Each 90-minute track session receives 1.5 continuing education units from the following professional organizations: AIA, BPI, GBCI, InterNACHI, NAHB, and NARI. To receive your credits, you must sign in at the beginning of each session
Track co-chairs: Matt Root, Conservation Services Group; Satpal Kaur, Chris Benedict R.A.
H2OUSE – Everything You Ever Needed to Know About Residential Water Consumption and Conservation
Session 1: Wednesday, March 6, 11:00am-12:30pm
Session Speaker: Peter Yost, BuildingGreen
Description: Water is energy-intensive; energy is water-intensive. That is the case for using water wisely. This session will lay out the relationships between energy and water and guide both building professionals and their clients through water-smart design, specification, installation and operation of all things residentially liquid.
Managing Heat, Water, Vapor, Air and Light
Session 2: Wednesday, March 6, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Session Speaker: Chris Benedict, Chris Benedict, R.A
Description: Decreasing the use of fossil fuel in buildings demands that the building enclosure be designed to do the heavy lifting! This is especially true for those attempting deep energy retrofits, passive house certification and zero energy. This session will explore the basics of managing the things that matter most to the energy performance of the building, while simultaneously making the building safer, healthier, and more durable.
Mechanical Systems
Session 3: Wednesday, March 6, 4:00-5:30pm
Session Speaker: Andy Shapiro, Energy Balance
Description: Learn the basics of selecting a home’s mechanical systems to provide comfort and efficiency. Learn how building enclosure efficiency affects the system choices you make. Learn a process to choose the best overall heating, cooling, hot water and ventilation system to optimize comfort and energy savings. By the end of the session, you will understand the basic components of the mechanical systems for a home, and will have a tool to guide the discussion of the choices that must be made. Examples will be presented of some typical mechanical systems choices for efficient homes.
Energy Calculations for Everyone
Session 4: Thursday, March 7, 8:30am-10:00am
Session Speaker: Bruce Harley, Conservation Services Group
Description: In order to understand energy use, a little math can go a long way. Do you know how much energy your home uses, or how it compares with similar homes? Do you know how the R-value of insulation relates to the R-value of a wall or roof assembly? This session will introduce some critical numbers and calculations to address basic energy use in buildings. Participants will receive a framework that will allow them to be informed when making design choices. Not everyone likes numbers, but to paraphrase Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat: if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. In order to define high performance, one needs to use concrete metrics; in order to design for high performance, one needs to use the right inputs. This session will help participants understand the inputs and the metrics in a way that the most math-phobic participants will feel comfortable with.
Building as a System
Session 5: Thursday, March 7, 10:30pm-12:00pm
Session Speaker: David Keefe, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation
Description: A building is more than walls, floors and a roof. It is a system balanced with invisible underlying connections similar to a human body. An improvement to one part of a building can sometimes cause unanticipated effects on another part of the building system. This session focuses on becoming able to predict and/or diagnose these effects, primarily in order to prevent the negative ones. No prior technical knowledge is needed.
The Green Architects’ Lounge – “Sprout Follies”
Session 6: Thursday, March 7, 2:00pm-3:30pm
Session Chair: Kristina Eldrenkamp, Albert, Righter & Tittmann Architects, Inc.
Session Speakers: Chris Briley, Green Design Studio; Phil Kaplan, Kaplan Thompson Architects
Description: Doing something new often does not go perfectly the first time. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Join the entertaining hosts of the Green Architect’s Lounge podcasts (sans cocktail recipe and song of the show) as they talk about beginner follies when building high performance buildings. Chris and Phil will discuss the fundamentals of “green” design for building and design professionals, how to avoid others’ mistakes, and answer many questions from the audience.
Closing Forum: What will be the hot topics at BE25?
Session 7: Thursday March 7, 4:00pm-5:30pm
Session Chair: Paul Eldrenkamp
Session Speakers: TBA
Description: The final session of the day will wrap up everything we learned at BE13 by forcing us to think out loud about where all our new-gained knowledge is taking us. The format: Six NESEA thought leaders will work within the pecha kucha framework to offer their predictions regarding what we’ll be grappling with in the sessions and workshops at Building Energy in March, 2025. This will followed by a period of quick-paced audience discussion. The 90 minutes will then wrap with a compelling preview of NESEA, 12 years hence. This closing session will offer an engaged response to the too-rarely asked question: “Just where are we going with all of this?“
