New Ideas for Energy-Efficient Modular Affordable Housing w/ GreenStaxx [podcast transcript]

John McMullen 

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 Greenstaxx. Gwen is here to talk about the development of her company's unique approach to multifamily housing.

Gwen, welcome.

Gwen Noyes

Hi, John. How are you?

John McMullen 

I'm great. How are you today?

Gwen Noyes

I’m fine. Thank you.

John McMullen 

So, tell me about yourself, Gwen. What's your background and how did you come to be one of the leaders at GreenStaxx?

Gwen Noyes

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.

John McMullen 

Tell me about GreenStaxx itself. You guys have your own system for designing modular projects. Is that right?

Gwen Noyes

Yes, we have my husband, Arthur, who has actually a patent on a whole process for building multifamily housing with modules. 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 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, the whole process, is something that is high quality design. That's the main thing my husband, I can say for one, one awards for his capacity as a designer. And this system is very good for the multifamily building industry. If we can get multi, you know, modular building going in the way it should be in this country.

John McMullen 

I certainly hope we can.

Speaking of the industry, I do want to get back to the system that you developed and how that works. But just to give a little background, can you tell me about the multifamily building market in New England? You guys are based in Massachusetts. What trends have you been seeing in New England and in Massachusetts,

Gwen Noyes

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 it's 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 isn't, 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, is really a poster child for the housing problem in this country, very expensive, very difficult to permit, and too long a process.

John McMullen 

So, tell me about the GreenStaxx solution.

Gwen Noyes

Okay, so the prototype that I'm working on, particularly this is, this is part of, part of the GreenStaxx company, but it's really a design that is unique. It's, 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 be like without a whole lot of permitting folder all filling in some of these, these gaps would be a way of proving the value of modular building, because it's quick to put in the there's very little. There's very little nuisance in the neighborhood, from a from the standpoint of security, when you have the boxes come in and they're sealed up and so on, there's, there's much less risk of nuisance or fire, or any of those things and the whole process is 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've 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. 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 were we're finishing now, and he said, This is condo quality. Well, we're doing it as rentals, and it's it. The one we're doing in Lowell is rental, but he wants to do it is condos and on the cape. And this is something that with very minimum folder all we can do. We can do more that somebody is asking us to check it out for a site in Worcester. So, you know, this is one way that you can minimize the amount of zoning and designing, and the whole thing can be, can be expedited.

John McMullen 

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?

Gwen Noyes

The triple decker is a pretty standard New England form, with a unit on each floor. And the one that we have designed has a two bedroom, two bathroom unit on the ground floor that lends itself to being ADA accessible. And then, the second and third floors are three bedrooms and two bathrooms. It could have a balcony. We, 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 a have the ground floor is, Has somebody who is uses it in a wheelchair so it, there are many, many ways of working with it and, and, as I said, you can double it together and have a marriage wall that you know, 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, nice exposure.

John McMullen 

I love a window. Who doesn't love a window? [Laughter]

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?

Gwen Noyes

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 is we've done retrofitting to make it be net zero, but you can't 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 the 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 an 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. We need to be thinking about how we can make buildings more energy efficient. And if I can rant on a little bit the work that we're doing in the building that we're currently finishing in Lowell, we could not afford to do all the all the extra work and consultants and so on that we used in Cambridge for the building that we passed with, you know, flying colors in 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, and the required number, which is now being revised, but it was 52 I believe. And that'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 3536 just a bit above the HERS ratings required for passive house. And this was, this was without doing all that certification work.

So, we're achieving really good HERS numbers anyway, with this modular building that we're doing that we've just finishing in Lowell.

John McMullen 

So tell me about 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?

Gwen Noyes

Well, yes, and our architects could be very, very specific about this, but it is largely insulation, insulation below the 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 you know, above the, you know, roof, and below where the solar panels are going to be. That's, that's one thing. And then what we used triple-glazed windows in in Cambridge, and only double-glazed windows in in Lowell. My understanding is that the double-glazed windows are beginning to be such a quality that 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 that, as I was mentioning, the air exchanges, how many air exchanges, and what kind of heat exchange can happen with the when, with the exhausting air so that's, there's, there's just a lot to it. And as I think the national inclination, or what people in the who are trying to bring down our CO two emissions, you know, as a whole, realize that buildings are, I think 40% of the of the CO two emissions, generally speaking. And if we can, if we can do more passive house where basically cooking and breathing is all you need to keep the place warm in the winter, that's that would be a huge change, a huge improvement in our in the use of energy in this country.

John McMullen 

That’d be rather revolutionary. I would think, right, 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 in the end point? Can you talk about that the manufacturing process a little bit?

Gwen Noyes

So, we've worked with two factories in the two buildings that we've built. One of them was in Maine and the and the other one was in Canada. Both of them are very able to provide the quality. Of construction that that, that you need to do what we're what we're talking about. As you can imagine in Canada, the energy requirements are, are very real for them. So, and the factory we work with, I guess I don't know whether we want to mention names or not, but it's a very good factory, very qualified and we were very happy with the product that they, that they provided. And the quality of the product that we did, we got in, in in Maine, was also very high. And so, one of the things that you find is a is a limitation is are very 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 we're working, it looks like we're working with the US company. 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 in the 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, and the capacity to do large buildings in Europe is unparalleled in this country. Anyway, we're at the moment, we're feeling like, again, the triple decker mod modular form is attractive to modular companies because they can get 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 one, get it straight, then do the next one without a whole lot of shop drawings and so on. That's very attractive to them. So, we think that this is a good place to be.

John McMullen 

Housing is such a huge issue right now. I know in New England, you 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?

Gwen Noyes

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. 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 pass a standard. This is amazing, and maybe only possible in a city that has the kind of industrial or commercial base cut tax base that we have in Cambridge, but it's, 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 energy efficient with HERS ratings, etc.

John McMullen 

I want to take us back to the beginning of this conversation just a little bit and go back to the project that you've built. How did you get involved? Am I? Am I correct in saying that a developer got in touch with you, then you got in touch with the factory? Was that the progression of things, or how did that work?

Gwen Noyes

Well. It happens that 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 I showed him what we've done, and he was impressed, and he said, he's he, 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 have partnered, we, he, he and I partnered to do the Lowell project and do it as a double triple decker, and we would like to do more work, and we're getting inquiries 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 make it happen.

John McMullen 

Are you finding that many of the people you talk to understand the modular process? Are you having to do some education there?

Gwen Noyes

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, at post war there were ticky, 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 housing. And you know, the notion of cheaper, better, faster, seems like it's a mirage to many people, but it's not, if you're if you're knowing, if you're dealing with, with, with the realities of modular building.

John McMullen 

Well, it seems like green stacks is doing all the right things. It's building Exactly. You know what Massachusetts is looking for, what New England's looking for. So, kudos to you guys. What's next for GreenStaxx. What do you have any projects on the horizon?

Gwen Noyes

Well, I alluded to the fact that there's some a developer in Massachusetts who has asked Nate to work on three, 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 factors 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 very a 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.

John McMullen 

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 GreenStaxx soon.

Gwen Noyes

Thank you so much. I enjoyed talking with you, and best of luck for your work. It's important.

John McMullen 

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.