Inside Modular: The Podcast of Commercial Modular Construction
Inside Modular is the official podcast of the Modular Building Institute, the Voice of Commercial Modular Construction. This series will highlight industry news and trends, include conversations with industry thought-leaders, and discuss the advantages of modular building construction.
Inside Modular: The Podcast of Commercial Modular Construction
New Ideas for Energy-Efficient Modular Affordable Housing w/ GreenStaxx
What if affordable multifamily housing could be built more efficiently and with less neighborhood disruption? Gwen Noyes, vice president and COO of GreenStaxx, draws on her wealth of experience in architecture and urban development—and her deep New England roots—as she discusses GreenStaxx's energy-efficient modular housing models. You'll hear firsthand about successful prototypes, like GreenStaxx's triple-deckers in Cambridge and Lowell, that promise to streamline construction and reduce costs.
Gwen also discusses the initial skepticism surrounding modular methods and how increasing acceptance is paving the way for new projects in Massachusetts and Vermont. Finally, Gwen shares GreenStaxx's latest endeavors and their innovative approaches to sustainable and efficient building practices, providing a glimpse into the future of commercial modular construction in New England.
Hello and welcome to Inside Modular, the podcast of commercial modular construction brought to you by the Modular Building Institute. Welcome everyone. My name is John McMullen. I'm the marketing director here at MBI. Today I'm joined by Gwen Noyes, vice president and COO at GreenStacks. Gwen is here to talk about the development of her company's unique approach to multifamily housing. Gwen welcome.
Speaker 2:Hi John, how are you? I'm great.
Speaker 1:How are you today? Just fine, thank you. So tell me about yourself, gwen. What's your background and how did you come to be one of the leaders at GreenStacks?
Speaker 2:My background. I have a degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and I've been working in housing since in the 70s and my partner Arthur and I have been both designers and developers of housing in that time, with a real priority in doing urban transportation-oriented work and making it as energy efficient as possible.
Speaker 1:Tell me about GreenStacks itself. You guys have your own system for designing modular projects. Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yes, we have. My husband, arthur, has actually a patent on a whole process for building multifamily housing with modules, or it's a modular design, so it can be done in just as a conventional construction, also depending upon the location and what's available in the way of, you know, capacity in of factories. But it's a system that can revolutionize the whole process of designing and building multifamily housing and it's beginning to take off. It's taken a while, but the whole process is something that is high quality design. That's the main thing. My husband, I can say for one, awards for his capacity as a designer and this system is very good for the multifamily building industry If we can get modular building going in the way it should be in this country.
Speaker 1:I certainly hope we can. I certainly hope we can. Speaking of the industry, I do want to get back the, the system that you developed and how that works. Um, but just to give a little background, can you tell me about the, the multi-family building market in new england? You guys are based in in massachusetts, is that right? Right? So well what trends have you been seeing in new england and in massachusetts?
Speaker 2:I think there's a crying need for more. We live in Massachusetts, we work in mostly in Massachusetts. However, we're also having multiple conversations with Vermont and the housing industry in Massachusetts is very expensive to build. Housing is expensive, the need for it is crying and the process for getting approvals is also arduous, and I think this is one of the issues that comes up again and again. We have a project that has been in the permitting process and appeals for years. That is. You know it's just a shame. So you know it's like we can't get through the many processes that make it much more expensive. So New England is really a poster child for the housing problem in this country Very expensive, very difficult to permit and too long a process.
Speaker 1:So tell me about the GreenStacks solution.
Speaker 2:Okay, so the prototype that I'm working on particularly this is part of the GreenStacks company, but it's really a design that is unique. It's a triple-decker that a few years ago I felt like if we want to get over the hump of permitting projects and look at what is needed in most cities, a lot of cities in New England have urban areas downtown where where there's been some demolition of old, older buildings, leaving pockets, leaving holes in the urban fabric, and triple deckers have been a traditional building form in in this part of the world and we, it just seemed to me like, without a whole lot of permitting falderal, filling in some of these gaps would be a way of proving the value of modular building because it's quick to put in, there's very little nuisance in the neighborhood a total nuisance in the neighborhood from the standpoint of security. When you have the boxes come in and they're sealed up and so on, there's much less risk of nuisance or fire or any of those things and the whole process just makes so much sense. So we did a prototype in Cambridge that the owner is thrilled with. It was high quality, she's getting great rents, it came together quickly after it was delivered and we're just finishing one now in Lowell with a double triple decker, and so what we've found is that we can make this single triple-decker into a prototype that can be multiplied as a double triple-decker or even a row house kind of configuration.
Speaker 2:The plans work for that. So the need to redesign a whole lot is totally minimized, and in fact we're now negotiating with a fellow who wants to do three of them on the Cape and the quality is so good. He came and looked at what we're finishing now and he said this is condo quality. Well, we're doing it as rentals, and the one we're doing in Lowell is rental, but he wants to do it as condos on the Cape and this is something that with very minimum falderal, we can do more. Somebody is asking us to check it out for a site in Worcester.
Speaker 1:So this is one way that you can minimize the amount of zoning and designing and the whole thing can be can be expedited this is going to be a maybe a silly question, but just so I'm clear when you say triple decker, you mean like a freestanding building with three floors. Is each floor its own living unit or is it one big unit?
Speaker 2:the triple decker is is a pretty standard new england form, uh, with a unit on each floor, and the one that we have designed is it has a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit on the ground floor that lends itself to being ADA accessible, and then the second and third floor are three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It could have a balcony. We so far haven't done that, although it's entirely possible to add a balcony. The one we did in Cambridge was Passive House certified and has solar panels on the roof and it's ADA accessible. We did have the ground floor has somebody who uses it in a wheelchair, so there are many, many ways of working with it and, as I said, you can double it together and have a marriage wall. That increases the energy efficiency of it, but we have, because of the way we've arranged the windows. Every room has a window and you know, nice exposure.
Speaker 1:I love a window. Who doesn't love a window? I wanted to ask you about Passive House, since you brought it up. Talk to me more about Passive Houses in general. What's required to get that certification? I know the solar panels certainly must help, but how do they? How does how? Does a regular house become a passive house and what's different about them?
Speaker 2:Well, a passive house is a way of describing an extremely energy efficient home, and it's very difficult to retrofit a passive house. In fact, where I'm sitting, we've done retrofitting to make it be net zero. But an old house can't be made very easily into a passive house. Passive house means that the energy that is used to heat it or cool it is basically zero I mean very close to zero and that is achieved through the ways in which the passive part of it is where the sun and wind and cold and so on are managed by the construction with large amounts of insulation and making sure that the building is tight and that the windows are high quality and all that. And then you have to have a HVAC system which brings in the right amount of air and make sure that, as air is coming in, if it's winter, that it's heated up by the heat that's already being exhausted. So there's a heat exchanger that saves the energy that you have from heating so that it can be heating the fresh air that's coming in. So all these things are measured and accounted for. Before you build, you have to go through theoretical tests that certified consultants can do for you to tell you whether you have too many windows or whether you need more heat exchanger energy, that kind of thing. So it's quite a process. You know. This is what we need to do as a country.
Speaker 2:We need to be thinking about how we can make buildings more energy efficient and, um, if I can rant on a little bit, the um, the work that we're doing in the building that we're currently finishing in Lowell.
Speaker 2:We could not afford to do all the extra work and consultants and so on that we used in Cambridge for the building that we passed with flying colors as a Passive House certified building in Cambridge, but in Lowell the kinds of rents we could get were not the same and we couldn't justify it. But just the other day we got back our tests for the HERS rating and HERS is Home Energy Efficiency Rating rating and the required number, which is now being revised, but it was 52, I believe, and it's being revised down to 40, maybe 45. And the HERS rating for passive house is 32. The HERS ratings for the apartments in the building that I'm just now finishing were 35,. Just now finishing we're 35, 36, just a bit above the HERS ratings required for passive house. And this was without doing all that certification work. So we are achieving really good HERS numbers anyway with this modular building that we're doing, that we've just finishing in in Lowell.
Speaker 1:So tell me about the, the, the building process itself. What are you doing differently, both for your original prototype in Lowell and for the certified passive house in Cambridge? Are there specific building methods or processes that you use to become, that help you become and meet those passive house requirements?
Speaker 2:Well, yes, and our architects could be very, very specific about this, but it is largely insulation insulation below the basement, basement floor, insulation outside the foundation walls, insulation, you know, in the walls and outside the you know outside the box, and insulation in the roof. So insulation between units, insulation, um, you know above the, you know roof and below, where the solar panels are going to be. That's one thing. And then we used triple glazed windows in Cambridge and only double glazed windows in Lowell.
Speaker 2:My understanding is that the double glazed windows are beginning to be such a quality that they can also pass the requirements for passive house, but I haven't tried that yet. So, and then the HVAC system has to be measured, also for a passive house, as I was mentioning the air exchanges, how many air exchanges and what kind of heat exchange can happen with the exhausting air. So there's just a lot to it. And as I think the national inclination or what people who are trying to bring down our CO2 emissions as a whole realize, that buildings are, I think, 40% of the CO2 emissions generally speaking, and if we can do more passive houseware basically cooking and breathing is all you need to keep the place warm in the winter that would be a huge change, a huge improvement in the use of energy in this country.
Speaker 1:That would be rather revolutionary, I would think.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:How about the manufacturing process itself? Where are your buildings manufactured? How do you get them to site? Is it a long distance between the factory and the endpoint? Can you talk about that, the manufacturing process, a little bit.
Speaker 2:So we've worked with two factories in the two buildings that we built. One of them was in Maine and the other one was in Canada. Both of them are very able to provide the quality of construction that you need to do what we're talking about, as you can imagine, in Canada. The energy requirements are very real for them, and the factory we worked with I guess I don't know whether we wanna mention names or not, but it's a very good factory, very qualified, and we were very happy with the product that they provided. And the quality of the product that we did we got in Maine was also very high, and so one of the things that you find is a limitation is are they available when you want the building? How long ahead do you need to get in line to get the product that you want? So that becomes an issue, and that's something that we have to bear in mind. Now we're going to be.
Speaker 2:We're working it looks like we're working with the look in the US company.
Speaker 2:I'm optimistic that we're going to be able to do that, partly because they have more availability on their line than the Canadian one and partly because some of the funding that's available now and the groups that are trying to consider module building have funding requirements to be built in the US and with all the equipment bought in the US too. So this is another reality that we need to work with and I should say there is historically nothing like the European priority. In Europe, the priority to build modularly has been in place for a number of years. To build modularly has been in place for a number of years and the capacity to do large buildings in Europe is unparalleled in this country. Anyway, at the moment we're feeling like again, the triple-decker modular form is attractive to modular companies because they can build it pretty quickly, they can fit it in between bigger projects and especially if they can do it in multiples if they can do do one, get it straight and do the next one, without a whole lot of shop drawings and so on that's very attractive to them.
Speaker 1:So we think that this is a good place to be housing is such a huge issue right now I know in New England, you've described it in Massachusetts and around the country around the world. States and big cities in the US are grappling with how to address it. Do you think that we can incorporate more passive building strategies into affordable homes?
Speaker 2:Yes, Well funny, you should ask me that because I'm from Cambridge and I just recently took myself off the Affordable Housing Trust in Cambridge, massachusetts, where I was happily working for I don't know up to 30 years.
Speaker 2:I can't even remember from the beginning of it, from the beginning of the Affordable Housing Trust, and I'm very proud of Cambridge for the fact that it has made a priority of the new. I think every new building for affordable housing in Cambridge is being built to a passive standard standard. This is amazing and maybe only possible in a city that has the kind of industrial or commercial base, tax base that we have in Cambridge. But it's, you know, a long-term investment for any community to say, okay, we're building, we're building affordable housing, and then doing it the right way to begin with, and if they can make that choice, it will pay off in the long run. And I can't. You know every town has its own budgetary constraints, but I think there also are beginning to be federal incentives for that kind of consideration too. It's just the right way to go. Long-term, the cost of building a very high quality building from modular construction can beat conventional construction from an energy standpoint and being, if not passive house, at least very, very energy efficient with hers ratings, et cetera.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take us back to the beginning of this conversation just a little bit. Go back to the project that you've built. How did you get involved? Am I correct in saying that a developer got in touch with you, then you got in touch with a factory? Was that the progression of things or how? How did that work?
Speaker 2:well, it happens that we we built modularly a building in newton mass. That has been very successful and one time, at one point, a young developer asked to take a tour of it and, uh, I showed him what we've done and he was impressed and he and I then were in touch and I decided that building a triple-decker was something I'd like to do myself as a developer. And I got in touch with him. He was working in Lowell and he said I have a site that would be appropriate for the double triple decker. And so we, we have partnered we he, he and I partnered to do the, the Lowell project, and do it as a, as a double triple decker. And we would like to do more work and we're getting inquiries from from other places. We would like to do it either as consultants or possibly as developers, but we'd like to make it be something that people come to us and say show us how to do this and and make it happen are you finding that many of the people you talk to understand the modular process?
Speaker 1:are you having to do some education there?
Speaker 2:yes, I think people are astounded that, a it's higher quality than conventional construction, b that it can be done in many places and less expensively. People just you know, I think, I think the construction industry has been so hampered I guess I'll use that word by convention and by. You know hearing, probably, some of the bad stories, or you know that years and years ago, ticky, tacky houses or something like that, you know. But we, anybody who's who's watched what's been going on in europe, can understand that we're really behind the eight ball here in terms of doing what we need to do for affordable, high quality um housing. And you know the, the, the notion of cheaper, better, faster seems like it's a mirage to many people. But it's not. If you, if you're, if you're knowing, if you're dealing with the with, with the realities of, of modular building well, it seems like green stacks is doing all the right things.
Speaker 1:It's building exactly. You know what massachusetts is looking for, what new england is looking for, so kudos to you guys. What's next for green stacks? What New England is looking for? So kudos to you guys. What's next for GreenStacks? Do you have any?
Speaker 2:projects on the horizon. Well, I alluded to the fact that there's some a developer in Massachusetts, who has asked me to work on three more versions of what we've done in Lowell. So we're starting to negotiate three more versions of what we've done in Lowell. So we're starting to negotiate. We're in early negotiations with one of the factories I mentioned. To think about that. We are talking with a group of people in Vermont who have actually a very large project. This is again in the initial conversations, but they have a very large piece of property that would be a very wonderful illustration of what can be done and we're having ongoing conversations about that. We're also talking with people in Vermont about affordable housing.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you're doing all the right things, Gwen. I really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. I really look forward to hearing more and seeing more from GreenStacks soon.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I enjoyed talking with you and best of luck for your work.
Speaker 1:It's important so much I enjoyed talking with you and best of luck for your work. It's important. Thank you very much. My name is John McMullen and this has been another episode of Inside Modular, the podcast of Commercial Modular Construction. Until next time.