CutMyTimber joins Passive House Northwest Group - Looking forward to the PHNW Spring Conference in Portland

We finally joined the PHNW group and are already listed on the PHNW Passive Pages. It is great to finally formalize our relationship with the passive house community in Washington and Oregon.  We look forward to attending the upcoming PHNW Spring Conference in Portland, Oregon on March 2nd.  The list of speakers is impressive and it will be a great opportunity to catch up with other professionals passionate about promoting passive house. Given that we just finished fabricating our first passive house project in Portland, Oregon we had to make time to finally join the local organization.  You can find photos of the project on flickr.  Watch for more videos and updates about the project on this blog over the next few weeks.  We plan on releasing videos of time-lapse images of the assembly to demonstrate the benefits of panelization.  We also hope to make another video showing the cadwork model with Stefan describing the project much as he did for a Tahoe residence we did a few years ago (see the video below, it has almost 4,000 views already). 




We are already very well-connected to the Passive House community in British Columbia, represented by the Canadian Passive House Institute (CanPHI), and received our passive house training from Guido Wimmers of Building Evolution of  (we made an earlier blog post about our training here).  

We were previously members of Passive House California and need to renew membership. Next week Greg is flying to New York for a conference on Digital Fabrication of buildings and will also be meeting with the passive house team at 475, a high-performance building supply company and active members of the New York Passive House group.  We are too busy building to stay up-to-date with all of these passive house groups but are enthused that the NY, CA, and PNW groups collaborated to form the American Passive House Network (we wish it was named the North American Passive House Network so people understand collaboration with Canadian groups).

CutMyTimber trained in Passive House

I think we all agree that homes need to be more energy efficient. There is a lot of talk about different systems and standards. I was trained and involved in many Minergie projects in the past.

Dr. Wolfgang Feist,German Professor and founder of the Passive House Institute went a step further and developed one of the highest green building standards in the world.
CutMyTimber spent a lot of time researching and testing various standards, products and software tools. We came to the conclusion that at this point the Passive House standard is probably the most advanced and thought-out green building standard at this point.

Therefore it’s no surprise that there is a strong move in Passive House all over North America. We are fortunate to have many local PH experts in Vancouver.  This was probably also the reason why the very first Passive House Designer/Consultant course took place in Vancouver.

I was one of the 25 professionals that took this very interesting course. We had a really good crowd mixed with engineers, architects, builders, building inspectors, green building consultants and building scientists.

What is a Passive House?

Basically a Passive House is a high performance building that uses solar (south windows) and interior heat gains (people, electronics, etc.)  Please see Passipedia for more details.

Passive Houses require less than 15 kWh/(m²yr) for heating or cooling (relating to the living space).

(Graphic: PH Institute)

In a nutshell following points are essential for Passive House design:
1.   Building shape, Compactness (Area/Volume ratio)
2.   Building orientation and window position/Solar exposure
3.   Building shell: High performance walls, roofs and foundation.
4.   Windows: Triple pane, double low e glazing windows with U-values of <0.8W/m2K
5.   Airtightness: Extreme tight building envelope (0.6 ach@50Pa)
6.   Thermal bridge free construction
7.   Heat recovery ventilation system

 
Following a few slides from our course.

First morning: Malcolm Isaacs and Dr. Guido Wimmers start the course and introduce the other instructors Dr. Andrea Frisque and Stefan Lotz. I felt very fortunate to have such a knowledgeable and passionate Passive House training team. Our instructors didn’t just talk about Passive House. All of them are very actively involved with the PH Institute in Germany, they are involved in current Passive House projects and clearly they knew their stuff and truly believe in Passive Buildings. Thanks again for such a great course.

Compactness and orientation of a building has a huge impact of heat and cooling energy consumption. The more compact a building is the better. Ideal building orientation is North-South.

The Building shell is one of the most important elements of a Passive Building. We require highly insulated and airtight walls. Ideally free of thermal bridges or penetrations. A Passive House should have R40 or better walls and R45 or better roof  (depending on location and many other factors). Malcolm explains a Passive House compatible floor to wall connection detail.

Thermal bridges that can’t be avoided need to be calculated. The calculation results have to be entered in the Passive House Software (PHPP). PHPP will consider these in the overall energy calculation.

Penetrations in the building envelope should be avoided in order to achieve an airtight building.  We learned about innovative products that can be used if there is no way to avoid a penetration. Unfortunately these grummets are not available in North America yet.

We learned a lot about the newest generation of windows. High quality windows triple pane, double low e glazing windows with U-values of <0.8W/m2K are essential for a Passive Building. Innovative window manufacturers came up with insulated window frames.

Unfortunately it’s hard to get windows with PH proprieties in North America. Many companies are working on it and it looks like we will see a new generation of window on the market soon.  

Because of the tight building shell a controlled air exchange is really important in a Passive House. A heat recovery ventilation system (HRV) is part of every passive house and requires proper planning.

Today’s Heat recovery units achieve efficiencies of 90% or more. Malcolm presents a few of the most efficient units currently available.

We also got exposed to a few of the currently available Passive House building Materials. Without pushing certain brands or products we had a chance to see new wind and vapor barriers, sealing tapes, ventilation ducts and nozzles.

Guido Wimmers opens the champagne at the end of the first Passive House Course in Canada. Many Thanks again to Guido, Malcolm, Andrea and Stephan for such a great course!! To my classmates: It was nice to meet you all and I hope we can pursue the Passive House move and be part of the local PH community.  

I can’t wait to design or manufacture our first Passive House.

Stefan Schneider, CutMyTimber INC.

USEFUL PASSIVE HOUSE LINKS:

Canadian Passive House Institute

Passive House Institute Darmstadt, Germany

Passive House Institute U.S

Passipedia

City of Vancover Passive Design Toolkits

CutMyTimber at University of British Columbia CAWP Open House

The Centre for Advanced Wood Processing (CAWP) is Canada's national centre of excellence for education and research related to wood products processing and advanced wood products manufacturing. CAWP offers a wide range of training courses, continuing education programs,  and industry services, conducts applied research, and assists industry toemploy students to work on special projects by coordinating a cooperative education program.


Last Thursday, October 7th 2010 the CAWP hosted an open house day. The CutMyTimber Founders Greg Howes and Stefan Schneider were present for this important and very interesting event.

Industry leaders such as Hundegger, Cadwork, MasterCam, SCM-Group, Leuco, and others where present:

The Hundegger Canada Crew: Markus Schellenberg with his very nice wife

and of course the machine doesn't run without a tech team. These Europeans always smile if there is a beer mug around. This one is made of Fir and milled on the 5-axis K2 joinery machine (in the background):

Hundegger ran some demos on their K2-5 axis machine. The type of machine that CutMyTimber is using for most of their complex projects:

But as impressive as the K2 is the real big news was the presentation of their soon to be released (in Europe first) 6 axis K2-Robot with fully automatic tool changer:

Of course the machine doesn't run without software. Cadwork was present as well:

same with the 5-axis SCM router. Software from MasterCam:

Software and machine are capable to mill about any shape and angle. Bellow a few samples:

The event also featured multiple speakers from different organizations and companies:

A great occasion for CutMyTimber C.E.O Stefan Schneider to talk about Digital manufacturing and the future of building:

Main part of the speech was the difference between BIM and FIM and why it is critical to use accurate  Fabrication Information Models in order to produce today's buildings and building components:

The 2nd part of the presentation was about the transfer from architectural data into a 3D FIM model, process definition, export to CAM software and various processing methods for steel and timber parts as well as prefab wall panels:

Accurate and very detailed Cadwork 3D FIM model

Cadwork to Hundegger K2 CNC interface and Hundegger EKP single part CAM system

Finshed scarf joint detail cut by Hundegger K2 joinery machine

Same process for steel I-beams and steel plates. Stefan shows a video of a Steel I-beam processor in action.

And of course in the end a short outlook about the future of building. This is what CutMyTimber is all about:

....of course that leads to surprised faces and great discussions:

a big THANK YOU to the UBC CAWP team for organizing a great event!!!