sustainable – LEAP Architecture

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Healthier Workplace: Enhanced Business Culture

Architectural design plays a large part in workplace psychology and enhanced business culture. It helps define everything from company culture and ethics, to employee productivity.

Psychology of Design

“Environmental psychology explores the parameters and variables that might alter one’s mood, behavior, productivity, effectiveness, and attitude.” Irving Weiner, AIA, & Environmental Psychology Professor

Have you ever walked into an office, or store and felt like, “Ahh, this is a place I want to be”? Maybe you’re not even sure why, but your subconscious had evaluated the space and given its stamp of approval, even before your rational brain has caught up.

This non-verbal communication is important for a how a commercial space (be it storefront, office, apartment building) speaks to both its customers and employees. A healthy workplace design will impact the company identity (design of space), help define the company culture, and reflect its ethics. But not only that, it influences how people behave. Sound important? We think so.

commercial architect enhanced business culture - artistic

Lounge area for photographer’s studio

But you might ask, how do we know this? Well, the field of environmental psychology studies how everything around us—our spaces, our buildings, our cities, and our landscape—make us feel and behave.

According to Dave Alan Kopec (New School of Architecture and Design in San Diego), it’s “the study of human relations and behaviors within the context of built and natural environments.” (1)

This knowledge of behavior modification is a powerful tool, which we as architects, use to create results for our clients. What kind of results? Well, in an office setting, this can lead to improvements in employee productivity, while for retail locations, purposeful design should lead to higher sales. In a healthcare environment, it could mean faster healing and shorter hospital stays. We’re talking tangible, measurable results!

“The goals are to integrate environmental factors such as HVAC, illumination, color, art, and ergonomics into the unconscious mind, so that one’s perception is positive; which in turn shall motivate one to be more effective in academia, in the community, and in the workforce.” Irving Weiner

Healthier Workplace: Enhanced Business Culture

So if this is known, and out there, why are so many office-type building still so…. blah? Well, according to Mike Bahr, it’s because most modern offices are solely considered as a cost, rather than a performance driver. They go for so called “functional” considerations, like let’s cram as many people in as possible, and one-size fits all workstations.

Don’t get us wrong, functionality is incredibly important, but designing based on the narrow definition of function misses so many opportunities. We like to incorporate all aspects of what we consider to be functionality, which includes how our clients want to encourage their clients/employees to behave and feel.

corporate office architect designs schematic for GE Battery plant new offices to enhanced business culture

Corporate office space for General Electric

And each situation is different. A highly collaborative office culture may need more shared workstations, meeting spaces, lounge areas, while a control culture is more suited to formal, individual spaces. It all starts with a) the “recognition of space as a way to support productivity and company goals”, b) defining the goals for behaviors and company culture, and c) letting the architect synergize all the elements in to a design that delivers.

How is your commercial space supporting your goals? We’ve helped all types of companies from corporate offices, to salons, and professional studio spaces to enhanced business culture. Take a look at some of our projects and see how we can help you!

5 Benefits of Designing a Happy, Healthy Home

in Healthy Home, Stories

More and more families and businesses are recognizing the value of designing for health, and working with architects like LEAP to create happier homes and more productive businesses. You probably spend a significant amount of time in your home, but is that affecting your health for better or worse? Check out 5 ways we design to ensure a healthy home, which also makes you feel great!

5 Benefits of a Happy, Healthy Home

Feel better, save money, and add more of that je ne sais que to your day. Sound good? We think so. LEAP’s design process was developed to truly understand and enhance your family’s goals, dynamics, and needs. We gather information and then custom design your space, while working to save you money in the construction phase, and long-term on utilities.

How do we do that?

We consider all of the following aspects in LEAP’s Residential Designs.

How to:

Enhance Family Life
Enhance Sleeping, Eating, Bathing and Living Lifestyles
Increase Daylight
Promote Healthy Indoor Air
Increase Energy Efficiency

For today, let’s look at some of the specific ways design can enhance your life with respect to enhanced family life, and living lifestyles.

Enhanced Family Life

Architecture, whether or not we realize it, can shape our relationships with each other and our environment, through space, form, and materials. How? By creating interactive settings—places to congregate, or just making it difficult to avoid each other. For example, designing so the stairs to the upper floor bedrooms cannot be accessed from the front hallway. This directs everyone to pass through the main living space, creating more opportunity for family interaction, as opposed to a straight bee-line upstairs. More open floor plans, or the use of L-shaped interlocking rooms can also creative a sense of connectedness, even when family member are technically in a different “room”. Increased human interactions improve our sense of well-being, enrich our lives, make them healthier and more pleasurable.

“The shaft of sunlight in a recessed window seat that creates a moment of warmth and calm, combined with a glimpse of nature, soft and acoustically absorbent seat materials, and the tactile delight of the smooth grip to adjust a wooden shutter.

Our well-being is intimately linked with such moments of delight. To an extent, such stimuli happen all the time, often without being recognized or designed, but when they are orchestrated throughout a building the effect is cumulative.” –Koen Steemers, D&A Magazine issue 23 by VELUX

Enhanced Sleeping, Eating, Bathing and Living Lifestyles

Healthy Home: Sleeping

The design of the bedroom can make or break a good night’s sleep. Naturally, light plays an important role for sleep cycles. A good dose of morning light will stimulate the circadian rhythm and help you feel more awake. Conversely, at night, bedrooms should have effective blackout options to support total darkness. This can be achieved using thermal shutters (for cold periods) and/or with adjustable louvers (for secure night time ventilation in warm conditions).

The bedroom shown at the right was designed as part of a master suite addition. It has an open floor plan between the bedroom and the bathroom, with a partial wall that creates a sense of boundary. The openness of the space allows sunlight to permeate far into the bedroom space, which gently illuminates the space in the morning. By afternoon, the space is so bright, no additional illumination is required. The white walls, ceiling and floor tile provide a sense of calm, spaciousness, and airiness. The wood bed and headboard/partition ground the space for a restful sleep.

Healthy Home: Eating

And for tonight’s kitchen performance… A good strategy for healthy, community eating is to create a sense of theater related to cooking. This can be achieved through designing in accessible counter-tops and seating, allowing for both spectating and participating (like the breakfast bar with stools shown to the right). To further support communal eating, (and the social interactions that result) the dining area should be adjacent to the kitchen, making an easy transition from preparation to eating enjoyment. (Read how LEAP used Ikea cabinets to get this look)

Conversely, the TV area should further from the kitchen, limiting the temptation to mentally check-out and simply down your food, while watching reruns of Seinfeld.

Healthy Home: Bathing

Hopefully we do not need to go over the merits of good personal hygiene here, well, unless you have a teen that refuses to shower. Bathing and the family or master bath have so many functions. When washing, the surroundings should not only enable you to get clean, but to also mentally wash away the day. You should be able to both literally and figuratively cleanse yourself. Bathrooms should generally feel serene, have clean lines, streamline fixtures, which should be easy to keep clean, along with the proper amount of storage. The master bath shown to the left creates an ultra calming atmosphere, with its white and soft gray pallet, along with contemplative views of nature. (BTW, this addition won a design award).

Healthy Home: Living Lifestyles

A thermal design strategy encompasses not only room temperature, but also radiant conditions, air movement, and thermal conduction of materials. We’re talking about things like sunlight, natural ventilation, and the feel of materials. Materials such as wood feel warm to the touch, while stone is cooling.

These various characteristics can be mixed and matched to create the mood for different rooms. A reading nook could comfortably warm, with ample sunlight and plenty of wood and fabric surfaces to create a cozy retreat. You may want your office to feel more stimulating—cooler both temperature and material-wise, minimal clean lines, with a good view outdoors for inspiration.

Sound is another important consideration. As with thermal design, different materials have different acoustic properties, which can be tailors to fit the space. Within the home there are places where acoustic privacy is welcome, and spaces where room-to-room conversation is desired.

The great room shown on the right was designed with a mixture of materials (wood floors and beams, stone fireplace, metal staircase and rails) to be a stimulating, yet balanced space. The high ceiling creates an air of magnificence, while the natural materials (wood and stone) provide a grounding effect.

Are you considering an addition or building a new home? Leverage LEAP’s design expertise to make the most of your new happy and healthy home.

Albany Architects Keep Seeds Safe in Haiti

in Get to Know the Architect, Haiti, Stories

How to prevent spoilage? Our minds usually jump to refrigeration, but what if electricity is not available or reliable? Albany architects use their green building expertise to solve this conundrum and help Haitians preserve seeds for high-yield crops.

Be Cool, Seeds

Haiti can be pretty hot and humid. While this might sound appealing for island life, it’s not ideal for storing seeds—and most important are those seeds. The seed we are referring to are peanut and rice. This seed storage project is part of a larger effort to develop more high-yield, high-protein crops for Haitians and to help reduce their reliance on international aid. This work is made possible by the iF Foundation.

David Doherty, friend and mentor, currently works with the iF Foundation to experimentally raise high-yield and high-protein crops. The seeds and seedlings are distributed to local farmers along with education and tools that perpetuate local, sustainable agriculture.

So, if you were literally banking next years meals, you’d want that bank to be designed right. So what’s a green architect to do? Start with site analysis of course! Identify features that we can work with, such as gravity, sun, shading, plants, air pressure. Sounds simplistic? Well, that’s where the elegance of the solution shines. When you have little to work with, it really brings out the creativity in people and the project.

Day 2. Team reviews the new plan of action.

Green Building Design

The main goal here was to keep the rice and peanut seed, which are stored in metal shipping containers, cool and prevent spoilage. The key design approach was to create shade and air movement. The shade was accomplished by designing an open-sided steel structure with a pavilion-style, tiered roof. The open, yet overlapping tiers allowed air hot air to escape. Planted walls will help further cool the surroundings and increase the temperature differential from the ground below to the hot roof above (temperature and pressure differential), further generating air flow.

Albany architect in Haiti oversees construction of seed storage pavilion

Day 3. A section of welded 2 x 4 for the frame has been painted and is being inspected.

Albany Architects go Back to the Drawing Board

If you scroll down to the bottom, you’ll see we successfully build the see storage pavilion! But before that point, our engineering and design mettle was tested. We hit several of the proverbial “bumps in the road”, which were more akin to the sinkhole on North Lake Ave. in Albany, earlier this year. Without giving you the blow-by-blow, let’s say that 6 months of design preparation had to be thrown out when we arrived in Haiti.

Here are a couple of the big bumps:

Bolts no more. The promised “metal shop” only had 2-hand held power drills to make holes for the 3600 bolted connections, which would have required 750 hours (or 31 days of 24/7 drilling). Did I mention the bits became dull after 48 holes, then unusable, and both of the drills burnt out? So no bolted connections. –>Okay, welding it is.
Right size steel? No. The design called for 4×4 steel tubes, ¼” thick. However, only 2×4 tubes were delivered, which were only 1/16” thick. –> We decided to weld together 2×4 tubes in order to fabricate 4×4 tubes. Extra welded supports were also required.

After we scrapped the entire design, half the team broke away to work on re-design while the other half continued preparation work on the ground. What was important in this project is that no one on the team gave up. After a few groans, everyone faced the new reality and got busy meeting the new challenge. We only had 1 week onsite to finish this project, and I am so proud of what our team (from the US and Haiti) was able to accomplish!

Albany architects designed seed storage pavilion in Haiti- shown under construction

Day 6. The pavilion starts to take shape.

The Lean and Green Team

LEAP Architecture certainly didn’t do this project alone. Our brilliant team made this project possible, overcoming obstacles large and small, with humor, grace and limited resources. A huge thanks to the iF Foundation for providing the funding.

Our Extraordinary Project team:

iF Foundation (Funders of the agricultural campus and programs)
David Doherty, Vice Chairman
Edlyne Cange, Country Director
Architecture by Eric Davenport, Founder LEAP Architecture
Engineering: by ENGinE, Widener University Students:
Cameron Connors, Nichole Dantoni, Alfred Hew, Hannah Landvater, Tori Remondelli,
Soils Engineer and Hands on Deck: Zamir Libohova
Construction Site Super: Magnus Regis, iF Foundation

LEAP designed a seed storage pavilion that required no moving parts

Day 7. The pavilion structure is complete. The plantings for additional shade around the perimeter are not in yet (as of the taking of this picture).

This project was completed in February 2016. To read about LEAP’s Albany Architects & their adventures, see out new effort for designing a school in Haiti. Click here.

ENERGY STAR Partner – Leap Makes Pledge

in Stories

As an ENERGY STAR Partner, we are creating house plans designed to earn the ENERGY STAR certification, and helping meet consumers’ growing demand for high quality, energy-efficient homes.

ENERGY STAR Partner – What it Means

If you’ve ever walked into a big box store looking for a new appliance, you’re probably familiar with the ENERGY STAR labels proudly affixed to that new washer or fridge. But did you know that ENERGY STAR rating and certification go beyond dishwashers? Yep, you could slap that shooting star across the front of your house, well, provided that your whole house meets certain environmental standards.

Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, administered nationally by the U.S. Department of Energy in conjunction with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, offers a comprehensive, whole-house approach to improving energy efficiency and comfort of homes, while helping to protect the environment.(1)

The Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can’t do it all alone—they need help—specifically our help. So in order to unleash the ENERGY STAR certification to the whole home model, they bring in architects and builder partners, the entities who are really in touch with you, the end-user.

Why Partner?

LEAP Architecture’s mission is promote sustainable building practices. We build basic energy conservation into each of our projects, which is to say, we already met ENERGY STAR certification, but unofficially. Partnering with EPA and making it official, provides higher visibility for conservation and an existing framework to help our clients understand the requirements for green building design. As mentioned above, since you are already familiar with the ENERGY STAR rating for appliances (less energy usage, lower green-house gas emissions, saves money), it’s an easy jump to envision that those same benefits will apply to your house.

Watch this 2 min video by the EPA for a run-down on the merits of an ENERGY STAR home.

Beyond ENERGY STAR

If you are interested in home energy conservation, don’t miss our post on Sustainable Building Goals Made Simple. This write-up shows the sustainability pyramid we use, and where ENERGY STAR fits into the scheme of things. ENERGY STAR certification creates a good solid foundation and a jumping off point to go even further into sustainable building, NET-Zero, for example.

LEAP welcomes your questions. We strive to make sure that your project is a good fit with our expertise. Give us a call 518-669-9435, and speak to Eric.

1. Home. Energy Star. [Online] https://www.energystar.gov/homepage.

Architects – AIA’s List of Critical Questions to Ask

in Get to Know the Architect, Stories

LEAP Architecture is a member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). Here we share AIA’s list of questions to help you decide if an architect is the right fit for you and your project.

Questions, Questions, Questions

Every architecture firm brings its own combination of skills, expertise, interests, and values to its projects. The challenge is to find the one that aligns most closely with your project’s needs. Selection is a mutual process.

The most thoughtful architects are as careful in selecting their clients as owners are in selecting architects. Be prepared to answer questions about your project’s purpose, budget, time frame, site, and the team of players you anticipate being involved with the project.

Below are some questions, broken up by topic, to address when meeting with a prospective architect.

Architects Experience

• What is your design philosophy?

• What sets your firm apart from other architects with similar experience?

• Do you have experience with the building type and size of my project?

• Will you share with me a portfolio of similar projects and provide a list of client references?

• Who from the architecture firm will I be dealing with on a regular basis? Is this the person who will design my project?

Take a look at LEAP’s Portfolio for Residential and Commercial Projects.

My Project

• What challenges do you foresee for my project?

• What do you see as the important issues or considerations in my project?

• What is your estimated timetable for my project?

• What means will you use to collect information about my needs, goals, etc.?

• How will you help me to fully understand the scope and sequence of the project? Will you utilize models, drawings, or computer animation?

Design

• What are the steps in the design process, and how are they organized?

• What criteria will be used to establish priorities and make design decisions?

• What do you expect me to provide?

• How disruptive will construction be?

• What role do you have during construction? Am I expected to work with the contractor directly?

Here’s a pretty thorough walk-through of LEAP’s design process.

Green Design

• Do you have experience with “green” or sustainable design?

• Do you regularly integrate low or no cost sustainable design strategies into projects?

• Considering the many areas that may be affected by sustainable design, how will you determine which options to pursue?

• If sustainable design technologies are implemented, do upfront costs exist that may affect the construction budget? What are the expected pay back times?

Read how LEAP approaches Green Design.

Architects Fees

• How do you establish fees?

• In anticipation of a formal proposal with costs, what would you expect your fee to be for this project?

• What is included in your basic services and what services would incur additional fees?

• If the scope of the project changes later in the project, will there be additional fees? How will these fees be justified? How will this be communicated to me?

• What is your track record with completing a project within the original budget?

Here’s one of LEAP’s posts that covers the benefits of working with an architect and our general fee structure.

LEAP welcomes your questions. We strive to make sure that your project is a good fit with our expertise. The AIA also offers a nice PDF guide, You and Your Architect. Download it here, and start asking away! Give us a call 518-669-9435, and speak to Eric. And lastly, check out our client reviews and testimonials.

Meet the Architect, Eric Davenport

in Get to Know the Architect, Stories

Get to Know LEAP Founder and Architect, Eric Davenport in our next series of posts!

5 Questions with Eric

What was your first job?

My first job was working at Stewarts in Clifton Park, NY, where I grew up. One of my duties was scraping out the bottom of the chili pot—an experience that turned me on to vegetarianism, lol!

What led you to become an architect?

I think I’ve always been drawn to architecture, even as a little kid. The process of designing something that people will live and work in, it seems commonplace, but when you really think about it, it’s a really big deal. Architecture influences all of us, everyday, whether or not we consciously recognize it. One of my favorite quotes:

“Architecture is basically a container of something. I hope they will enjoy not so much the teacup, but the tea.” –Yoshio Taniguchi

How does your family influence your design approach?

LEAP Architect, Eric Davenport with his 3 kids.

My wife Claire and I have 3 children, ages 4, 12, and 19. So I understand that family life is sometimes chaotic. The flow of the house should bring a family together, be a backdrop for, yet also enhance daily activities. The materials used is another big consideration. These should be aesthetically pleasing, but also durable and easy to maintain. A good design meets the needs of both growing children and the parents. Many families need “together” spaces and “away” spaces to help balance the family dynamics. We also explore specific growth plans for families, and also businesses to help improve their bottom lines.

Have you traveled? How has that shaped you?

Travel has had a profound influence on my life and work. I worked through my undergraduate degree at Ball State University in Indiana. My last semester was spent in Copenhagen, Denmark. I really connected to the Scandinavian aesthetic—clean lines, lots of light, and it always feels fresh. The weather in Denmark is not so great, so little effort is spent on simple exteriors. However, the interiors are other-worldy: warm, cozy, vibrant spaces for living, working and playing are key to the Dane’s happy lifestyles.

I also traveled and studied in Sri Lanka, India and Nepal, which helped inform our practice with historical context. It’s one thing to look at these ancient structures in a text book. When experiencing them in person, I learned how historic structures can be used in contemporary ways, and contribute to sustainable design strategies.

After coming back to the states, I knew that I needed to incorporate green and sustainable building practices into my designs. I complemented my environmental architecture education by attending ECOSA, the sustainable design institute in Prescott, AZ.

Spending time out in the desert was wild. It helped me appreciate the specificity of regional climates and their impact on architectural design. I studied under the guidance of Tony Brown, who was an apprentice of Paolo Soleri. Soleri, for those of you that don’t know, founded the Arcosanti, an urban laboratory focused on innovative design, community, and environmental accountability in the high desert of Arizona.

For the last 10 years I’ve been living and working in New York’s Capital District, which is also where I grew up. Living here, it feels a little like completing a circuit.

Portrait of the Architect as a Young Man in Nepal. LEAP Founder and Architect, Eric Davenport in his formative years.

Do you have a passion project?

Haiti is a big one. I started volunteering in Haiti in 2003. The initial focus was on education and how to affordably create schools as a space for teaching with cultural arts. My involvement grew from there. I really fell in love with the country and the people. I’m proud to say that LEAP has worked not only on schools, but emergency relief community designs, sustainable agricultural pro
cessing plants, community centers, computer centers, and food security programs. I’m working on a longer story about my Haiti experiences, so stay tuned for that in the coming weeks.

LEAP Founder and Architect, Eric Davenport overseeing construction of a seed storage facility in Haiti.

[box type=”bio”] LEAP Architect, Eric Davenport excels in understanding complex needs of businesses and families. LEAP’s goal is to provide affordable solutions to companies and residential clients. He has extensive experience in single family and multi-family residential projects and also specializes in interior design.

Contact LEAP and let us put our experience to work for you![/box]

Sustainable Building Goals Made Simple

in Passive House Design, Stories

So you’re interested in going green, being environmentally responsible, and feeling pretty damn good about it—until the influx of terms and programs rush in—LEED, Energy Star, Passive House, Carbon Neutral. What’s right for me? That’s why we’re going to take you through our Sustainable Building Goals Made Simple.

Sustainability Building Goals Don’t Have to be Overwhelming

This can be a complex terrain to navigate, but this is one of the first topics that LEAP tackles and it informs the rest of the design process going forward. We divide sustainability goals into 3 sections of a pyramid—conservation, Net-Zero, and Living Building. A pyramid shape is a perfect representation of starting with a wide base of basic green building practices and becoming more refined as you go up.

Below is a graphical representation of our pyramid, with each of the 3 layers explained in the following text.

Sustainable Building Goals Made Simple

Conservation and Sustainable Architecture

Sustainable architecture is a pretty broad term, which basically seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings through conscious design, energy efficiency, choice of materials, development space and the ecosystem at large. Sustainable architecture has an eye towards energy and ecological conservation in the design of the built environment. The idea of sustainability is to think ahead to ensure that building are constructed for longevity and effectiveness. Read more about LEAP’s commitment to sustainability.

Energy Star

Energy Star is a government-backed labeling program that helps people and organizations save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by identifying factories, office equipment, home appliances and electronics that have superior energy efficiency

LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design)

LEED is one of the most popular green building certification programs used worldwide. Developed by the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) it includes a set of rating systems for the design, construction, operation, and maintenance of green buildings, homes, and neighborhoods that aims to help building owners and operators be environmentally responsible and use resources efficiently.

Buildings can qualify for four levels of LEED certification:

Certified: 40–49 points
Silver: 50–59 points
Gold: 60–79 points
Platinum: 80 points and above

Green Globes

Green Globes is an online green building rating and certification tool that is used primarily in Canada and the US. Their standard is recognized by the Global Sustainable Tourism Council and Green Globe is an Affiliate Member of the UNWTO. Green Globe members are committed to benchmarking and managing the use of energy and water with the aim of reducing the use of these resources as well as promoting reuse and recycling of materials.

Net Zero Building

A zero net energy (ZNE) building is a structure with zero net energy consumption. This means the total amount of energy used by the building on an annual basis is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy created on the site. In some definitions, the energy balance can be from renewable energy sources elsewhere. These buildings consequently contribute less overall greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than similar non-ZNE buildings. They do at times consume non-renewable energy and produce greenhouse gases, but at other times reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas production elsewhere by the same amount.

Carbon Neutral Buildings

Carbon-neutral, also called carbon neutrality is a term used to describe the action of organizations, businesses and individuals taking action to remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as each put in to it. It is similar to net zero building. The overall goal of carbon neutrality is to achieve a zero carbon footprint, which means using no fossil fuel GHG emitting energy to operate.

Read more in our story of meeting the 2030 CHALLENGE: CARBON-NEUTRAL BUILDINGS

Passive House Building

The term passive house refers to a rigorous, voluntary standard for energy efficiency in a building, reducing its ecological footprint. It results in ultra-low energy buildings that require little energy for space heating or cooling. The requirements for a certified Passive House are very stringent. Per the definition—it can use no more than 1.4 kWh per 1 ft² of living space annually.

Read more on our series of Passive House Design Posts.

Living Buildings

A Living Building operates as a structure that “generates all of its own energy with renewable nontoxic resources, captures and treats all of its water, and operates efficiently and for maximum beauty.

The Living Building Challenge™ is a building certification program, advocacy tool and philosophy that defines the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today and acts to rapidly diminish the gap between current limits and the end-game positive solutions we seek.

[box type=”bio”] Interested in Sustainable Building, Net Zero, & Passive House Design? Whether you want to start from scratch or renovate—we can help with Sustainable Building Goals Made Simple! Every $1 spent on design saves $10 in construction costs. Let LEAP provide you the best design possible.

Passive House Design: Air Sealing & Pink Slime

in Passive House Design, Stories

This is the fourth post in our series on Passive House Design. If you missed either of the previous, click on the links below to get up to speed! LEAP’s intelligent design process consists of four main steps. Today we explore the importance of air sealing, and pink slime—that’s a technical term.

Passive House Design Process

“Your Love is Lifting Me Higher”

We want you to have a love affair with your house or office building (or why not both?). It should be an uplifting space that makes you want to sing and dance. And hopefully it’s just you dancing—because your building is (or should be)—coated with pink slime. Not the psychomagnotheric slime that had lady liberty strolling around, cracking domes like soft boiled eggs, but the air sealing kind.

Air sealing is critical to temperature and moisture control, and reduces draftiness, noise and pollutants. It also plays an important role in energy efficiency. Proper sealing of joints and penetrations in the building envelope can reduce energy consumption for heating and cooling by 30%.

passive house design, air sealing, spray on seal

Here is an example from Ghostbusters II, where they went a little overboard with air sealing the building.

The Ghosts of Air Sealing

The wind whistling past your building at night can do more than just make eerie noises. It can actually create a negative pressure zone, which tries to suck air out from the inside. Here is a list of critical locations where air tries to get out (or in—refer to image at the top):

Around doors and windows
Around electrical fixtures
Basement band joist and exterior penetrations
Wiring/plumbing/duct penetrations
Vertical meets horizontal planes: (roof to wall, floor to wall, wall to wall)

Air Barriers are materials that stop moisture-laden air from entering building assemblies, reduce air leakage and, wind-driven air from entering into and through insulation. Examples of air barriers:

Interior drywall, fully sealed for continuity and air tightness.
Exterior sheathing: plywood, OSB*, fully sealed for continuity and air tightness. (*needs coating)

How do you ensure that these sheathings are fully sealed? Pink slime to the rescue! Certain spray foams and caulks are applied to the framing members to effectively seal the locations mentioned above. One of the products we like is by Owens Corning. They make a spray foam with flexible seal technology (and yes, it is pink). Not all spray foams can be used for air sealing. Some do not adhere well to the frame, and some are too rigid, which means they can crack and create gaps as the structure settles.

So, with yet another set of important design considerations to manage…

Who Ya Gonna Call? LEAP ARCHITECTURE!

We ain’t afraid of no gaps!

LEAP works with energy star certified framers and contractors, who know how to seal and frame correctly, saving you from any number of scary scenarios down the road. Proper air sealing is that much harder if the framing member aren’t in correct place, which is why LEAP specifies a detailed instructions for framing and construction. One of our the most notable directives: ROCK the CEILING FIRST!

LEAP specifies that the ceiling be sheet-rocked before the wall framing goes up. This allows the space behind the walls to basically be capped by the ceiling, instead of creating an ‘air corridor’ directly up to the attic and below to the basement. The energy benefits gained using this method totally outweigh any inconvenience for builders.

Kit to conduct Blower Test to measure air sealing. (looks suspiciously like an ecto-containment unit)

So how do you know that you have achieve effective containment? Well, blower door testing is a diagnostic tool designed to measure the air tightness of buildings. It uses a calibrated fan capable of measuring airflow, mounted in a flexible panel positioned in an external door. A pressure-sensing device measures the air pressure created by the fan. The fan both pressurizes and depressurizes the home. By recording both flow and pressure in each direction, the system is able to provide highly detailed information about building air tightness.

There are two main ways that blower-door tests are reported: airflow at a pressure difference of 50 Pascals (cfm50) or air changes per hour at a pressure difference of 50 Pascals (ACH50). The first number — cfm50 — can be read directly off the airflow manometer at the time of the test. The second number — ACH50 — can only be calculated once the building’s volume has been determined. To calculate ACH50, multiply cfm50 by 60 minutes per hour and divide the product by the building volume, including the basement, measured in cubic feet.(1)

Passive House Design requires an ACH50 of 0.6, which is pretty rigorous to achieve. Aside from Passive House, standard New York State requirements for building tightness are likely to be upgraded by October 2016, where all constructions must meet and ACH50 of 3. This means 3 air changes or less per hour, which will require installation of a whole house ventilation system per ASHRAE standards.

Air Change per hour at 50 pascals (ACH50) as it relates to Passive House Design and mechanical ventilation requirements.

[box type=”bio”] Contact LEAP to design an air-tight building worthy of an ecto containment unit and watch as we fire up our foam insulation spray guns (we won’t cross the streams!).[/box]

Passive House Design: Insulation–That’s a Wrap

in Passive House Design, Stories

This is the third post in our series on Passive House Design. If you missed either of the previous, click on the links below to get up to speed! LEAP’s intelligent design process consists of four main steps, each building on the previous. Site analysis is the first step, because it informs all the other steps. You can have all of the best windows, doors, and insulation, but their effectiveness is diminished if the orientation of the structure isn’t correct.

Passive House Design Process

Today we explore the importance of insulation, and avoidance of thermal bridging.

Site Analysis
Doors and Windows
Insulation
Air Sealing

Insulation to Minimize Heat Loss

A typical modern house loses and gains approximately 150 kWh/m²a of heat, where the units refer to energy per floor area. A “leaky house” will have double those losses — think older windows, no wall insulation, and degraded door seals. On the other hand, a passive house will be 20x more efficient compared to the leaky house, and 10x more than a typical modern house. A big part of how Passive House Design minimizes thermal gains and losses is through super insulation.

passive house insulation, passive house design

Comparison of heat gains and losses for different house types.

Passive House Standards

Per the definition of Passive House—it can use no more than 1.4 kWh per 1 ft² of living space annually. For example, a 2,000 ft² house would only use 2,800 kWh per year, which comes out to $280/yr (@ 10 cents/kWh). To achieve this efficiency, we’ve discussed how the structure’s envelop must be air-tight, but we also need to insulate the heck out of it.

The insulation itself is generally comprised of multiple layers, all with high R-values. This insulation covers the entire envelope of the structure, including under the footing,with the only exception being the windows and doors. To be continuous, the insulation goes on the outside of the framing, opposed to between studs in a conventional building. The outermost layer of the insulation-sandwich is a water/wind membrane, which tends to be UV sensitive. This necessitates installing siding to cover and protect the membrane.

This configuration significantly reduces the heat transfer through the walls, roof and floor compared to conventional buildings. A wide range of thermal insulation materials can be combined to provide the required high R-values. Special attention is also given to eliminating thermal bridges.

A thermal bridge is a break in the insulation surrounding the house. In a traditional home, this would include all framing members of the structure, and things like porches and overhangs. Thermal bridges lead to massive heat loss, negating the benefit of “over insulating” the structure.

Example of a possible combination of insulation layers for a Passive House Design.

Much Ado About Porches, Decks, and Overhangs

We don’t pay special attention to these “add-ons” for nothing. There are lurking thermal bridges…ready to let all the heat in (or out) of our carefully crafted structure. So instead of penalizing Passive House structures and sending them to the corner with no porches or decks, we work around it. Normally a ledger board would be affixed to the structure as a supporting member for the deck or porch. Instead, we design it to stand-off, and put all of our support posts in the ground. In this manner, we avoid creating a break in the continuous insulation wrap.

So to wrap up, (pun intended), think of super insulation for a passive house like Ralphie’s brother in a Christmas Story. He is bundled to the max, layer upon layer of winter clothes, along with socks, boots, gloves, and his hood pulled so tight that he can barely see—and all on the outside of his “frame”. I guess Randy and Ralphies’ mother understood the dangers of heat loss and thermal bridging back in the 50’s. That lady was well ahead of her time.

[box type=”bio”] Interested in Passive House or Green Building Design? Whether you want to start from scratch or renovate—we can help! Every $1 spent on design saves $10 in construction costs. Don’t shoot your eye out. Let us provide you the best design possible. Contact us to get started.[/box]

Passive House Design: Windows— A Dark Age Salvation

in Passive House Design, Stories

We are continuing our series on Passive House Design. LEAP’s intelligent design process consists of four main steps, each with the aim to maximize human comfort, energy efficiency, and real cost savings. Today we explore the importance of good windows and doors, along with what constitutes them as such.

Passive House Design Process

Site Analysis
Doors and Windows
Insulation
Air Sealing

We Aren’t Living in the Dark Ages, or Are We?

So you took a perfectly good, well insulated structure and put holes in it. Oops, I mean windows. You put windows in. But that’s one of the reasons we crawled out of caves and stopped living like mole-people. Our homes and offices are more pleasant with natural light and vitamin D.

Let’s look at an example somewhere between mole-people era and modern times—the reign of castles. I think we can agree that castles were not the pinnacle of energy efficiency. To support this claim, Eric “Outlander” Davenport, traveled back in time to report the effective R-values of castles as 4… Well, in comparison, the effective R-value of a passive house is 42. (Well really it’s 40, but we all know the answer to life, universe and everything is 42).

So what the heck is this effective R-value you speak of?

R-value stands for resistance to heat flow. The higher the R-value, the greater the insulating value.

Effective R-values are the TOTAL resistances provided by all components in a wall assembly. This equates to patience and higher math—tallying up the thermal bridging, air infiltration, radiant heat loss or gain, and moisture impact on the overall structure. These factors usually reduce the effectiveness of the labeled R-value, on say conventional cavity-filled insulation.

Poor window quality can totally tank your whole effective R-value. You can construct your walls from the most insulating material in the world, but if you’re then installing crap windows, you might as well tack an oil cloth over the opening and call it good.

Which brings us to the puffy sleeves of the 1980’s. Building designers deemed “Windows for all” & “Architecture is above human whims!”, as a backlash to the 1970’s energy crisis and inoperable windows. This equated to: we can put windows everywhere, (even on the—gasp—west side of the building) and a window, is a window, is a window. We shall install the same windows in New York, California, and Alaska—climate dependence be dammed!

Well, to give you an idea of how well that worked out—the one design fits all approach—the effective R-value of these buildings dropped back to 4. Yes, 4. Your new, beautiful, big-hair building is the energy equivalent of living in a drafty castle. Back to the dark ages. (Weren’t puffy sleeves popular in the middle ages too? Coincidence?)

So we continue to claw our way out of the dark days of the 80’s, towards the light of Passive House Design. Good windows (and doors) equals a good thermal envelope, which equals a high effective R-value (42!), which spreads comfort and energy efficiency across the land.

What Constitutes a High Efficiency Window?

Soft, but what light through yonder window breaks? It faces east, and 2″ is the notch. Or rather, placement and construction—a high efficiency window doth make. And who pray tell constructs the finest windows in the land? Well, the Europeans do. Perhaps it was those long, drafty years of castle living that haunt their collective consciousness. But at any rate, they have figured out how to build a great window. And the big secret? A deep notch.

A deep notch accomplishes two things: makes the structure stronger, and reduces thermal bridging. The wood/glass interface is the weakest part of the window, and also where most of the energy is lost. European windows have a 2″ notch, whereas most American made windows are only 1/2″. This extra 1.5″ seats the glass securely in the frame and significantly reduces air leakage.

The Passive House Institute has a database of Passive House Certified windows and doors (and no, they don’t have to be European). When manufacturers from anywhere meet Passive House specifications, they can become certified. Below is an example of what a Passive House Institute certification seal looks like. Notice the list of 7 different climate regions.

Types of Windows

The type of window is also important. Double hung are out. Casement, awning, and fixed windows are in. Tilt-turn windows are a good option for functionality and air sealing, see image below. The three positions (fixed, tilt, turn) allow for security, venting and ease of cleaning, respectively.

Placement is another key factor. For balanced daylighting, large and floor to ceiling windows are typically placed on south and east facing walls. Small windows are placed high up on the north facing wall. As a rule of thumb, window area is no more than 10% of the total floor area for a given room. This helps prevent overheating in the summer and losing heat in the winter.

3-Tilt-Turn-Windows-passive house design

Tilt Turn Windows are a good choice for Passive House Design. Image from Glo Windows.

We didn’t really touch much on doors, but the same principles apply: good sturdy frames and good sealing will be more energy efficient. Bad doors are like installing a portcullis? It’ll keep the critters out, but not much else. The payback for spending a little more money upfront on good doors and windows is well worth it. Want to know how much? Contact LEAP Architecture today, and we can fill you in!