Join us in building a foundation of understanding between both communities. What is Passive House and the Living Building Challenge?
The presentation will cover the learning experience and lessons learnt from the viewpoint of the Engineer of Record for HVAC and Plumbing systems as follows:
The building is being monitored for energy performance, air quality and comfort.
Living Buildings and Passive House buildings introduce an array of new construction methodologies, from thermal bridging details to inbuilding sewage recycling to solar arrays. Hear directly from the constructors their successes, challenges, and solutions.
Throughout Canada many buildings are built in locations where the climate allows for using outside air for cooling at least some of the time. Passive cooling can be used to achieve comfort conditions for a significant number of buildings. If successfully implemented, there are multiple benefits to this strategy. The obvious benefit stems from the energy savings resulting from elimination of cooling air and mechanically moving it through the building with fans. Beyond this there is also the potential for improved comfort and the multitude of wellness and health benefits from a connection to the outdoors. In a work environment this might even lead to improved productivity.
However, there is ample anecdotal evidence on the fact that even in the most suitable environments, passively cooled buildings have failed. For success, buildings need to be designed to be suitable to be operated without mechanical cooling, and when appropriate, measures need to be taken to assure comfort. We will discuss the role of solar radiation, shading, occupant numbers, internal loads, thermal mass, stack effect, wind, solar chimneys and more, as well as when it might be advisable to provide some mechanical systems.
In this session we will discuss how to design for comfort using natural ventilation for cooling, and where the limitations are. We will discuss this in both the conventional context of historic weather data and typical construction, as well as the context of 1) highly insulated, airtight buildings and 2) a changing climate, and both combined. This session will go into some technical detail on design process, design tools, climate analysis, airflow and thermal comfort analysis.
Firehall 17 in Vancouver is being designed to achieve Passive House, LEED v4 Gold as well as targeting Net Zero. As a firehall, it must first and foremost provide for efficient firefighter response times. This requirement, plus a small building footprint, small occupant load and a tight urban site have resulted in a form factor that is not what is typically seen in passive house buildings. This session will illustrate the outer limits of what is possible in a complex, non-residential building with an inefficient form factor, plus some of strategies that can be implemented to overcome this design challenge.
As Passive House becomes increasingly popular in commercial, institutional, and high rise multi-unit residential construction, our understanding of thermal bridging needs to consider an expanding range of materials, assemblies and construction methods. Luckily, quantifying the impact of and mitigating thermal bridges has been the subject of research for the last several years, yielding a large amount of data that industry can benefit from. This presentation will introduce participants to an exciting project that is currently in development – an online Thermal Bridging Performance Database. Participants will get a sneak peek into the resource, including how the data can be leveraged to make better decisions on projects and ultimately reduce energy use on buildings.
Troy Glasner from E3 Eco Group along with Pat Cuthbert of Aqua Coast Engineering will be diving deep into large building air tightness testing. They will be covering the strategies that ensure a successful building envelope design as well as how to develop a successful plan for air tightness testing. They will be using “The Heights”, a Passive House multi-family building being constructed at 3501 East Hastings Street, as a case study to illustrate air barrier strategies and details, and to demonstrate the testing. They will discuss their findings and how other non-passive house projects have faired in whole building air tightness testing.
Protocols for testing to the Passive House standard as well as the US Army Core of Engineers standard will be reviewed. Construction details will be discussed to demonstrate how such projects can achieve a successful outcome for Passive Houses and for other building systems.
Larger scale, non-residential Passive House buildings present unique challenges in adapting traditional Passive House design ethos, particularly in North America. These types of buildings are often more complex with more involved requirements from both the owner and local building code.
The list of the usual suspects often includes:
- Cooling (Air-Conditioning) and De-Humidification Requirements
- Large Process Loads – Commercial Food Services, Elevating Devices, Data Centres, and Product Refrigeration (e.g. grocery store)
- More Sophisticated Mechanical and Control systems
- Increased ventilation rates, often driven by code mandated minimums
- Limited equipment availability at higher capacities and rated for commercial duty
The intent of this presentation is to contemplate how mechanical system design can be developed for North American commercial- and institutional-scale Passive House Buildings, without becoming unnecessarily complex or cost-prohibitive.
Topics that will be covered include:
- An overview of how heating, cooling, and domestic hot water systems for large scale buildings are developed
- Ventilation systems including comparisons between code required and Passive House rates, airflow control, and heat exchange type best suited for your application
- Common challenges related to code-driven requirements, such as heat tracing systems, emergency generators, smoke exhaust requirements, etc.
- Managing process ventilation requirements surrounding elevators and kitchens
- Managing cooling-dominant applications and process loads
The content draws upon the experiences and lessons learned from some of Integral Group’s current projects, including the Charter Telecom Headquarters Office in Victoria, BC; the Clayton Heights Community Centre in Surrey; the Hornby Island Firehall; the Vancouver Art Gallery; and the Vancouver Firehall 17 Redevelopment.