The last month has seen an acceleration in the easing of Covid restrictions around the United States, and Canada is poised to start opening up soon.  While we were all in our own Covid hibernation bubble, some pretty monumental shifts have occurred that will affect how we live and build both short and long term.  Here are some of the things we’ve being seeing that may impact how you build.

1.   Increased awareness of ventilation’s impact on health & environmental threats

At Small Planet Supply we’re seeing more projects interested in utilizing continuous fresh air (or mechanical) ventilation to protect occupant health indoors. 

Filtration of outdoor air has also become a topic of high interest and goals and best practices are still in discussion.  An example of this has been the discussion, largely among Passive House community, but also among other builders on how to filtrate a home or building during wildfire events. 

At Small Planet Supply, we offer both ventilation systems and filtration systems and actively work with our customers to help them chose the right ventilation systems and filtration for their project and the external environment. The continued drought in Western North America, and the anticipated wildfires, presents a unique challenge to builders and homeowners alike: how to keep indoor air clean when the air outside isn’t.

Learn more : Zehnder | Ventacity | Airwash | Airscape HEPA Tower Air Purifier | Blogs: Wildfires & Zehnder System Performance & Wildfire & Clearing the Air

2.    Utilizing Ventilation to Make Indoor Spaces Safer from Airborne Viruses

At this point, the scientific consensus is that the major transmission vehicle for COVID-19 is airborne.  As schools, restaurants and other public serving entities open, they are tasked with providing ventilation that will protect both their customers (or students) and their employees. It’s a problem many organizations haven’t had to address before now: Identifying the appropriate and useful ventilation rates to mitigate airborne viruses in public spaces like schools and restaurants. Mitigating airborne viruses requires increasing the ventilation rates up to six air changes an hour. However, changing the fresh air ventilation rates also impacts occupant comfort due to relative humidity changes as a result of the higher flow rates,  which significantly impacts the efficiency and therefore the energy model’s gains or losses of the building which affects equipment sizing.  At Small Planet Supply we’re working with existing schools and restaurants to help customers find solutions to their ventilation problems.

Learn more: Zehnder Covid-19 booklet

3.   Increased Consideration of Embodied Carbon in Building Design

Not that long ago, the sole focus in constructing energy-efficient buildings was how much energy the home or building would use once constructed (or operational carbon).  The last few years have seen the increased consideration of the impact of embodied carbon in building planning.  According to Carbon Leadership Forum, “building sector emissions are responsible for nearly 40% of energy-related global greenhouse gas emissions, with at least 11% resulting from the production of building materials.”[1]  This 11% is called embodied carbon.  In its simplest form, embodied carbon is the carbon footprint of a building or infrastructure project before it becomes operational. It also refers to the CO₂ produced maintaining the building and eventually demolishing it, transporting the waste, and recycling it.

Some strategies to decrease embodied carbon include: choosing lower carbon building materials (wood instead of steel), carbon sequestering materials (like wood, or Thermacork), reusing materials, using fewer finish materials and finding ways to minimize waste.

At Small Planet Supply we’re seeing an increasing number of customers ask questions about the composition of products they are ordering, as well as an increase in the number of customers who are ordering ThermaCork.  ThermaCork is a 100% natural, renewable, recyclable, and biodegradable product made from the outer bark of oak trees.  Since it stores more carbon that is used in making the finished product, Thermacork is considered carbon negative for embodied carbon calculations.  For building, ThermaCork can be used as both as an insulation and an exterior façade. 

Learn more: SPS website | ThermaCork website

4.   Transition from fossil fuels for space and water heating increases need for high- efficiency mechanical systems

Currently an increasing number of cities and towns are banning fossil fuels, which means switching out from natural gas and propane to electricity for cooking, heating and hot water.  An estimate from the US Energy Information Administration is that 62% of the average home’s energy use is for space and hot water heating.[2]  Heat pumps and heat pump water heaters offer efficient heating delivery using less energy, translating to energy bill savings for consumers; it does this while also helping utility districts manage customer energy load without needing to excessively increase electrical capacity. 

At Small Planet Supply we’ve been pleasantly surprised at the consumer response to the SANCO2 heat pump water heater since we started selling it in 2016.  SANCO2 not only has an impressive Coefficient of Performance of up to 5.0, but it also uses CO2 as a refrigerant which has a GWP of 1.  Compare this to other heat pump water heaters using refrigerant 410A, which has a GWP of 2088, and you can see why people feel good about having these units in their home or project.  

Our newly produced WaterDrop DHW Heating Plant utilizes SANCO2 technology and is targeted for multi-family or commercial use.  The WaterDrop system gangs together multiple heat pumps and water tanks with a swing tank.  The systems are designed by Small Planet Supply and either assembled on-site according to design specifications or are assembled onto a skid.  Once the skids are fully assembled, they are transported to the construction site and plugged in at the location for which they were designed.

Learn more: SANCO2 | WaterDrop

5.   The addition of future climate considerations into building design

Small Planet Supply CEO, Albert Rooks has been increasingly seeing project design teams coming in with an eye to the future. “The teams that I’m working with aren’t just looking at how the mechanical systems will handle the heating and cooling loads for today, they are building for the future.  In the past, most jobs only focused on the current climate model, which was all that was required.  Now I see a lot of firms coming in having developed future climate models with a 30-to-50-year outlook so they understand whether cooling loads can still be met in that time frame.  From where I’m standing, energy modelers and mechanical engineers are integral to making the decisions to design for the future climate. “

As the world wakes up from its COVID-19 slumber, we’ve been surprised about the changes we’re seeing as the world goes back to work.  But, at Small Planet Supply, one thing’s still the same: Our commitment to partner with our customers in meeting their high-performance building needs.

[1] https://carbonleadershipforum.org/what-is-a-buy-clean-policy

[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/homes.php