Build Responsible with Erik


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		12 Tips for Going Green, Responsibly! Erik listou, CGR, CAPS, CGP Click here to view Responsible Building through Build Responsible Dean A. Dalvit, AIA, EIT (www.EVStudio.us) We had an excellent meeting today with Erik Listou, founder of Build Responsible, a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide education and awareness of green, energy sustainability and handicap accessibility and to help people make responsible building

decisions in all of their construction projects.
Erik is a regular contributor of helpful articles to Colorado Serenity magazine as well as hosting a live talk radio show on KHOW am 630 every Sunday from noon to 1:00pm MST. Erik is also working on a television series that will further promote responsible building concepts.
Erik’s vision is very much in alignment with ours here at EVstudio and we hope to be able to provide topics and information to his organization that will help to build awareness of sustainable design practice and accessibility concepts in the greater community. It’s great to have collaborators locally to work with in this way and we are excited to see Build Responsible grow into a valuable resource for everyone whether they are thinking about

Preparing for Winter…Responsibly! by Erik Listou, CGR, CAPS, CGP
What is – Build Responsible™ by Erik Listou, CGR, CAPS, CGP
The 5-W’s Of Project Planning by Erik Listou, CGR, CAPS, CGP
The Kitchen- The New Family Room by Erik Listou, CGR, CAPS, CGP
Remodeling Project Expectations by Erik Listou, CGR, CAPS, CGP

The Importance of (Well Built) As-Built Drawings
Dean A. Dalvit, AIA, EIT (www.EVStudio.us)
We have done a large variety of residential and commercial remodel, addition, tenant finish, adaptive re-use and historic preservation work over the years and one thing seems to ring true as the single, most important component of a highly accurate and well developed set of plans: a quality set of as-built drawings. A lot of people don’t necessarily know what exactly as-built drawings are, and that is the topic of this post.

As-built drawings are defined by a number of industries, but in their simplest form, they are drawings that represent the actual built structure. Not as it was designed, but as it actually is today. There is no question that buildings don’t always get built per plan, so even if you have an existing set of drawings, it helps to prepare as-built drawings, but nothing replaces the actual measured and field verified set of drawings. And nothing will save you cost and headaches as much as a thoroughly developed set of as-built drawings.

Why is this? Well, for starters, people always make changes to their designs during the construction process and these changes almost never make it back to a set of revised plans. Why would they? after all, if the change is made in the field, there’s no reason to update the plans, whose sole purpose is to tell the builder what to build. Also, a building of any vintage may have had additional projects that made alterations to it’s original form that may have affected everything from interior finishes to the core structural system of the building (and this includes brand new buildings too). And more often than not, these projects are done without permits, plans, and in the worst cases, without the guidance of someone who knows what they’re doing.

So what do we do when we do as-builts? Well, for starters, we measure everything. We spend a lot of time in the building itself, often with our laptops and CAD software running so that we can recreate the entire building in the computer while we measure. This obviously takes quite a while, because there’s an awful lot to measure and we want to get the precision of the computer model very tight so when we propose the new work, there are no surprises. These measurements are not just sizes of rooms, but the fully integrated map of every wall, cabinet, fixture, appliance, door, window…you get the idea. Then, we also measure the vertical elements like door and window sizes, heights, bearing heights, plate and beam heights etc.. We measure soffit and fascia details, siding, roof pitches, exterior improvements, slopes in floors, ceilings…the whole nine yards. The end result is essentially as set of drawings that depict exactly what is there today.

There are a lot of other things that happen during this process. We are able to document a number of other systems while we go through the building at this level of detail. Plumbing, mechanical, electrical and structural elements that we can visually observe are all documented so that any new work can be designed not to conflict with these systems. Structural systems are particularly important - especially if we’re making changes to the plan that rely on the integrity of the existing structure or if we’re changing the structural skeleton of the existing building. And of course, it’s also an opportunity to discover other issues that the homeowner never knew about. To name a few that we have discovered over the years: moisture problems, unsafe materials, unsafe electrical and dangerous structural situations.

When you spend that much time in a building and get to know it as intimately as we do during the as-built process, the clear result is a much better design. We are able to integrate everything we know about the building to put together architectural changes that work with the existing systems as opposed to ignoring them. This results in projects that are easier to build, less costly, and architecturally integrated so the final outcome is a building that flows and seamlessly transitions from the existing to the new.

So, when you have a project that will involve any level of remodel or addition to an existing structure, keep these things in mind because there is enormous value in a quality set of as-built drawings. And, once they are generated, you have them to work from for years to come.

The Skinny on Thermal Mass
Dean A. Dalvit, AIA, EIT (www.EVStudio.us)
Alright, let me first say that while I studied thermodynamics and heat transfer in school, it’s been many years since I’ve had to look up a specific heat capacity coefficient. With that said, there are some fundamental things that have stuck and I can’t help but apply those concepts into my design work and try to help others understand the nature of nature (or in this case, the nature of buildings).
So first, you need to familiarize yourself with some basics about the way that heat energy moves around. There are really only three ways this can happen:
1) Conduction - this is direct heat transfer through a material. Some materials are better conductors than others. This is why pots and pans are metal and scuba suits are synthetic rubber.
2) Convection - this is literally where a material that has heat in it physically moves to another location. This seems rather low tech, but it is quite effective. Consider where hot air goes and how nice it is to have a summer breeze.
3) Radiation - Without this one, we would be a cold, dead world. The Sun transmits all of it’s energy through the solar system via this method and it is a very important mode of heat transfer.
This blog is going to focus specifically on Conduction. I’ll leave the other two for another post some other day.
So how does conduction work in a building wall (or roof or floor…)? Simple: The temperature on both sides of the wall eventually want to reach equilibrium. So, if it’s hot outside and cool inside, the wall itself will allow the heat pass through the wall and warm the inside of the wall until both temperatures are the same (in fact the temperature at any point in the wall is the same). The resistance in the wall to letting this happen is called R-Value. The higher the R-value, the better job the wall does at keeping the heat from passing through the wall.
That’s simple right? WRONG!
There’s something very important going on here though that nobody ever talks about: The time that it takes for the energy to reach a steady state of flow. Simply put, it takes time for the energy to make it through the wall and that effect is not described at all by r-value alone. Without getting into the ugly equations (which frankly, I no longer have committed to memory anymore), there is a special property of all materials that tell you how well the material can store the heat that is passing through: the specific heat capacity. Combine this with the actual density and thickness of the material, and now you’re able to talk intelligibly about how a wall will really react to changing weather. Enter the world of thermal mass.
Consider this: if it takes more than 12 hours for the outside temperature and the inside temperature to reach equilibrium because the wall itself stored a lot of the energy passing through, then day turned into night and the temperature on the outside of the wall is now different. The energy flow may even reverse if you live in a place like Colorado and the wall will rarely, if ever reach a steady state of energy flow. So knowing that, we can throw r-value alone out the window as a metric for thermal performance (pun intended as most heat loss in the building occurs at the doors and windows anyway).
Instead, we should be considering materials with a high capacity to store heat and slow down the passage of heat flow to at least 12 hours. Light frame construction doesn’t have much density and steady state is reached much more quickly than solid dense walls. That doesn’t mean that light frame construction is inherently bad - it just relies much more on r-value to thermally perform. With denser wall materials with capacity to store heat, we can make the comfort level within the home much less dependant on the outside air temperature. Imagine if you had walls that took days to reach steady state. Then that passing three day storm may never have an effect on the heat loss in through the wall whatsoever. Too bad we have doors and windows, but their thermal performance is another topic for another time.
Strangely, there is very little data out there to corroborate this, except for the fact that the comfort level in brick homes and log homes is really quite high despite the fact that the conductive r-values are very low. The same holds true for concrete structures and rammed earth. We need more studies on this phenomena to better understand how we can leverage the properties of materials to make new and much higher performing building materials. It is something that could significantly impact the thermal performance of every building we build in the future and can get us that much closer to a carbon-zero footprint.

Useful Links

These are useful links for you to use.

This list contains links to Internet resource sites collected by Build Responsible. This list is not exhaustive and will remain a work in progress. Please note that Build Responsible cannot be held liable for the contents of the referenced sites nor the inclusion and/or omission of Web sites in this list. Please send us your links and information to post on this site.

www.BuiltGreen.org
Introduced in 1995, Built Green Colorado is one of oldest and largest green home building programs in the nation. A voluntary industry-driven program of the Home Builders Association of Metro Denver offered to builders across the state, the purpose of Built Green Colorado is to encourage home builders to use technologies, products and practices that result in homes that are better built and better for the environment.

www.USGBC.org
The U.S. Green Building Council is a 501(c)(3) non-profit community of leaders working to make green buildings available to everyone within a generation.

www.USGBC.org
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria.

www.Dsireusa.org
DSIRE is a comprehensive source of information on state, local, utility, and federal incentives that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency. Choose one or both databases to search.

www.epa.gov/greenbuilding
The buildings in which we live, work, and play protect us from nature's extremes, yet they also affect our health and environment in countless ways. As the environmental impact of buildings becomes more apparent, a new field called "green building" is gaining momentum.

Green, or sustainable, building is the practice of creating and using healthier and more resource-efficient models of construction, renovation, operation, maintenance and demolition. Read more about green building or use these links to explore topics:

Associations and Non-Profit Organizations
Building Materials, Guides and Certification
Case Studies
Campus Initiatives
Codes and Standards
Commissioning and Post-Occupancy Evaluation
Design and Simulation Tools
Design Resources
Economics
Energy
Funding
Government Initiatives & Guidelines
Life Cycle Analysis and Costing
Media
Rating Systems
Research Centers
Sustainability/Miscellaneous