Coming from the design profession, I am a strong believer in the effectiveness of design workshops.<\/p>\n
To kick off the design and engineering process, I had planned for a design workshop with architects, contractors and green building professionals (the so called green team). The intent of the workshop was to figure out how we would put everything back together and how to integrate the most appropriate and efficient sustainable strategies, systems and materials. The cumulative expertise and creativity of the workshop participants was to help us to organize our ideas, make sure that various wish list<\/a> items are compatible, and make sure we accomplish our project principles<\/a>.<\/p>\n A rehab is not a cheap undertaking, nor is a sustainable rehab. If we spend all this money, I would like to make sure that we get things right the first time round and that we can count on a reasonable payback and\/or effective environmental footprint reduction. The workshop was an investment that will help us in this regard.<\/p>\n I developed a list of items to discuss and resolve in the workshop:<\/p>\n I put these items into a draft workshop agenda and ran them by my friends John Edel<\/a> and\u00a0 Ted Krasnesky (Pepper Construction). Both pointed out that I was missing baseline data on basic energy needs. That data would be the foundation for the workshop discussions (i.e. how well would the insulation work and how much heating do I really need?).<\/p>\n I needed an energy model. More importantly, I needed to find someone competent who can run that energy model for me \u2013 quickly. Never mind the bad economy. Energy consultants in the residential green building business seem to be extremely busy.<\/p>\n A visit to Chicago Green Drinks<\/a> earlier this year got me out of this rut. I remembered a presentation by Corbett Lundsford (Green Team Group, LLC<\/a>) about energy audits and modeling. Corbett was kind enough to squeeze me into his schedule. He ran a REM\/Rate energy model<\/a> for me based on the floor plans and building performance parameters we discussed. Thank you Corbett!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Coming from the design profession, I am a strong believer in the effectiveness of design workshops. To kick off the design and engineering process, I had planned for a design workshop with architects, contractors and green building professionals (the so called green team). The intent of the workshop was to figure out how we would … Continue reading Stuck in workshop preparations<\/span> \n