Kellogg-Hubbard Library, Hayes Room

135 Main Street • Montpelier, VT  (802) 223-3338

Join Ben Graham to look at how buildings can be a part of a regenerative land use pattern.

We will discuss using local, natural materials for building and how they are used in high performance design. There will also be coverage of community based development patterns that integrate agriculture and affordability.

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Ben has been designing and building natural buildings since 1999 and recently co-founded the Ecological Design/Build Group.  He teaches at Yestermorrow and is focused on integrating nature and culture through architecture, planning and design.

This talk is a part of the Transition Third Thursday presentation series at the Library, co-sponsored by Transition Town Montpelier and Kellogg-Hubbard Library.

Our Governor, Peter Shumlin, is calling for 75% of our electricity to come from renewables within 20 years, and 90% of our total energy from renewables by 2050.  Implementing this plan  will not only mean a cleaner, more climate friendly environment, but it will also mean green collar jobs for Vermont’s working families.

Now let’s put the pressure on and tell Montpelier that we can move even faster and create good green jobs in the process. Let’s tell Montpelier that the faster we move towards a renewable energy future, the better we will stand in our fight against climate change.  Now is the time for Vermont to once again lead the way!

On Wednesday, January 25th, at 10:00 am in the Cedar Creek Room in the Statehouse, Montpelier, there will be a rally/press conference announcing the launch of the historic “Fossil Fuels Freedom Campaign.”  This campaign was formed by our partners in the 350.org Vermont organization, and seeks to build a future of sustainable, climate friendly, renewable energy reliance in our state and beyond.

The Vermont Sierra Club supports these principles, and we will be there.

We invite you to be there too!

There have been several forums and workshops that have occurred as of late on PACE (the forum at the Vermont Law School in October as well as the workshop that took place recently at the annual ‘Vermont Energy and Climate Action Conference.’) This email is a follow up to those events, as well as simply ensuring that those of you who have expressed an interest in PACE or who are actively moving the program forward are aware of some important resources available to support your efforts. This email summarizes some of those resources as well as notes some potential follow-up items for your consideration, including:

2012 Town Meeting:  If your town has not approved establishing a PACE district, we encourage you to organize now to get an item on the 2012 Town Warning.  We have developed some sample language for you to include on your Town Warning, which can be found on the WIKI site at http://pacevermont.wikispaces.com/. We have also developed a guidance document to help you understand the steps in approving a PACE district for your town. That document is attached, though it can also be found on the WIKI site. This has to happen quickly though! January 26th is the last day to get an article on the Town Meeting Day warning…

The WIKI Site:  VEIC has established a PACE “WIKI” site that contains a number of important guidance documents and information about implementing PACE in Vermont.  [A “WIKI” site is merely a webpage that is designed to provide easy access to information for a targeted audience.]  On this site, you will find:

•       On-line forum: Do you have a question about PACE?  Check out the WIKI site to get your questions answered or see what other questions have been raised and addressed.

•      Guidance documents:  We have a number of guidance documents posted on the WIKI site, including a step-by-step guide on “How to Implement PACE in Your Community.

•      Sample ballot language: If your town has not already approved the establishment of a PACE district, we have posted two versions of sample language for your consideration to place on your Town Warning for the 2012 Town Meeting Day.

A Letter of Support for the Program from Vermont Treasurer Beth Pearce: The State Treasurer has been a great supporter of the PACE program. At the October forum Treasurer Pearce outlined the economic and environmental benefits she believes the PACE program can bring to Vermont. To offer her perspective both on the benefits she believes the program will bring as well as the safety mechanisms in place to protect Vermont communities, Treasurer Pearce has also put together a general letter of support of the program. Find that letter on the WIKI site as well and please share it with local officials and other community members to offer that important perspective.

NOTE: All communities that have signed up for the Quick Start Program are granted access to the WIKI site and should have received guidance on how to gain access. To gain access to the WIKI site, click on http://pacevermont.wikispaces.com and enter your ID and password. If you haven’t already set up an account, you will first need to go to http://pacevermont.wikispaces.com/space/join and set one up. You will then receive an e-mail authorizing you. Please contact Peter Adamczyk at VEIC (802-540-7631 or padamczyk@veic.org) if you have any questions about gaining access to the WIKI site.

New PACE law:  As many of you are aware, the Vermont Legislature made changes in 2011 to the PACE program and strengthened the law.  In light of this new legislation, it is unclear whether towns that had previously approved the establishment of a PACE district need to re-submit new language again at their 2012 Town Meeting. In light of this new legislation, towns that had previously approved the establishment of a PACE district may wish to consider whether to re-submit new language again at their 2012 Town Meeting. If so, please use the language we have provided on the WIKI site.

Moving Ahead with PACE implementation: If your town has already approved establishing a PACE district, you are ready to move ahead with implementation. There are series of questions that you will need to answer and then have approved by your selectboard.  These are all spelled out on the “PACE Program Description and Guidelines.” This can be found on the WIKI site in the “Sample Documents” section.

Again, we hope the “Guide to Implementing PACE Districts in Vermont Communities” serves as a useful step-by-step resource for helping those interested in moving a PACE program forward. If you have any questions, please go to the WIKI forum as the first step in getting those questions answered or feel free to contact me at 802-223-2328 ext. 112 or jmiller@vnrc.org or reach Peter Adamczyk at VEIC at 802-540-7631 or padamczyk@veic.org.

We have until 2017! That is FIVE years!!! FIVE!!! The whole world is at stake – nut just Africa!

Tears run down my face in fear – yet we MUST stay strong and Get IT DONE!

What are YOU… yes, YOU doing – not your neighbor?  Don’t wait until it is too late!

Do you even know what to do? Where to start? The answer lies within our Transportation, Buildings, which are the two worst offenders to our emission levels.

Please Don’t drive unless it is absolutely necessary. Never Idle. Car and Van Pool, Use Rideshare to connect!  In Vermont: www.ConnectingCommuters.org  (800-685-RIDE) or www.uppervalleyrideshare.com (802-295-1824 x204). Take the bus, train, ferry, bike, e-bike, walk, ski… and drive energy efficient vehicles. Our future transportation infrastructure needs to start now!

Seal and Insulate your Buildings to reduce the emissions caused from the use of dirty non-renewable fossil fuels. You can’t seal them tight enough!  Zero Energy Buildings ARE achievable. This should be the goal and not to settle for anything less!

Renewable Energy – this is the solution! Clean energy from Solar, Wind, Micro-hydro*…  We need Community Solar and Wind Farms… We can’t get solar installed or wind turbines up fast enough!  It is about TIME!  NOW is the time to G.E.T. going!

Learn more in every issue of Green Energy Times… New Issue coming out on Dec. 15th with a Front page article about the 2017 dilemma directly from the IEA warning, that Anjali Appadurai refers to … The new issue will be online next week, so ck back with us! AND, watch for G.E.T.  at newstands near you or subscribe on this website out and about in VT and NH at the same time!

* Micro-hydro is an untapped goldmine of energy producing power that runs 24 hrs a day and does NOT harm the environment in ANY way. The Federal Gov’t is the only block in making this happen.  It is time to get that changed.  Go to your state representatives and government officials and let’s get the micro-hydro laws changed!

by Richard Feasy

What would you think about having a system in place so that every time a home or business was listed for sale in Vermont, buyers would be provided with an energy rating and information on improving the energy efficiency of that building?

Might you consider this a step in the right direction by making sure buyers were made aware of what they were getting into and given guidance on reducing energy costs?  Or would you see this as an excessive mandate?

These seem to be the two extreme perspectives voiced at the Working Group on Building Energy Disclosure that has been meeting regularly since late summer in Montpelier.  This Working Group was established as part of H.47, the “Vermont Energy Act of 2011”, to study “…whether and how to require disclosure of the energy efficiency of commercial and residential buildings in order to make data on building energy performance visible in the marketplace for real property and inform the choice of those who may purchase or rent such property.”

The Act named the composition of the Working Group to include: legislators, certain agency heads (or their designees), a real estate broker, someone from Efficiency Vermont, an appraiser representative, a builder representative, a contractor, an energy rating provider, an energy expert, a local energy committee representative, a lender representative, an attorney, and a heating service representative.  The individuals making up this diverse group bring a wealth of experience and perspectives to the table, and Working Group co-chairs Rep. Margaret Cheney and George Twigg (Efficiency Vermont) provide a fair and balanced approach in making sure that all opinions are aired and heard.

The Working Group has met three times through October 2011, and the three subcommittees that have been formed out of the main Working Group have been meeting multiple times in addition to the full Group meetings.  Focusing on “disclosure recipients and timing”, “markets and properties”, and “rating and audits”, these sub-groups have researched and discussed many of the details that will be necessary to consider if energy disclosure policy is to proceed.  The Working Group has been asked to provide a report and recommendations to the general assembly by December 15, 2011.  The elements of this report are just now starting to emerge.

From an initial “sense of the group” vote taken at the meeting in late October, there appears to be a majority of support for recommending a system that would require a simplified energy rating produced by the seller, their real estate agent, home inspector or other trained contractor at about the time a building is put on the market for sale, prior to the first showing.  There exist such web-based rating systems that could be made available for as inexpensively as free that appear to work quite well.  Buyers could then compare properties with the energy rating information in hand and have some sense of what they could be getting into and what it might take to upgrade that building to more efficient levels.  The Working Group is also looking into recommending a system that would then connect the buyer of a property with a certified building performance contractor who could provide a more detailed and specific energy audit that could be used as part of financing to upgrade the building.  Linking the buyer to actionable information is ultimately the intent of this disclosure initiative, since the objective is for Vermont to improve the energy efficiency of 80,000 buildings 25% by 2020, the goal set out a few years ago by the Vermont legislature.

In an on-going spirit of cooperation, the Working Group will continue to work towards their December 15 report goal.  The meetings are all open to the general public, so if you are interested in attending or receiving more information, you can contact Rachel Levin at rlevin@leg.state.vt.us.

Enertia is a brand name for homes designed and sold in kits by North Carolina-based Enertia Building Systems (EBS). The idea essentially marries the concepts of geothermal and passive solar heating/cooling into what amounts to a highly energy efficient hybrid system. Architectural inventor Michael Sykes coined the term “Enertia” in the 1980s to describe the innovative homes he was designing that would store solar and geothermal energy and make use of it for most if not all heating and cooling needs.

Under such a system, solid wood walls replace siding, framing, insulation and paneling, while an air flow channel—or “envelope”—runs around the building inside the walls, creating what Sykes terms a miniature biosphere. Inside the envelope, solar heated air circulates, pumping and boosting geothermal energy from beneath the house and storing it within the wood mass of the walls, where it is doled out gradually.

By harnessing the properties of thermal inertia—the ability of materials to store heat and give it off slowly—an “Enertia” house maintains a relatively fixed and comfortable temperature throughout the warmer day (when solar heat is collected and stored) and cooler night (when the wood walls give off heat to keep things toasty as the mercury dips).

The heart of the system is a south-facing sun space within the envelope that is dominated by windows and which therefore soaks up lots of solar energy, filling the house’s wood walls with thermal energy that in turn radiates into the primary living space. The entire house functions like an electric heat pump—moving warm and cool air around to accommodate the comfort needs of the occupants. It works even throughout the seasonal changes of the year—with minimal to no fossil fuels consumed or pollution generated.

In one Enertia house in North Carolina, the only power bill the owners typically pay is $35/month for electricity. They also have a back-up in-floor radiant heating system powered by natural gas for long cloudy stretches or unusually cold weather. Gas bills for heat typically total $150 for the year, meaning the owners’ total annual outlay for heating, cooling and electricity is less than $600—some $1,000 less than traditional homes in the same zip code are paying, according to data from the U.S. Department of Energy.
EBS markets several different designs for its Enertia houses, but all share the basic premise of primary interior living space heated and cooled by air channeled in from a south-facing

“buffer zone” envelope and from below grade. Smaller houses in the line top out at about 2,000 square feet over two floors of living space, while larger ones encompass some 4,000 square feet of living space over three floors. Depending on the model, you could spend anywhere from $66,000 to $292,000 for a complete plan and building materials kit. The rest—including the selection and cost of the land and the labor to build the house—is up to you.

CONTACTS: Enertia Building Systems, www.enertia.com.
SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk® is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

GET Aug2011 page 24

Watch for it at a newsstand, supermarket, and local stores and establishments near you – throughout 85% of Vermont & 45% of New Hampshire! Be sure to pick up copies when they first come out or they may be gone when you come back.

If you can’t find it near you – let us know so that we see if we can make it happen… you can also subscribe right from this website on the Advertising/Subscriptions Tab (above).

Enjoy, learn and most of all we hope you find something to help move us forward on our path to energy independence and reducing our carbon emission levels.  Share your stories with us!  We love to hear from you!

The test is being performed on residential windows of an energy efficient home that is constructed with Structurally Insulated Panels and triple pane windows and doors. R-value in the roof is R-47 and the walls are R-38, with log siding. The passive solar, well-insulated home takes advantage of Solar Gain by it’s orientation, which works extremely well during the winter. To counter the sun on the south facing side of the home, a 4’ overhang is accomplished with a balcony over the 1st story windows, as well as a 4‘ overhang from the upper roof. The western 1st story has a full porch attached with skylights over some of the windows to allow lighting gain.

Most of the northern side of the house is blocked from the elements of the winter by the addition of a breezeway that leads to a double car garage. The northeastern corner of the house is still open to the elements with a double casement window arrangement in the bathroom. Some cold air could be felt when the temps dropped below zero, in spite of the fiberglass frame and triple panes, designed to perform with as little heat loss as was possible at the time of purchase. Gordon’s Windows installed a single insulated beautiful blue EcoSmart shade with side tracks in March of 2011. Although we have not been able to put them through the test of the brutally cold January and February months, we were able to see a huge difference in the time that we were able to test them last winter. When we would open the shade, the temperature difference was unbelievably noticeable. They truly performed in a manner that made the comfort level in the room much warmer during the night. Clearly, the heat loss was lessoned, as well as the cool air that was felt along some points in the windows.

What we never realized is that the cooling and heating of windows actually wears the windows down after time, which occurs on all windows. The EcoSmart shades are a welcome solution. They also look great, even if you are a fan of no curtains. During the day, when we want our solar gain and ability to keep our energy need for lighting low, they beautifully draw up to allow any level of light in. We are testing the highest insulated shade they offer, so when they are down, it is dark inside. Gordon’s offers a light filtering shade, but we wanted to give them the ultimate test to be able to give our readers an option to reduce their energy usage that is much less costly than window replacements. Window treatments, after time will eventually be needed as your home settles and the seasons come and go, to keep your heating needs lower.

We also installed them on our eastern facing windows where we were feeling cold air coming in and also seeing some icing in the corners and lower edge of the glass during the coldest nights, and with nor’easters! The shades performed the same as with the north facing window treatments.

The eastern windows do not have any overhangs for summer shading/cooling. It was nearly impossible to sleep in with the sunrise and immediate temperature increase in the mornings. An unexpected benefit of the shades is how they keep summer heat out. With the shades down at least 80% until the sun reaches overhead, they really keep the room cool, in spite of how hot it gets outside. When you pull the shades up it is unbelievable how scorching hot it is between the shade and the window (we tend to keep the windows open to let it out). We chose a color that matches the wide wooden sills and they look very nice as well. The ones on the south side of this room are under a porch roof, so we just appreciate their summer value of keeping the room darkened when we want to sleep in.

Now that we realize the huge benefit of their cooling abilities we need to deal with the upstairs 2nd story windows that only have a 2‘ overhang. We hope that Gordon’s will allow us to test that side of the house and will let you know if it helps to keep it cooler in here when the temps reach to the 90’s outside and there is no breeze anywhere. After that it should be cool sailing in here and our energy reduction measures will benefit all the more.

Written and tested by Nancy Rae Mallery 8.5.11
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Type of Building: 5500sf (includes 1500 sf of old Herrick Building) Post and Beam Visitor Center, built in 2009 by Jeff Schoellkopf, Architect/Designer and JA Morrissey, Builder, with main contributors to the Post and Beam effort: Erik and Laurel Tobiason of Colby and Tobiason of Woodstock, Mike Elder of JA Morrissey of Williston, and Duncan Kier of Liberty Head Post and Beam in Huntington. Construction Cost: 1.8 million.

Fuel Type: High Efficiency Wood Boiler. Froling Turbo 3000 – 177,000 BTU cord wood boiler. Why cord wood and not pellets? Cord wood has a lower embodied energy/cord (less processing) and is available to GMC at little to no cost. Our current supply of firewood comes from GMC’s Meltzer property in Lowell where we recently conducted a sustainable timber harvest as part of our State of Vermont Forest Management Plan (This plan allows the property to be in the Current Use Program and thereby reduces the property tax burden).

Annual Heating Fuel Consumption: 8 cords of firewood over 12 mos of domestic hot water heating and space heating – includes heating 1500sf of poorly insulated building.

Electricity Use: 35,000kWH/year. Our electricity covers lights, computers systems (servers), air conditioning, refrigeration, a work shop, our circulators and fans for the heating and cooling system, etc. We are open 7 days a week from 9-5 from Memorial Day through Columbus Day and M-F from 10-5 for the winter and spring.

Window Brand: Accurate Dorwin. Triple paned Argon gas filled. Our windows have a low U Factor (the lower the U-factor, the better) of .17 to .26 depending on whether they are designed to allow more passive solar energy or not. In the case of our building we utilized windows that shade sun on the south side of the meeting hall but units that allow passive solar on the western exposure of the Marvin B. Gameroff Hiker Information Center.

Insulation Type: Spray Foam Closed Cell. R 35 walls and R 40 Roof. Roof is made up of Structural Insulated Panels.

Building Feature Details:

Composting toilet: Clivus Multrum M-32 Compost Reactor with three dry toilet stools. We reduce our waste water by using a dry composting toilet system. Our minimal amounts of gray water go in to a conventional septic. Our Clivus Multrum system saves thousands of gallons of water a year.

Energy Star Appliances: Sun Frost 16 Cubic Foot Refrigerator/Freezer (most energy efficient refrigerator available today). Bosch Energy Star Dishwasher.
Grid Tied PV. 2kW roof mounted array rated to produce 2000 kWH/year. Three AllSun Trackers each rated at 4kW produce 12,000kWH a year. Given the excellent nature of our site for solar, our trackers could produce as high as 6kW per tracker and thus give us 18,000kWH/yr. Our ultimate goal is to be electrically neutral – producing as much as we use – and we hope to achieve this through three additional trackers planned for a fall 2011 installation.

Heat recovery ventilation: This unit helps keep our tight building’s air clean and filtered while preventing heat loss.
All wood was locally and sustainably harvested in Bristol and Ripton Vermont.
Non-Toxic Products: Both in building and for cleaning purposes.

High Efficiency Lighting: Not only are all lights compact fluorescent, but many of them are on occupancy sensors (turns the lights off when no one is present) or on timers (outside lights) to reduce electrical demand. We have also just begun to replace our compact fluorescent bulbs with high efficiency LED bulbs to further reduce our lighting demand. Every effort was made to provide natural daylighting, reducing electric lighting.

Future Project:

Planned installation of second wood gasification boiler at our seasonal housing facility. This unit will cover the high demand for hot water in the summer and space heating in the winter. We plan to experiment with a clothes dryer that can use the hot water heat as the energy source rather than propane.

For questions on what GMC is doing,
email Pete Antos-Ketcham.
pantosketcham@greenmountainclub.org  

by Pete Antos-Ketcham, GMC Facilities Manager
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The recently opened Bosarge Family Education Center is situated at one of Maine’s premier tourist destinations and is being hailed as the “greenest building in Maine.” Designed through a collaboration between Maclay Architects of Waitsfield, VT and Scott Simons Architects of Portland, ME, this project included input from design professionals, staff, board members and donors from across New England.

The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens started the process of designing the Bosarge Family Education Center by laying out strict goals for both environmental performance and programming. The client set the high environmental goal of both net-zero energy and LEED Platinum, for this 8,000 square foot building sited next to their existing visitor’s center.

The client’s program included administrative office space as well as flexible classroom space that could be adapted for various larger events and gatherings.

From the beginning of the design process, creative ways of meeting the client’s goals were explored by the design team. The client was restricted by both a tight budget and schedule, as a non-profit intent on preserving the visitor’s experience during the summer season. To fulfill the client’s expectations, a panelized construction system, produced by Bensonwood of Walpole, NH was utilized, which allowed for the majority of the building envelope to be fabricated off-site and then assembled rapidly on-site. Once the shell was in place, HP Cummings, construction manager for the project, was able to work through the winter months under cover. This construction approach allowed the project to be completed on budget, on schedule and to meet the strict environmental goals set out by the client.

The Bosarge Family Education Center at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens boasts walls and a roof that are over a foot thick and achieve an efficiency rating of R-40 in above ground walls, R-60 in the roof and R-20 in below ground insulation. Triple-glazed, R-5 windows, designed and manufactured in Germany, provide passive solar gain in the winter while keeping out heat in the summer. To produce the energy load required to achieve net-zero, the building is equipped with 135 PV panels on the south facing roof as well as an additional 102 panel array on the ground, together capable of generating 55,148 kWh. This energy production will offset the building’s annual energy use, which is modeled at 19 kbtu/sf-yr, to make this building a net-zero building.

The Bosarge Family Education Center is one of a handful of net-zero non-residential buildings in all of New England, and only the second commercial LEED Platinum building in Maine. This building stands at the next frontier of building design, surpassing LEED standards to achieve much greater energy savings and greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Beyond the environmental goals, this new building at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens meets all of the programming requirements set out in the beginning of the project by connecting directly to the neighboring botanical gardens through views and access. A central gallery acts as a transparent, breezeway-like, connector. The two wings spread out from this center, one housing administrative and staff functions and the other designed as a flexible multi-use space. This can function as a large performance space or be partitioned into acoustically separate classrooms that each open into the landscape and exterior teaching spaces.

The Gardens’ vision of building a teaching tool for visitors that communicates the importance of resource and energy conservation is realized. The Bosarge Family Education Center is now open to the public. Meters inside the building and online track real-time data for lighting, mechanical systems, water use and electricity production to teach anyone who is interested in learning more about the technical aspects of the project. Through an integrated design process the strict environmental metrics were turned into a teachable mantra, one that describes the finished product, “If a plant designed a building…” Visitors to the gardens can now complete that sentence with first hand experience, “It would be powered by the sun, t would use natural materials as its building blocks, and it would harness the daylight.” If you are in the Boothbay region, be sure to visit.

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