The trend towards old buildings is very real: Sasaki is moving from its long-term offices in Watertown, a Boston suburb, to a historically important 1890s building in the heart of Boston’s downtown. electricity came from renewable sources.” Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) funding opportunity, the International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology (ICAST) has completed energy-efficiency upgrades to nearly 1,000 multifamily buildings, yielding a reported savings of 7. “Renewable energy is at a strong level of consciousness all across the country, at all levels. “A lot of thoughtful, sustainable building is happening today, especially along the coasts in California and the Northeast, the Pacific Northwest, Chicago and other places,” she says. Building owners and managers can create more energy-efficient buildings by improving the performance of their building envelopes. Tamar Warburg sees the design landscape trending green. The only way to do it is with mechanical changes, like windows.” “The concrete envelope and the structure are one, and very porous. She says that the most difficult architectural style to retrofit for energy efficiency is that of a 1960s Brutalist building. “Heat pumps are great as long as you have a good building envelope.”īerry also touts the use of energy recovery ventilators to boost the efficiency of cooling systems. “We want to get away from electric resistance heat like electric radiators, which are not very efficient and very expensive to run, and use variable flow electric technology, like heat pumps. “In those cases, we do careful calculations and figure out how we can add interior insulation,” Berry says.īoth she and Warburg recommend replacing outdated heating and cooling systems in older buildings with heat pumps. When used as a house’s exterior wall, it is meant to breathe. We replaced them with double-paned replicas of the originals.” In another project, that was impossible – the old windows had been replaced. All the old wood windows were taken off site, repaired and then sealed. For example, a few years ago, we worked on a small – only 15,000 square feet – but historically important building at Boston University. The building envelope which includes ceilings directly below the roof and. If any temporarily air-sealed location fails during the blower door test, your home cannot be evaluated. and identify retrofits to help improve energy efficiency. “With windows, the first line of action is always to repair, preserve and seal the original windows. An energy-efficient home is comfortable, healthy, environmentally friendly and cost-effective.
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