Exciting times indeed for passive building in the United States: Passive design principles that originated here and in Canada are all grown up and making a furious comeback. Policy makers, researchers and scientists, builders and designers are all embracing passive building in their everyday practice.
And as always, the growth is evident here at NESEA’s annual high-performance tour de force: NESEA BE15. A quick recap: Passive Building Place–a concentration of passive building component exhibitors, and the tour of their offerings, is in its fourth consecutive year. For those who remember, we started my first blog on the NESEA trade show focusing on passive house products in 2012. Passive building was still tiny then compared to what it has grown into now.
PHIUS and its membership organization the Passive House Alliance US (PHAUS) – the leading passive building research institute and alliance in the US – is the anchor of Passive Building Place for the fourth straight year.
NESEA never stands still. In its topic selection for conference workshops and presentations it continues to ask the tough questions and pushes the boundaries. I am talking about the passive building standard adaptation work we have been doing on Tuesday in a half day workshop. On Wednesday afternoon as part of the core conference I’ll be presenting about very exciting multifamily developments specifically. The Passive Building Place has become a mainstay and is expanding every year with new manufacturers who have recognized that passive building will be a significant driver for high performing materials and components.
Larger projects like Orenco Orchards in Eugene, Ore., by CPHC® Dylan Lamar and GreenHammer are coming on strong–they need more manufacturers to step up to the multifamily and commercial passive building market.
But, as multifamily and commercial projects come on strong, we see hesitation amongst manufacturers regarding new components and material needed for larger building developments. This follows the past trend with single family passive homes: the architects and CPHC®s (Certified Passive House Consultants) have taken on the design of the first larger buildings find themselves ahead of the curve.
While this might sound glamorous to some, in practice it is quite a challenge for the teams. Architects are out to make ambitious reductions in energy and carbon with large buildings, and they need appropriate high performance components. In principle, much of what’s been learned and accomplished in single family applications is transferable. Ideally, however, manufacturers will develop turnkey and warranted solution packages for multifamily and other large buildings. What about superinsulated thermal bridge free airtight curtain wall systems? Is this too much to ask for?
Here’s a good place to start: At last year’s 9th Annual North American Passive House Conference in San Francisco, five leading multifamily passive building teams came together for a presentation. The one component they all wanted was a fire-rated door, that complies with ADA requirements of a low threshold, is airtight and has exceptional thermal performance comparable to the passive house windows that have taken the BE Passive Building Place by storm over the past few years.
To see what’s cooking this year, we are back for another tour of the trade show with you! I will have the pleasure of guiding a tour on Wednesday, March 4 beginning at 5.30 pm just before the boat tour. We’ll be visiting exhibitors who offer products and components germane to the passive building community. We will stop at selected passive building place exhibitors and Passive House Alliance sponsors inside and outside Passive Building Place. Because there are so many it’s impossible to visit all–instead we’ll focus on innovations and a more in depth conversation of 5-10 minutes discussing the manufacturers’ products.
Also different this year: We will take the investigative role and instead of highlighting the passive building products we’ve seen in past years, we will challenge vendors with a different question: What are you doing to support larger passive building developments? Are you seeing the effects from it in your practice and what are you doing to respond, to prepare for it? Are there new offerings in the pipeline? What are designers asking for, what is missing?
Our goal is to identify the gap so that we can fill it. We like to inspire manufacturers to take the growth in passive building seriously. Please join us on this tour to hear from manufacturers what they are hearing and to ask the right and tough questions to inspire more high performing systems development for larger U.S. passive buildings.
Twenty-four exhibitors are joining us this year in the Passive Building Place or elsewhere on the floor–they include sponsors of PHAUS, firms with PHIUS certified professionals on staff, firms offering PHIUS verified windows or doors, or that are collaborating with PHIUS/PHAUS otherwise. Those partners are listed here:
475 High Performance Building Supply (Booth # 759)
Auburndale Builders (Booth # 913)
Bright Build Home (Booth # 549)
Conservation Services Group (Booth # 709)
Fraunhofer CSE (Booth # 660)
H Window/Energate (Booth # 642)
Huber Engineered Woods (Booth # 743)
Klearwall Industries LLC (Booth # 862)
Intus Windows (Booth # 624) PHAUS Green Sponsor
Marvin & Integrity Windows (Booth # 939) PHAUS Silver Sponsor
Mitsubishi Electric (Booth # 707) PHAUS Silver Sponsor
New England Homes by Preferred Building Systems (Booth # 919)
Passive House Institute US/Passive House Alliance (Booth # 753)
Pinnacle Windows Solutions (Booth # 763)
PowerWise Systems (Booth # 814)
PROSOCO Inc. (Booth # 949) PHAUS Green Sponsor
Roxul (Booth # 860)
Schock (#636)
SIGA Cover, Inc. (Booth # 620)
Steven Winter Associates (#844)
Stiebel-Eltron Inc. (Booth # 749)
Yestermorrow Design/Build School (Booth # 1036)
Zehnder America, Inc. (Booth # 864) PHAUS Friend Sponsor
Zola Windows (Booth # 755) PHAUS Friend Sponsor
We won’t have time to stop at all passive building component vendors, but we urge you to stop check them all out as you find time. Make sure to stop by:
Dryvit (Booth # 430)
Enovative (Booth # 945)
European Architectural Supply (Booth # 727)
Fantech (Booth # 828)
Foard Panel (Booth # 830)
Green Fiber (Booth # 717)
Led Waves (Booth # 628)
Main Green Building Supply (Booth # 622)
Retrotec (Booth # 541)
Sanden International (# 563)
Schock USA (Booth # 636)
Tremco Barrier Solutions (Booth # 719)
Viessmann Manufacturing (Booth # 565)
Yaro DSI (Booth # 638)
Thank you all for participating in this and putting your weight behind this exciting emerging construction market. Again, you are true leaders in this market transformation towards high performance building products that is so needed to achieve zero/positive energy buildings through passive design. Thanks again for joining!
And have a great BE15!