The Minnesota CLF chapter’s Specification Subgroup (myself, Andy Marolt/Ryan Companies, Laura Eder/ESG, Java Nyamjav/MSR Design, with input from Annie Perkins/SFI) recently collaborated on a draft set of specification templates incorporating embodied carbon requirements into product performance and action submittals. This work builds on sample... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Passive Solar Heating.

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:


1. Explain the three classic approaches to passive solar.
2. Understand the relevance of passive solar today.
3. Describe some key elements of passive solar design.
... Read more

Colleagues

It has been my great pleasure to serve the AIA's COTE Top Ten review process, both as a main juror and, most recently, as one of the technical review team.  I have specifically reviewed the Discovery and Energy measures for the past few years.  I will be serving again on the 2021 team.  The AIA has already received many more... Read more

Hi SDL: I'm working on a presentation and would love to highlight a completed and/or unbuilt project that seriously incorporates climate change projections in the design. Any scale would be great. It's becoming abundantly clear that we need to be doing this for any building that will be around for even a few decades. In fact, the insurance... Read more

We just wrapped up an awesome Winter Summit at Gulf State Park in Alabama. I'll be posting flip chart pages and notes here--we can use this forum to continue the conversations. 

Apologies for the flurry of emails, but it seems best to start separate threads for each topic. If you'd rather limit the flow, you can switch to daily digest... Read more

We all know the climates are shifting, and the ASHRAE standard that gets invoked for energy codes is shifting along with them--though not in perfect sync.  Louisiana is leaping from ASHRAE 90.1-2007 energy code to 2021 IECC (boom!).  The 2021 IECC as published uses relatively old climate maps; for Louisiana, at least, the same as the 90.1-2007... Read more

We are looking for colleagues from other firms to join a conference session proposal on "Dirt cheap Net Zero" for the ASHRAE / IBPSA conference (August 12-14, 2020, Chicago). 

We just had the grand opening of our first project designed to achieve net zero, a 50-unit affordable housing project, where we upgraded from the minimums required... Read more

I've written waste and recycling policies many a time before for both construciton and operations... but in a volunteer committee application this morning, the maintenance team got bogged down on "how do we collect recycling without plastic bags" question. I told them there's not any kind of plastic bag that I'm aware of which can be thrown... Read more

Hello Fellow Green Guru Members:  I am pleased to be a new member of the Sustainable Community Design Leaders (SCDL) forum, and look forward to learning and contributing here.  Also, in case you missed it, this week there were two important steps forward towards an eventual standardized Environmental-Social-Governance (ESG) reporting system... Read more

Ventilation is essential for indoor air quality, but it can bring very hot or very cold outdoor air into conditioned space.

BuildingGreen-Approved ERVs

Heat-recovery ventilators (HRVs) and energy-recovery ventilators (ERVs) can save energy by capturing nearly all of the heat in the air being exchanged. BuildingGreen approves:... Read more

Gather with the Changemakers in Sustainable Design

You are invited to join BuildingGreen and your peers for the Summit that has always delivered on driving our movement forward. Over three days of collaboration, workshops, learning, sharing, networking, and socializing, we’ll explore what Sustainability Leadership looks like in 2023 and... Read more

Hi all, hope you're keeping safe and healthy. I'm thinking about protocols to put in place on jobsites related to COVID-19 in addition to our IAQ plans. Wondering if anyone's company has started to layout specific protocols, PPE, etc. and is willing to share.

What got me thinking was this article from Prof. Joe Allen at Harvard about... Read more

The Sustainable Design Leaders network and Summit events started over 10 years ago, when a group of sustainable designers realized that the struggles they faced and the goals they strove toward were shared by many... Read more

Who else missed Building Green’s annual April Fool’s issue?

Wondering if anyone has a contact for good [sustainable] interactive water feature designer? A client is looking for a designer to add to our team and I figured this network would certainly have some insights. Project will be located in Omaha, NE. 

We are looking into different building skin materials from including GFRC and FRP (amongst others) as alternatives to precast. I remember years ago (when I was at LAS) we had retrofitted a Federal Courthouse with FRP for blast resistance. I kind of remember that at the time it had some pretty high offgassing concerns. I haven't been able to... Read more