Buildings + Beyond Podcast

Mainstream demand for highly efficient, resilient, and cost-effective buildings is greater than ever before. More people are looking to integrate zero energy design and construction strategies without having to sacrifice modern conveniences and amenities. So, how do we implement solutions that enable us to use less energy… without feeling like we’re using less energy?

To answer this question, we sit down with SWA sustainability experts, Paula Zimin and Karla Butterfield, to discuss what it means to achieve zero energy status and learn how we can accomplish this among various building typologies and sectors. Join us for this exciting and in-depth look at zero energy buildings! 

Episode Guests: Paula Zimin & Karla Butterfield

Definitions:

Programs & Certifications:

Reports:

SWA Resources & Net-Zero Projects:

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.

BuildingEnergy NYC, October 3-4

The BuildingEnergy NYC Conference + Trade Show is NYC’s premier event for professionals and practitioners in the fields of high-performance building, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. SWA will have various speakers presenting on an array of building energy topics. Come visit us! 

NAPHN Conference, October 17-21

Join North America’s Passive House community as it convenes in a surprising hotspot of Passive House design and construction: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. SWA has four sessions at the NAPHN conference on a variety of Passive House topics. Hope to see you there!

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

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 www.swinter.com.

Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Improving the Efficiency of Your Single-Family Home

Guest: Srikanth Puttagunta

CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO SUBSCRIBE

Kelly:                                  00:06                   welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb:                                00:09                   the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly:                                  00:13                   by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health.

Robb:                                00:18                   I’m Robb Aldrich

Kelly:                                  00:19                   and I’m Kelly Westby

Robb:                                00:21                   and before we get into this week’s episode, we wanted to let you know about a couple of upcoming events and Dylan Martello, who was a passive house consultant here at SWA and is really instrumental in putting this podcast together, helping to produce the podcast. He’s going to be speaking at both of these conferences and he’ll give you a little bit of Info about.

Dylan:                                00:40                   Thanks Robb. The first is building energy NYC conference taking place on October 3rd and fourth in New York City. The conference, which is presented by Northeast Sustainable Energy Association or NESEA, n e s e a, has become a staple for professionals and practitioners in the field of high performance building, energy efficiency, and renewable energy. We’ve been to the building energy conferences for many years now and my colleagues and I are looking forward to returning for another great event. Visit NESEA.org For more info.

Robb:                                01:09                   Yeah. I’ve been involved with NESEA for 20 years or so, and really good people and I’ve learned tons at NESEA conferences over the years.

Dylan:                                01:17                   Next is the North American Passive House Network Conference and expo taking place at the David l Lauren’s convention center in Pittsburgh, Pa. Join US October 17th through the 21st where we’ll be speaking on a variety of topics related to passive house visit naphnconference.com for more info.

Robb:                                01:35                   Thanks Dylan. This week we’re talking about zero energy buildings, ZEB’s which is an acronym, probably a lot of people hear or see more. I certainly do. It’s a big topic. We don’t get to the bottom of it, but we do our best. I’m talking with Paula Zimin who is director of sustainable building services here at Stephen Winter associates, she is an RA, but also does really a lot of energy modeling and she focuses on larger buildings, larger multifamily buildings, commercial buildings, and institutional buildings. And I’m also talking with Karla Butterfield, who is a sustainability director here at SWA and she’s all about residential from single family residential homes all the way up to large, tall multifamily buildings and everything in between. And she does a lot of work with certification programs, zero energy ready home, which we talk about here, LEED national green building standard among several others. So this episode really we talk about all types of buildings, small to large, different programs, different systems, different paradigms. And even, I think we started the episode with the discussion of different meanings of zero energy buildings. What does this really mean? So let’s get to the end.

Robb:                                02:57                   Welcome Karla and Paula Thanks for being here. So zero energy buildings is a big topic. It’s, I think even getting into kind of the mass media. I see it in newspapers and stuff, not only in the magazines and journals and conferences I’ve been going to for a decade or whatever. So it’s a growing topic, growing in popularity. And you guys have certainly dabbled in it and it’s a growing trend.

Karla:                                 03:29                   I would say it was a Buzzword tenish years ago, where most people in the industry knew what zero energy buildings or zero energy construction meant, and then went through kind of a controversial period of what does that really mean and what do we really call it. But you’re right, it is in the mainstream now. And most people who are at all familiar with the built environment know what zero energy means.

Robb:                                03:56                   So what does zero energy mean, Paula and zero energy building?

Paula :                               04:00                   So I think in my world, because I work more in the commercial sector and larger buildings, zero energy buildings, gets limited to a building scale, which can be very difficult to do. So in my world, I think that we’re approaching zero energy on a broader scale at the community scale. So it’s certainly a low energy building a focus. There might not be the ability to get to zero energy, but there is certainly the drive to how can we as a community or a larger set of buildings get to zero.

Robb:                                04:35                   So I mean it seems that at the core level we’re talking about very efficient buildings, very low energy needs, be it electricity or fossil fuel or wood or whatever low energy needs and you can meet all of those energy needs with renewable energy, wind or solar or whatever. That’s kind of the general idea?

Karla:                                 04:57                   That’s the general idea. A lot of people will argue there’s no such thing as a zero energy building because of the fact that you are using a fuel and so it’s really a net zero or net neutral fuel building.

Robb:                                05:14                   So that was, yeah, so I’ve had people like jump down my throat when I say it’s a zero energy building and they say, no, no, no, no NET zero energy building. And I actually seriously don’t, I don’t understand that distinction

Karla:                                 05:24                   Right. And then saying net zero energy also is somewhat offensive to some people. So they want to say, you know, what we are is we’re, we’re neutral with fuel. So one fuel offsets the other.

Robb:                                05:35                   So if you use some natural gas, you generate even more electricity from PV or something to offset that natural gas.

Karla:                                 05:44                   Right. And that’s easier to do in low rise buildings. Especially single family buildings are really small. Multifamily buildings, like Paula indicated. Harder to do in more commercial or high-rise buildings because you don’t have enough room for that PV to offset if it’s on your roof. There’s a lot of other solutions for that too. I’m sure you’re going to ask that question in a bit.

Paula :                               06:04                   A lot of controversy is that even though you’re a net zero building, you’re still using the grid. And how does the grid get its energy? Usually through fossil fuels. So if you’re really talking about a carbon neutral building, that’s very hard to do from the building scale unless if your grid is carbon neutral. So unless if you’re grid is hydro or some other, you know, non fossil fuel source. So you could also be off the grid potentially to be carbon neutral. So it’s a difference between a net carbon neutral building versus a net zero energy building and your relationship with the grid.

Robb:                                06:44                   Okay. Okay. So as a catch-all term “zero energy buildings, “you’re going to get disagreement about that?

Karla:                                 06:51                   It all comes down to how you want to define it. You have to define what zero energy means to you, whether it’s zero carbon, net zero, or some other sort of definition.

Robb:                                07:06                   Which is not, they’re not necessarily zero energy costs.

Karla:                                 07:08                   I think to keep pushing this into the 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.

Robb Aldrich

If there is anyone that knows heat pumps, it’s Robb Aldrich. Robb has over 20 years of experience focusing on energy systems in buildings including evaluating new technologies, modeling building performance, optimizing designs, and researching new products and systems. Robb works with builders and design professionals across the country to make residential buildings healthier, more efficient, less costly to build and operate, and more comfortable. Read more

Air-source heat pumps (ASHPs) are a booming business. In the Northeast, manufacturers report that sales of residential systems have increased by 25-35% per year over the past 5-10 years. We’ve seen more and more systems being installed in all types of buildings.

On this episode of Buildings and Beyond, Kelly sits down with her co-host and Principal Mechanical Engineer, Robb Aldrich, to uncover the potential benefits associated with ASHPs and how to get the most from these systems.

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Kelly: (00:06)
welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb: (00:08)
the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:13)
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health.

Robb: (00:18)
I’m Robb Aldrich

Kelly: (00:19)
and I’m Kelly Westby. Around here when we think of air source heat pumps, We think of Robb Aldrich. He is a principal engineer and he’s been working at Steven winter associates since 2000, before that, he designed, installed and commissioned solar electric and solar thermal systems. But now he’s just mostly focused on researching new trends and technologies to make buildings more efficient. And we’ll get to hear a little bit today about his research on air source heat pumps. Welcome to buildings and beyond, Robb, it’s very good to have you here.

Robb: (00:54)
Thank you very much. It’s been a while.

Kelly: (00:58)
we are obviously going to talk about air source heat pumps and I guess my first question is why are we talking about air source heat pumps?

Robb: (01:07)
Boy, so 20 years ago, like when I was in Grad school or just started Grad school, the electric heating was just anathema. It was the worst possible thing in the world. Because generating electricity only happened at like 30- 35% efficiency and you know, much, much more resource efficient to burn fuels in buildings to get the heat from them.

Kelly: (01:36)
and that’s I think what our clients are saying to us now when we talk about air source heat pumps.

Robb: (01:40)
Yeah. Yeah. It could very well be, but it was 10-15 years ago when I started looking at some of the specs of these, what was then, a new generation of air source heat pumps and saw some pretty staggering efficiencies at relatively cold temperatures and its kind of blew my mind. So I mean a pump, I guess people probably know what a heat pump is, but a heat pump uses a vapor compression cycle to move heat from one place to another from outdoors to indoors in the winter and then backwards in the summer, like your fridge moves heat from inside the fridge into your kitchen, this moves heat from outdoors to indoors to heat your home. And historically, heat pumps- air source heat pumps, which is what we’re talking about today, rather than ground source heat pumps or water source heat pumps, air source heat pumps have historically been used further south where it’s warmer. Because they don’t- they didn’t- used to perform very well at cold temperatures. So in Florida, lots of air source heat pumps, you know, when the temperature got down to 30ish degrees or whatever, they switched over to electric resistance. And that didn’t happen all that often. So it wasn’t really a big energy hit. But up here it would be a big energy hit.

Kelly: (03:01)
we operate very often below that temperature

Robb: (03:04)
below 30 degrees. Yeah. So this was something that fascinated me. I was kind of incredulous of the performance, you know, the rate of performance of these systems. So I was keeping an eye on it for, well, for the past 10 or 15 years and watching how the products evolved and really was interested to see if we could actually measure performance to see if they lived up to their hype, their ratings.

Kelly: (03:31)
All right. Interesting. And maybe this is a step backwards, but that’s the lay the groundwork a little bit. Can you talk a little bit about the terminology that we use around water source heat or air source heat pumps and what the industry is calling things, and what you like to call things?

Robb: (03:47)
Yeah, there’s unfortunately there’s lots of different terminology that people use and I don’t pretend to be the authority on it, but I try to be at least consistent myself and do what I hear most other people do when they talk about it. So a mini split is a term that you may hear a lot. And to me mini split means mini, small capacity, and split. So you have an outdoor unit and an indoor unit. So like a window AC is not split. It’s packaged, everything’s in one package, you stick it through the wall and it cools inside. So split means you mean have an outdoor unit and an indoor unit and the outdoor unit, a lot of people still call the condensing unit. Because when you have an air conditioner that’s what it is. But when you have a heat pump, the condensers actually inside in the winter and the evaporators outside. So a lot of manufacturers call it the outdoor unit. So I try to also call it the outdoor unit. It’s more correct.

Kelly: (04:46)
but it can actually be inside sometimes

Robb: (04:49)
the outdoor unit?

Kelly: (04:50)
Yeah and ducted

Robb: (04:50)
no, no, no. The outdoor unit is going to be outside.

Kelly: (04:55)
Ah in VRF sometimes we see them ducted to the outside in some commercial projects

Robb: (04:59)
Ah, okay. Okay. Gotcha. So you suck the air right in and out. Huge louvers or fans. Right. Okay. Yep. Gotcha. So it’s almost outside. Very close. On the mini split front, sometimes I think quite a few people use the term mini split only to mean ductless systems. So most people are familiar with those. You’ll see the cassettes usually high up on the wall. They’re very common everywhere else in the world except the US but more and more common in the US. There’s no ducts it just sucks room air from the top and blows out the conditioned air from the bottom. So some people when they say mini splits, they mean ductless, but you can also have ducted mini splits, or what I call ducted mini splits, which have short lengths of duct to deliver air to a couple of rooms.

Kelly: (05:54)
Great. And then now that we’ve gotten all that under under our belts

Robb: (06:01)
And VRFS you mentioned VRFs, should we clarify?

Kelly: (06:01)
I did. Yes please.

Robb: (06:04)
So this is even more annoying because the terminology doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality. So VRF stands for variable refrigerant flow, which usually is used to refer to larger systems than the residential heat pumps that we’re going to be talking about today. So you’ll, you’ll see six, eight, 10 ton systems. You’ll see several, you know, getting together on the roof of a big building with, you know, dozens of fan coils spread all throughout the building. And VRF is larger systems that can handle much longer pipelines. Every fan coil indoors has an expansion valve. It’s a lot more versatile and bigger capacity and more versatile. the small heat pumps that I’ve been looking at for single family, really all kinds of buildings, but small capacity, like five tons or less, often, much less, often like in the one ton range, they have variable speed compressors and inverter driven compressors and therefore they have variable refrigerant flow, but they’re not called variable refrigerant flow. They’re called inverter driven heat pumps or a whole bunch of other terms, but variable speed heat pumps. So VRFs are usually not called heat pumps even though they pump heat and inverter driven heat pumps are not called VRF, even though they have variable refrigerant flow.

Kelly: (07:32)
Great. And now that that’s super clear, clear as mud I think someone around here used to say, you brought up inverter driven technology. Can you talk a little bit about inverter versus single speed two stage? kind of how that technology has evolved?

Robb: (07:49)
Yeah, I guess the history of it, I can’t speak to too much. I think it was in Japan, I think it might’ve been like 30 years ago or something. So the inverter refers to part of the electronics. Here’s my simplistic understanding, but power to these units gets converted to a direct current and then inverted back to alternating current at the frequency you want the compressor to operate. So you’ve got the compressor at varying frequencies. You can deliver different amounts of refrigerant flow and different capacities depending on what the control system wants, depending on the load, depending on, you know, whatever the control algorithms are calling for. So that’s where the term inverter comes from. And there are some 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

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. 

Regulations

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Kelly: (00:06)
Welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb: (00:09)
the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:13)
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health.

Robb: (00:16)
I’m Robb Aldrich

Kelly: (00:19)
and I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb: (00:20)
This week I’m talking with Peter Stratton, who is the managing director of accessibility services here at Steven winter associates. And he’s been at this for quite a while. He’s been working on accessibility related topics since back in the eighties or nineties when the first accessibility legislation came out and he’s been helping people comply with the legislation. We talk a little bit about the history of accessibility requirements, how it differs from codes. They’re not always the same thing, which can be frustrating. And basically what he does, how he helps building owners, designers, developers comply with the proper accessibility requirements.

New Speaker: (01:04)
Pete thanks for being here.

Peter: (01:06)
Thanks for having me Robb.

Robb: (01:08)
So one of my big focuses of this podcast, one of my big interests is to talk more with people in this company. I mean, the company’s not huge, 125 people or so, but we do a lot of different things. And accessibility is one of the things that I’m really not very familiar with. So when we decided to do this podcast, I said, all right, I want to interview Peter Stratton first. And I told you and you said fantastic, and then you left the country for two weeks. So what’s up with that?

Peter: (01:38)
I’m back now though, I was investigating accessibility in Machu Picchu

Robb: (01:43)
I look forward to the report. I guess first we’re talking about accessibility and people know what it is in a vague sense, but do you have a good working definition or an official definition?

Peter: (01:57)
working definition? So when we talk about accessibility in the context of what we do here at Steven winter associates, accessibility really means, that a building, a space, a facility is in compliance with a requirement or a criteria. So when we say is the building accessible? we really mean, does it comply with the requirements that are applicable to the building?

Robb: (02:22)
Okay. And the term universal design I hear a lot is that kind of a above and beyond term?

Peter: (02:31)
many terms. Accessibility is what- when we talk about accessibility, again, we mean in compliance with the requirement. When we talk about universal design or inclusive design, we talk about sort of going beyond compliance and accommodating the needs of a variety of potential building users versus accessibility, which focuses mostly on accommodating the needs of people with disabilities. So that’s the distinction.

Robb: (03:02)
And accessibility- The legal requirements for accessibility are a big enough stretch for some people that going above and beyond is, we don’t get into that too much

Peter: (03:12)
We do get into it often enough, but universal design for the most part is not a requirement of federal, state or local law or building codes. There are universal design requirements that are out there, but not to the extent that accessibility requirements exist.

Robb: (03:31)
Okay. So when did it start, when did you start working and when did accessibility requirements come on the books?

Peter: (03:38)
Yeah, well, we been working on accessibility for many years. I personally celebrate my 25th anniversary here at Steven Winter associates this month. But we haven’t been working on it that long, almost that long. Many years ago we were a contractor to HUD’s office of policy development and research and OPDNR at that time had RFPs out on the street for contractors who could get involved in some early research on the fair housing amendments act.

Robb: (04:20)
And that was new?

Peter: (04:21)
That was new at the time. Certainly. The law fair housing amendments act of 1988 when we talk about the Fair Housing Act, subsequent to the passing of the Fair Housing Amendments Act, you know, the industry was kind of confused about having to comply with the legal use of a federal regulation and also with the requirements of a building code or criteria.

Robb: (04:50)
And there wasn’t overlap? So this was, this was the legislation, not building code.

Peter: (04:53)
This is federal legislation in addition to building code that that was, that applied at the time. and then architect for example, understands building code and criteria, technical standards. And at that time, little bit confused about the legally use of a federal regulation, which they at that time learned that they need to comply with. And so there was some early research on what it all sort of really meant for the industry. And we were involved in that early research and then it sort of snowballed from there. And here we are all these years later with a significant number of people on the team doing a lot of great stuff. Yeah.

Robb: (05:40)
Very cool. And is it mostly with developers we’re working with? I mean, what’s the stretch?

Peter: (05:49)
I mean, so our clients run the gamut. We work with a whole bunch of stakeholders, right? So architects, developers, contractors, public agencies, and lots of attorneys because it is very litigious as you can imagine. And we’ve got developers and other entities that are sued often for noncompliance with requirements. And we do a lot of that litigation consulting. So working with a lot of attorneys these days. But for the most part I’d say we work primarily with developers and architects- that sort of bread and butter. New construction. The requirements depending also cover existing construction alterations, renovations. But I think our bread and butter for the most part is new construction, multifamily housing.

Robb: (06:40)
And so is that separation between legislation and codes still present? Has it gotten better or has legislation outpaced codes and codes are trying to catch up?

Peter: (06:56)
You know it’s a mixed bag. So in the very beginning, we had the legal use of federal regulations to worry about when we design and construct facilities, and I’m talking about housing, but we have all the federal requirements like the ADA that apply to facilities that are non housing facilities, like public accommodations. Fair housing is obviously housing and the ADA is public accommodation and commercial facilities. Title Three of the ADA and title two of the ADA covers activities of states and local governments. So if the local government does have a housing type of a facility, like a shelter, although it is housing, it is also subject to ADA title two because it’s a activity of a state or local government, I should say. So federal regulations have to be complied with in addition to the building code in the very beginning, many years ago it was a tough kind of nut to crack.

Peter: (08:02)
You know, what’s more stringent, what takes precedence over the other. I really only need to worry about the requirements of the building code when it comes to access because that’s enough to get me in compliance with federal regulation, which is not true. And so that was the sentiment at that time.

Robb: (08:22)
Were talking about nineties?

Peter: (08:24)
we’re talking early nineties, mid nineties. Now a lot has changed, more current additions of the building code. And I’m 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.

There are approximately 57 million Americans living with disabilities in the United States; worldwide, people with disabilities make up 15% of our population. Given this information, we must do our part to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to opportunities afforded to everyone – starting with equal access to buildings.

This week’s guest is a long-time accessibility expert who serves as the Managing Director of SWA’s Accessibility Services, Peter Stratton. Peter begins the episode with an overview of the existing accessibility requirements in the U.S. and highlights additional measures that should be taken to ensure inclusiveness for all. Join us to learn how we can foster a more accessible built environment through careful design and planning. 

Episode Guest: 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.

A Basic Guide to Fair Housing Accessibility: Everything Architects and Builders Need to Know About the Fair Housing Act Accessibility Guidelines

Designing for Passive House and Accessibility Requirements

Cost of Accessible Housing

Accessible Housing by Design: Universal Design Principles in Practice

Aging in Place Guide for Building Owners

Accessibility Posts on PartyWalls Blog

Regulations

Fair Housing Accessibility Guidelines 

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

International Building Code (IBC) Chapter 11

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

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 www.swinter.com.

Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Air Source Heat Pumps

Guest: Robb Aldrich

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Kelly:                                  00:06                   Welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb:                                00:09                   the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly:                                  00:13                   by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health.

Robb:                                00:16                   I’m Robb Aldrich

Kelly:                                  00:19                   and I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb:                                00:20                   This week I’m talking with Peter Stratton, who is the managing director of accessibility services here at Steven winter associates. And he’s been at this for quite a while. He’s been working on accessibility related topics since back in the eighties or nineties when the first accessibility legislation came out and he’s been helping people comply with the legislation. We talk a little bit about the history of accessibility requirements, how it differs from codes. They’re not always the same thing, which can be frustrating. And basically what he does, how he helps building owners, designers, developers comply with the proper accessibility requirements.

New Speaker:                  01:04                   Pete thanks for being here.

Peter:                                01:06                   Thanks for having me Robb.

Robb:                                01:08                   So one of my big focuses of this podcast, one of my big interests is to talk more with people in this company. I mean, the company’s not huge, 125 people or so, but we do a lot of different things. And accessibility is one of the things that I’m really not very familiar with. So when we decided to do this podcast, I said, all right, I want to interview Peter Stratton first. And I told you and you said fantastic, and then you left the country for two weeks. So what’s up with that?

Peter:                                01:38                   I’m back now though, I was investigating accessibility in Machu Picchu

Robb:                                01:43                   I look forward to the report. I guess first we’re talking about accessibility and people know what it is in a vague sense, but do you have a good working definition or an official definition?

Peter:                                01:57                   working definition? So when we talk about accessibility in the context of what we do here at Steven winter associates, accessibility really means, that a building, a space, a facility is in compliance with a requirement or a criteria. So when we say is the building accessible? we really mean, does it comply with the requirements that are applicable to the building?

Robb:                                02:22                   Okay. And the term universal design I hear a lot is that kind of a above and beyond term?

Peter:                                02:31                   many terms. Accessibility is what- when we talk about accessibility, again, we mean in compliance with the requirement. When we talk about universal design or inclusive design, we talk about sort of going beyond compliance and accommodating the needs of a variety of potential building users versus accessibility, which focuses mostly on accommodating the needs of people with disabilities. So that’s the distinction.

Robb:                                03:02                   And accessibility- The legal requirements for accessibility are a big enough stretch for some people that going above and beyond is, we don’t get into that too much

Peter:                                03:12                   We do get into it often enough, but universal design for the most part is not a requirement of federal, state or local law or building codes. There are universal design requirements that are out there, but not to the extent that accessibility requirements exist.

Robb:                                03:31                   Okay. So when did it start, when did you start working and when did accessibility requirements come on the books?

Peter:                                03:38                   Yeah, well, we been working on accessibility for many years. I personally celebrate my 25th anniversary here at Steven Winter associates this month. But we haven’t been working on it that long, almost that long. Many years ago we were a contractor to HUD’s office of policy development and research and OPDNR at that time had RFPs out on the street for contractors who could get involved in some early research on the fair housing amendments act.

Robb:                                04:20                   And that was new?

Peter:                                04:21                   That was new at the time. Certainly. The law fair housing amendments act of 1988 when we talk about the Fair Housing Act, subsequent to the passing of the Fair Housing Amendments Act, you know, the industry was kind of confused about having to comply with the legal use of a federal regulation and also with the requirements of a building code or criteria.

Robb:                                04:50                   And there wasn’t overlap? So this was, this was the legislation, not building code.

Peter:                                04:53                   This is federal legislation in addition to building code that that was, that applied at the time. and then architect for example, understands building code and criteria, technical standards. And at that time, little bit confused about the legally use of a federal regulation, which they at that time learned that they need to comply with. And so there was some early research on what it all sort of really meant for the industry. And we were involved in that early research and then it sort of snowballed from there. And here we are all these years later with a significant number of people on the team doing a lot of great stuff. Yeah.

Robb:                                05:40                   Very cool. And is it mostly with developers we’re working with? I mean, what’s the stretch?

Peter:                                05:49                   I mean, so our clients run the gamut. We work with a whole bunch of stakeholders, right? So architects, developers, contractors, public agencies, and lots of attorneys because it is very litigious as you can imagine. And we’ve got developers and other entities that are sued often for noncompliance with requirements. And we do a lot of that litigation consulting. So working with a lot of attorneys these days. But for the most part I’d say we work primarily with developers and architects- that sort of bread and butter. New construction. The requirements depending also cover existing construction alterations, renovations. But I think our bread and butter for the most part is new construction, multifamily housing.

Robb:                                06:40                   And so is that separation between legislation and codes still present? Has it gotten better or has legislation outpaced codes and codes are trying to catch up?

Peter:                                06:56                   You know it’s a mixed bag. So in the very beginning, we had the legal use of federal regulations to worry about when we design and construct facilities, and I’m talking about housing, but we have all the federal requirements like the ADA that apply to facilities that are non housing facilities, like public accommodations. Fair housing is obviously housing and the ADA is public accommodation and commercial facilities. Title Three of the ADA and title two of the ADA covers activities of states and local governments. So if the local government does have a housing type of a facility, like a shelter, although it is housing, it is also subject to ADA title two because it’s a activity of a state or local government, I should say. So federal regulations have to be complied with in addition to the building code in the very beginning, many years ago it was a tough kind of nut to crack.

Peter:                                08:02                   You know, what’s more stringent, what takes precedence over the other. I really only need to worry about the requirements of the building code when it comes to access because that’s enough to get me in compliance with federal regulation, which is not true. And so that was the sentiment at that time.

Robb:                                08:22                   Were talking about nineties?

Peter:                                08:24                   we’re talking early nineties, mid nineties. Now a lot has changed, more current additions of the building code. And I’m 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

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. 

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Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Kelly: (00:06)
Welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb: (00:09)
the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:13)
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb: (00:18)
I’m Robb Aldrich.

Kelly: (00:19)
and I’m Kelly Westby. So I’m excited to be talking to Eric Wallace, who works at Steven Winter associates providing consulting, design and inspection services for solar energy systems. He actually also gets involved in a variety of programs including energy star enterprise green communities and New York City energy code projects. But before joining SWA, Eric spent several years designing commercial scale solar power systems, large and small commercial scale, as well as some single family and multifamily and institutional projects. Today we’re going to focus on solar photovoltaic systems. We’re going to talk about urban installations and specifically New York City regulations. So I’m just going to jump into the conversation that we have with him. So, welcome, Eric. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Eric: (01:13)
Thank you very much, Kelly.

Eric: (01:14)
So I just want to kind of dive right in: Can you lay the groundwork for us? What does the solar market look like right now and what’s your component of it?

Eric: (01:27)
Sure. So the big story of the solar market over the past decade is really about cost reduction and sustained incentives. So just since 2010, residential and commercial scale systems have dropped about 60 percent in cost, and utility scale systems have dropped almost 80 percent in cost. What remains to be the highest cost barrier for solar are what we would call soft costs. So those are your engineering, your sales acquisition costs, or any permitting costs. So anything other than the material and labor costs. So that has dropped hugely in countries like Germany and Australia, but it remains high for a variety reasons in the United States. But despite that there’s been a huge drops in cost. On top of that, we still have great incentives. The federal investment tax credit is worth 30 percent of the cost of the system right now that’s scheduled to sunset over the next few years.

Eric: (02:32)
The good news is that it survived the most recent revamp of the tax plan under this administration, which kind of proves the general knowledge that climate change might be controversial, but solar power isn’t. It has bipartisan support across the board and because it’s saving people money, and giving people more choice on power. Other than that, you also have new tariffs in the past year or two both on modules and cells, as well as on steel and aluminum. And the exact impact is yet to be seen. There’s some estimates around 10 to fourteen cents per kilowatt for installation increase in cost, but they are reviewing exemptions to the rules and there’s bound to be legal challenges to these tariffs. So it’s still not really clear what the overall impact is going to be.

Kelly: (03:23)
Okay, great. And you mentioned incentives and a lot of them are tax related. Have you run into any issues with clients that you’ve worked with that have problems taking advantage of the tax incentives?

Eric: (03:38)
Yeah, the biggest issue is usually if we’re working with a nonprofit developer, for example, with a low income housing development. Sometimes they can find ways to get around that if they can get an equity investor, or have a for-profit branch of their organization that can take advantage of the tax incentives. So there are ways around that. There are also certain companies that specialize specifically in providing what we call a power purchase agreement to nonprofit entities that can’t take advantage of those incentives. So if a nonprofit developers trying to build a low income multifamily building but they can’t get those incentives, they can go through a company like grid alternatives that specializes in providing that for them.

Kelly: (04:26)
Okay, great. And can you talk to me a little bit about the type of solar and specifically solar pv photovoltaic systems? What’s common? I know years ago we heard about building integrated pv, we heard about different chemistry, like cadmium telluride. Discuss a little bit about what’s happened with the specific types and where we’re at now.

Speaker 2: (04:52)
Sure. So there are a variety of different technologies available, but the most common and cheapest is the crystalline silicon module, kind of your standard regular module. There were waves and pushes for things like concentrated photovoltaics, thin film modules built in Pv, but a lot of those really didn’t survive or if they’re still around they didn’t win the race because regular crystalline pv just dropped in price so rapidly. And when you’re talking about installation methods, this can be the same for multiple technologies, but you essentially have a ballasted option where your pv modules are weighted down by concrete blocks and they have a pretty bare bones, lightweight, tray or small racking system that lays pretty low profile on the roof. Those are going to be your lightest, cheapest, and definitely the most common. You can also do something like a light gauge steel rack on top of your roof if you want to get some extra till, some extra height. You can combine more modules into a tighter space when you do that sort of racking system

Kelly: (05:59)
Ballpark what would be the percentage increase if you went to that type of system?

Eric: (06:04)
It’s a little less than 50 percent- up to maybe 50 percent. So a ballasted system using really high end modules is going to be about 14 watts per square foot. That’s primarily because the way your ballasted system works, the rows of modules are all tilted individually, so you need space between the rows. So one row doesn’t shade the other one. When you go to a rack , your modules are all just bundled up right against one another, and they’re on a continuous tilt. So your watts per square feet is going to go up to something more like 18 to 20 watts per square feet.

Kelly: (06:39)
Gotcha. Okay, great. Talk to me a little bit about how you optimize for a typical building, kind of thinking in an urban environment. How do you optimize that type of building for installing solar?

Speaker 2: (06:51)
Sure. So there’s a lot of obstacles to putting solar in an urban environment. You have plenty of sources of shade, tall buildings can lead to some pretty difficult engineering issues. You have a high demand for square footage and space on the roof. So the big thing is the bulkheads. Are they shading area where you want to put your modules? How much space is the bulkhead taking up in any mechanical equipment? Do you want the roof to be accessible to your tenants? So the main things for optimization from those points of view are to put your bulkheads in any equipment that has to be on the roof, your RTU or your ERV as far to the north as possible. Obviously, sometimes the geometry of the building kind of limits what you can do with your bulkhead, but as much as that as possible, you should do that.

Eric: (07:37)
If you can utilize as much as your hvac equipment as possible to get it off the roof and free up space for the PV, that’s great. And if you can’t get around these things or you’re limited on how much you can move stuff, creating a kind of uniform open area for the array and not putting your fans and odd configurations is really good because it’s nice to have a very regular, large area for your, for your array. If you want to maintain the space as an amenity space, another installation option is something more like a more structural steel support for your PV system, like a trellis or a big canopy above the roof. That’s going to add some significant costs and structural requirements for your building, but then you 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.

By the end of 2050, solar energy is projected to be the world’s largest source of electricity. While utility-scale solar will comprise much of this capacity, there will also be significant growth in the commercial and residential sectors – particularly in cities.

On episode three of Buildings and Beyond, Kelly interviews SWA’s solar expert, Eric Wallace, to discuss the various factors affecting solar photovoltaic (PV) growth including changes in technology, policy, and financing. Tune in to learn about some of the barriers and opportunities that solar developers face in the height of a solar revolution. 

Episode Guest: Eric Wallace

Eric Wallace is a Building Systems Engineer at Steven Winter Associates, providing consulting, design, and inspection services for solar energy as well as a variety of programs, including Energy Star Multifamily High Rise, Enterprise Green Communities, New York Energy Conservation Code, and ASHRAE Standard 90.1. Prior to SWA, Eric spent four years designing commercial-scale solar power systems. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Solar Energy Basics

NREL U.S. Solar Photovoltaic System Cost Benchmark: Q1 2017

Solar in the City: Designing Solar for High-Density Areas

NYSERDA’s VDER Resources

The Duck Curve

Community Solar Basics

Programs

NYSERDA’s NY-Sun Program

Massachusetts Energy Storage Mandate

New Jersey Energy Storage Policy

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

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 www.swinter.com.

Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Accessibility 

CLICK HERE TO LEARN HOW TO SUBSCRIBE

Kelly:                                  00:06                   Welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb:                                00:09                   the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly:                                  00:13                   by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb:                                00:18                   I’m Robb Aldrich.

Kelly:                                  00:19                   and I’m Kelly Westby. So I’m excited to be talking to Eric Wallace, who works at Steven Winter associates providing consulting, design and inspection services for solar energy systems. He actually also gets involved in a variety of programs including energy star enterprise green communities and New York City energy code projects. But before joining SWA, Eric spent several years designing commercial scale solar power systems, large and small commercial scale, as well as some single family and multifamily and institutional projects. Today we’re going to focus on solar photovoltaic systems. We’re going to talk about urban installations and specifically New York City regulations. So I’m just going to jump into the conversation that we have with him. So, welcome, Eric. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Eric:                                   01:13                   Thank you very much, Kelly.

Eric:                                   01:14                   So I just want to kind of dive right in: Can you lay the groundwork for us? What does the solar market look like right now and what’s your component of it?

Eric:                                   01:27                   Sure. So the big story of the solar market over the past decade is really about cost reduction and sustained incentives. So just since 2010, residential and commercial scale systems have dropped about 60 percent in cost, and utility scale systems have dropped almost 80 percent in cost. What remains to be the highest cost barrier for solar are what we would call soft costs. So those are your engineering, your sales acquisition costs, or any permitting costs. So anything other than the material and labor costs. So that has dropped hugely in countries like Germany and Australia, but it remains high for a variety reasons in the United States. But despite that there’s been a huge drops in cost. On top of that, we still have great incentives. The federal investment tax credit is worth 30 percent of the cost of the system right now that’s scheduled to sunset over the next few years.

Eric:                                   02:32                   The good news is that it survived the most recent revamp of the tax plan under this administration, which kind of proves the general knowledge that climate change might be controversial, but solar power isn’t. It has bipartisan support across the board and because it’s saving people money, and giving people more choice on power. Other than that, you also have new tariffs in the past year or two both on modules and cells, as well as on steel and aluminum. And the exact impact is yet to be seen. There’s some estimates around 10 to fourteen cents per kilowatt for installation increase in cost, but they are reviewing exemptions to the rules and there’s bound to be legal challenges to these tariffs. So it’s still not really clear what the overall impact is going to be.

Kelly:                                  03:23                   Okay, great. And you mentioned incentives and a lot of them are tax related. Have you run into any issues with clients that you’ve worked with that have problems taking advantage of the tax incentives?

Eric:                                   03:38                   Yeah, the biggest issue is usually if we’re working with a nonprofit developer, for example, with a low income housing development. Sometimes they can find ways to get around that if they can get an equity investor, or have a for-profit branch of their organization that can take advantage of the tax incentives. So there are ways around that. There are also certain companies that specialize specifically in providing what we call a power purchase agreement to nonprofit entities that can’t take advantage of those incentives. So if a nonprofit developers trying to build a low income multifamily building but they can’t get those incentives, they can go through a company like grid alternatives that specializes in providing that for them.

Kelly:                                  04:26                   Okay, great. And can you talk to me a little bit about the type of solar and specifically solar pv photovoltaic systems? What’s common? I know years ago we heard about building integrated pv, we heard about different chemistry, like cadmium telluride. Discuss a little bit about what’s happened with the specific types and where we’re at now.

Speaker 2:                        04:52                   Sure. So there are a variety of different technologies available, but the most common and cheapest is the crystalline silicon module, kind of your standard regular module. There were waves and pushes for things like concentrated photovoltaics, thin film modules built in Pv, but a lot of those really didn’t survive or if they’re still around they didn’t win the race because regular crystalline pv just dropped in price so rapidly. And when you’re talking about installation methods, this can be the same for multiple technologies, but you essentially have a ballasted option where your pv modules are weighted down by concrete blocks and they have a pretty bare bones, lightweight, tray or small racking system that lays pretty low profile on the roof. Those are going to be your lightest, cheapest, and definitely the most common. You can also do something like a light gauge steel rack on top of your roof if you want to get some extra till, some extra height. You can combine more modules into a tighter space when you do that sort of racking system

Kelly:                                  05:59                   Ballpark what would be the percentage increase if you went to that type of system?

Eric:                                   06:04                   It’s a little less than 50 percent- up to maybe 50 percent. So a ballasted system using really high end modules is going to be about 14 watts per square foot. That’s primarily because the way your ballasted system works, the rows of modules are all tilted individually, so you need space between the rows. So one row doesn’t shade the other one. When you go to a rack , your modules are all just bundled up right against one another, and they’re on a continuous tilt. So your watts per square feet is going to go up to something more like 18 to 20 watts per square feet.

Kelly:                                  06:39                   Gotcha. Okay, great. Talk to me a little bit about how you optimize for a typical building, kind of thinking in an urban environment. How do you optimize that type of building for installing solar?

Speaker 2:                        06:51                   Sure. So there’s a lot of obstacles to putting solar in an urban environment. You have plenty of sources of shade, tall buildings can lead to some pretty difficult engineering issues. You have a high demand for square footage and space on the roof. So the big thing is the bulkheads. Are they shading area where you want to put your modules? How much space is the bulkhead taking up in any mechanical equipment? Do you want the roof to be accessible to your tenants? So the main things for optimization from those points of view are to put your bulkheads in any equipment that has to be on the roof, your RTU or your ERV as far to the north as possible. Obviously, sometimes the geometry of the building kind of limits what you can do with your bulkhead, but as much as that as possible, you should do that.

Eric:                                   07:37                   If you can utilize as much as your hvac equipment as possible to get it off the roof and free up space for the PV, that’s great. And if you can’t get around these things or you’re limited on how much you can move stuff, creating a kind of uniform open area for the array and not putting your fans and odd configurations is really good because it’s nice to have a very regular, large area for your, for your array. If you want to maintain the space as an amenity space, another installation option is something more like a more structural steel support for your PV system, like a trellis or a big canopy above the roof. That’s going to add some significant costs and structural requirements for your building, but then you 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

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. 

Green Building Certifications

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Kelly: (00:06)
welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb: (00:09)
the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:13)
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Robb: (00:18)
I’m Robb Aldrich

Kelly: (00:19)
and I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb: (00:21)
This week I’m talking with Maureen Mahle, who’s the managing director of sustainable housing services here at Steven Winter associates or SWA as you’ll pRobbably hear us call it. She’s been here for at least 12 years, has been involved in green building programs since leed for homes came out and many programs since then. I believe I read, she has certified over 12,000 homes or housing units since she started here. This episode we’re focusing on health and green buildings, which is a big topic, an important topic, a topic around which there’s a lot of different advice, a lot of different programs, advising not necessarily the same things. it can be overwhelming to many. It is overwhelming to me at times, but you have to start somewhere. So that’s, that’s what we’re going to talk about. Here’s my interview.

Robb: (01:17)
We’re here to talk about buildings and health or green buildings and health, which is a huge topic. So we’re going to scratch the surface and do an overview. And of course, health is a huge part of green buildings. It’s one of the tenants. But there’s a lot of confusion. There’s a lot of misunderstanding. There’s a lot of, there are a lot of different programs that say a lot of different things. And I know you’ve given it quite a bit of thought. it’s a huge topic. But having you give us a primmer or an overview of some of the issues and what some of the programs are good for and not so good for, that would be great.

Maureen: (01:58)
Absolutely. So I guess I’ll start by saying I have absolutely no training and topics surrounding health whatsoever. I’m not a doctor. I have no medical background whatsoever. My mother was a nurse. That’s as close as I get. but in my role working on buildings and advising people who work on buildings, I actually have a lot of influence over human health as do all of us in this industry. So that’s kind of the base turn that got me interested in. This is starting from the place of: we’re not health experts and yet we have a big impact on health. Therefore, we have a duty to figure out some basic things and more importantly to start taking action. Even if we don’t have everything figured out. If we wait until we know the absolutes, we’re never going to get anything done. And we could potentially do more damage in the near term and in the longterm.

Robb: (02:56)
Gotcha. So code built buildings, what do codes do for us? Do codes give us any kind of basic level of health protection?

Maureen: (03:08)
codes get into ventilation, which is important, mostly focused only on new construction. There are very few codes that retroactively address ventilation and buildings and ventilation is what we’re doing to basically remove pollutants. Ventilation levels set by code are intended to be sort of minimally safe. And there is a difference as we’re starting to find out between minimally safe and optimally healthy. Right? So there is actually a pretty big gap there. I can throw it out right now- one of the pieces of research around this is the cog effects study. And we’ll link that in the show notes for this. But you know, long story short and summarizing, you know, very, very briefly, it’s sort of like if you double your ventilation, you might be twice as smart roughly. So that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about is the difference between surviving, which is what code is aimed at, and living your life to the fullest and sort of like being in peak operating condition as humans, we want our buildings to be in peak operating condition.

Robb: (04:21)
So not only just do no harm but actually make environments better, right? Can we make ourselves healthier? So this is much more a topic were thinking about now, recently, you know, certainly more than 10 years ago and certainly more than 30 years ago. But you know, buildings are different, buildings are getting tighter. Is that one of the main reasons why it’s a growing concern or people getting more paranoid?

Maureen: (04:50)
I think it’s a mix of factors. I think buildings are getting tighter. I think we’ve got more products from more places around the world than ever before. We’ve got more plastics, we’ve got more composites, we’ve got all kinds of stuff, some of which is touted to be healthy. But it may be evaluated for certain criteria or it may be touted as being green in one aspect, like because it contains post consumer recycled content, but it may not actually be healthy. Right? So we’ve got more products, we’ve got tighter buildings. We have people with more sensitivities and maybe more health conditions that they’re managing because we’ve had declining air quality, even outdoor air quality in places like the asthma corridor in the Bronx. We now have people that have environmental inflicted asthma and so then they’re going to be more sensitive to what’s inside their homes and their workplaces as well.

Maureen: (05:43)
Right. So it kind of all trickles down. So its that kind of combination things. I think also, we are paying more attention to health and buildings because we have more information. I think it’s incomplete. I think it’s a little bit scattered. But in general we’re starting to see bits and pieces of information come through that. Some of the things we were promoting as being really great or maybe not so great and that’s not really new, right? I mean, we’ve been down this path with asbestos and formaldehyde and lots of things. But now we start to get more information and as we do, you know, we’ve got a responsibility to follow through and utilize that information. I mean, one of the resources that I think is really pretty cool now, is if you ever see these warnings from California proposition 65 on products, you see it on Amazon, right. And be like, oh, this has got that warning. And that’s a requirement to disclose if you’re containing chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm in the state of California

Robb: (06:51)
Right. It’s always baffled me when I go and buy something- I recently I bought something on Amazon, I forget what it was- And it had that label on it. This product is known to cause cancer in the state of California.

Maureen: (07:01)
Yeah. But nowhere else. Anyways. Different standards. So we can use other, you know, metrics that maybe some of the more progressive entities have adopted and sort of extrapolate those back to ourselves, and say, okay, maybe I don’t have to know it as a building science person and not a medically trained person. Maybe I don’t have to know everything. Maybe I can adopt these other proxies to help me figure out my way through this whole health in buildings question.

Robb: (07:31)
Gotcha. But as you said, we know more and more, like we know now asbestos is bad, and it should be avoided. We know radon is bad. But I guess that list is kind of is kind of growing.

Maureen: (07:43)
Well, it is growing in some ways. In some ways I don’t Think that the basic list has changes. The Center for Disease Control and EPA and everyone has kind of agreed on these top risk factors, as human health is 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.

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 Guest: Maureen Mahle

Maureen Mahle is an engineer and specialist in high performance homes. Her background in sustainable design and construction includes piloting several LEED programs for the U.S. Green Building Council and certifying over 13,000 green homes in 10 states. Maureen is an advocate for connecting health to high performance homes, and is both a Fitwel Ambassador and a WELL AP. Under her leadership, SWA is a 6-time recipient of the Indoor airPLUS Leader Award.

Green Building Certifications:

Send your feedback and questions to [email protected]

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 www.swinter.com.

Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Solar PV- The Revolution Continues 

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Kelly:                                  00:06                   welcome to buildings and beyond

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   00:18                   I’m Robb Aldrich

Kelly:                                  00:19                   and I’m Kelly Westby.

Rob:                                   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 probably 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.

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   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

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   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 probably 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 problem 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.

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   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 probably 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.

Rob:                                   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 probably 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.

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   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 problem 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.

Rob:                                   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

Rob:                                   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.

Rob:                                   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

Rob:                                   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.

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 [email protected]

Buildings and Beyond is the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment by focusing on efficiency, accessibility, and health.

Buildings and Beyond is a production of Steven Winter Associates. We provide energy, green building, and accessibility consulting services to improve the built environment. For more information, visit swinter.com.

Hosts: Robb Aldrich | Kelly Westby

Production Team: Heather Breslin | Alex Mirabile | Dylan Martello

Kelly: (00:06)
welcome to buildings and beyond

Robb: (00:09)
the podcast that explores how we can create a more sustainable built environment

Kelly: (00:13)
by focusing on efficiency, accessibility and health.

Robb: (00:18)
I’m Robb Aldrich

Kelly: (00:19)
and I’m Kelly Westby.

Robb: (00:22)
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.