Blog

At Steven Winter Associates, Inc. (SWA), we work with clients who are approaching net zero from different angles: driven by institutional goals, climate concerns, marketing campaigns, and connecting with municipal emissions targets.

Carbon Footprint Analysis (a sub-set of LCA) takes into account all the carbon emissions (greenhouse gases put in the atmosphere), associated with a building or material from cradle to grave, i.e., to the point of recycling or disposal, and includes…

Across North America, more States, Provinces, and Municipalities are integrating PH into their building standards. One of the more recent adopters is the City of Toronto.

We took some common New Year resolutions and put our SWA spin on them. This year, make resolutions to improve the built environment in 2020!

As members of the HERS Rating community, we are very excited about the recent study conducted by Freddie Mac determining that homes rated under RESNET’s Home Energy Rating System (HERS) between 2013 and 2017 sold for an average of 2.7% more than comparable unrated homes.

CYMI: The code change proposals for the 2021 IECC are open for voting by Governmental Member Voting Representatives (GMVR) from Monday, November 18th through Friday, December 6th, and your vote is instrumental in making buildings consume less energy!

A high-level summary of the code development process with respect to the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), aka the “model” energy code.

The residential energy efficiency industry has been using blower door testing since the mid 1980’s to measure the air tightness of homes. Since then, we’ve evolved from testing single family homes, to testing entire apartment buildings.

Many of us in the building industry believe that, combined with a good continuous air seal, the highest insulation value makes the greenest enclosure, helping to reduce a structure’s carbon footprint and combat climate change. It may come as a…

Before you can really dig deep into the advanced design concepts of embodied carbon analysis and whole building energy modeling, you must first perform some bare minimum prep work.

The construction industry has been increasingly focused on meeting ever-tightening codes and achieving higher ratings in sustainability certification programs (e.g., LEED, Passive House, etc.). These standards do a good job of raising the bar, but there is a new bar…

During the winter, a home’s space heating system probably needs to work harder to make up for the HPWH. In the summer, the HPWH provides a bit of extra cooling and dehumidification. We put together some guidelines a few years…