is that like an approximate line?
Paula: (11:02) I’m pretty sure that’s a hard line for, at least in our zones that we work in. I’m not sure if it changes in zones one and two.
Robb: (11:10) So kind of a practical line, you haven’t seen it really work… All the zero energy ready homes have had 45 or less or it’s like you just have to get 45?
Paula: (11:20) in order to answer that question you’re asking me at point blank because it also goes with some of the state programs. So NYSERDA has a hard line for sure. And then Connecticut does as well for the tiers that in qualifying. And if you qualify for those tiers, you also have to be zero energy ready. So anyway, it gets, you know, it gets kind of an alphabet soup of confusing. But yes, there’s the doe zero energy ready homes, which can apply to anything that can be energy star labeled. So it has to be energy star labeled, it has to meet indoor air plus requirements and it has to meet a pretty stringent domestic hot water delivery requirement, which is a bit tricky for multifamily. So that’s what a ZERH is
Robb: (12:03) and indoor airplus is an EPA air quality certification?
Paula: (12:07) It is, it’s a companion certification to the energy star program. And then there’s the living building challenge. There’s an energy peddle in the living building challenge. There’s also a separate pathway for zero energy certification in the living building challenge. And we’ve had one project achieve that. A single family. And that program can also apply to any building type, commercial, residential. It’s open, the requirements are very simple. You’d have to demonstrate zero energy. It’s measured
Robb: (12:43) So larger buildings, Paula, either of you, have you worked with multifamily buildings that have gotten a zero energy score?
Karla: (12:54) zero energy larger buildings, not on the commercial side, on the multifamily side. So the push with the multifamily side has been, everything that pushes this really, are incentive programs and financing- either requirements or incentives through financing.
Robb: (13:11) So in your experience, people aren’t just trying to get to zero, they’re not hordes of people trying to get to zero Energy
Karla: (13:20) There aren’t hoards in general. And there’s certainly not in the multifamily sector. It is pushed for the affordable multifamily developers by their financing. And the requirements that come in the state of Connecticut and Pennsylvania specifically have enhanced the application process. If you do passive house, you get more points and it, since it’s such a competitive process for financing, those points become very important. So that’s where we’ve seen an uptick in passive house, which is our great pathway to zero energy building.
Paula: (13:53) Yeah. The problem though was getting zero energy on multifamily buildings, anywhere from like three to four stories and above, is just that you have a much larger building, volume to available rooftop ratio. And the ability to offset all of your energies within that limited area,, it’s just a matter of numbers. You just don’t have the amount of area that you would need, which is why you would, if you were interested in a zero energy building, you start thinking about buying a green energy from a portfolio, from a community distributed energy resource.
Robb: (14:26) Okay. I worked on one, I had a very small role in one zero energy multifamily project up near Albany. And we just did some consulting on the HVC and the units. He wanted to get away with very, very simple heating and cooling systems. But I think it was three or four stories
Paula: (14:48) yes. that’s about the limiting range. Three, four stories.
Robb: (14:52) But I think the PV was like covered parking, Pv covered parking so that, you know, it’s not a building, it’s kind of the site
Paula: (14:58) surprised that we don’t see that more often. The covered parking PV over covered parking, particularly in the more suburban areas, maybe it’s the cost of the additional structure that you would have to install, but that would be a great place to put Pv for our multifamily buildings. Three to four stories or other otherwise garden style apartments. But it isn’t often seen.
Karla: (15:21) I think that it’s not that it’s not accepted, but it’s not something that we see in the northeast. I see it a lot more down south. I’ve seen covered parking in Florida quite a bit. And we have one project in north Massachusetts. Is that where Amhurst and those schools are? They were looking so hard for places to put the PV because they are targeting zero energy for a dormitory. And so they’re lifting up above HVAC equipment on the roof, on, you know, pedestals for the PV as well as on the car ports. So, you know, when you think outside the box, there’s places for it to go. But that’s a pretty rural area up there. And you have to have the space for it. It’s not going to work in Manhattan. It’s not going to even work in Cambridge. We have another project in Cambridge with a university and when they came when they came to us, one of the first goals was we want to be zero energy – We want this seven story dorm to be zero energy. And quickly found that as hard as we were working with the envelope and the model which Paula is working on, they weren’t going to reach zero energy
Robb: (16:34) not within the building footprint. They’d have to look beyond.
Karla: (16:39) Well this dorm also has a cafeteria and some other amenities spaces. And so the usage is pretty high. \
Robb: (16:46) So, Paula, when you get into bigger multifamily buildings, how does the modeling change? How do the programs change?
Paula: (16:52) In terms of zero energy, similar to what Carla was saying, there’s really only the international living futures pedal certification for zero energy buildings. There’s a voluntary self-reporting that you can report to the National Building Institute, NBI, to claim that you are zero energy and that can be either modeled or actual. But that’s sort of, you know, you’re self-reporting, it’s on you to prove it. But there’s no other, you know, a particular program in the commercial market.
Robb: (17:33) But modeling tools are different for commercial?
Paula: (17:37) Yeah. Whereas Carla often uses HERS software primarily, we can use any number of ASHRAE approved or DOE 2 modeling programs. We primarily use EnQuest or open studio for that modeling. The concept for zero energy is the same though, whether you do a single family home or do a, you know, a school or an office building, you primarily just want to know what your loads are on the inside, balance out what the envelope needs to be, and provide a robust envelope, and then downsize your HVAC equipment and be thoughtful about your ventilation systems. And you at least can get to a low energy building if not a net zero if you don’t have the ability to install renewables onsite.
Robb: (18:31) So if somebody comes to you in and says, one of these clients you’ve been talking about, “we want a zero energy building, we want a zero energy dorm” First step is?
Karla: (18:42) tell them that the residents cannot bring in extra refrigerators or tell them that they’re limited to one laptop per student.
Robb: (18:50) I guess this one, when I talked to Lois about passive houses, I mean it was like, it all depends on where in the design process they are. I mean, if they come to you very, very early, you didn’t really focus on the design. And the envelope, I assume you get the envelope as good as possible and modeling helps on that front.
Paula: (19:08) You really have to model, you really have to model to understand the equipment that an owner anticipates in the building to understand the schedules of that building. You know, an apartment building is going to be different than a dorm cause obviously the density is different in terms of people and the kind of equipment families versus you know, Young 20 somethings in a dormitory, and the equipment that they can bring in versus a school which might only have like two computers per classroom or maybe a high school has computers and all their classrooms for every student. So the level of equipment can be anywhere across the board.
Karla: (19:46) But ideally it is during schematic design, if not, definitely during design development and the mileage. I would say even design development is almost too late in some cases. Probably for the bigger buildings or the more complicated ones. And there should be continual iterations in the modeling as the designs are being developed. And there should be several plan reviews, usually a 50% design development, a hundred percent design development. Then again at 50 construction documents. And then after when they do that, that really horrible thing called value engineering, which isn’t really what it’s supposed to be. So after a VE set or a VE session, we get our eyes back on the plans again to make sure that none of the critical elements have been taken out and not properly replaced.
Robb: (20:35) You mentioned the downsize of Hvhc and that’s one of this kind of concepts that I remember hearing talked about 20 years ago, but in practicality, rarely seen. But that’s I think coming into play. I mean if you go an awesome high R air tight envelope, there are opportunities to save some money on the HVAC
Karla: (20:59) and the equipment is available in the sizes that are appropriate for the single family homes. Right. So when we get down from, we might’ve seen a house that had load calculation saying they needed five tons for the cooling and when properly calculated room by room low calculations, it’s comes down to two tons, and that piece of equipment and is available. So that’s great. But when it comes to the multifamily, where the loads are incredibly low and the high performing buildings like per apartment you make per apartment. And most cases, this is going to be a per apartment situation because the owners very seldom want to own the utilities. They might be willing to own, say natural gas bill for the domestic hot water for a central system, but they don’t want to own all of the tenants electric. So these are sub metered or individually metered, which means that every apartment has its own heating and cooling source. And so to get those really small, that’s when it gets tricky.
Robb: (21:59) Gotcha. And on institutional buildings, commercial buildings, the loads are often like internal gains driven, not so much envelope driven.
Paula: (22:08) Well, most of the time we find that in commercial buildings or even the more dense, higher, bigger and multifamily buildings, you don’t really need more than about an R20 opaque wall assembly. We always recommend better windows, always recommend triple pane. The windows are always the weakest link in your envelope assembly. But what is really driving the energy of the building are those internal loads, are all the equipment, all of the people, all of the ventilation within the building, that’s driving cooling and heating loads. The envelope, you know, doesn’t really keep too much out when you have to ventilate the building to the level that you want your building to be healthy, and you don’t want to fight that. But that was always a balance when we’re talking about commercial buildings, of how much ventilation you want to provide, how healthy do you want the interior to be versus the energy use of that building. Because More ventilation is going to be more energy.
Robb: (23:05) Another reason why it’s easier for smaller buildings, I guess for single family, right? Because it’s really envelope driven rather than internal gas driven. So we mentioned schools, we mentioned colleges, but Paula there are a lot of interest in like public schools. Some school agents used to go this way. Is that, is that a whole different can of worms?
Paula: (23:23) I think net zero certainly is possible and more so in public schools because it’s a, it’s very repeatable building typology. And I think that there’s a lot of studies that are out there typically. Typically, low rise urban schools are going to have a little bit more difficulty when they are approaching the four or five story limit, they have a smaller footprint that they can work in. But certainly in the burbs, where you have a two or three story school, you can absolutely get to net zero fairly early. But again, you do need to be cognizant of how you’re designing the building and what the loads are of the building, particularly kitchens. We had talked about kitchens previously, that one dorm kitchens can have a very high load that can make it difficult to meet your energy goals.
Karla: (24:10) And remember we had the conversation about net energy or zero net energy or net zero energy. And so when you’re talking about the use of the building, and this will even come up with the dorm that we were just talking about, of whether or not it will be open in the summer for camps. And so that changes the dynamic because normally universities are closed for at least a couple of months. The dorms are being used for a couple of months and the same would hold true for a school, so easier in an annual period to show that you’re a zero energy.
Robb: (24:37) Gotcha. You’re generating lots of electricity if you have PV when you’re not using much at all. Right?
Speaker 6: (24:44) And that interests a introduces an interesting dynamic with the grid because if your school, which is producing the most amount of energy in the summertime is otherwise shut down your exporting most of that generated energy to the grid. And you know, is there a payback with your local utility for that export it energy? Is there a benefit to you or not and that that could play a role if it’s a financial decision
Karla: (25:12) Well, we’ve seen it play a role too with nonprofits. So senior care facilities deciding not to go with PV because they’re already locked into a very low rate for what they pay for the electricity. So there’s no payback there to go.
Robb: (25:25) Right. Gotcha. Yeah. And that’s getting back to something you mentioned earlier with the schools who have all this electricity, excess electricity and in the summertime, maybe that opens up opportunities for zero energy communities? Doing that?
Paula: (25:38) Absolutely. I think We really need to start thinking beyond just the boundaries of our buildings and start thinking about communities and how either commercial buildings can use that exported electricity nearby and develop those relationships so that it’s not necessarily a burden to the grid because as we see in California and Hawaii, there’s a lot of renewable energy, it’s too much at the wrong time. Right, so in California, Hawaii, they really need to start talking about energy storage so that they can use that energy that they’re producing, just not at the time that is being produced. I think that’ll start being part of our conversation as we start talking about these community district energy systems so we can maintain that all within our communities.
Robb: (26:27) So how about codes? I mean, I’ve heard lots of talk about California mostly, but also New York, Massachusetts, trying to move to zero energy codes. what does that mean? I’ve got to say I’ve heard a lot more talk substance on this topic.
Karla: (26:44) Well, it’s a little easier to do out in California quite frankly because, you know, the installation goes a lot further. The PV goes a lot further. I mean, you’d need less installation and you need a little more PV and you can get to zero a lot faster in those zones because of the climate. And that’s not true everywhere in California for sure. But yeah, it’s definitely more of a challenge in zones four and five, which is Massachusetts and New York state, and Six of course. Yes. As you get up further north.
Robb: (27:20) Yeah. All right. Yeah. The last I think I read, California was kind of backing off on the whole zero energy mandate and zero electricity as a first step. Is that to be determined? But are you involved in New York policy or any other policy on the east coast? I think, well, I think you were talking about schools
Paula: (27:43) In New York City, they have developed the stretch code, which we anticipate. And then in the coming months, the stretch code I think is trying to get to be 20% better than current code. I’m a little bit skeptical on it because n knowing how energy modeling works, the regulated load, within our current code is already so low. And this percent better thing that we’ve done for so long is starting to be less effective. We need to start moving toward an absolute target of some sort. similar to how passive house has a target of 38, for example, for new construction, 38 SEUI, Source Energy use intensity. so it’s an energy per square foot on the source basis. So however much energy goes into generating the electricity from the power plant and that goes into that calculation. I don’t think that 38 is the right number for all building typologies. but I think we need to start talking about absolute numbers as opposed to this percent better cause this percent better starts to just be an obscure number that is very difficult to get to potentially. We’ve been finding that the percent better could be much more restrictive than a passive house, for example. So you can design a passive house building that doesn’t necessarily meet stretch code. That’s a problem.
Robb: (29:13) That’s tough. All right. Yeah, so if we come back and five years and talk about this again, what will we be talking about?
Karla: (29:23) We’ll probably be having a very similar conversation, however we’ll have many more examples. I do think we’re going to see the construction of some of these near zero, or you know, the multifamily is just not going to get to zero, but we’re, so, I don’t know what we’re going to call them, but we’re going to more construction. We’re going to see the fear factor go away.
Robb: (29:43) The fear factor of, oh, zero energy is way too expensive. It’s too weird.
Karla: (29:49) It not what we normally do, we can’t build like this. It’s outside of the way we do things kind of thing. We’re already seeing that change with sort of the second phase of developments that I’ve done, either passive house or close to zero or just getting to HERS index of 40 to 45 which is a big jump for some developers in multifamily that might be used to 20 points higher in a HERS index. So we’re moving in the right direction and I think well hopefully we’ll get the terminology down so that we’re not spending half of the podcast talking about the words without coming to any consensus.
Paula: (30:23) I think terminology is hopefully what we’ll see a change in my industry, in the commercial world, we often say high performance buildings and I think we need to change that nomenclature to be low energy buildings or low carbon buildings. because a Maserati and Ferrari are high performance cars and yeah, they ride really well, but what’s their mpg? Right? we need the smart cars. We need, you know, the little electric cars or hybrid cars or something a little bit different. That’s going to be our solution.
Robb: (31:08) Hopefully won’t get too many emails about that. People loving those smart cards. All right, so it’s not going to become standard practice, but people are going to be much more familiar with it and comfortable with it and we’ll have maybe metrics that are more meaningful. I think so. Nice. Cool. Anything else on the topic or we’ll talk about it again in five years. Maybe sooner than five years. Okay, great. Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks rob.
Speaker 7: (31:46) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www. swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes buildings that beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I’ve production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex [inaudible], and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
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
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.
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 efficiency benefits when you compare it to single speed or even two speed because, in a lot of these systems, you have the same coil area, the same heat exchanger area, but you’re moving, you know, half the refrigerant at part load, so using much, much less electricity to move that refrigerant, but with a still a pretty large coil area, you can get a pretty good efficiency. And the other way that it helps is in cold, cold weather, they can kind of over clock, which is probably not the right word, but when you need a lot more heat, the compressors can run at higher speeds than they normally would under, you know, single stage 60 hertz or whatever. So they can run faster, deliver more heat at really cold temperatures. You’ll take an efficiency hit when they’re working that hard. But it really can provide, it’s pretty impressive how much heat they can provide at cold temperatures.
Kelly: (09:35) Right. And I think part of it too was about matching the load in the space more closely. Right? not having the kick on and kick off the compressor?
Robb: (09:45) not cycling. Yep. Yeah. There are some comfort benefits. Maybe durability benefits, maybe energy benefits associated with, yeah, less cycling.
Kelly: (09:55) Right. And sort of speaking a little bit to that efficiency, can you talk a little bit about rating systems? People say COP, they say HSPF, what are the differences? Who’s testing? And are these the right test to be applied to us?
Robb: (10:15) That is a big topic. And so COP stands for Coefficient performance, which is energy out over energy in, it’s basically efficiency, but you would hope that the COPs are actually greater than 100% because you’re moving heat from one place to another. You’re not converting heat. So you know, you want to see COPS, you know, in the threes or fours, right. You know, the higher the better, depending on the application and it depends. HSPF stands for heating season performance factor, it has units of Btus per watt hour. It was developed initially to kind of duplicate SEEr ratings for air conditioners I believe. And then used for heat pumps back at like 30, 40 years ago and again when heat pumps were used down south. They didn’t have a lot of cold weather and it was pretty much single stage equipment and the HSPF rating, the calculation procedure really makes sense for that kind of equipment. For the newer equipment It really doesn’t make sense. I hate to throw stones because it’s a lot easier to criticize things than to actually develop a good standard. HSPF for inverter driven heat pumps are pretty worthless. The number is pretty meaningless to me. So what I, and there’s a lot of reasons for that and some folks at CSA in Canada are trying to develop a test procedure that’s more appropriate and reflects real world performance better for variable speed systems. I mean, it’s really hard. It’s really hard to rate. It’s really hard to test because everything’s variable speed. The compressor’s variable speed, all the fans are variable speed. And you can only test it, you know, steady state really, or, well, maybe not, but that’s how the tests are done, at steady state. So how, how do you do that? And to make it reflect real world performance. And they haven’t figured that out and hopefully it’s coming. So I look at the manufacturer literature and I look down at the cop at the design temperature, at my heating design temperature or at cold design temperatures to see what the capacity is to see what the efficiency is from the manufacturer literature.
Kelly: (12:45) That’s a good recommendation. And speaking of these rated COPs on the unit and the rated capacity, didn’t you do a study in 2012 about how these things are actually performing?
Robb: (12:59) Yeah, that was, yeah, that was fun. That was a small study. That was like 10. We monitored 10 ductless mini split heat pumps in single family homes around New England. It was sponsored by the Department of Energy and we partnered with efficiency Vermont on it. And we monitored, and to that point, I hadn’t seen, for my tastes, rigorous enough assessments for field performance. And again, they’re hard to monitor because everything’s variable speed. Especially the airflow on the indoor units. So we monitored return temps, supply temps and airflow in rea ltime. That airflow varied depending on the fan speed, depending on how soiled the filter was, depending on the little vein positions that direct the air up or down. So it really varied a lot. So monitoring airflow allowed us to calculate more accurate heat delivered. And then also we monitored electricity consumption. So from that we could get the COPs.
Kelly: (14:07) And you mentioned there were not so rigorous studies before. What was missing from those?
Robb: (14:12) I think mostly the flow rate. I mean, it’s easy to monitor electricity consumption. It’s pretty straightforward. So quite a few people had done that. Some people monitored return temps supply temps and not flow rate. Like they looked up the literature flow rate values for the heat pumps and assumed that that was what was being delivered.
Kelly: (14:32) So they were assuming that the COP was wrong, but that the flow rates were right.
Robb: (14:36) Yeah, I was well, There’s also a cop. You just look at the literature and find a COP. But it’s hard and you know, we went around and around and around on what the best way, the most practical way was to measure flow rate. And we were lucky to get the funding to do it. It was pretty interesting. And the findings were concerning at first, so it was a cold winter that we monitored. We’ll put this study in the show notes. I will put this in the show. So the average cop of the systems we monitored was to 2.0, which was lower. I mean, people, I think I was expecting closer to three.
Kelly: (15:29) Based on the literature?
Robb: (15:30) Yeah. Largely based on the literature and so it was sobering. But the other thing was that it ranged all over the place. We had one system that had a cop of one for the whole winter, it just sort of had electric resistance heat. Then we had some that were really good, you know, in the mid twos, so the range of performance was pretty staggering. And that was really concerning. I mean, so many people told me that our study is bogus, it’s flawed, you know, so many people dismissed it, but we went back to it.
Kelly: (16:09) Were there some specific complaints?
Robb: (16:11) That it was wrong? Yeah. They’re way too low. That these efficiency numbers are way too low. They can’t possibly reflect real numbers.
Kelly: (16:22) Not like the way that you measured cfm was inaccurate?
Robb: (16:27) Yeah. They didn’t get into detail. We probably tried 20 different methods to measure flow rate from these systems. And there’s one friend of mine who we went back to his house like five times. Thank you John. Thanks again. He’s an energy geek also. Yeah. I think he was happy to help out, but we did our due diligence, so I was, I was pretty confident that it wasn’t crazy. But the other thing we found was that the capacity, the heat output, pretty much did match the manufacturer specs. It was the efficiency that was off for some of the systems. Quite a few of the systems.
Kelly: (17:04) And so are they still calling you up and telling you to fix your study?
Robb: (17:09) no, because there have been other studies which found similar things, so I pass the buck to people that did the other studies. A few years later there was a study, and Massachusetts utilities hired Cadmus to do an evaluation on much more, a hundred ish systems in Massachusetts homes and I think Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Rhode Island homes. And so they used a very similar method where they’d measure flow rate. They measured return time to supply time and electric energy, electric power. The winter that they did this evaluation was the record breaking snow winter and the most snow ever recorded in Boston. It was very cold, very snowy, and they in a hundred ish, I hate talking about other people’s reports, so we’ll like this as well, but from my reading of it, was that first winter, that incredibly cold winter, they found average COP of 1.7 of all the ductless heat pumps installed. Which is even lower than what we’ve done.
Kelly: (18:12) Maybe somewhat aligned compared to outdoor temperature, something like that
Robb: (18:17) But again, huge range of performance. Some systems are performing great. Some systems were horrible, absolutely horrible. And so they continue the evaluation for another winter. Again, this is my understanding, and the next winter was like an absurdly mild non winter and the average cop went up to 2.5. So big difference. But there again, staggering range and efficiencies in performance. So this got us thinking about, you know, that obviously these systems can perform to their specifications. Just a lot of them are not. So, yeah. What’s going on, what’s going on.
Kelly: (18:54) So did you find that there was a particular manufacturer that was problematic? what did you find?
Robb: (19:03) No particular manufacturer seemed to be bad. In general, we haven’t figured it all out, but I think we know some things and some are common sense. One of the most common sense features is, these things suck heat from the outdoor air. If they’re buried in snow, they cannot suck heat from the outdoor. And that seems obvious and stupid, right? It’s not, there were so many of these systems that were buried in snow or especially when we had like five feet of snow on the ground, or like underneath drip edges, you know, on the side of the house, underneath the drip edge without a gutter and, or the gutter fills up and freezes and ice strips down and in cases the heat pump, the outdoor unit in ice. we saw that in our small study and you know, they saw it in the bigger utilities study. Common sense would say that you should not do this
Kelly: (20:00) so mounted above the area median snow fall
Robb: (20:04) Mounted up above the snow, right. Which might mean pretty high. You know, especially in northern New England, I see them mounted on the sides of buildings, four or five feet up, above the snow, not under a drip edge, or if it is, or maybe even if it isn’t, protect it with like a little, you’ll see a lot with little hats on them to shed the snow and ice and rain, so that the evaporator doesn’t freeze out there. So that was probably the most common sense thing we found to explain the poor performance. Sizing was another one. Sizing the systems so that they meet the load better, they’re a better match for the load, tends to lead to better efficiency and that’s for ductless systems more. What we found in some cases, the ductless heat pumps, if they were really oversized, the indoor fan coil was always in low speed, the fan was in low speed and that kind of crippled your capacity and efficiency. So it wasn’t, yeah, it underperformed.
Kelly: (21:13) Yeah. And I thought that because these things vary in terms of the compressor can vary to meet the load, that oversizing wasn’t as much of a problem, but it’s interesting to hear.
Robb: (21:24) Yeah. And I think it’s with ductless, so if you want in and you took that same ductless heat pump and took the fan and stuck it on high all the time, you might not see that problem. But that’s a lot of airflow. It can be cool. It can be loud if you always have your indoor fan coil on high. Actually I saw a study, which I can try and link to, that did that. They did a few nights with a heat pump, the fan in auto and then a few nights with the same heat pump and put the fan too high and they saw like a 40% increase in the COP. And they just put that indoor fan speed to high. So that was a big deal.
Kelly: (22:00) You mentioned the outdoor unit. Is there anything in terms of the indoor unit, where it’s located?
Robb: (22:05) return air temperature seems to be a pretty big deal. These things were initially developed for cooling. Again, I’m talking about ductless, so putting them high on a wall, and also above head height, you’re not gonna whack your head into them. That’s important. But the warmest air in a room, is going to be out by the ceiling. So that’s the return air for most of these ductless heat pumps. So we saw a return air temperatures of high seventies, eighties, pretty regularly in some of these homes. And with that high return air temperature, you’re going to lower your capacity and efficiency. So yeah, a ducted system where you can suck cooler air from a more appropriate place or many manufacturers make like low wall, like floor mounted kind of radiator sort of profile heat pumps, which may make more sense in a heating dominated space.
Kelly: (22:58) And one thing that we find, in VRF mostly, in some of the commissioning projects that we’ve done is, we’ll get a low discharge air temperature and we’ll find out that there’s an issue with refrigerant charge.
Robb: (23:08) Oh my God. Yeah. So that cop of one, which I was like wait, we must have done something wrong. I talked to another researcher who had said, yeah, I’ll bet you anything that’s overcharged. yeah, charge is important. I mean, it always is important and again, with variable speed equipment, it’s really hard. It’s harder I should say, to assess the charge with variable speed equipment, you can’t, you know, check the super heat, or the common methods you use to check the charge in the single stage equipment. Everything’s variable speed, the indoor fan’s variable speed, the outdoor fan’s variable speed and most importantly the compressors variable speed. So it’s harder to do those checks. So weighing in the refrigerant accurately when you install it, is the way to do it.
Kelly: (24:00) So measuring the line lengths, pressure testing, vacuum, and then adding the right amount of refrigerant.
Robb: (24:07) Adding the right amount of refrigerant. And some of them are like pre-charged for a line length. So between x and Y. But pay attention to that. Right. And if you don’t need to add any, don’t add any. If you do, do, I mean, follow the instructions.
Kelly: (24:25) All right, so if we’re back here in five years, what are we going to be talking about here?
Robb: (24:30) We’re going to be talking about some other studies that we didn’t get to talk about. I’m assuming because we ran out of time, but I do want to say that a lot of these kind of best practices are outlined in some pretty good NEAP documents. NEAP is the northeast energy efficiency partnerships and they have a. They have a good specification that’ll let you know, if you want to use a heat pump in cold climate, what to look for, the COP to look for, etc. Also they have some heat pump selection guides, you know, for a particular application. How to think about what kind of heat pump to select or is a heat pump going to be appropriate for your application?
Kelly: (25:20) Because it’s not necessarily appropriate in every scenario?
Robb: (25:23) No, no, I wouldn’t say so. I mean it depends what your goals are. I mean, if you have really big loads, then going back to fuel fired systems is still going to be the lowest cost, maybe most practical way to meet it. But you know, another part of the reason we see more and more, heat pumps is because loads are getting smaller and smaller and smaller, especially with newer new construction efficient buildings. NEAP also has a kind of guideline for quality installation, which talks about a few of the things that I mentioned and more things. So that is definitely a good resource. So I would refer you there. And also, you know, I talked about the big utility study.
Robb: (26:12) So just recently, Vermont did a study of air source heat pumps, ductless air source heat pumps installed through their incentive programs and they found really staggeringly good performance. Average cop for several dozen- I don’t think it was a hundred, but it was 70 something maybe I think average cop for, I think it was two winters was three, 3.0, which is so much better than the other studies and I think Vermont really, you know, took a lot of these findings to heart. It’s like we’ve got to make sure our systems are installed better. And I listened to a presentation from one of the guys at Cadimus that did the evaluation and he said, yeah, the quality of installation was just so much better. He was doing both studies. Yeah. So the quality of installation was so much better. And the users were so much savvier about their equipment and knowing how to operate it. I mean, at one of the systems we monitored in Vermont, really, I looked out the window and there was the outdoor unit, the heat pump, buried in ice underneath the drip edge. And I said, I don’t think that’s going to work very well. The guy said well, it’ll probably work again in April when everything melts.
Kelly: (27:34) who needs heat in the winter? Well I’m glad you re-steered me there, rob, because that is a much happier note to end on and I think the manufacturers will be much happier with us to end on that note as well. and so I’m going to take back the question and I’m going to say that in five years we’ll be sitting here talking about your new study, on VRF systems, which I just want you to do. And in five years they’re going to be performing perfectly because you’ll have figured it all out and we’re going to figure out how to make them perform perfectly.
Robb: (28:10) I have concerns about VRF systems. I mean, VRF systems are a lot bigger, a lot more complicated, a lot more joints, where refrigerant might leak, for example. So I haven’t yet seen good studies that show heat delivered and electricity consumed. If anybody listening has please send it to us.
Kelly: (28:33) please send it to us. Yeah. And actually on that note, did you see any differences between having one indoor unit and multiple indoor units at the same outdoor unit?
Robb: (28:43) No, I didn’t. We only monitored one to ones, but the two Cadmus studies that I mentioned monitored what I call multi split, where you have one outdoor unit with two or three indoor units. And yes, efficiency was lower. The more indoor heads you had for the same outdoor unit. And I’ve talked to a lot of contractors that say the same thing, like, “oh yeah, everybody knows that Multi splits are much more efficient.” So one to ones the way to go if you can. They’re not even that much more expensive, you know, a three to one is kind of two and a half to three times the price of three one to ones. Yeah, that’s been the pricing I’ve seen.
Kelly: (29:29) All right. Well on that note. Thank you for being on the podcast.
New Speaker: (29:32) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes. Buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. Our production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
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.
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.
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 talking about the international building code way. When all these federal regulations came into play, we didn’t have the international building code. We had a number of different building codes like BOCA or the southern building code, that covered different jurisdictions across the country. Now, for the most part, we have the international building code. And it has chapter 11 accessibility in it.
Peter: (08:59) And it has, you know, attempted to keep up with the requirements of federal law. There are some editions of the International Building Code, for example, that are approved by HUD as safe harbors for compliance with the design and construction requirements of the Fair Housing Amendments Act, a safe harbor is a document that you can turn to, that when you comply with that document from beginning to end, you essentially comply with the requirements of fair housing.
Robb: (09:26) And so HUD will review a code and say, all right, this meets all our checklists?
Peter: (09:31) That’s right. And HUD it has done that, but they stopped at the international building code 2006, and now we’re up to 2018. So Hud is sort of lagging, building codes have progressed.
Robb: (09:44) And the accessibility requirements, the legislation also have progressed or evolved?
Peter: (09:50) No, the fair housing amendments act has remained the same. The Americans with Disabilities Act has been updated and there had been criteria that have been updated. But additions of the international building code beyond 2006 have not been approved by HUD as safe harbors for compliance.
Robb: (10:09) So presumably they didn’t backtrack on their accessibility measures?
Peter: (10:14) Thats right. I think things have gotten better and the trend is sort of improved accessibility in the building codes for sure, but still not a HUD approved safe harbor. And it’s not that, you know, there’s nothing in the legal ease of the law that tells you that you’ve got to comply with a HUD approved safe harbor.
Robb: (10:36) Thats just a service really to try to get accessibility into standard practice. Cause I mean developers, builders, have to deal with codes, architects, everybody has to deal with the codes. They know how to deal with the codes. And now you throw up a piece of legislation at them, and it’s like woah.
Peter: (10:56) I think I would have believed I would have agreed with that statement 20 years ago. But today for an industry key stakeholder to say, “hey look, I’m a little confused at this law” or “I understand my building is not compliant, but you know, I get the building code I’m not really familiar with it.” I think a little bit too late for that. It’s been around for many, many, many, many years at this point. And so, you know, you try to learn and grow and I think what has changed from now to then is that the industry I think realizes now that accessibility really is its own sort of niche practice.
Robb: (11:43) Right. You have to do it. That’s like efficiency. I mean codes didn’t use to address efficiency. It was, you know, structural safety, fire safety..
Peter: (11:51) You’ve got to do it right. And you rely on the accessibility consultant just like you would rely on any specialty consultant. The acoustics consultant, right? The landscape consultant, the mechanical consultant, you know, the architect is not developing or designing mechanical systems and is not doing acoustics probably for the most part. So how can you expect an architect to essentially be paid what they’re paid and also understand all of the nuts and bolts of a federal regulation in addition to the building code? I think it’s just way too much.
Robb: (12:25) Gotcha. So what are some of the nuts and bolts, I mean, what are some of the things that people fail to comply with? Some common things that just requires some extra thought or some extra planning?
Peter: (12:34) Yeah things people fail to comply with that? That a great question. I think what trips people up and when I see people, I think for the most part, designers or architects and interior designers, speaking as one of those professionals. Yes. And just based on the experience, you know what I see every day. All of the codes, the federal laws, the state laws, local legislation, all have what’s called scoping criteria and technical criteria. So the scoping criteria is what needs to be accessible. For example, how many building entrances are required to be accessible, how many bathrooms are required to be accessible. And then you turn to technical criteria for direction on how to make an entrance accessible. The clear width of the door, you know, maximum opening pressure, maneuvering clearance on both sides, the hardware type, closing speed, all of that. The technical criteria I think are pretty simple. You know, you go to the criteria, you open the book and you follow the steps, the door has to provide a clear with of no less than 32 inches measuring between the face of the door and the opposing stop when the door is open, 90 degrees. That’s simple. I think it’s scoping criteria in terms of how many, how much, that sort of confuses architects and designers. And that’s where we see, I think, the mistakes being made. You know, the building code for example in New York City requires that all public entrances are accessible. Americans with disabilities act requires that 60% of public entrances are accessible. The fair housing amendments act requires that at least one primary entrance be accessible. So if you have a building that is subject to a number of federal requirements, which many are, in addition to building code, you’ve got different scoping requirements and you’ve got different technical requirements to comply with. So it’s understanding what to apply and sort of what governs what rule you’ve got to follow. And so it’s mostly the scoping information. That’s what trips designers up.
Robb: (15:03) And its not necessarily getting the details right, You know, so something has to be a dimension of x and its dimension of x plus one inches
Peter: (15:11) I want to say yes, but then again, when I think about it, you know, the devil’s in the details, it’s all about the details really. I think it’s the scoping criteria that just, if you don’t iron out the scoping criteria, how many and what, right at the onset, and you can continue to design the project very difficult to correct, you’ve got yourself in a hole. When it comes to the technical criteria, you know, bevels on thresholds, maximum threshold height, clear width at doors. There’s lots that we’d need to think about in order to meet the technical requirements. So to say that a 32 inch door needs to provide a clear width of 32 inches, does a 210 door work? Should you default to a 36 inch door because you have a different or an odd hinge on a 210 door, so the devil is in the details. Certainly.
Robb: (16:15) So have the requirements, I don’t know if hinges is a good example, but has the legislation evolved to kind of make these requirements more practical, more buildable or, or I mean I think I’ve heard someone talk about like ranges and you know, used to mandate a dimension of x, now it’s a dimension of x plus or minus an inch or something to have some wiggle room
Peter: (16:44) yes, the criteria have, the requirements have, definitely progressed, not as fast as the law itself, you know, so we’ve got technical standards that change and develop every so many years. A federal regulation does not do that. The law stays in place. The technical criteria changed over time. That said though, the Americans with Disabilities Act has recently been updated, but the fair housing amendments act has not been updated and either have other federal laws. So although the laws can change, they primarily stay the same, and it’s the technical criteria that change. So what was required by a technical standard in 1998 is very different than the same technical standard, which is now dated, latest one in 2009, 2017 coming onboard. So, there are committees that develop these criteria’s, you know, they also learn as we build over time.
Peter: (17:54) And so one of the things that we often hear is, you know, is there any tolerance? you know, the requirement is 18 inches, a distance of 18 inches between the center line of a toilet and the adjacent side wall for example. It’s very tough to meet that hard line 18 and construction, right? Construction is not a perfect science. So the criteria have moved away from that hard line of 18 and now contemplate a range of between 16 and 18, which is much easier to comply with. Right. Much more builder friendly and much more practical. I’d say. And so that’s where we are with the criteria.
Robb: (18:35) So with, with projects that go well, I mean that you’re involved in, I kind of assume it’s kind of a soup to nuts process being involved with designers early on and, and through construction and verifying after construction
Peter: (18:51) So it runs the gamut. If we could have our wish of course it would be to be involved, at schematic design. So we can advise on the direction that the designer is going in terms of designing the units. Normally we provide two comprehensive reviews, but we don’t only stop at the architectural review, right. we’re reviewing all the plan sets, mechanical, electrical, plumbing and architectural. So it’s just not the spaces.
Robb: (19:26) what on mechanical? What are you have to inspect mechanical drawings for?
Peter: (19:29) So We’re looking, for example, for information on thermostats, which you usually find. We’re looking at height. Often times there are chase walls, which obstruct into maneuvering cones at doors, for example. It’s all the mechanical chases, plumbing chases, you know, there are a whole variety of things.
Robb: (19:52) Are you saying mechanical engineers might draw ducks where they might interfere with somebody?
Peter: (19:58) Sometimes, I think it’s more likely though that we might have a plumbing set that’s misaligned or that doesn’t align with the architectural set. So for example, in a bathtub, in a bathroom or a shower, we’ll see the architect has designed the control wall, whether operable parts to the shower and the top is. The plumbing set may have the same controls but on an opposing wall. And so we often find that the plan sets are not aligned.
Robb: (20:33) Alright so They’re just trying to minimize their plumbing rounds, they’re trying to make it practical for them.
Peter: (20:38) Right, well The architect put the controls on an exterior wall and then in the plumbing, they go from the exterior wall right to an interior wall. And so the building is now constructed with the plumbing on the interior wall because that’s the plumbing set. Cause they pull the plumbing set and that’s what they are building from. But there’s a reason why the architect put the plumbing controls on the exterior wall. Gotcha. And so when you bust stop plumbing controls or control locations, that’s very difficult to fix if sometimes not possible at all.
Robb: (21:09) So, so people are doing better in general? I mean people are catching on?
New Speaker: (21:14) I think people are doing better in general. Yes. You know, years ago it was difficult to convince a design team that they should have their plans reviewed and they should have construction inspected along the way during various stages of construction, which is what we do. But I think people have learned the hard way sometimes. As you know, sometimes the hard way. Yes. Certainly. I think what’s important to realize is that when we’re talking about, you know, designing and constructing multifamily housing, if the building is not built in compliance with the design and construction requirements of the fair housing amendments act, you are violating someone’s civil rights and to violate a building code is one thing to violate civil right is a different thing. And that’s why you hear about so much litigation that surrounds noncompliance with the Fair Housing Amendments Act. We used to hear years ago the developer say, we rely on the architect to get this right, they’re the design professional, why do I need to hire a separate accessibility consultant? But they have since learned that they probably shouldn’t rely only on the architect. There are certainly architects that are very great at it. But again it’s a very specialized field. it certainly is.
Robb: (22:37) So if we were to talk again in five years, what do you think we’d be talking about? What would have changed?
Peter: (22:50) Wow. Five years from now? I would say that based on the trend that we are seeing now, and you know, our group here at Steven Winter Associates has grown pretty significantly over a very short number of years. The work is certainly coming in at a good rate. I think that we might see in five years, probably less of an uptick in litigation. And hopefully that’s as a result of people retaining accessibility, the consultants that do work like us. Gatta give it the old Clark, Rob.
Robb: (23:29) Yeah, absolutely. Getting it right the first time. And I’ve gone through the hard way. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that’s, I think you started out as a more on the litigation side and they’ve really tried to migrate more and more with builders and developers and designers to get it right.
Peter: (23:42) You got, it definitely started on the litigation side, you know, and when we started, litigation was the only way, you know, to hurt someone in the pocket is the way to get them to learn. And so that was the sort of the press, in terms of enforcement at that time. And at that time, the model of course was cases that involved, the complaints against the industry- architects, developers, and, you know, we today, our model is to work on behalf of industry and to help industry navigate litigation should it make its way into litigation. And that’s what all of our litigation projects now involve, you know, helping industry navigate litigation. And I think that starting in litigation has enabled us to have a very keen sense of how decisions are made that surround particular issues. You know, what the court might sort of be lenient on, what the court might press, what happens in New York City versus same litigation outside of New York City. What happens in a jurisdiction when attorney Xyz is involved in the case versus the same type of litigation that doesn’t involve this particular attorney. And so we’ve learned that as a result of the business. I think that’s the value that we bring.
Robb: (25:17) All right. Nice. Anything else? Any other big picture accessibility points?
Peter: (25:28) pig picture, accessibility points? Uh, not that I can think of offhand, Rob, of course, we might need to do a better job in getting this particular office a little bit more accessible, but you know, this is radio and we can’t see that.
Robb: (25:43) You could send me some notes so I’ll get right on it. Thanks Pete. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3: (25:52) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast And check out the episode show notes buildings and beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services. Do you improve the built environment our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings I production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
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.
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.
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 maintain that space underneath and you can also get up above the shading from your bulkhead often.
Kelly: (08:26) Okay. And do you know approximately how much more those types of systems are costing to maintain that space below?
Speaker 2: (08:33) Yeah, it’s usually going to be like a dollar to a dollar 50 more per watt. Which is fairly significant, when for a ballasted system in New York City, in that urban environment, we’re looking at about 3.50 per watt. For this canopy trellis type system you’re looking at more like 4.50, maybe 5.00 per watt? A steel rack is more like $4 per watt. And these are all pretty high markup compared elsewhere in the country. So where its 3.50 per watt in New York, you’re going to see a ballasted system in a big commercial project can be closer to $2 per watt somewhere else.
Kelly: (09:07) Okay. Wow. And then for this ballasted system, could you use that to be over mechanical equipment or is there any drawback to that?
Speaker 2: (09:18) So the ballasted equipment is very low lying in a roof. It’s not going to go over anything. It has to even go around your roof drains. You don’t want to block the water and being able to get to those. So you can maybe get over mechanical equipment with a light gauge steel rack. You run into issues about access. So you want to maintain a three foot path to your different fans in case you ever need to service them. So the issue with that is that even if you can get your light gauge steel rack above, because of the strength of that steel, you’re going to have a lot of bracing and that might prevent you from actually being able to get into that fan. The other question is, is it equipment that is exhausting heat? So heat is going to reduce the efficiency of the performance of your modules. So that should also be taken into account if you’re spanning over any HVAC equipment.
Kelly: (10:07) Okay, great. That’s interesting. Switching topics a little bit here, but let’s go into the net metering. How is that structure now? Are there any drawbacks? Actually first explain that metering maybe.
Eric: (10:27) Yeah, no problem. So net metering is kind of the original tool for providing a revenue stream or a reason why you would want to put pv on your building. Basically, if solar is being produced on your property and you’re using it at the same time, there’s no difference. It’s just flowing from your panels to your load. But if it’s being produced in the middle of the day, say on your home and you’re at work, and your home is not using any electricity and the pvs cranking out kilowatt hours, it goes back onto the grid and then that rolls back your meter. That credits your account in a volume metric method. So basically you get credited in kilowatt hours for every kilowatt hour you put back onto the grid, And that’s a great tool just for for promoting solar and it’s worked really, really well, but it’s very blunt.
Eric: (11:16) And so it actually disincentivizes putting any other types of technologies like energy storage batteries on, into your system mainly because the grid is acting as your battery. and then also it doesn’t really promote strategic deployment of things like solar or batteries. It’s just kind of so you can connect and you can put it back onto the grid, but there’s no difference in how your energy is valued based on location or time. So what New York is doing is replacing that with what they’re calling the value of distributed energy resources. It’s part of their whole statewide renewing the energy initiative and basically that breaks down any energy that you export into a number of different components. So there is an energy component, basically the hourly wholesale value of electricity at the moment that you’re exporting. There was a capacity component which is set monthly, so same as the demand charges that a commercial building would pay.
Eric: (12:15) There’s a locational bonus if you’re in a really dense area, there is a value for essentially the greenness of the power, like the renewable energy credit, so you get an environmental value is what they call it. And then if you include storage, you get a demand reduction value, basically trying to assign an incentive to put storage in because it helps the utility for any upgrades to their distribution grid. So you add all these together and that gets you your new export value. Any energy you use immediately is essentially still worth your retail rate because it’s never goes through your meter. But any energy that is exported to the grid gets measured and valued at your new rate. In some sample calculations it’s anywhere from one half to two thirds the value. So it’s definitely less so it’s kind of a compromise between solar installers and people who want to put solar in. And utilities who are losing money on lost revenue or independent power producers who are losing money on people producing their own energy and using the grid just as a service.
Kelly: (13:23) Which is an interesting piece, right? Because the utilities are actually sort of required to fund different energy efficiency opportunities in some cases. So they have this sort of struggle I suppose.
Eric: (13:36) Yeah, it’s a given to take for sure. So if the value now of the power that’s produced on site by your solar system is entirely dependent on what percentage of your overall usage you are you actually covering. And then how closely does it match your load profile. So, if you’re only producing a tiny percentage of what you actually use, you’re probably never exporting. And so the value of the energy you generate is still the same as it was before, as you increase towards 100 percent, you need to match your own low profile more and more to get closer to the traditional type of net metering to your actual retail rate. So this kind of incentivizes putting storage in indirectly as well. So, you’re going to want to increase your self-consumption of Pv, which battery storage can help with, or if you knew that you have to export, like you’re going to produce more in this week, then you can possibly use, it encourages you to export at the peak times on your grid. So let’s say in your region of con Ed, your peak usage is at seven to 11 or something like that and encourages you to put it out onto the grid, which then helps con Ed deal with congestion on the grid at that time.
Kelly: (14:47) Great. Yeah. And Con Ed being the utility in New York?
Eric: (14:49) Yes. Consolidated Edison.
Kelly: (14:52) And that’s interesting. And I’ve heard of some issues in other locations that maybe haven’t incentivized storage. I think it’s referred to as duck curve. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2: (15:06) Yeah, so New York is kind of looking forward to that issue or they’re not really there yet. They don’t have enough solar, but the duck curve is what happens potentially when you have a really high penetration of solar on your grid. So California and Hawaii are dealing with this right now. essentially the issue is in the summertime when your grid peak usages in the later afternoon when AC is cranking up at home, when people are starting to come home and use their TVs, turn lights on, solar is coming offline because the peak solar is going to be in the middle of the day. So a solar loss coming offline and load is going up. You’re not only turning other generators on to compensate for the loss of the solar, you’re also turning generators on to meet that new excessive load. So the ramp up in the afternoon is just huge.
Eric: (15:54) And the shape that you see is small peak in the morning, a big dip when the solar is cranking, then this huge spike and a massive ramp. and the main way that they’re dealing with that is turning on gas peaker plants. So you’re using this less efficient method of burning gas compared to a combined cycle gas plant to meet this huge ramp and load that you have, and you’re losing some of the benefits of putting all the solar on the grid and the first place. So the idea is if you can put more storage on the grid, you can soften that difference between the solar peak and the grid peak, transfer some of that load over, and help the grid that way. So New York is trying to create a kind of early market based approach to incentivize more distributed storage on their grid. California’s approach is a little more like telling their large utilities that they have to put storage on the grid.
Kelly: (16:52) Okay, great. And is anybody else pioneering this distributed storage solution outside of New York?
Eric: (17:01) So New Jersey and Massachusetts are, I don’t know the specifics of their policy, but they’re putting in some aggressive storage components under their energy policy, beyond that, it’s still fairly new. I think California and the states we’ve talked about are really the front runners. Okay. Interesting.
Kelly: (17:20) Okay. Interesting. And the other buzz word I’ve been hearing, or a buzz phrase I suppose, is community solar. What are your thoughts?
Eric: (17:31) So from a technical standpoint, community solar isn’t really any different than any other small commercial or large commercial PV system. It’s really just an innovative ownership structure. So the idea is that there’s a lot of people that have obstacles to being able to participate in the solar revolution. If you don’t own your place and you can’t put solar on your roof, if you do own your place, but you live in a condo or a co-op and you can’t just put solar on the roof. There’s not enough roof space to go around for all the people that live in your building. If you don’t have a good roof, if you don’t have access to the money that it costs to install the system, or the credit to do a long-term lease, for any number of reasons there are obstacles that prevents you from going solar.
Eric: (18:18) Community Solar basically allows people to pool their resources and precious solar from a centralized location in their community. By community I mean it has to be in their utility region and in their grid operator region. So if you live in New York City, it has to be in the five boroughs, wherever you buy it. If you live in Westchester County, you would have to be up there, even though they’re both con Ed, you have to be in your own region as well. So basically it’s an innovative ownership structure to get around the obstacles that we talked about and expands the market to more people, and lets more people go solar and overcome all these issues.
Kelly: (19:02) Sounds great. Great. And so if I invite you back on this podcast in five years, what are we going to be talking about then?
Eric: (19:15) If you invite me back on, I’d say number one: how was the market affected by the ramp down of the ITC – that is the investment tax credit. So there’s a sunset clause it scheduled it to kind of fall off by 2023. How is that affecting everything? Number two: what sort of progress has been made on energy storage? How has the cost come down on that? Number three, I would say, how have California and Hawaii and other states dealt with the duck curve issue? Can they get to really high penetrations of solar? And number four was VDR, the value of distributed energy resources- the New York program. Was that successful? Is everybody happy still? And then lastly, what’s happening with community solar? Has it been as great as everyone thought it was going to be? The potential looks really huge and it can expand the market and we’ll see if that is actually achieved.
Kelly: (20:12) Well, it sounds like we have our agenda cut out for it. Thank you So much for being on.
Speaker 3: (20:17) thank you so much. Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www dot swinter dot com slash podcast and check out the episode show notes. buildings that beyond is brought to you by steven winter associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. Our production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, myself, and heather Breslin. Thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
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.
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.
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 affected in buildings. And it’s tobacco smoke, right? Which, again, something not regulated by code per se. Maybe regulated by covenant or something other than a code or municipalities. Biological contaminants. So that’s most often things like mold. And again, code not necessarily addressing it. Combustion byproducts, which may be addressed by code.
Robb: (08:25) To a certain degree, yeah. If you have combustion equipment in a building, there are certainly requirements how you need to vent it safely.
Maureen: (08:33) Human health is also affected by household products and practices and that’s really tough to control. But that’s where those consumer warnings, like the proposition 65 kind of come in like, hey, maybe air fresheners aren’t the best idea in the world. Right. That’s an example, but there’s lots of, you know, flame retardants in your couch and stuff like that. That are known carcinogens, basically.
Robb: (08:56) Known- really accepted pretty much across the board? I mean, not just in California or is it a range?
Maureen: (09:03) I’m sure there’s a lot of ambiguity in there. I think that, I, for one, am willing to trust some of the folks that have done the research, like the healthy buildings resources at the center for healthy buildings, places like that. I don’t know. I mean, yes, we could investigate every single one ourselves, but as practitioners, I don’t think we have the time, the funding, the bandwidth to do that. So yeah, we’re kind of accepting some of these proxies, especially the ones that are cited in multiple sources by multiple sources and multiple locations. So we’re kind of starting at the high level there. And toxic materials I think is going to continue to pRobbably change the most in the near future as those things are defined a little bit differently. We’ve really had this approach in this country where all materials are innocent until proven guilty unlike, you know, drugs or food or other things, which from my limited understanding of those industries are sort of guilty until proven innocent.
Maureen: (10:06) It’s absolutely the opposite in building materials. It’s like slander if we say that, you know, vinyl is bad for us until it’s been proven in multiple lawsuits. Another big one on this top 10 toxic things from CDC is radon. And you mentioned that briefly, it’s a huge pRobblem in the northeast as well as other parts of the country. And this is one where it’s really tricky because the EPA recommended levels for Pico Curies per liter are not what’s recommended by the health entities. So this is a place where for all intensive purposes, code is in conflict with what health people are recommending. They’re recommending two or lower. The World Health Organization has figured out that if you dropped the number from four to two, you would cut the instances of lung cancer caused by radon in half.
Robb: (11:03) Now with radon in this, I don’t want to go down a rabbit hole, but it’s tricky to monitor radon down at levels that low. I understand. I thought one of the reasons it got stuck at four is because we can’t really measure more accurately below that with affordable tools. When everybody wants to buy a house, you get the little packet. Those aren’t maybe as accurate, but maybe that’s, maybe, that’s a red herring
Maureen: (11:27) I think there are questions around the accuracy. The radon professional I hired at my house told me, for example, in my conditions where we’ve got humidity in the basement, which is one of the places I wanted to test, because it’s outside the condition envelope- He told us to use the, scintillation liquid tests instead of the activated carbon tests. So there’s some things you can do with those home tests, but yeah. And, and it changes over time. It changes seasonally, so you kind of have to stay active a little bit and keep participating in your own personal radon monitoring if you want to maintain safe levels.
Robb: (12:11) Yeah. And that’s something I think we talked about. Well, we’ll talk about that when we want to talk about what do we do? And there’s proven things that are bad for us, right? There are some proven practices that are good for us. We have to go beyond code. You have to embrace some programs. And I know you’ve gone through several programs in respects to health and indoor air quality, and they’re not all the same.
Maureen: (12:42) They’re not all the same. I mean the one that’s pRobbably at the top of the list in terms of people’s familiarity, if they’d been watching this conversation develop over the last five years is WELL Building Standard. It’s something that is aggressive, thorough, addresses all aspects of health as has been determined by the international well building institute. So everything from the food that’s offered in buildings, to the ventilation, and the other things that we’ve been talking about, and the materials for sure- they get into water quality, which very few other green building rating systems do. And one of the things that they always sort of tout, one of the statistics, actually comes from the Center for Disease Control. It talks about what the various social determinants of health are for an individual. And they are citing this group of studies that talks about the fact that your genetics actually only makes up about 5% of your health outcomes, which is not what we would instinctively think, right?
Maureen: (14:02) You’d ask people what’s gonna determine your health and they think, “oh, it’s got to be like, you know, 60% genetics and 40% lifestyle choices.” Nope, it’s not. The Center for Disease Control is saying that genes or your biology are less than 5%. Your lifestyle is around 20%. The medical care you receive is about 15%, and your physical and social environment, which is where you live- discrimination, income, your gender, all that stuff- is at least 55%. So the catchphrase is like, it’s not your genetic code, it’s your zip code.
Robb: (14:41) Do those one more time real quickly
Maureen: (14:46) Sure so genetics and biology is less than 5% of your health outcomes. Lifestyles responsible for about 20%, the medical care you get is about 15%, and then your physical and social environment is 55%. Buildings lie there. I mean, how big a portion of that is, you know, I can’t say, but it’s pRobbably bigger than your genetics. Right? So, I mean, that’s the kind of thing that really spurred me to start looking at this and figuring out what we can do, because pretending that we’re not having an effect on people’s health in the building science industry, in the architectural or engineering or buildings development industries, is false. We don’t know where to start, so we do nothing. And that is where I think that these rating systems and so on are valuable.
Maureen: (15:47) And I’m not necessarily saying do the whole rating system, but I’m saying if you don’t have the time to research all of these aspects to the zillions degree yourself, refer to these as tools, compare them to each other, pick out the parts that seem to apply the best to your project or your circumstance or what you can control in a project, and then do something. Right. So that’s kind of what I advocate for. So if you think water quality in your building might be worth exploring, WELL Building Standard is the only one that seems to have much of a reference at all for water quality. So use theirs. I don’t know if it’s the best. I don’t know if it’s the ultimate, but it exists. It’s clearly written down and you can test for it. So it’s practicable I guess. So that’s why I would recommend that, but it’s not the only one for sure. Fit Well is an interesting one that’s getting a lot of traction. It’s a lighter touch than WELL, totally different organizations, but similar in that it attempts to address these various health factors. It was originally designed for commercial office buildings, but now they’re branching out into residential versions and things like that. it’s designed to be more of an entry level. Like if WELL is let’s say the platinum standard, fit well is sort of the, “I don’t know what to do, where do I start?” Start here.
Maureen: (17:26) So that’s, that’s a program to consider. And then I think it’s important to recognize that things that have been around for quite a while, including the LEED family of rating systems, including enterprise green communities, those have all kinds of health elements baked into them. Some as prerequisites, some as optional points. So if you actually look at those top 10 CDC risk factors of buildings and how they affect human health, and you map it against something like the Leed rating systems, they do something for every single one of those aspects, but it might be optional. It might be a prerequisite. So just because you’re getting one of those certifications doesn’t mean that you’ve necessarily built an optimally healthy building because you can skirt certain ones of them and you can do other things well, but then drop some major pieces of the puzzle. However, if you wanted to, you could use the guidance that’s in those rating systems to build a pretty healthy building.
Robb: (18:28) And Energy Star has one too, right?
Maureen: (18:32) They do, indoor air plus. It was designed to be an accompaniment, and that’s very interesting because these pieces are all a little bit different. These rating systems are a little bit different. Indoor air plus was written for builders to read and implement themselves. It’s residential, but it’s also very prescriptive. It’s like, “do this, do that, avoid this, put in that” which is kind of a nice place to start actually. What it doesn’t touch on, which is actually what WELL and Fit Well are super heavy on, is any of that sort of end-user choice about things like how are you actually going to operate your systems? What kind of furniture are you going to put in there? What kind of chemicals are going to be in that furniture? You know, those sorts of things. So the responsibility under that type of a program under indoor air plus really stops at the day that you turn over the keys.
Robb: (19:28) Yeah. And that’s a great point with that, as far as you know, it’s not just the specs you use to build the home. We talked about radon briefly because this is installing a passive radon vent is pretty typical in new construction. And then the idea, as you said, you know, you can test after construction and if you have a pRobblem you can add a fan and make it active and really mitigate radon. How many people follow up and do the testing to actually check for radon and see if they need to add a fan or do a more rigorous solution.
Maureen: (19:56) I mean, that’s one of the challenging things about health and buildings, is that it spans all the way through. And if you drop the ball anywhere between design and 15 years of occupancy, you can undermine what you set out to do. But that isn’t to say that we should put it all on the occupants, and sometimes that’s the trend, right? I mean, one of the topics I like to talk about, that’s a great example where design really matters, is the active design concepts about how buildings are designed in the first place to allow people to, and entice people to, move physically and engage in and have opportunities for exercise and have inviting stairwells. I tried to take the stairs out of a parking garage the other day and we kept getting stuck. We literally wound up back in the same place four times because we kept hitting dead ends right. And we were following the exit signs and we couldn’t get out. So that’s a design choice. That’s not the end user. End User was trying to do their part to walk up the stairs. And it’s not just about stairs, there’s a lot of pieces to that. I’m simplifying, but you know, that’s an example of why it kind of all starts in the beginning. But you gotta you gotta follow it all the way through.
Robb: (21:13) Excellent. Excellent. Huge topic. Any other big pieces? I’m sure we’re going to want to dive into more of this in future episodes.
Maureen: (21:23) I want to just encourage people not to be stymied by the fact that it is a huge topic. Pick something, pick one thing that peaks your interest and do it on your next project
Robb: (21:34) and manageable, it’s practical and manageable and you can do it. Yeah. Nice. So if we talk about this again in five years, what do you think we’ll be talking about? What will have changed?
Maureen: (21:45) Oh Man. I think, you know what? I think we’re going to see a lot of change around that material sector and I am imagining that things will start to cause cancer outside of the state of California.
Robb: (21:56) It’s also true on the sensor side of thing. We’re getting many more low cost, more affordable sensors so people have the capability to actually evaluate conditions a lot more.
Maureen: (22:06) That’s a great point. Yep. people will be taking more ownership of evaluating the health of their environments and then they’ll hold other entities including manufacturers and designers accountable
Robb: (22:19) and consumers can actually assess their indoor air quality. And make changes. Awesome. Thank you very much, Maureen.
Maureen: (22:31) Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 4: (22:37) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes. Buildings and Beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. The production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
Your Top 10 Passive House Questions, Answered
Jul 31, 2018
Featuring
Lois Arena
Lois Arena, Director of Passive House Services at Steven Winter Associates, Inc., possesses over 25 years of experience in the building science field and has extensive experience with new and existing buildings. Lois holds both US and international Passive House consultant certifications and is currently consulting on some of the largest and most difficult Passive House projects in the world. She has co-authored and presented training programs about energy efficient building practices to professionals in all sectors of the building industry and is regularly invited to present at conferences and private firms around the world to discuss the benefits of and road blocks to PH adoption. Read more
Extreme energy efficiency, superior thermal comfort, and ensured durability: these are the three major concepts behind the Passive House standard. First developed in Germany in the 1990’s, this building performance standard has evolved into a worldwide model for high performance construction which has been applied to a wide range of building typologies including residential, offices, hotels, schools, and industrial.
In this episode Robb is joined by Passive House guru, Lois Arena, as the two discuss some of the most frequently asked Passive House questions. They dive into the progression of the standard over the last 25 years, what types of projects can and have been certified, measures to reduce a building’s total energy demand to meet the Passive House standard, and many more related topics.
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.
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: (00:22) This episode I’m talking with Lois arena, who is an engineer and the Director of passive house services at Steven Winter Associates. And she’s in charge of, well, all things passive house at this company as you might tell from her title, but she’s really been involved in some of the really the biggest passive house projects the United states to date. And this conversation is really a big picture. It’s a little different. I asked her- we should do it passive house episode and she said, you know what, I have a list of FAQs that I answer 4,000 times a week. Let’s talk about those. So it’s very easy on my part. I just asked her FAQs, but here’s a primer on passive house with Lois.
Robb: (01:07) Thanks Lois. Thanks for being here. So this is a little different. Lois is really the passive house maven here at the Steven Winter Associates, she might use stronger in terms- “in charge of passive house” I believe I’ve read quite recently. But this session or this podcast is going to be a little different when we sat down, it’s like “what would make a good passive house podcast and you said “here’s the top 10 FAQs that I get about passive house 400 times a month.” And you actually have a little brochure that you had printed up, which I didn’t know about. So I was happy to read that and see that. So here we go. This is, this is the top several I picked and choosed and maybe I added on a two of my own. So first, what is passive house?
Lois: (02:04) Passive House is a building energy standard and it currently is the most stringent standard in the world. And it’s a performance based standard that gives you what I call an energy budget. So there’s an energy demand per square foot that you’re not allowed to exceed. And there’s one for heating, one for cooling, and then one for the whole building. All energy uses in the building.
Robb: (02:29) So is it energy consumption? Are there peak demand requirements also? This is like an energy consumption over the course of a year?
Lois: (02:36) It’s an annual energy demand growth. Yes. For all three categories.
Robb: (02:41) And that’s, that’s at its core. That’s what it is at its core.
Lois: (02:45) Yes.
Robb: (02:48) So key requirements, other than the energy demand?
Lois: (02:51) There are some key requirements. So they’re not just concerned with energy efficiency. They want to make sure the buildings are durable. So no moisture problems, no mold, no indoor air quality problems. And they also want to make sure that they’re comfortable. So they don’t want you to squeeze down the energy efficiency by say, a massive PV array to have a really poor envelope. So they focus on the envelope of the building first, they focused on comfort, durability, and then energy efficiency.
Robb: (03:17) Okay. Interesting. So envelope is the first target?
Lois: (03:22) Envelope is first.
Robb: (03:23) Okay. And air tightness is a big, big piece of that. I think?
Lois: (03:27) it’s a very big piece of that. Yeah. The passive house air tightness requirements, depending on what code or standard you’re comparing it to, is generally five to 10 times tighter than any other standard out there or code requirement. Yeah.
Robb: (03:39) Yeah. I remember 20 years ago before I was here, I was doing solar thermal systems, hydronic heating systems and somebody told me they did blower door test on their house and came back with one ACH 50 and I told him he was full of crap. There’s no way a house can be that tight. I was like obviously we can’t trust this guy at all. He’s smoking something. But that’s like, you know, until recently, I think it was like 0.6 ACH 50-air changes per hour, at 50 pascals. I thought they were shifting to an area or a or a per square foot of enclosure?
Lois: (04:22) They are. Well, there’s two different standards. Ones the U.S. Standard and one’s the international standard, the US split off from the international standard. When they did that, they went to solely a cfm per square foot of facade. And that’s for large buildings for the US. That’s 0.08 CFM per square foot of facade. So very, very tight. The international version, they were used to doing smaller buildings. .6 was their standard. As the building’s got bigger, they came up with a recommendation for buildings over, I think it’s probably 10,000 square feet actually. So not even that huge that they recommend that you go to 0.033 cfm per square foot of facade. And so for a building like Cornell, that’s almost, I think 200,000 square feet.
Robb: (05:12) This is a dormitory for Cornell medical school?
Lois: (05:15) This was the Cornell tech campuses student housing. So not really a dorm. It’s their tech campus in New York City on Governors Island. And so that air change rate actually equates to about 0.15 air changes per hour for building of that size. When you go down to 0.033.
Robb: (05:40) Okay. So you blew it away on that project. Other key requirements. Balanced ventilation. That was on your list of FAQs, and continuous insulation. Those three I think where the, ‘you got to get those right or you’re hopeless” right?
Lois: (05:58) Exactly. So the continuous insulation for durability, the air leakage actually was also for durability. When they first started the program over 25 years ago, they didn’t have that type of requirement and they wound up with homes that had mold and mildew on the walls. They had some massive failures and so they reevaluate it because air could get in, but then they couldn’t dry out because the heat flow through the walls was so low. So they determined from testing and analysis that they needed to go down to 0.06 for durability reasons. It wasn’t just for energy efficiency. So that’s where that developed from. And then the mechanical ventilation, obviously if you’re that tight, you got to provide some fresh air to people and it has to be balanced. Exhaust only systems won’t work. And it stresses the fans, right? You start whining, you using up more energy than you typically would if you’re depressurizing the building all the time.
Robb: (07:02) The fans will burn out the motors will burnout. So, what can be certified? This is also on your list.
Lois: (07:09) This is a common question. Yes. What can be certified, right? Yeah, actually anything can be certified that either has a heating or cooling system in it and that you can do a blower door test on. And so for example, something that we couldn’t certify, which was really interesting and sad because I wanted to do this project was, one of our developers asked us if we wanted to work on a project in Hawaii.
Robb: (07:35) And you said..
Lois: (07:36) Of course, and that product is mine. I’ll be the lead consultant on that one. And I will open a Hawaiian office if I need to.
Lois: (07:44) But it didn’t need cooling because of all of the ventilation there and the ventilation system is a passive ventilation system. We just open grills in the walls. So it made me want to move there, but we could not certify the project
Robb: (08:00) Yeah and that’s the question that’s on the list. But there are some climates where passive house is kind of moved, Hawaii being one, San Diego probably. So not only houses though, anything?
Lois: (08:16) Anything. We’re doing office space. Somebody has a dentist’s office certified down in Virginia, so it’s high rise. It’s low rise. It’s offices as any type of building you’re doing. We’re doing a factory in Sri Lanka, so anywhere, any type of building
Robb: (08:32) Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re doing like a portion of a high rise office building, a section of the offices within a really big building.
Lois: (08:44) Exactly. So in Boston there’s a project going in Winthrop square that is 55 story tower, 35 stories of that are residential, about four stories on the base are retail, restaurant, that sort of stuff. And then there’s 20 stories in between those two spaces that is office and so passive House Institute has agreed to do it as a pilot project because they haven’t really done a section in the middle section of a building like that before.
Robb: (09:12) It started with single family homes, yes?
Lois: (09:15) It started single family low rise. Yeah. Right.
Robb: (09:18) But evolved a lot from there. Okay. Next question on your FAQs, is what is the price premium for getting passive house?
Lois: (09:27) That is usually number one. You can always tell the developer in the room, you know, you’re like, ah, so that’s a tricky question because it all depends on where your baseline is.
Lois: (09:37) If you are a code minimum builder that does nothing more than code buildings, you have a lot farther to go, than if you are a typical leed silver builder and that’s your standard, you’re already doing stuff for energy efficiency, you’re already doing probably some good ventilation strategies. It may not be passive house level, but you’ve already got some good stuff in there. And you’ve already got better insulation levels, and to get to leed silver, you’ll need some good energy points. So it depends on where you start from. And it also depends on if you come with a building plan already set and say to me, “make this passive house” instead of a program and say, “look, I need a hundred units. It can’t be taller than this. I need some retail space,” and the designer is left with your budget to create a project that fits that budget.
Lois: (10:27) So we have estimates anywhere from zero additional costs because of those types of projects, to 15% is usually the high end. And that’s usually the person that comes to me with a set of plans and says, “make this one passive house” and we don’t want to change anything. So, you know, ventilation is going to be an ad because you don’t have to do supply, right. Ventilation’s an add, your windows are probably going to be more expensive. So you know, you don’t always have to go to triple pane windows, but you’re always have to go to a much better window than is very typical in the United States.
Robb: (11:03) So you primarily work on larger multifamily buildings, office buildings, very tall buildings. Yes. Cornell Tech was 26 stories. It was the first tower that tall and that big in the world to get certified.
Lois: (11:25) Yeah. And that sort of set the ground for all of these other people with large buildings coming and asking us to be certified.
Robb: (11:36) And all over the world. Oh my gosh. You’re going to Sri Lanka in two weeks?
Lois: (11:41) Dylan’s going to do the final blower door tests around the Sri Lanka factory. I’m going to Vancouver in two weeks, cause they’re adopting it as their code. So they need people who have done large buildings to come out and train some of their developers. So they’ve hired myself and some other consultants who’ve had experience on big buildings and were going out to do some pretty intensive two, three day workshops for their developers
Robb: (12:09) Nice. All right. After price: O&M. Are there big changes in operation and maintenance with passive house buildings?
Lois: (12:16) Generally, no. Generally you’re supposed to see lower maintenance costs because the building’s supposed to be more durable. You should see less rot, you should see less leakage. You should see, you know, less things that cause repair. The one area where you probably will have increased maintenance is in the ventilation system because the ERBs have filters that need to be replaced. So the extent of the extra maintenance depends on the type of ventilation strategy you choose. If you choose an individual ERB in every apartment versus centralized systems where you only have two or three, then you’ve got that many more filters to change if you’d go with the individual systems. So that’s where your increased maintenance would be.
Robb: (12:56) Makes Sense. And I mean, on the heating and cooling side, one would assume that the systems are smaller capacity, maybe lower costs, lower maintenance, that may not always follow.
Lois: (13:08) That’s the hook that passive house uses to try and tell you that it’s a no cost option. Right? Like it’s a balance. You save money on your heating and cooling, but you pay a little more on your shell. But for large buildings, that’s not really the case. Large buildings, these high density buildings, all the large buildings are high density office space, everything is very high density. They generally have very high internal gains compared to a residential building. So the cooling system doesn’t decrease, the heating decreases almost to nothing. But the cooling stays there. So your demand, your whole annual demand, could possibly stay the same. Probably won’t go up because there are specific measures you do take to try and minimize the amount of cooling, especially from exterior. You try and use a lot of bypass for free cooling from the ventilation system. You do employ strategies to try and mitigate the internal gains, but you’re not likely going to cut it even by 25% the size of your system, so you basically have the same, if you’re using the same system for heating and cooling, you did not decrease the size of your system. So for small projects, yes, you’ll save money on your heating and cooling.
Robb: (14:28) I’ve worked on a lot of smaller projects and they can get away, even low rise multifamily, can get away with much simpler heating and cooling systems. Now this one surprised me, this one you said is the most common question that you get about passive house. Can occupants open their windows? Seriously. We’re talking about cost and Iq and ventilation, and this is like, you get this all the time.
Lois: (14:58) All the time. People assume that because the building has to be so air tight, that the minute someone opens their window, it ruins the entire project. Its like “so well, you shouldn’t be able to open your windows. You can have operable windows” and we get in the biggest fights over this. This is like one of the silly things that’s so not true, but somehow has, you know, made its way through the little rumor mill about passive house and it’s absolutely not true. You are required in livable spaces, especially residences to provide operable windows. You have to, they want the occupants open the windows, to control their climate. They want the occupants to control their climate.
Robb: (15:42) All right. Speaking of speaking of windows, is there a restriction on the amount of glazing you can have in a passive house?
Lois: (15:49) Technically no. There’s no written “You cannot have greater than 30% window wall ratio”. What happens is, the more glass you have, the better the window and the better the shell has to become, right. Cause the window is usually the worst portion of your thermal envelope. So when you go to some of these taller buildings, especially the market rate ones where they want to have floor to ceiling glass, they pay the price for them.
Robb: (16:17) I’ve been to Vancouver once and Oh my God, everything is glass.
Lois: (16:21) Everything is glass, yeah. That’s what they’re fighting against right now. Yeah. That’s one of the big issues. So you wouldn’t, you probably couldn’t, in this climate, have an all glass building. You probably could in San Diego.
Robb: (16:34) Gotcha. Yeah. Very climate dependent. It’s all about the energy budget. What are the major roadblocks to passive house compliance?
Lois: (16:45) So again, it’s pretty climate specific because we have such an extreme climate here that especially for ventilation, in New England, in cold climates in general, you need energy recovery or heat recovery ventilation. We’re very limited on efficient systems, whether they’re individual or central systems. We only have one or two options for each
Robb: (17:11) That are certified or that workout in the modeling?
Lois: (17:15) That work out in the modeling and that have the type of controls and efficiency levels that you want, because you can’t, especially for individual ones, if the less efficient the ERV, the colder the air coming in, the more comfort problems you’re going to have with your occupants. So it’s really a huge concern. UL listing on these equipment, you need to make sure that they’re UL listed. We have very few that are. There’s a ton of great ERVs out there in the world. We just don’t have them in the United States. Canada has more options than we do. Yeah. And then the other part that we’re still seeing road blocks on, are small enough heating and cooling systems. I do hear that one heat pump manufacturer just came out with a 4,000 BTU head. We just got the notification today that that was released from the manufacturer.
Robb: (18:10) Oh so the one I saw was at a show. It wasn’t actually launched.
Lois: (18:15) It wasn’t lost yet. We’ve got the official.
Robb: (18:16) Ah so I was misled. I’ll be making some calls.
Lois: (18:22) They probably had all of their certifications by then, but I don’t think they had announced it to the public officially. So we just get the mass email. So that’s great news, but we need more. That’s one manufacturer.
Robb: (18:37) Yeah, absolutely. I agree. I mean that’s any building type. I mean you’re making the load smaller and smaller. And the way to heat and cool hasn’t changed enough, hasn’t caught up. What changes to standard practices will be needed to meet passive house criteria? The ceiling is the first thing that comes to mind.
Lois: (19:04) Yeah. We’re constantly in meetings and people are like, “that’s not how we typically do things.” So there’s a lot more attention to a really good durable, flexible tapes instead of just relying on clock. That sort of thing. Everybody on the job has to know what you’re trying to achieve. That’s one of the things you can’t just have your electrician come in and repulser your installation around wire and you know, holster the building assembly and then leave and not have at least somebody else on site.
Robb: (19:40) Don’t make fun of electricians. Plumbers do it too, contractors, carpenters.
New Speaker: (19:47) Everybody does it. Every trade needs to be on board. The other thing you need to do is, and I always thought this was funny because I, since I’ve gotten into passive house over the last eight years, I’ve heard so many people talk about the integrated design process and then I’d go to presentations and they’re like, you need to have these people on board early. And I’m like, well, isn’t that how everybody always works? That’s how every passive house project works. I mean, you’re not going to get there if you don’t. You got to have a contractor ready so that they can help you with pricing and help bring down the cost. You got to have your HVC contractor on board because they need to know that the loads are going to be low, the building’s going to be tested, it’s going to be inspected and they have to believe you that the loads are going to be low so that they size the equipment properly. So really you need your whole team, all your consultants on board at the beginning. So that’s, that’s another pretty big change to standard practice.
Robb: (20:34) That makes sense. Absolutely. What are the implications to the construction schedule?
Lois: (20:49) We get that question a lot. Coming from the northeast and in particular working in New York, the answer to that has to be, there’s absolutely no implications because they would never allow passive house in the borders of New York. If you told a construction team that you are going to delay their schedule by 10 weeks, 20 you know, whatever. I’ve had some of the consultants from Canada tell me that they tell the design team that they need to put the building process on hold between dd and cds for like, I don’t know, two months or so, so that they can go through the precertification process. And I go, no, no, we do not do that. We never say that. We are on board with the certifiers from the beginning. We’re constantly doing the analysis from the beginning and they looked at me like, well, what happens if there’s a big change again? Then we deal with it. But you can’t, you can’t slow construction team down by even two weeks. They would kill you. For half a day! You come in and you tell them there’s something wrong that they need to fix and, and it’s like, we’re going to do it now. Stay here. You’re going to sign off on it before you leave, you’re not leaving the site. There’s the occasion where a contractor changed what they were supposed to do in the field without asking, then they have to fix it. And so that has implications. But that’s not because it’s passive house. That’s because they didn’t do what was on the plans and their drawings and they didn’t come up with an acceptable solution and they did something wrong. So we have a couple of projects out there right now where one of the contractors did what they normally do instead of what was in their drawings. They just flew by the seat of their pants and now we have to go back and rip out some dry wall.
Robb: (22:50) Oh, this is probably my favorite. Are there conflicts between passive house and code requirements or other program requirements?
Lois: (22:58) Yes, there are. And it all starts with Ashrae 62.2. Now mind you, I am on the subcommittee for that standard, but I am a conscientious objector to many of the things that they require. Alot of it has to do with the kitchen, kitchen ventilation and the studies that some of the labs had been doing and the high levels of ventilation that they’re requiring, and it’s exhaust only systems that are the issue. They’re requiring certain high levels of kitchen exhaust and I keep trying to tell them, you’re not going to get any exhaust because these buildings are too tight. And even if you’ve only built the building to LEED, an apartment in the middle of an apartment building only has one exterior wall. Only a few CFM is going to come through that, the 100 CFM that they’re requiring for intermittent or the five air changes per hour for continuous is not going to come through the exterior envelope. It’s not going to be fresh air coming from the outside. It’s going to be from the neighboring apartments and that’s anti what they want. But that’s what’s going to happen. And we can’t convince that a passive house would like lower levels of ventilation but balanced and supply to all the living spaces and then exhaust from the kitchens and the bath. But it’s much lower than the codes and the ashrae standards in particular require. So there’s a conflict there. They don’t see our low levels of balanced ventilation as better than their high levels of exhaust-only, even though I think we’ve shown on multiple projects that high level doesn’t work when you don’t have to makeup air.
Robb: (24:39) And it’s different. It’s different for single family detached than Multifamily. Not that exhaust only is always okay in single family, but you know the exhaust is not coming from your neighbor. It’s not coming from the garbage chute. It’s coming from outside. If it was coming from a crawl space filled with radon, that’s bad. That’s a concern. But yeah, I mean exhaust only in big multifamily buildings, nobody knows where that air is coming from.
Lois: (25:07) Right. What we think is that, filtration is going to become a bigger part of the solution, but we don’t have that many great products out there yet that the lab’s feel comfortable would do a great job. And then again, it’s all based on maintenance. Right. All of these solutions are based on maintenance. Are you going to clean your filters? Because when you stop cleaning your filters, they don’t work either. So it’s one of the hardest ones to deal with. And most of the conflicts we have are with ventilation. It’s not really with anything else. You can talk about thermal breaks and the conflicts might be with your structural engineer, but there’s always ways to deal with it. The ventilation thing is one of those ones where there’s this constant battle. There’s line in the sand. Nobody’s really, nobody’s pleased.
Robb: (25:50) Yeah. It’s tricky. I don’t have an answer. I mean, I understand passive house. I mean they seem low to me, the pessimist requirements, but at the same time, yeah. Exhaust only in multifamily just doesn’t work. They know that.
Lois: (26:03) And how do you ventilate a 400 square foot studio apartment at five air changes per hour, and meet any kind of energy budget? You know what I mean? It’s just ludicrous.
Robb: (26:13) Well here’s a practical question. Can the capacity of a ventilation system be higher but not always run? So do the modeling for a lower capacity ventilation and if somebody wants more they can boost it.
Lois: (26:27) So very easy to do with individual ERVs. Yeah, much harder to do with central systems in large projects, but it can be done. I have spoken with people in the north, the northwest, that have been working on passive house projects and they put like things like inline booster fans in their bathrooms and so, and they have a variable speed drive on the central system that is supposedly responding to me boosting my bathroom. It takes a lot of controls and a lot more product, you know, a lot more pieces of equipment and people are weary of that. They would prefer to put in constant volume. Let’s balance that and get that to work and, but I think that that might be the next breakthrough. If we can do that effectively. Cost effectively. Practical. Yeah. I think it’s been shown that the boost when you’re cooking especially is important. Yup.
Robb: (27:23) Alright. We’ll solve that next week. Next time. Yeah. So those are all of your FAQs, which are good. Thanks. But I have two more questions and they’re not hard questions. Who is building passive houses and why? I mean the people that are doing it, who’s doing it and why.
Lois: (27:48) So we have a lot of affordable housing developers going to passive house.
Robb: (27:52) Is that just our clients or are you seeing that nationwide?
Lois: (27:57) Nationwide. We’re seeing a affordable housing agencies put it on tax credit applications. We’re seeing developers just come to us and it’s not necessarily because they’re getting incentives to do it. They see it as they’re owning the buildings, too. Right. So you have to understand that. So they’re paying part of the cost. So they see it as energy reduction. They’re also paying part of the heating for their tenants. So that is an awesome other energy reduction for them. But they are really committed to the people that live in their buildings. Yeah. and providing a low income, tenant with low energy bills, is really important to them. And comfort and durability and good indoor air quality. They’re just a wonderful Group of developers to work with.
Robb: (28:37) Yeah. In the 20 years that I’ve been doing it, it’s, it’s kind of mission driven groups that are really not just looking at the bottom line but really want to provide quality housing, quality buildings. It’s very gratifying to work with folks like that.
Lois: (28:52) And then we have mission driven market rate people that believe in it. They bought into the 50 by 80 or 80 by 50 challenges. Right. Like they want to reduce carbon. They live in cities, that’s their goal and they want to be part of that solution and they’re willing to be leaders in that. So we have a number of market rate clients that are pushing that as well. Yeah. Trying to differentiate themselves.
Robb: (29:20) So not incentive driven. Awesome. That is cool. And geography, I mean, we’re mostly in the northeast probably, but I mean nationwide. Do you have a feel for other hotspots? California? I mean, big cities?
Lois: (29:35) The Northwest. Yep. They’re a little more active there. Canada’s going crazy right now because of the codes. New York really is the driver, the city, the state, everybody’s behind this carbon reduction goal. Passive House is seen as one of the ways through, not the only way, but one of the ways through plus the whole push to net zero from everyone, everywhere, is passive house is seen as sort of like the first stepping stone, like getting your building energy use down by those metrics first. And then adding renewables and whatever other technology. And so it’s not necessarily the certification that is so important, it’s the just the measures, the principals. Yeah.
Robb: (30:18) cool. Last question. If we talk again in five years, what are we going to be talking about?
Lois: (30:26) How stupid we were that we didn’t know this wasn’t actually going to work this particular way. Like for instance, you know, we thought, okay, it’s supposed to reduce energy use by this much and maybe to tenants are so comfortable they’re turning up their heat and want to be, you know, it’s that whole thing
Robb: (30:48) Or the modeling might not be quite as accurate as one might hope.
Lois: (30:52) How often does that happen? Never happens. Come on. Modelers are fantastic. What we’re really hoping for right now is that all of our projects are going to employ some sort of monitoring. Because we are expecting some of these buildings to not perform the way that we hope they will. But if we can’t tell people why, then we’ve failed. Yeah, right. We just need to be able say, okay, here’s the problem. We need to look at this differently and move forward.
Robb: (31:26) A lot of the technology, like the heat pumps, the new ventilation systems, they’re just lot of new stuff being installed in building for five years being maintained to different levels of rigor.
Lois: (31:42) One of the biggest issues is the maintenance staff education levels with this new technology as well? Yeah. Like they’re used to maintaining. We are working with the school construction authority in New York to evaluate what it means to go to this level of efficiency. Not Necessarily certifying to passive house, but these levels of efficiency, and they constantly talk about education of their current maintenance staff and what their maintenance staff will use. Even the schedules that are in the building management systems for turning things on and off. They’ll override them quite a few times because they don’t want to be dealing with turning them on and off for special groups. So they’ll just put them on 24/7. So you go look at the utility bills and you’re like, this is not what we designed. Yeah, so a lot of education is needed.
Robb: (32:33) Yeah. Hopefully these will be under a little bit of a microscope to inspect them, so yeah, we’ll figure all that stuff out. Cool. Anything else? Any other big picture passive house pieces. We covered a lot. We’re all experts. Sweet. Thanks Lois.
Speaker 4: (32:59) Thank you for listening to buildings and beyond. For more information about the topics discussed today, visit www.swinter.com/podcast and check out the episode show notes. Buildings at beyond is brought to you by Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. Our professionals have led the way since 1972 and the development of best practices to achieve high performance buildings. I production team for today’s episode includes Dylan Martello, Alex Mirabile, Lee and myself. Heather Breslin, thank you for listening and we’ll see you next week.
We are excited to introduce our new podcast, Buildings and Beyond! Join us as we explore how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health. Check out the trailer to find out what we have in store for season 1. And be sure to subscribe to Buildings and Beyond so you don’t miss any of our upcoming episodes!
Robb: 00:06 the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment
Kelly: 00:10 by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health.
Robb: 00:14 My Name’s Robb Aldrich
Kelly: 00:15 and I’m Kelly Westby. We’re both engineers with Steven winter associates, which we lovingly refer to as SWA around here. Robb and I will be kind of alternating as hosts for this podcast. We’ll cover a wide range of topics related to high performance buildings and we hope we can help you make buildings better.
Robb: 00:32 For myself, there’s so much I don’t know about buildings. Energy is really my main focus but there’s so many interactions with indoor air quality materials, water use, and I have tons to learn about accessibility, resiliency and there are more and more new building technologies out there that I really want to learn more about.
Kelly: 00:49 So Robb, what do we have coming up this season?
Robb: 00:52 So for this first season while we’re getting our feet wet, in this whole podcast thing, we’re going to talk to several of our colleagues here at SWA, Steven Winter Associates. We’re hoping to have eight episodes on topics such as net zero energy, passive house, and smart buildings.
Kelly: 01:06 And I’ll be interviewing you on air source heat pumps. I am looking forward to all of our discussions this season, but I’m also looking forward to going beyond, if you will, and talking to lots of other industry professionals, like developers and code officials or architects, engineers, in future seasons. So we really hope you’ll subscribe to this and future seasons of buildings and beyond.
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