Completed in June 2015, Orchards at Orenco is the largest multifamily passive house building in North America. The development provides 57 affordable housing units for individuals and families earning less than 60 percent of the area’s median income. In addition to affordable rent, residents enjoy lower utility costs through a 60 to 70 percent reduction in overall energy use compared to similarly sized buildings in the Pacific Northwest. This is in part due to the building’s nearly 90 percent reduction in energy use for heating.

The March Allies for Efficiency course will cover how the owner, developer, design teams and general contractor worked together to meet rigorous passive housing standards, including their approach to design, modeling, envelope, mechanical systems and construction. It will also include findings on incremental and associated financing costs, as well as information on actual energy use compared to modeled energy use for the first six months of occupancy.

Course objectives:

• Demonstrate design approaches and solutions to meet passive house standards
• Communicate key differences between traditional construction and passive house methods for building envelope, heating, ventilation and cooling
• Review constructability of passive house details, including the air barrier strategy
• Illustrate the challenges of sourcing materials to meet passive housing standard, including impacts to project schedule
• Foster an understanding of passive house whole-building air tightness testing and use of the passive house planning package as a design tool

Allies for Efficiency: Applying the passive house standard to low-income, multifamily projects
Wednesday, March 16
Presentation: 2:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Catered reception: 4:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Mercy Corps Northwest
Aceh conference room
43 SW Naito Pkwy
Portland, OR 97204

Presenters include Marty Houston of Walsh Construction, Dylan Lamar of Green Hammer, Craig Kelley from Housing Development Center, and Jeff Becksfort from PAE.

If you are interested in attending this event, look out for the registration link in your email inbox. For more information, contact Alejandro Savransky at 503.548.4955.