Enclosure Best Practices: Roofs, Walls, and Floors
Building enclosures – the roof, walls, and floor – are the first line of defense between nature and people. Enclosure performance is optimized when air sealing and insulation – two under appreciated and typically underperforming features – are done to high-performance standards rather than the status quo. The preceding class in our High-Performance Fundamentals program (How Buildings Work; Science and Buildings and Science in Buildings) covered the scientific principles needed to effectively design high-performance buildings.
The Role of Building Science in High Performance Buildings: Part 2 Science in Buildings
Integrating building science into building performance means better indoor and outdoor environmental quality, increased building durability and resilience, and less risk for building owners, communities, and the planet. This course builds from high school level biology, chemistry, and physical science to building science principles and their application to superior building performance. The role that building science can play in building electrification is a key outcome of this course.
The Role of Building Science in High Performance Buildings: Part 1 Science and Buildings
Integrating building science into building performance means better indoor and outdoor environmental quality, increased building durability and resilience, and less risk for building owners, communities, and the planet. This course builds from high school level biology, chemistry, and physical science to building science principles and their application to superior building performance. The role that building science can play in building electrification is a key outcome of this course.
3C-REN’s New Residential Energy Savings Program – Learn how to access incentives!
Unlike conventional rebate programs, this new business model offers contractors flexibility by paying incentives for actual metered kWh and therm savings. Rather than having a restrictive list of measures and incentives, the program pays you to meet your customers’ energy savings or electrification needs.
All Electric Buildings: Stories from the Field
All-electric construction has gone mainstream in just a few years. With industry-wide experience, comes new lessons and adaptations. We’ll review what’s been easy and what strategies still require additional attention from designers, builders, and manufacturers. Come with your questions, and your lessons learned.
Minimizing Embodied Carbon by Design
This class will be taught by Larry Strain and Chris Magwood, two thought leaders in the field of embodied carbon. Both, unusually, have careers combining research and practice. Larry, co-founder of the award-winning Bay Area architecture firm of Siegel & Strain, for decades has infused his design practice with applied research as a means of creating buildings that are both beautiful and green. Larry will share his recent work, focused on analyzing the relative carbon impacts of low-carbon renovation of existing buildings versus construction of new, low-carbon/net-zero buildings. Chris, a natural building pioneer, serves as executive director of the Endeavour Centre, a not-for-profit sustainable building school in Ontario, Canada, where he applies his research via teaching and construction of low/no-carbon buildings. Chris will present his recent work on construction methods that maximize carbon sequestration.
Higher Performance Envelope + Balanced Ventilation
Energy performance is increasingly dependent on buildings that limit air infiltration, but that’s just one piece of higher performance roof and wall assembly. In this 3rd installment of our Higher-Performance series, we’ll look at cost-effective strategies to make tight envelopes standard practice, with special emphasis on thermal continuity and managing moisture. We’ll finish up with the partner to a tight envelope: balanced ventilation.
Higher-Performance Windows and Glazing
In this 4th installment of our Higher-Performance series, we’ll take a deeper dive into key components that impact the energy performance of fenestration. We’ll cover windows and storefronts for residential and small commercial projects for the Central Coast climate.
Our Changing Climate and Evolving Building Practice
This class will provide an overview of the changes occurring within the building sector and the driving forces behind them. We will discuss what these trends foretell for those of us in the industry, and an array of actual and potential solutions available to address the challenges we face.
Ventilation 101
Ventilation 101 will cover the fundamentals of ventilation.
