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Interviews with the leaders, practitioners, and change-makers in the global Passive House movement. A production of Passive House Accelerator.
I think that's my number one thing is that we've got to make these projects fun. Whether your idea of fun is like a steep learning curve like mine is kind of a sick concept of what fun is, but we've we've gotta have that engagement. You know? We've gotta have some reason why people are are coming to do the thing that's a little bit harder, you know, with when it's it's our first time. So Yeah.
Beth Campbell:Let's have some fun while we're delivering passive houses. And then the whole rest of everybody will jump in.
Zack Semke:Hello, and welcome to the Reimagine Edit, a special series of the Passive House podcast that shares curated insights from the conversations happening in the Reimagine Buildings Collective, our membership community, where we bring together climate conscious builders, designers, and change makers to share lessons, level up our work, and build the networks we need to thrive. In this episode 14, we'll hear from Beth Campbell, Ryan Abendroth, Mike Fowler, Kevin Brennan, Kara Hagerty Wilson, Nikita Reid, and Michael Ingui. I'm Zach Semke, director of Passive House Accelerator and host of the Reimagine Buildings Collective, and thanks for joining me. Our first clip is a question from Mike, a member of the Reimagined Buildings Collective of Ryan Abendroth, an expert in residence in the collective. Ryan is the former certification manager at Fias and founder and principal of Passive Energy Designs.
Zack Semke:Here, Mike asks Ryan about how to manage the very high humidity in places like Houston.
Mike:One of the things, you know, the Zender system in, I keep wondering how to deal with the really high humidity come in Houston, Texas. And a good percentage of the summer during the day, you're looking at seventy, eighty, 90% humidity. So you're sucking in that high humidity and you're blowing out the dryer from the inside the house. You know, it's transferring some of that humidity is getting brought back into the house. I don't know numbers wise as to how much is it.
Mike:I don't, I guess there's no way around it. If you want to ventilate, you just gotta put up with the high humidity air coming in.
Ryan Abendroth:Yeah. So a couple notes. One, my business partner that I found a BuildZero with lives in Houston. So we do have some, you know, firsthand experience of like that sort of climate. In most of our residential projects there, I feel like we are just saying, you know, it's, it's okay.
Ryan Abendroth:Like we're going to do that ventilation just like we would maybe anywhere else for the most part and have then for sure a dedicated dehumidification system that is going to be dehumidifying that space or that house, but it doesn't need to be necessarily connected to one another. I think this is the question. I've done some other projects with some engineers, like the first commercial passive house, I think it was actually the first non residential passive house, was in Kansas in 2012. And the engine, it was about 1,200 ish square feet, but it was a classroom. And it also had a glass facade on the south with a trommel and like a little bit of western glass too.
Ryan Abendroth:It had a big overhang, but so there was a lot of solar gain. And then I put into Wolfie like, you know, like four people or something, you know, it's like a little office thing, but it was actually a classroom. And so according to the code, the occupancy was 44 people. And if you put the humidity load even of Kansas into that building, plus the, you know, glass wall facade, plus 44 people in a 1,200 square foot building, engineer designed this thing to have three, you know, ducted mini splits and like all like 18,000 or something BTUs per hour, where Wolfie's telling you or, you know, PHP, I think back then, that it's like 5,000, you know, BTUs or something per hour. But when you add the 44 people in, of course, it goes way up.
Ryan Abendroth:I bring this story up because that project, the engineer did not feel comfortable putting the amount of ventilation air for 44 people into that space without dehumidifying it. So the ERV in that project runs into the back of the air handler and uses the air handler for distribution, so that it can do, you know, some dehumidification and things. I don't know that you need to go to that route because at the normal residential occupancy, I think you can
Ryan Abendroth:just dump ventilation air into a room. And then that gets picked up by your mechanical system, which should include, you know, kind of
Ryan Abendroth:a whole home dehumidifier. I don't know that you need to precondition it, if that makes sense.
Mike:Yeah. It's gonna be a pair of, series seven, water furnaces, which can ramp way down and pull a lot of humidity out, I think.
Ryan Abendroth:So you probably are you using that for distribution, like you're running your ventilation into that air handler, into that duct system?
Mike:Wasn't planning that. The initial plan was just traditional Zender layout, you know, with a individual locations in eight different rooms
Ryan Abendroth:Yeah.
Mike:For intake and exhaust.
Ryan Abendroth:And so generally, I do think that's, like, the best way to go about it. Because if you run it into the air handler according to, like, the, you know, FIES guidelines, you also need to run the air handler at minimum speed all the time. And that fan energy is also not great in a really hot climate.
Mike:Right.
Ryan Abendroth:And so you you generally would want to avoid that. However, I have a project that I worked on here in Saint Louis that is geothermal and has a zinder and has a, like, ultra air Santa Fe dehumidifier on it. And they are all running through the same duct system. And they're running that air handler all the time to make sure that they're getting that distribution throughout the whole building. I don't know that that's optimal, but that house still performs extremely well.
Zack Semke:Next up, Michael Ingui, founder of Passive House Accelerator, and Mike Fowler, sustainability integration leader at Methune, discuss the passive survivability of buildings, particularly during heat waves. Mike draws on an example that hits close to home quite literally, and that he's talking about extremes in our shared hometown of Seattle.
Mike Fowler:You'd rather survive and be uncomfortable rather than the alternative.
Michael Ingui:Yeah. And I I think for me, the question really also becomes, does it really even make sense to design for even more than that? It probably that you you probably have to go to such extreme measures.
Mike Fowler:Yeah. And I think that's a great question because, you know, we did that. Our focus was just on, okay. We've got an existing building stock. What happens when in this existing building stock when we have an extreme heat wave?
Mike Fowler:And so none of that answered like, okay. What if we buy all the brand new passive house apartment building? What does that how did that how does that do? So that was kind of a question that was kinda lingering in my mind. And the next study we did in house, Claire McConnell was our building energy modeling.
Mike Fowler:Claire is Claire is the actual person doing all the modeling, so I'm really standing on her shoulders and her work and skill to do modeling. I I am the fortunate one to get to be a spokesperson about this. Yeah. So we had a project and it was in the California Bay Area. And in twenty twenty two, September, there was a giant heat wave that hit there.
Mike Fowler:And the owner of that building, has a very vulnerable population that this apartment building was gonna be built for. And they're like, should we air condition? You know? And so we're like, let's study it. You know?
Mike Fowler:And they were looking at, you know, potentially, you know? And so one of the things we proposed was like, hey, we can make this a passive house Mhmm. Project. And so, like, we figured out what is, you know, running through, you know? And for me and like, Skyler and I think it was Dylan, the two of them created a passive PHPP dashboard, and I use that a ton still.
Mike Fowler:Just sort of as as a concept schematic, like, do we make sure we got it we've got it sort of dialed in so that, you know, yeah, it might change every little bit, but it's basically a we know it. I have confidence that this is a passive house envelope. Mhmm. And so we we we did model that. And the and the thing was, you know, at that point at that heat wave also, there was a ton of wildfire smoke around.
Mike Fowler:And so it's like that was the question of, okay. Well, it's it's that heat wave, was upper nineties. 100, a 104 was the peak temperature. And I'm like, okay. Well, that's kind of like if we get another heat wave in Seattle, Western Washington, a 104 is probably gonna be where it is.
Mike Fowler:It's you know, might not be a 108. Like, it was in the heat dome, but, you know, at a place that had only touched a 100, like, twice in its history.
Michael Ingui:Mhmm.
Mike Fowler:You know, that's this is a good model. And I also, at that point, now had balance heat recovery ventilation, in multifamily apartments in the Washington code. And, you know, this is a this is a bonus chance to sort of test that. Okay. If we ran you know?
Ryan Abendroth:It's huge.
Mike Fowler:Yeah. 104 degrees outside. What we found out, you know, similar thing. California code, if you couldn't keep the sun out or you couldn't open your windows at night, temperatures should climb up to a 120 degrees, which is also in that basically extreme danger quality. You know, in California, the nights were cool enough, but if you were code minimum, you could open your windows, the interior temperature was 94 degrees.
Mike Fowler:And we're like, okay. Well, what's the passive house envelope do? And it took it from 94 down to 86 degrees.
Ryan Abendroth:That's by itself. I mean, that's massive.
Mike Fowler:Yeah. Yeah. And then we're like, okay. Fantastic. We see, you know, passive house in a 104 degree heat wave.
Mike Fowler:No power. You could ride through it and not cry climb into that extreme extreme caution level above 90. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Mike Fowler:Well, there's also wildfire smoke. So let's say we you can't you really don't wanna open your windows. You know? You don't want to you know? That because you have to make the choice of, do I open my windows at night to cool off a little bit to let in all this wildfire smoke that's really, really harmful to our health?
Mike Fowler:But with a Passive House with heat recovery ventilation, filtered air, you can close those windows, use the HRV system. And so instead of 86 degrees, it was 87 with the HRV running. So it was a very good confirmation that passive house enclosures do work. And I'll emphasize right now that, you know, I say that everything I've been talking about so far, applies from, let's say, the Rocky Mountains West because it's you know, we we live in our our Western US climate doesn't have a lot of humidity. But you were think you were bringing up a point, Michael, about there's a there's extremes.
Mike Fowler:And do we do do we design for extremes, or do we design for something sort of like that and sort of keep our fingers crossed?
Ryan Abendroth:Yeah. I
Mike Fowler:think what Passive House is doing for us is by having that focus be on low loads and and then closure first, designing to that gives us that buffer or insurance piece. So have we to design for the extreme. We're just designing for everyday comfort and health. If we design for that, that gives us a buffer to sort of ride through an extreme piece without having to spend a lot of extra cost or saying, well, I I wanted to stay we're not trying to keep it below 80. We're low.
Mike Fowler:We're saying if it's an extreme heat time and there's no power, we can go through a few days of it being 80 degrees inside. But we don't have to, like, look at our building enclosures and go even more excessive. It's still the fundamentals. Exterior shading works the best. We wanna keep the sun from coming in and heating our space and having ability to have a little bit of if we've got the ability to cool freely at night, do it.
Mike Fowler:You know? And then and so I think that's where I think Passive House is helping us just by designing a Passive House that is giving us more of a, call it, an insurance policy for better better words.
Zack Semke:Now let's pivot to Michael's conversation with Kevin Brennan, air tightness and insulation expert at Brennan and Brennan, longtime cohost of Passive House Accelerator Live, and now a member of the Source two thousand fifty team. Kevin shares how he diagnoses what needs to happen first in retrofits.
Ryan Abendroth:What do you look because it sounds like before you even get the passive house, you're looking at other weatherization items first. Because everybody asks, well, where do you start? But what are you looking at when you're looking at an existing brownstone or an existing freestanding house?
Ryan Abendroth:So just like as if you were going to your doctor, you'd have a general conversation about how do you feel? What's your biggest concern? Why are you here today? Start up that conversation about why we're what your plans are for the building and the retrofit, other big needs, big problems in the in the building, the house moisture. Is it is it too cold?
Ryan Abendroth:Is it too hot? And then the next level would be do a blow a door, find out how leaky the building is, and then assess the systems. And then based on what the client's needs are and plans are, then figuring out a solution for each one of those problems. Are you gutting the top floor and you're gonna have new roof space? Are you firing it down?
Ryan Abendroth:Are you removing the front wall from the inside or is this an exterior renovation? And then just making those plans, anything you touch, just do it to the best that you can afford and you have the ability and you don't really, you wanna sequence it, right? So you don't have to do it twice. That's kind of my advice always. And then stick with the BPI method of test in, test out and do no harm.
Ryan Abendroth:So like, the old school way of doing a blow a door test before and after checking your combustion appliances to make sure you didn't make the house dangerous is something that should be done. It's mandated by most energy efficiency programs, but and then in our projects that we're working on the brownstones, we're eliminating most of those devices, the domestic hot water heater appliance or the furnace or the boiler. So we are making buildings safer just in in the whole big picture of it. But when you're planning your renovations, just do it smart. You don't wanna have a, you know, a backdrafted hot hot water heater leads to somebody getting hurt, but it's it's weird stuff like that.
Ryan Abendroth:You just gotta watch out for.
Zack Semke:Next up, Skye, a reimaginer, asks Kara Hagerty Wilson of Onion Flats Architecture about how she navigates uncertainty and guides clients through it. A couple of quick notes. In the clip, you'll hear Kara reference the number point zero six, which refers to PHEUS's air tightness threshold and air permeance of 0.06 cubic feet per minute per square foot of enclosure area at 50 Pascals of pressure. Kara also mentions Birdo, which is Boston's Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance.
Michael Ingui:I was curious also with so much unknown until you're able to do investigatory demo and like get a more thorough kind of forensic evaluation of the existing. How are you dealing with that both on the client's understanding of the overall budget and just having to do revisions across the different phases. Yeah. I'll say that the surprises we found when we think of Hano Homes, the project, the smaller project we presented, the surprise wasn't anything we had to change. It was more something that affected our air sealing, our ability to get as airtight as we wanted.
Michael Ingui:So it didn't make for a change. We had to change our perspective, I guess, on what is the solution. We're not going to get to 0.06 for that project. So instead, we're going to get to 0.26, whatever it was, and still be really happy about it. I think there's these projects that we haven't yet encountered something that during construction was like system altering or envelope altering or anything like that.
Michael Ingui:It's been more like, oh, they didn't seal XYZ a hundred years ago. Of course, didn't. You know, it's taking a taking a small hit here and there and kind of pivoting. And then that you and the client are aligned on the goals that are less, I guess, quantitative and more Like, how are you ensuring that you're meeting the deliverable expectations on the client end of what they're receiving with this whole process and that it's worth the value to them? So some of the clients, the ones in Boston in particular are up against the Virto ordinance.
Michael Ingui:So they're seeking to drastically reduce their energy consumption on-site. And a lot of their financing will be tied to a percentage reduction overall. The efforts we're putting forth tend to do a lot more than that percentage as a baseline. So we've not yet encountered something that made us think that we weren't going to hit those numbers quite yet. That's not been something that's come up yet.
Michael Ingui:Our clients have been really involved throughout the entire processes and they're on every call. They know every player. They're asking all the right questions all the time and they're very well educated on it too. So it's not like we have to teach them on it. They already know this stuff.
Michael Ingui:So they're keeping good tabs. Amazing.
Zack Semke:Here, Mary James, Passive House Accelerator's senior editor, asks Cara about striking a balance with standardization in off-site construction.
Mary James:I wanna go back for a minute to the window size being different on different floors. And I just wondered how that affects the I mean, one of the advantages of off-site construction I had thought was, you know, that you're producing the same thing over and over again. But the panel sizes must have to be adjusted if the window sizes are different on different floors. Yes?
Michael Ingui:So the overall panel width will be whatever they'd like it to be within their what they can span, what they can deal with, what they can maneuver. And then so at Salem, the the windows are typically they're not always in the middle of the panel. It'd be nice if they were. But to your point, it's because the windows are different per floor, it does mean that, like, the panel window sill height dimension is different for Floor 2. So it's not like a cookie cutter situation.
Michael Ingui:It's a little bit more prioritized for the existing conditions.
Mary James:I had thought that one of the cost advantages of using a panelized approach was the consistency of the panels that you're producing, that are being manufactured. But I guess maybe it doesn't matter so much because they're all being designed.
Michael Ingui:They're all being designed. I think here where it helps like in new construction, that's that's totally valid that there's cost savings and being able to, like, get a module and build it a 100 times and install it. Here, because we're dealing with having to kind of merge with existing conditions, we could lose out on that opportunity a little bit, But we still get to have really consistent air sealing details because it's happening off-site. We get QAQC on the product that's happening off-site. And then, general, we couldn't build Salem without a panel.
Michael Ingui:It's just we can't physically get somebody to site build that while there's ducks in the way. Like, it it kinda had to be a panelized solution if we were gonna take the systems outboard.
Zack Semke:Next is an exchange between Karen, a reimaginer, and Beth Campbell, Education Program Director of Passive House Massachusetts. Beth recently completed interviews with over 40 Passive House builders, designers, tradespeople, and developers Massachusetts and package their collective insights into the excellent report Cost Efficient Passive House Delivery, coauthored with Executive Director Alexander Gard Murray. In their exchange, which includes comments from Michael Ingui as well, Beth dives into the power of the mockup to influence practice in the field.
Karin:Just to briefly summarize where I started with this is I was working on a new construction, 80 unit, eight story building here in Brooklyn, where they were doing a panelized exterior. I went in advance to New Jersey to look at how they were putting the panels together since I was the energy rater on the job. My job was to do the ENERGY STAR checklists, the thermal checklists, also to do testing and verification on any ductwork, which they didn't have, but the apartment air tightness. So from the beginning it looked like they had air tightness handled very well, but with the PTACs, the areas of the PTACs which I kept warning them about, I was fortunate enough to be on this job early enough to keep reminding them of all of the things to look for for air tightness, and especially the PTAC areas, but they were new to this and this is really actually the basis of my question. So here I am, I'm coming in, I'm looking over their details, so I have to always decide am I the policeman, am I the educator, am I the how do I get them on board?
Karin:This really got critical. I mean, in most cases people do listen to me, we go through examples and things, but when we got to testing the apartments, it was clear that a lot of it hadn't sunk in. And long story short, we went back and forth. It took about six or seven visits to some of the same apartments before they listened to me and took the covers off the PTACs and really took a close look at what had been going on there. My question- Karen,
Beth Campbell:just to be clear so that everybody knows what we're talking about right now, we're talking about the HVAC units that go into the window opening, correct, that do heating and cooling? Yes. Presume they're heat pumps? Yes. Yes.
Beth Campbell:Everybody here can imagine how you might have air leakage issues because you've got both a window going into that opening as well as the HVAC equipment, which may not be designed to be particularly airtight, and then the installation also matters a lot. Is that Yes,
Karin:the problem was that obviously these P TACs created penetrations in these really nicely tightly sealed panels. So the panels themselves were not an issue, the windows themselves were not an issue, it was where they had failed to seal the openings.
Beth Campbell:And is your question more about like good industry practices for how to seal these or more so about how you get people to listen to you as
Karin:the perpetrator? Because last time you made some very interesting comments about working with the trades people. And I usually come in trying to educate them at the beginning and then trying to work with them. There have been times where I have compromised on things that maybe I shouldn't have quite passed on. On a previous project, actually, got into a back and forth with the architect who didn't understand what was going on.
Karin:Okay.
Beth Campbell:So I've got two I've got two thoughts for you right off the bat, and maybe these are already things that that you're talking about. But number one, did you guys do a mock up first before They we
Karin:not. Were all
Beth Campbell:sometimes it's not in the budget, sometimes it's really hard to convey the importance of how much money a mock up can save a project. But especially if the developer is not used to it, whatever, it might not be in the budget. But that's the that's the number one go to that I'm hearing from teams is, like, without a mock up, we're screwed. You know? And a mock up doesn't need to be a stand alone because sometimes there's just not budget for that.
Beth Campbell:But especially with an ENERGY STAR project where you've got unit compartmentalization already, so you have some level of air tightness that you're dealing with in your case, using one of those apartment units as a proxy for whole building airtightness can be a really useful tactic. And that might be something that again, how much leverage do you have as the consultant coming in? Probably, it's going to depend a lot on the team, but that's one of the biggest recommendations that I've been hearing is get into that apartment, air test it early. It might mean out of sequence ordering and procurement for the team because that one unit is going to need to be if airtight drywall method is your method for compartmentalization air sealing in that apartment, you might have to get some out of sequence trades in there to get that unit done early so that you can test it. But test as early as you can, especially with those PTAC units, it sounds like.
Beth Campbell:Because you saw that. You flagged that early. Nobody paid attention to you. So I guess my other question for you is around incentive money. Is there incentive money on the table for the developer that if they miss Energy Star on this, are they losing a bunch of money on the project?
Beth Campbell:Because that's another way that you can you've got to talk money. You don't talk the benefits of air sealing or something. And I think you probably already know that. But that's the only way to get people to listen to you is callbacks, making sure that stuff is in subcontractor trades, that who ends up holding the bag if you don't meet these targets. If somebody knows that they have financial risk on the line, they're going to listen a lot more.
Beth Campbell:But as a third party, it can be really hard to leverage your power over those subcontracts, over mock ups, or over those incentives.
Ryan Abendroth:Yeah. I would also say, just to echo it, time and money. It is truly amazing to me how quickly the team can do things after the mock Yeah. And also it's always amazing to me because some of the mockups we do and some of the stuff we do, I'm so lucky. Very often I've got Kevin Brennan on my job and John Mitchell or Ed May, and, and we're doing a townhouse and we're doing a mockup for something I've already done before.
Ryan Abendroth:Do you know how many times we change how we install it? Yeah. It's hilarious. And, because it's, you know, that team wants to use this tape or that product or this thing, or, oh, hey, because of the condition of this wall, we want to do one thing. And then they all decide, and then like a couple days later, everything's installed perfectly, not reinstalled.
Ryan Abendroth:It's just amazing to me how much time, which in my world is worth more than anything in the universe, and not having to go backwards. Time and then, sorry, risk. I'm right there with you. So yeah, I think the mockup's a good one.
Karin:Well, one thing I'll say is that I usually end up on jobs way after contracts are signed. So even though if you go to my website, you'll see I have a whole page of what I advise developers to do, one of them is to make sure it's in the contract. If I'm on the job and I find an issue that it's not in anybody's contract, I just back off and I let them work it out before I go forward with the job, which happened on another big job. But the thing in this particular case, there was a junior person in charge of the project at this point who didn't have a lot of authority and the main contractor was out sick. And so he ended up making a bunch of decisions.
Karin:He kept wanting to retest things and test them this way and test them that way. And looking in not the places where I was saying. So without coming across as a police person, I've been trying to look for ways to get the ideas across to people earlier so that they listen to me earlier because I'm usually just an asterisk on the list until we start testing and something fails.
Beth Campbell:Right, yep. And it sounds like you're already doing it. In this case, sometimes your hands are tied, but it's really that early communication with the developer And showing them, you know, if you can if you can put together even a simple spreadsheet of cost benefit to the developer to have you come in early and have some money in there for for mock up, making sure that that doesn't get VE'd out, for example. If you if you have any anything where you can speak the financial language of the developer, even if, again, if it's a simple spreadsheet showing, like, hey. This is my cost to come in early, and this is how much projected savings you're going to have to have me come in early versus stepping in late and now trying to fix problems.
Beth Campbell:If you can show that in black and white and then translate what you're saying into numbers, even if they're, you know, broad examples of numbers, they don't have to be super accurate. They can be order of magnitude numbers even. That can be a piece to have people's ears perk up. Really what I'm hearing from teams is that paying that extra amount for the consultants to come in early it pays for itself in almost all cases.
Zack Semke:And speaking of influencing and guiding practice in the field, Kevin Brennan has a lot to share. Here, Michael prompts Kevin about the contractor kickoff meeting.
Ryan Abendroth:But one of my favorites, which came from you, is the contractor kickoff, where that kickoff meeting with the subs, just describe that, describe the importance of it. Also, I'd I'd say, you know, for anybody who's on this call who who needs to do one, describe to them how to do one, in your in your opinion, do do do it well.
Ryan Abendroth:My inspiration for it was just getting everyone on the same page and setting the standard of the project. So coming from the GC, the architect, and the owners that everyone working on the project needs to know the rules of the game. You know, like, it's a different type of project. It's not standard construction. You can't just make a hole anywhere you want.
Ryan Abendroth:You you need to ask permission, and is this okay? I'm and I kind of mimic that training based, not like opportunity or kind of like introduction to the team. This way we set the hierarchy, right? The GC's in charge, the architects over construction administration's overseeing everyone. And then who are the key players on the project?
Ryan Abendroth:The plumber, the electrician, the insulator, the carpenter, just making sure they all work well together and explaining what the goals of the project are. This way, even though you're an electrician, like I don't touch outside walls or, you know, like like I'm just an electrician and it's like, look, you can't you you I wouldn't ruin your work. Don't ruin my work. And then I wouldn't put holes. I wouldn't cut your I wouldn't cut your electrical wires and not tell you, please don't do that to my air battery or my installation.
Ryan Abendroth:And I mimic the training based kinda like on like a safety training, like a safety orientation of like, this is the project, these are the rules, this is what it is. And then a little bit of show and tell kind of like, these are the products we're gonna use. This is how you air seal, not easy, right? It takes some time I have to clean. And it's just creating that level of respect on the project for our work, which is semi new to old work, which is standard, and then how they all interweave.
Ryan Abendroth:And then in the trades, kinesthetic learners, they like to look, listen, and feel and touch. And I love leaving mock ups or kinda like drawings or ways of instructing that then stay on the site. And then when you get new people on the site, they can be like, this is what this needs to look like. This is different. This is a passive house.
Ryan Abendroth:Favorite anecdote information was working at one of the early projects and it was the middle of the winter and there was no heat on whatsoever, no temporary And the painters were showing up and they were like putting shorts on and they would put their winter clothes on to go home. But all day, they were working painting in their shorts, you know, in a quiet building. The air was good. It was filled with light, and it was it's like, this is different. You know?
Ryan Abendroth:All our other projects were freezing. And
Ryan Abendroth:It was pretty wild. And not only that, but everything, the paint was dry and everything about it was better.
Ryan Abendroth:Yeah.
Ryan Abendroth:So you just brought up something that dawned on me because I'm actually dealing with a situation right now where mock ups are important, direction is important, and I feel like it's not my project per se, but I'm working on a project where there is a little bit of time being wasted or spent just waiting for mock ups and direction. One of the things that I guess I took for granted and still do is that part of our, when we do these initial meetings with the contractor, we've typically already met with the past files consultant and you and others, and we know what our makeup is of our wall and our window, and part of what they're learning on is that makeup. So maybe talk about the importance of a mock up, because I think for some of them, I'm remembering some of our products where you didn't know if you're gonna use peel and stick, or you didn't know if you could use tape or some liquid applied to you know, what what's your what's your recommendation there?
Ryan Abendroth:Early. And then navigate what the library is or what what potential products you can use and narrow that down. It can be very overwhelming for a general contractor that's not an air barrier specialist to look at all the air barrier products and be like, this is the one I want because it's intimidating. You kinda do what you have access to, like, what does my local lumber yard sell? What have I used before?
Ryan Abendroth:Have I purchased it before? Those kinda guide a lot of the GC decisions, logistics and purchasing, and then figuring out what they are. On my projects that I worked on, me being the tester, so I knew I was gonna test early. I tested my own my own stuff. Ahmad, if this is your project or a other do an early mock up and test it.
Ryan Abendroth:So build a chamber onto it. I've been pitching for years. I have never no one's ever done it before, but the office, the PH with the office, whereas every construction site needs a place to take a phone call in a meeting that is quiet, dust free, and depending on what products you're using, you kinda need them to be weather safe and that they don't freeze or dry. So build a small little corner of one project with one window, build three walls onto it, maybe a ceiling, use the floor, whatever it is, put it up. That's your first run mock up.
Ryan Abendroth:It's a place where you'll keep everything. You test it. You know it's tight. If everything else looks like this, we'll be in good shape, but you're testing like five different things at once. You're testing the window to the wall airtight connection.
Ryan Abendroth:You're testing your fluid applied air barrier on the block. You're testing your through floor in connections, and then you can take it to the next level and have it be like a finished mock up. Among people, clients, architects, PCs. They like to know what something is gonna look like in the future. And it kind of like builds upon confidence, but making the blow a door or testing ability, you don't need to send it to a laboratory and have it tested.
Ryan Abendroth:You get your first window early, plus everyone likes to know, like, was it easy to get? Was it easy to bring in? Like, is this a sample? Like, can you logistically get me one window in four weeks? You know, because if you can't get me one window in four weeks, how are you going get me 20 in twenty weeks?
Ryan Abendroth:You know?
Zack Semke:Next, hear from Nikita Reid and her Reimagined Design interview with Michael. Nikita is Associate Principal at Quinn Evans and host of the podcast Tangible Remnants. Here, Michael asks her how she integrates architecture, preservation, and high performance building design, priorities that are sometimes viewed as working at cross purposes. Incorrectly viewed, Nikita would point out.
Ryan Abendroth:How do you deal with that? Know you've got two loves, I guess three. Architecture preservation, you might join into one, and then high performance. Yes. You're constantly kind of marrying the three, I guess.
Nakita Reed:Yeah. And a lot of it is a lot of conversations. And so I know there are sometimes that some architects, they view like the state historic preservation officer or the various regulatory bodies as adversaries as opposed to collaborators and partners. So on all of our projects, I am often making sure that we are having these conversations early and often with the various approval entities to let them know this is what we're planning, here's what we would like to do, where are there gaps, where it's potential, what could potentially be a holdup or that sort of thing. And so a lot of times when we're able to not only help communicate what we want to do, but also help educate the different policy makers and even the regulatory agencies on what we're trying to do, that helps.
Nakita Reed:Because I found that, surprise, surprise, many of the people enforcing policy aren't as familiar with the realities that we're facing in the day to day. And so being able to bring them along during the process before they just have to be like, alright, I have ten days to approve or deny this. I'm not familiar with what this is. Denied. Come back with more information, that sort of thing.
Nakita Reed:So having those types of conversations early and often, and also just developing the rapport with them so that they're familiar. Like, the the permit official in Baltimore knows me. The SHPO knows me. So it's it's one of those things where being able to have those conversations helps build that relationship and that trust. So they also know that I'm not trying to get over on them.
Nakita Reed:I'm not trying to skirt the intent of the code or the law or the standard, but really trying to be creative and solve these problems.
Zack Semke:In this clip, we hear Nikita share her advice to architects who are beginning their first historic project.
Nakita Reed:It's also funny because the number of architects who will come to me after they have taken on a historic preservation project, only to realize that, oh, there's more, there's actual laws and standards they have to follow on this project. Yeah, it's not a hobby. Like, all right, what did you get into? How can I help you unravel this and the approvals you need to do? Because I think that's the other thing where a lot of times people get very upset or they feel like preservation is very hard or adaptive reuse is so difficult, but really it's just they're not familiar with the system and the approvals.
Nakita Reed:And so they do things in the wrong order, and that holds up a bunch of things.
Ryan Abendroth:Oh, sequencing. Will say, on historic preservation, it wasn't going to be one of my questions, but now it is. Because you're right, sequencing. It becomes that much more important when it's a historic restoration, first of all. But if you're dealing with a certifying body, when you're dealing with preservation, even that much more important.
Ryan Abendroth:So maybe talk a little bit about that.
Nakita Reed:Yes. And part of it also is just knowing where to check to prevent some of the pitfalls. And I know most of you are architects on the call. The biggest nugget I'll give you if you're working on a historic building is to double check to see if there's an easement on the property before you start doing anything. One of the horror stories that I heard when I was first starting out in my career was that there was an architect who was really well known, and she decided to do some work for historically black church in the Eastern Shore Of Maryland.
Nakita Reed:And she was like, oh, they have this great big parcel of land right next to the building, they could do a fantastic addition. The church was like, this sounds great, we wanna do the addition. Yes, please design this and let's go. She designs it, she submits it to the building permit office to be able to get a building permit, and they say, you can't build anything on this plot of land because there is a historic easement on this property. That the church leadership at some point in time, decades previously, gave the SHPO a perpetual easement saying they would never build on this land because they were going to get however much money from the SHPO for a grant or something like that.
Nakita Reed:And so she had to go back to the church and say, I'm sorry, you can't build here because you have this easement, but you also owe me tens of thousands of dollars because I already did this work. And so it's like that friction between, I know you can't do what you wanted to do, but I did the work from a design standpoint, so now you owe me money. But then it's like, well, how are we gonna pay you if we can't raise money for capital improvements we can't do? So it was just kind of like that friction.
Ryan Abendroth:Page 22, yeah. Exactly. It's a toughie.
Zack Semke:And here, reimaginer Ranger Penny asks Nikita about how she advocates for energy efficiency within the context of historic preservation work.
Rainger Pinney:I'm sure that you sometimes will get some pushback and it feels like you're in a really unique position of being an advocate for both high performance and preservation. And I'm sure that there are choices, hard choices that need to be made sometimes. And there's some preservation purists that I'm sure would be really resistant to changing envelope details and having to build up walls from either the inside or the outside. Just kind of curious what your pitch for energy efficiency is in some of these buildings.
Nakita Reed:Yeah. Yeah. That's such a great question. Because you're right. There are some preservationists who don't buy the idea that sustainability and preservation go hand in hand.
Nakita Reed:Same way there are some some sustainability folks who don't buy it from a preservation side either. So it's interesting because there are some people who really care about, well, what's the mortar on the building? I just want the mortar to be repaired and that needs to be that's all I care about. But from a broader preservation standpoint, being good stewards of buildings means keeping people in the buildings and keeping people caring about the buildings. Because once a building is no longer cared for or upkept, that's when all of the bad things start to happen because people stop doing repairs, the roof starts to leak, water gets in, you know, it's not secure anymore, vandalism starts to happen, and then it becomes a place that if no one cares about, then it just, it's going to fall apart.
Nakita Reed:And so being able to keep people comfortable in a building is a great way to be a good steward for the building, which is going to in the long run, keep the building preserved and carried forward. And so oftentimes when I am talking to, I lovingly call my preservation purist nerds, and I'm one of them sometimes. I'm like, all right, get it. All right, nerds. So this is what we're gonna do.
Nakita Reed:It's very much, we need to actually think holistically about the building because otherwise we're gonna miss the forest from the trees. And so it's funny because I'm just a total nerd because both my preservation folks and also my pass house folks, it's like hey nerds what's going on like we're very much nerdy on all this so it's like are we talking about building science are we talking about the mortar are we talking about what kind of plaster is it so it's just being able to find the different things to nerd out and being able to find the different things that people care about and are passionate about to be able to get them to be open to that conversation is a lot of talking.
Ryan Abendroth:By the way, I think you just hit a bit of a sweet spot in that conversation, though, because I think and it it reminds me so so often of of of the RS groups talk at one point. We're starting at the end. They were talking about it from a chemical mechanical perspective, but I think it also works in in this one where you're talking about a use perspective. And, yeah, if the end users if it doesn't have an end user, we're doomed. You know, there's only so many truly, beautifully, historically preserved buildings that don't have a real use because they're uncomfortable or or aren't set up well or the the rooms aren't the way people work or live anymore.
Ryan Abendroth:Right. That we need. I mean, we need a few of them maybe, but but you're you're really in my in my mind, just I wrote it down here. You've that that's a sweet spot right there. That's that's the place to start the conversation.
Ryan Abendroth:Right. If you don't do this, and the building becomes less useful, all of a sudden, this building's in in danger, forgetting all about historic preservation.
Nakita Reed:Right, exactly.
Zack Semke:In our last clip for today's episode, we hear from Beth Campbell again. Now, case you didn't know, an incredibly exciting boom in Passive House is underway in Massachusetts, spurred on by a policy framework of incentives and code. Beth shares the numbers they're seeing right now.
Beth Campbell:So within this massive pipeline that we have going on in Massachusetts right now, we have just an enormous number of projects that are in the works. So we've got around 2,000 certified units. So most of these are permanent units, some of them are single family homes, but mainly multifamily. We've got 5,000 that have been design certified, those are well into the pipeline. We've got another 8,000 registered units meaning that this is money that people have paid to get these projects registered, so we feel pretty confident that they're in design now.
Beth Campbell:And then there's another 21,000 that have been kind of preliminarily reviewed. So over 30,000 units of primarily multifamily passive house projects that are in the pipeline right now that aim to get certified. And essentially, we've got about a third of the population of Massachusetts has opted in to these specialized codes areas that require passive house certification for a certificate of occupancy essentially. So we've got a lot coming down the pipeline. So that's why Massachusetts is so focused and making sure we've got a lot of really great opportunities out there for folks to get certified as CPHCs or Ds or take builder or tradesperson certification courses.
Beth Campbell:There's going to be a lot of people that don't take those full certifications that still need education. And so that's where our target focus is.
Zack Semke:I had the honor of visiting Boston a couple of weeks ago to deliver the keynote address at Passive House Massachusetts twenty twenty five Passive House Symposium. During my visit there, I learned that Beth's numbers have been updated to 35,000 units being in the pipeline now. If all were built, that would amount to somewhere between thirty and thirty five million square feet of passive house and passive building projects in just one state. For context, The entire US has about 12,000,000 square feet of certified passive projects built to date. So Massachusetts is creating a hockey stick of adoption of Passive House for the entire country.
Zack Semke:Incredibly exciting. On that note, I hope these snippets of our experts in residence in The Collective have piqued You can dive into the full replays of these conversations all available in the Collective. And if you're not yet a member of the Collective, we'd love to have you join us. You'll get direct access to experts and peers who are on the same journey with buildings, resilience, and climate. Learn more at reimaginebuildings.com.
Zack Semke:Speaking of members, a warm welcome to our newest Reimaginers. Kristen Bailey, Scott Drennan, Aaron Sourhoff, Carrie Beer, Liam Smedley, Kevin Stack, Laura Blau, Benoit Bemenu, Gio Beltran, Mark Granin, Jenin Pertslinger, Joseph Martin, Susan Blumquist, Rebecca Griffith, Tamiya Sarkozy, Jane Sanders, Matthew Richardson, Peter Reagor, and Jake Bales. With that, thanks for listening to this fourteenth episode of the Reimagine Edit, a production of the Passive House podcast by Passive House Accelerator. It's a privilege to bring these conversations from the Reimagined Buildings Collective into the open. Each time we share what we're learning and take the time to really listen, we sharpen our practice together.
Zack Semke:None of this work happens in isolation. We're learning alongside one another, building as we go, and gradually finding clearer footing toward the future we're trying to create. So thanks for being part of this ongoing experiment in reimagining buildings. And if you're not yet part of the collective and you're curious, check it out. We'd love for you to join us.
Zack Semke:With that, have a great couple of weeks. We'll be back soon with another episode of the Reimagine Edit.