What is High Performance Building?
At Ubergreen Spaces + Homes, high performance building is our standard but not the building industry norm. We want to change that. We have the experience, the knowledge and science to make buildings that are healthier, more comfortable, more durable, and better for our occupants and the planet. We have the ability to model specific to the climate of which you live and understand how our indoor thermal environment, air quality, energy and material use interact. Equipped with this building science knowledge and mindset, this gives us the tools and insight to control and optimize our energy consumption and indoor environments for the individuals and families that utilize them.
Ubergreen Spaces + Homes has experience with multiple high performance building methodologies and takes them into account when designing or building:
Passive House Institue US (PHIUS): is a non-profit organization committed to making high-performance passive building the mainstream market standard. PHIUS trains and certifies professionals, maintains the Passive House climate-specific passive building standard, certifies and quality assures passive buildings, and conducts research to advance high-performance building.
Buildings that meet the PHIUS standard use 40-60 percent less energy for space conditioning than conventional buildings, and provide superior indoor air quality, resilience during power outages, and an extremely quiet, comfortable environment.
Passive building comprises a set of design principles used to attain a quantifiable and rigorous level of energy efficiency within a specific quantifiable comfort level. "Optimize your gains and losses" based on climate summarizes the approach. To that end, a passive building is designed and built in accordance with these five building-science principles:
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Employs continuous insulation throughout its entire envelope without any thermal bridging.
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The building envelope is extremely airtight, preventing infiltration of outside air and loss of conditioned air.
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Employs high-performance windows (double or triple-paned windows depending on climate and building type) and doors - solar gain is managed to exploit the sun's energy for heating purposes in the heating season and to minimize overheating during the cooling season.
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Uses some form of balanced heat- and moisture-recovery ventilation.
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Uses a minimal space conditioning system.
Passive building principles can be applied to all building typologies – from single-family homes to multifamily apartment buildings, offices, and skyscrapers.
https://www.phius.org/home-page
Independent Living Future Institute: their mission is to lead the transformation toward a civilization that is socially just, culturally rich, and ecologically restorative. ILFI's permise is belief that providing a compelling vision for the future is a fundamental requirement for reconciling humanity's relationship with the natural world.
The Living Building Challenge consists of seven performance categories, or "Petals": Place, Water, Energy, Health + Happiness, Materials, Equity, and Beauty.
Each Petal is subdivided into Imperatives, for a total of twenty Imperatives in the Challenge. The Imperatives can be applied to almost every conceivable building project, of any scale and any location—be it a new building or an existing structure.
WELL Building Institute: knows that the spaces around us can make everyone, everywhere, healthier, happier and more productive. The WELL Building Institue is leading a global movement to transform health and well-being with our people first approach to buildings, organizations and communities. We do this using our WELL Building Standard (WELL), a roadmap for creating and certifying spaces that advance human health and well-being. Developed over 10 years and backed by the latest scientific research, WELL sets pathways for accomplishing health-first factors that help every one of us to do our best work and be our best selves by supporting our physical and mental health across 10 core concepts. Rigorous performance standards for design interventions, operational protocols and company-wide practices are verified by a third party. WELL works at any scale, from a single interior space to an entire organization.
LEED: (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the most widely used green building rating system in the world. Available for virtually all building types, LEED provides a framework for healthy, highly efficient, and cost-saving green buildings. LEED certification is a globally recognized symbol of sustainability achievement and leadership. Millions of people are living, working and learning in LEED-certified buildings around the world.
