Workshop8: Boulder architects’ design net-zero housing project in El Paso
Paisano Green is the first net-zero, LEED platinum, affordable senior-housing project in the United States, according to those involved in the project.
Net-zero means energy produced on site will equal or exceed energy consumed on site. The five-building, 73-unit project is built on 4.2 acres, adjacent to the major border crossing between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico.
Workshop8 LLC was founded in 2010 by green-minded Joseph Vigil, Ulla Lange, Brandy LeMae, jv DeSousa and Ali Gidfar, specifically to enter the competition. LeMae found the competition, and she and Vigil presented the idea to the group.
Lange said members of the group, all with their own businesses, came together to “test the waters” and see how the collaboration would work. “We came together at a time when the economy was weak and business was slow,” Lange said.
The group received $25,000 to develop its concept further when it became one of three finalists in the competition. When its design won, the group incorporated as a business and received the contract for architectural fees that amounted to $1.3 million.
Along the way, Deneuve Construction Services of Boulder acted as a construction consultant for Workshop 8.
“It was like putting a dream team of Boulder Green Building Guild members together,” Vigil said. “This has allowed us to showcase our talents on a national and international stage, and it has allowed us to go after bigger and more exciting work.”
The architects designed Paisano Green so it would not use fossil fuels for energy. It features wind turbines, rooftop solar panels, air-source heat-pump water heaters, Energy Star appliances, north- and south-facing windows, and canopies for increased protection from excessive glare and solar heat gain, plus a drought-tolerant landscape.
In February 2010, Workshop8 won a national design competition held by the Housing Authority of the city of El Paso. The competition, and the construction of the project, was paid in part by a federal grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The reason for the competition was to aid in the El Paso authority’s vision of constructing the “greenest” affordable-housing development in the country.
Portland, Oregon-based Pavilion Construction was selected from a large pool of responding general contractors to lead in the construction, which began in December, 2011.
“This project is more than just housing people — it’s about creating a rich and vibrant lifestyle for the people who will live there,” DeSousa said. “We are really proud of what we produced and enjoyed the creative process and the competition with some of the country’s biggest design firms.”
The project has been presented at several conferences across the United States, most notably at HUD’s Going Green: Intelligent Investment for Public Housing conference in Boston last July.
At HUD’s request, Workshop8 and Boulder-based Sustainably Built prepared a white paper outlining the best practices in delivering sustainability and green design in affordable housing.
Sustainably Built, led by founder and principal Adam Stenftenagel and principal Mark Bloomfield, consults on energy efficiency, renewable energy, durable materials and indoor air quality. The 13-page white paper describes the energy-efficient strategies — both passive and active — that are included in the project.
Sustainably Built put together a comparison of the building design versus the IECC 2009 code requirement and modeled the energy consumption of a typical one-bedroom unit as built at Paisano Green versus a unit built to base code standards.
Early projections for annual energy consumption of a one-bedroom unit included a savings of $691, comparing the IECC 2009 code requirements costing $882 with the new design’s annual cost of $191. DeSousa said those projections should be fairly accurate after the first few months worth of bills have come in.
Paisano Green relies solely on renewable energy through solar thermal, photovoltaic panels and a wind-power generator. With the energy generated by solar panels alone, it is anticipated that neither the tenants nor the housing authority will have to pay a substantial utility bill. The PV panels are projected to produce as much energy in a year as the tenants will consume.
Design considerations
Workshop8’s design is tailored to respond to the intense sun and wind of the Chihuahuan Desert locale. Water is the most precious resource in this environment — much more so than energy. The design responds to its urban location in ways that both integrate it into the built fabric, and at the same time protect it and its inhabitants from the surrounding environment. It is a solution so interwoven into the nature of its place that it could not be duplicated in another location.
El Paso is unlike other desert communities, with an elevation of 4,000 feet above sea level. As a result, nighttime lows average 75 degrees in summer and commonly hover around freezing in winter.
At Paisano Green, the walls are insulated to R-28 and the roofs to R-30. Studies for Paisano Green showed that for the climate, insulation levels in excess of R-30 for roofs and R-28 for walls, the additional energy reduction would not offset the cost of the additional R factor.
Roof and wall surfaces are predominantly white or light colored to reflect as much of the sun’s energy as possible and to minimize absorbed radiant energy. White TPO roofing, light colored stucco and white metal roofing comprise most of the exterior surfaces of the building envelope. TPO, or thermoplastic polyolefin m, is a roofing material that protects against heat-aging and UV degradation.
Funding
The $11 million project was funded by an $8.25 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, along with $3.2 million from El Paso’s housing authority and a $500,000 loan from the city of El Paso. As a condition of the federal grant, the housing authority needed to move quickly; the authority was required to hire a general contractor by September 2010 and spend 60 percent of the funds by the following summer. The city proved instrumental in helping the housing authority meet deadlines.
One major obstacle was zoning; the site’s residential designation did not allow for 92-foot-tall wind turbines with 12-foot blades, and modifying the code would have delayed the project beyond its deadline.
“We had a discussion of, ‘Well, we can rewrite our code to allow wind turbines, and we’ll have to go research other (city) codes and see what they’ve done, see how to write it and what’s legal in Texas,’ ´ said Marty Howell, sustainability manager for the city of El Paso. Instead, on the advice of city planners, Howell and the housing authority learned about an existing zoning category — general mixed use — that allowed them to set their own height requirements.
City officials were instrumental in working out a net-metering deal with the Public Utility Commission Texas. The city and housing authority, in conjunction with the utility company, worked toward passing state legislation that created an exception in the rate structure for El Paso, reinstating net metering.
“The impact of that for the housing authority has been enormous, and it will save them hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even millions of dollars, over the next 20 to 30 years,” DeSousa said.
Paisano Green is the first net-zero, LEED platinum, affordable senior-housing project in the United States, according to those involved in the project.
Net-zero means energy produced on site will equal or exceed energy consumed on site. The five-building, 73-unit project is built on 4.2 acres, adjacent to the major border crossing between El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico.
Workshop8 LLC was founded in 2010 by green-minded Joseph Vigil, Ulla…
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