"Building Envelope Commissioning" will discuss the process of envelope commissioning and how the NIBS structure can be implemented. ASHRAE states, "The Commissioning Process is a quality-focused process for achieving, verifying, and documenting that the performance of facilities, systems, and assemblies meets defined objectives and criteria."

Drawing on project experience from across North America, the presentation will examine the need for commissioning the passive building envelope systems, the process, the challenges and the impact on energy performance.

1 LU HSW/SD

CLSB - Collaborative Life Science Building is an extremely complicated, hyper-fast construction schedule project with several large clients and an amazing set of functions housed within the building. The building enclosure was developed with key lessons that will apply to most other building types. The complexity of the schedule, team, functions, and enclosure performance program all combined to make an interesting project. This course is intended to share the lessons that have been learned and are continuing to evolve through construction.

1 LU HSW/SD

Tour Description:

CLSB is an acronym for the OSU OHSU Collaborative Life Sciences Building and Skourtes Tower project on the South Waterfront in Portland, just south of the I-5 bridge. Integrating several clients including OHSU, PSU, and others, this hyper-fast scheduled project with incredible complexities has demanded an evolution of the processes involved.

A “passive” approach to building design uses architectural and building enclosure elements aligned with local, micro-climate considerations to meet thermal comfort requirements. This can significantly reduce the need for “active” mechanical and electrical equipment that would typically provide heating, cooling, ventilation and lighting. Ideally, a truly passive building would eliminate the need for active equipment all together.

This talk revisits some issues discussed during two presentations from 2007 that focused sealant adhesion and compatibility with self adhered membranes. This talk will focus on common issues with material compatibility and the effect on building enclosure performance as well as air barrier material transitions.

Dave Young, PE RDH

Different approaches to constructing air barriers have varying implications for cost, constructability, complexity, and effectiveness. This presentation will describe the air barrier approach on three different projects, evaluating the impact on the cost and constructability of each approach as well as a description of the testing methods and resulting measurement of the air tightness of the buildings involved. Additional discussion regarding the areas of air leakage and lessons learned when employing various different approaches will inform the effectiveness of each approach.

The 2013 SeaBEC Symposium ”Zen and the Art of Building Enclosure Design” will bring together leading presenters focusing on building enclosure and whole building solutions. This will be an international event held here in the Northwest and presented in conjunction with the Portland Building Enclosure Council and British Columbia Building Envelope Council.

We believe this testing methodology is an innovative new approach of simulating the effect of wind-driven rain on the building enclosure to investigate water intrusion. The method builds on existing standards and utilizes readily available equipment to provide a cost effective, versatile, time-saving, and realistic means of replicating weather events to recreate leaks. In conducting hundreds of leak investigation tests, this technique has proven to recreate leaks quickly and without overloading the building’s water management systems.

NFPA 285 is the Standard Fire Test Method for Evaluation of Fire Propagation Characteristics of Exterior Non-Load-Bearing Wall Assemblies Containing Combustible Components. NFPA 285 assembly tests are required by the International Building Code (IBC) when exterior non-combustible walls contain combustible components. The scope of materials classified by the IBC requiring NFPA 285 testing is increasing. Combined with more stringent energy code requirements, the use of combustible materials is also growing in exterior walls.

This presentation will explain how this sealant adhesion and compatibility study was conceived and executed and will also provide conclusions about the observed reactions between many different substrates and sealants. This study was executed to determine the varying levels of adhesion between commonly specified sealants and substrates (including weather resistive barriers, self adhered membranes, liquid applied membranes and cladding components including brick, fiber cement cladding and various window materials.