IES’s Charley Stevenson and Matt Root will be on hand as Built Environment Plus holds its 2022 Green Building Showcase on Oct. 27, 5-9:30 p.m. The event happens at Harvard University’s Science and Engineering Complex (SEC), the BE+ 2021 Green Building of the Year. IES was Living Building Challenge consultant for SEC, researching 5,600 building materials using IES’s healthier materials management platform, Red2Green. Join us for a night of project boards, presentations, discussions and awards for everyone involved in designing, operating and constructing the built environment, which is sponsored in part by Red2Green.
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By Matt Root
The details of better building are well understood, but when considering the variety of options it’s all too easy to get tangled with needless complication. Yes, parametric energy models provide cool visuals, but since we already know the basics, let’s take a look at some ways to increase performance and keep it simple.
Well-established strategies and ambitious but achievable metrics provide us with some key starting points. Every project and each project team is different, and we all know the devil is in, well, the details.
Here are ten easy steps, and we note that there is flexibility in all of them:
- Make it airtight: 0.10-0.15 cfm75/sq ft shell area
- Detail continuous exterior insulation:
- Aim for a true R15-20ish in the walls
- Small things can make a difference—such as using thermally broken attachment clips
- Ensure that there are no major structural thermal bridges
- Stick to a modest window to wall ratio—24%ish is good
- Look at higher performance windows
- You don’t necessarily have to go to triple glazed, but doing so may allow higher window to wall ratios
- Employ high efficiency air source heat pumps for heating and cooling
- Air to water heat pumps are also worth a look
- Specify 85%+ high efficiency ERVs
- For residential units, ensure that fresh air is routed directly to each bedroom (as opposed to the return side of the fan coils)
- Minimize ductwork on roof
- Minimize the DHW loads
- Location, location, location—and simple here means establishing the best possible building orientation for solar
- Design for unit compartmentalization (0.30 cfm50/sqft)
- Whole-building sealing is essential, but don’t overlook sealing up gaps between adjacent residential units
Of course every step won’t be applicable or achievable in all cases, but giving each of these basic ideas due consideration at the outset covers the essential factors for a high performance building. When we begin a project by getting clear on the goals and appropriate standards such as these, we provide valuable parameters—creating a solid framework that the design and construction teams can leverage to perform their finest work.
by Carlye Woodard
When asked to participate in the Living Future 2022 Conference panel presentation on the Volume Certification process IES developed with Williams College, I’ll admit I was skeptical about filling the allotted time with relevant information. Living Building Challenge (LBC) Volume Certification requirements had only recently been agreed upon, and represented a relatively small adjustment to IES’ overall process. The advantages of reusing compliant and audited products from a certifying campus project on subsequent campus projects seemed clear. Incorporating these previously researched and approved products into the campus standard just makes good common sense.
By shifting my thinking to the perspective of the audience—imagining an architect, CM, or college planning director just beginning the process of designing to LBC standards—I recognized that the process we have developed and the perspectives we have earned from multiple projects are perhaps the most valuable information I could provide. Fortunately, the subject of process and best practices is something any of us on the IES team could talk about for hours! Realizing the true scope provided a new challenge: condensing the wide angle view into the time constraints of the presentation.
The materials research process, whether or not it is for a LBC certifying project, can seem complicated and involved, particularly for the uninitiated. The work does not fit neatly into any spreadsheet, which is why Red2Green, our healthier materials management platform, is so essential to our work. The value of being able to track decisions, communications, research progress and results in real time is incalculable in the process of determining as many approvable products as possible, particularly when we can accomplish this prior to spec writing.
By including clear product specificity in the specs, avoiding general performance language, and only including products that have been vetted and approved for use, we provide clarity to the trade partners and subcontractors to help them feel confident that they are understanding and following the goals of the project. As a follow up step, our “pre-submittal” process provides the confirmation that each product considered at this stage has been vetted and meets the requirements of LBC.
Future Williams College projects, including renovations and routine maintenance, will benefit from the investment in LBC for capital projects, which directly inform the updated college standards and improved specs. Each and every subsequent campus project will have a head start with a greater number of healthy, LBC compliant product options, building upon past efforts to meet the college sustainability and healthy environment goals. Stakeholders at the college can be confident that the lessons learned from LBC certifying capital projects are applied throughout the campus.
The advantages of the Volume Certification agreement that Williams College has pursued and begun to implement seem obvious. With the benefit of data and strategy based on years of experience, the process by which we choose, research, approve and document products that meet the healthy materials goals of the college is involved, but has proven to be achievable, effective and replicable. The truth about striving to use healthier building products in every building project—ultimately the goal of a Volume Certification process—is that we now know how to do it well. And in time, perhaps, it will all sound like common sense.
IES will join representatives of Williams College to speak at the International Living Future Institute’s (ILFI) 16th annual Living Future unConference, taking place May 2-13. IES’ Charley Stevenson, principal, and Carlye Woodard, project coordinator, will join Williams’ Mike Evans, associate director, Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives, and Mike Wood, assistant director, Planning, Design and Construction, to present Integrated Materials Management: Volume Strategies for Maximizing LBC Materials Petal Efficiency. The session will be held May 11 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET.
Focusing on healthier materials, Integrated Materials Management (IMM) explores lessons gleaned from the decade-long sustainability collaboration between Williams and IES. Attendees, including owners, architects and builders, will learn how IMM strategies can leverage the gains of LBC Materials Petal certification, particularly when employing LBC Volume Certification. The Volume process allows owners and project teams to economically and efficiently scale their certification efforts and results over multiple building projects.
Covered topics include recognizing the vital role of contract documents in achieving specific materials goals and reducing risks; identifying key responsibilities for various stakeholders; and choosing target metrics to guide the process and assess results. Participants will leave knowing how to gauge project performance and ensure continual process improvements.
With a theme of Restoration + Justice, ILFI promises “ten days of inspiring keynotes and plenaries, collaboration and daily networking sessions, and more than 80 educational sessions.” The online conference will offer opportunities for “learning and networking in ten tracks, including Climate Justice, Resilience, Zero Carbon, Innovation in Ownership, Beauty+Biophilic Design, and more.”
As many of us age, some start to wonder why we don’t feel so good anymore. Millions experience chronically occurring diseases and conditions that have developed in us over our lifetimes. Health care costs alone, according to PLANSPONSOR magazine, are estimated at $285,000 for a retired couple! How can this be? What is causing this spike in health care expenses for retirees? How do we get so sick and what can we do about it?
On Wednesday morning, IES team members Lisa Carey Moore and Amy Johns join forces with Kalin Associates architect Lisa Goodwin Robins for Views From the Front Line: Incorporating Healthier Materials, during ABX19 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Moderated by Bergmeyer Associates architect Casey Brownell, the group will consider healthy materials implementation at all project phases.
NORTH ADAMS, MA—Finding building materials that won’t harm human health is now simpler and easier with the introduction of Red2Green (R2G), a new platform that slashes the time and effort required to pursue the ambitious requirements of the Living Building Challenge by crowdsourcing and documenting key materials health data for building and construction materials.