Green Architects' Lounge – Details, episodes & analysis

Welcome back for part 2 of Jacob's lecture from the PassivhausMAINE lecture series on addressing embodied carbon in our built environment.  We close the episode with a song from one of the bands Jacob records with; Fantasma by Mal Maiz! Enjoy!

Cheers!  

Chris and Phil were not only lucky enough to attend a lecture by Jacob Racusin, but they were also able to record it! Our friends at PassivhausMAINE invited Jacob to share his insights on low-impact, high-performance building technologies and discuss some of the ground-breaking work he has been involved in lately regarding plant-based construction and carbon sequestration in our built environment. He's a wonderful speaker with contagious passion for combating climate change through better building. 

This is part one of his lecture, be sure to check out part two which will be released in about a week. Also be sure to visit our lame facebook page for cocktail recipes and links to Jacob's slide deck. Visuals help, but the the audio holds up on its own as well. 

Also, new theme song.

Cheers!  

We’ve come to realize that we all want simple rules of thumb to guide our design process. Unfortunately, there isn’t a rule of thumb for everything and we’re going to have to rely on some common sense, good advice, and good old-fashioned engineering to get this balanced ventilation system right.

Our cocktails are refreshed and we’re ready to go.

In this episode we are assuming that you are preparing to design or build a super-tight house and you’re interested in the best way to provide fresh air for its occupants.

In the old days, you’d just “let the house breathe” [shudder]. But those days are long gone. A healthy house leaks, while an energy-efficient house controls how it leaks — and this episode is all about the latter.

Phil and I have freshened up our drinks and now we’re ready to tackle Items 8 through 15. Be sure to go back to Part 1 to listen to Items 1 through 7.

It’s back to the basics with this one, folks.

Back in 2013, we were asked to do a presentation at NESEA for the “Fundementals” track — something similar to our “Sprout Follies” podcast. We put together a PowerPoint presentation, and did our best to deal with the fact that our cocktails would be coffee. It was well received, so we thought it would be a good idea to share a condensed version of that presentation as a podcast here at GBA.

Most “Top 10” lists have only ten items. Ours has fifteen! We tackle 1 through 7 in this podcast. Be sure to tune in soon for Part 2 (Things 8 through 15).

Without further ado, I give you our fifteen “Top 10” things not to blow on your next project.

Phil and Chris have returned to continue their discussion on foundations. In Part One, they covered slabs and frost walls, and in this part they cover basements and crawl spaces.

Not too long ago I found myself in a deep conversation (pun intended) about frost-protected slabs with some other architects and building professionals. I was surprised at the energy surrounding the topic. We all seemed to have developed substantial differences in the details on our own and we were all learning from each other.

I was equally surprised at how fresh this concept seemed — I mean, haven’t we been founding our wood structures on the ground for centuries now? Millennia, even?

The diversity of approaches has to do with our culture’s new desire to create ultra-energy-efficient houses. I walked away thinking that we should do a podcast on the subject, but then I thought about how much drawing we all did, and wondered if an audio podcast was a good forum for this topic.

Luckily, with the courage supplied by a good cocktail and the “challenge accepted” attitude and encouragement from Phil, we decided we’d make a go of it. We decided we’d cover the concepts in audio form and provide some details from our own work here on GBA.--Chris

Cocktails in hand, Phil and I pick up the conversation about the Pretty Good House. Be sure to check Part 1 of this episode for some of the basics and the origins of this nebulous building/design concept.

The status quo of newly constructed homes here in America is, well, disappointing. Despite some strong market-transforming rating systems (such as LEED, Energy Star, Passivhaus, etc.), the classic American home is still being designed and built exactly as it was 20, 30, or even 40 years ago. Why?

There’s a few reasons, the biggest of which is market demand. People buy what’s on the market, and builders build what sells. The only ones pushing the market are those few who are willing to go the extra distance, and do that extra homework to make their projects substantially better. This is actually a very small percentage of those building or buying a new home.

The second biggest reason is that these rating systems often put builders and designers at arm’s length. Let’s be honest: there’s a lot of work involved with these systems. For example, LEED requires substantial fees and administrative work. Passivhaus requires rigorous energy modeling and detailing that sometimes is not the most cost-effective approach (buying $6,000 worth of added insulation to save the amount of energy that one more $400 solar panel would provide, for example). This is where the “Pretty Good House” concept comes into play.