I might get a better answer on GBA, but any building performance folks you'd recommend connecting with in the SF Bay Area? I'm not in the building industry at all, but love hearing talks and daydreaming about changing careers. Finding some material for folks outside of the PNW, New England, and the South West would be amazing. Temperate climates like the bay seem especially challenging to get specific info for, so maybe it's a case where I need to understand the principles well and apply it myself.
Love the book by the way; it's what I wish I'd had when I was looking to buy my first home. I'm going to be gifting it to a few people in my family over the next few years.
> I might get a better answer on GBA, but any building performance folks you'd recommend connecting with in the SF Bay Area?
I'm halfway down that road, having completed a high performance remodel in the Bay Area, and contemplated a career shift into some adjacent field.
High performance building is not as organized a movement here, but instead a patchwork of architects, contractors and consultants that I had to assemble for my project. Assembling a team that was willing to work in a high performance modality was probably the hardest part. It's still unfamiliar to many customers and professionals.
I also did a good amount of the high performance work on my house, so I got to know the principles and practicals pretty well. It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed the process and the learnings (and living in the result).
Would you be open to sharing some details about your project(s)? Things like costs, who you worked with, guiding principles, etc. would be amazing. I feel like maybe finding the kind of people that will do high performance work is just outside of my budget, so I'm curious what you did and with what resources.
Dan do you ever talk about retro fitting old houses at your monthly talks.
It would wonderful to learn what can be done to existing (my home is 1880’s) buildings to improve their performance.
Not exactly the same, but my city is retrofitting a lot of Soviet-era apartment blocks to bring them up to modern standards. They are made out of concrete with no insulation and were built when (natural) gas was basically free.
The bulk of the work is wrapping the building in 25cm of rigid foam exterior insulation, replacing windows and making sure that they are fairly air tight. They aren't adding mechanical ventilation, as installation would cause too much disruption to residents who are living there. Heating systems are being upgraded to newer units if they are old and inefficient (still powered by gas or district heating, no heat pumps).
The main issue with older buildings is often you want to maintain the 'character' so wrapping the building in external insulation and replacing the facade isn't always an option. However if you have a building made of masonry this is the best way to insulate it, as the masonry then acts as a thermal mass to keep temperatures inside more stable (in both hot and cold weather). These apartment blocks were ugly concrete that nobody wants to ever see again though, so it's not an issue here :-)
>The bulk of the work is wrapping the building in 25cm of rigid foam exterior insulation, replacing windows and making sure that they are fairly air tight. They aren't adding mechanical ventilation, as installation would cause too much disruption to residents who are living there.
Hmmm, like the worst possible idea (air tight + not adequate ventilation), the early (10-15 years ago) "Class A" or "Class B" new buldings made here without appropriate ventilation have given lots of problems (humidity/mould).
The only possible remedy being daily manual ventilation, i.e. open windows for 10/15 minutes every single day (but many people won't or cannot do it).
