(guitar music) - We at Mitsubishi Electric believe in the issue of climate change and we manufacture products to reduce emissions from buildings as key to solving this problem.

That's why we are proud to be a visionary sponsor of "Heart of a Building".

Learn more about our commitment to eliminating dependence on fossil fuels here.

(guitar music) - Hi, I'm Paul Kriescher.

Welcome to "Heart of a Building".

Did you know that buildings account for about 40% of all energy use in the United States?

We're hoping to make a dent in that percentage.

This show dives into building designs that are cutting edge, really pushing the envelope of energy efficiency, and sustainable living.

Along the way we'll also explore the motivation from the people involved in these great projects.

In short, the why.

Today we're in Weld County, Colorado, in the town of Gilcrest, population of somewhere around 1,000 people.

Agriculture, oil and gas are the main industries here.

With Greeley and the University of Northern Colorado, a short drive away.

Gilcrest also happens to be the home of one of the most energy efficient libraries in the country.

Let's go check it out.

The Nantes Library is a result of about five years of collaboration between the library board, the architect, consultants, and builder.

And before we jump into all the cool features that make this a near-passive house performing building, let's find out why this communit came together to build it.

Today we're talking with many of the people instrumental in making this project a reality.

(guitar music) Yo u probably haven't wondered how many hairdryers it would take to heat a high-performance building.

Well, in the case of this one, we've figured it out.

Find out at the end of our program.

(guitar music) Now I get to be inside, with the former executive director here at Nantes Library and the current executive director at the Nantes Library.

I wanna start by asking, why?

Why was this building built?

How did it come together to really have this be a space?

And you guys have quite an intriguing story about how this came together.

So I'd love to hear that.

- The town of Gilcrest is, in our legally defined service area, for the, actually the Platteville Library.

Which means the, the residents of Gilcrest have been paying the mill levy, that is, - The tax.

- The tax, correct.

But we felt like we needed to do more.

For the residents to get a return on their investment.

The town also has the high school, as well as the grade school.

And we figured this was the perfect spot to put a building up.

- Yeah, there's a cool story behind the name of this building.

- So Gilcrest used to be called Nantes, although I'm not sure how they pronounced it.

But it was named for the Station Master for Union Pacific here in the area.

It was Nantes for a long time, and then it kind of died.

And a man named Gilcrest moved here and he said, "I'm gonna make this town happen again."

So he sort of rebuilt it, and named it after his father, also with the last name Gilcrest.

So it's been Gilcrest ever since.

- I mean, the two of you, especially you Diane, were very important in the shaping of this vision.

You know, Naomi you've recently become the executive director here, but who else were some of the people that were important in, in the vision behind this building?

- We have a very progressive library board.

- Okay.

- And we do have a couple of members on our board who are really into sustainability.

- Okay.

- And that's really how this whole thing got started.

- I have the pleasure of sitting down with three key people that made The Nantes Library Project happen.

This project by stereotype, to do a near-passive house project, is oftentimes done in Boulder, in Aspen, in Telluride, why and how did it happen here in Gilcrest?

- We started 10 years ago on our main library, upgrading efficiency.

So we've been doing this for awhile.

We're 10 years into that now.

I mean, it's really nothing new out here.

And really if you look at all your pictures of the old west, the landscapes and stuff, you see windmills out there.

- Right.

- Renewable energy, on ranches and farms.

- If the basis for going sustainable is to reduce or eliminate your dependence on either fossil fuels or to get away from the fluctuating energy bills every month, then absolutely.

I mean, especially you as a board, you've gotta budget a year in advance, and you've got a finite amount of funds to work with.

And so now all of a sudden you can plan a little better.

You have those tools.

- Passive house belongs in any building in any place that you can get that energy model, and the team and the vernacular to get along, to make it happen.

So why not Gilcrest, right?

- We live off of a tax dollars.

And we try to be efficient with the tax dollars, make them work.

I come from an area that lived off of oil, and I've seen it crash.

And there goes your tax base.

So when you build stuff like this, you have to build it for the long term.

Build it so that you're not paying a lot in utilities over the longterm.

Were at $120 to $130 bucks average a month, for electric, and gas.

- Yeah.

And I think were 4600 square feet.

- That sounds right.

- Right.

- Were a little less.

- Plus we're trying to be an example.

We're showing that it can be done and it's not that expensive.

I mean, this building wasn't that much.

We saw another library being built immediately after this for five times the amount.

And they didn't do these things.

- So now I get to spend time with Dr. Matthew Hortt, Executive Director of the High Plains Library District.

Matthew, thank you so much for joining today.

One of the cool things that you've shared with me is that, your library district has 14 other libraries, it covers a large geographic area across the Northeast.

What's been some of the reaction from other parts of the library district towards this building, towards this project?

- Yeah, it's really interesting with our district, just as you mentioned.

It's really large.

We've got about 3000 square miles.

You know, a mix of rural, urban and suburban.

And because of that, there's also some very interesting governance, but I think the one thing that we can all agree upon, is just how amazing this facility is.

And how it is, brings in all of the green technology and, the green engineering that went into it.

This building's amazing.

And I think it's one of the things that we see a lot in terms of, when we start conversations with other communities in the district, about library services.

Everyone points to this.

Oh, well like that Nantes has library?

Could we get something like that?

And I think that's just a testament to the amazing work that the Platteville Public Library Board, and also the staff did to make this happen.

(guitar music) - Everyone at the Platteville Public Library had an amazing collaborative spirit.

And I think that consensus shows off in that it's a place that's appealing for everybody.

We also happen to use a lot of local materials, such as natively selected grass, and Beetle Kill Pine that comes from the Rockies.

- Yeah.

- And I believe that that integration of local materials shows that a green building like this can be inoffensive, attractive and blend right in with the community.

- The town of Gilcrest itself is quite old.

And so this is a modern building.

But not in the sense that it's off putting.

- Yeah, it fits.

- It does, it does.

And that's what we went for.

That's why we've got some of the design work that we have in here.

With the kind of the industrial farm, farm look to it.

You do need the, the architect to design a building like this and you need the construction company to bring it into being.

We do all our own millwork and all our own casework, that's the finished product at the end of the job.

That's what everybody sees.

So we build that in house.

So when you walk through this library, you're gonna see woodwork on the ceiling, on the columns, at the reception desk.

All of that is done by us.

I really enjoy our ceiling.

That is made from the Beetle Kill Wood.

- Yeah.

- I just think it's just really cool that we could find a use for that.

And I think it makes our building very unique.

- It's really cool to just be able to say, we're one of the greenest libraries in the whole country and that's great.

You wouldn't really expect it from a little town like this, but it's really nice.

- I think we should be going way above code, or I think code should be changed but, that's hard to do.

- You've presented an example.

- I mean by- - That's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to lead by example.

- And I think it's important to note that a lot of the materials that you see, and a lot of the materials that you don't see are really off the shelf materials.

There's nothing extreme or wacky about what we've done.

It's all readily available stuff.

Just put together in a slightly different way.

- Right.

- With a little more care.

- Right.

A holistic or building as a system thought process behind it.

- Yeah, building as a body.

I mean, this is a living thing that we're in and it it's going to continue to use power and move when we're not in it, and the less, and that the more logical that it does that will bio mimic how our bodies work, we sweat, we breathe, we have a heating and cooling system and our breathing device isn't paired with our heating and cooling device.

Like you see many buildings.

So we dissected this in pieces, and then put them all back together in a different way with on the shelf talent and on the shelf materials.

(light hearted guitar music) - So now I get to spend time with Kelly and Cody, getting into some of the nerdy details about this building.

Which is gonna be fun.

So for starters, as we look at things like the envelope of the building, Kelly, I'll look to you.

The installation details, to make a passive house compliant or near passive house, always have to be well above code.

So what'd you do here?

What'd you do in the foundation for starters, and we'll work our way up.

- So we'll start with the floor slab.

We actually added several inches of rigid foam, under the slab.

In fact, we were required to have a minimum of R-10 by code, we actually have R-38, so that's almost four times as much.

The walls are constructed, it's basically, it's a double wall construction.

So we have your typical two by six wood framing at 16 inches on center, which is what you might have in your house, for example.

And we've installed cavity insulation, which, again, is what you might have on your house.

Then we added a layer of, it's called nail base installation.

It's four and a half inches thick.

It's like a SIPs panel, but it only has the wood on one side.

And so we attach that to the framing system and the wood layer allows us to attach our finish, so that we don't have to drill through the entire assembly to reach a stud wall assembly, for example.

Code minimum is R-20, we have R-34, with our assembly.

So then when we think about our roof, as you can see, we've got some things going on.

We've got a clerestory here.

And this has, also has cavity installation plus a SIPs panel on top.

- So structurally insulated panels that they have on the rooftop are essentially an Oreo cookie of installation.

They have OSB on one side, OSB on the other side, or some sort of rigid material on there.

And then in this case, multiple inches of expanded polystyrene foam, such as like you'd see in a styrofoam cup.

And that provides a great thermally broken insulation.

- But if I could interrupt, just a quick Paul, we had to make it super geeky.

You remember that part in "Christmas Vacation", where the kid sticks his tongue to the frozen flagpole?

When that tongue got stuck to that flagpole, that's a thermal bridge.

- That's a thermal bridge.

- So when we say you have to break a thermal bridge, we don't mean pouring water on the dude's tongue.

We actually mean prevent that from ever happening to begin with.

Insulate that pole so nothing can ever get stuck to it, and it'll never lose its temperature.

- On that end down there, we basically have pre-engineered trusses.

Which is a really common way to frame roofs, especially if they're wood-framed.

And that's also has cavity insulation, and plus Nail Base insulation on top of SIPs panel.

And so our roof assembly is minimum R-38, we have an R-70.

- Okay, an R-70 excellent.

- So yeah, so we're almost double with our walls and our roof, and almost quadruple with our floor slab.

- Since this building was seeking to meets, you know, trying to get to passive house type of compliance.

What challenges did you face like with the architect, with the passive house consultant, with the board?

I mean were there challenges in trying to build something like this, at this level of performance?

- Well it's, I wouldn't say so much as a challenge, but more like putting together a puzzle from the architects drawings, because when you're marrying up different type of materials, especially when you're not using conventional construction, getting everything to line up, and be in a perfect plane, and be in the exact flat surface is difficult.

And if you look at the roof, there's a marriage of trusses and SIPs, and none of those are the same thicknesses.

So we had to really do a lot of coordination and planning to make sure that everything was flat when the roof came out and you wouldn't even know that it was there.

- Cody we wanna bring you in, on the air tightness side, So what did you do to make this building so much more air tight.

I mean, the thickness of the walls, all the extra installation without question helps.

But then you did things beyond that to make sure the building was buttoned up really well.

- Yeah buttoned up is a good term And so to start with, we put in a very heavy duty radon mats.

We're gonna design that radon mat, and that's also a vapor barrier that's going to protect our concrete and our installation from taking on any moistures and stuff.

And then we bring that up, and we actually define on all sides a red line.

In fact, Kelly draws it in for us, and it helps our contractor say, oh wait, although that's a shear wall, it's got a red line on it.

So also our primary air barrier, and everything must be connected to the primary air barrier.

So from that radon mat, to the shear wall, to the air barrier, ri ght behind that tongue and groove ceiling there, all of these connections from doors to windows, to the ceiling, have to all be connected in one singular layer.

- The windows that were chosen, you know, the window performance around them.

Are you able to share some of those details?

Like what was done and why?

- Right.

So we originally started with a super high performing triple glazed window made by a local manufacturer.

And I believe what happened was there were procurement issues.

They were, I believe a 16 week lead time.

- That's happening these days for people in the construction, and all of a sudden in the construction world.

- And so that became problematic.

And so we landed on a double pane, I believe.

uPVC window, that still met our energy criteria or close to it.

- Okay.

- So we got really close to the values.

I want to say, we ended with U 0.29 value, which is better than Energy Star.

So it's still, a rocking window.

And it, again, it didn't break the bank.

- Exactly.

Do you know what solar heat gain coefficient was?

As far as much of the sun's energy coming- - I don't, but it was it was a little on the high side.

Because we want to take advantage of the solar heat gain, especially in the winter months.

And we design our building for that, and that factors into our overhangs and our window placement.

So we do want that to be about average or slightly higher.

- Yeah, and that was part of doing the passive house modeling.

So you could get see that that was not going to be a penalty per se, because many times in Colorado and other parts of the country, we say, what are we gonna do to reduce that solar heat gain as much as possible?

At times, it's better to let more of it in.

And it's great that you're looking at it through a modeling tool, to be able to get to that.

- Sure.

- Cody, I want to switch to you as we think about, making a building very airtight, then we've got to ventilate it right.

Correct?

So like, so the energy recovery ventilators in here, can you share what was chosen, and why they were chosen and how they're operating?

- Yeah, absolutely.

You know, in any commercial driven project, you have your specifications, it goes out to bid, and you have to have some flexibility for things to change to get value engineered in or out.

So windows kind of got adjusted from fiberglass triple pane, to a uPVC rate hat, which is still a good protrusion or a uPVC product.

And a good double pane.

- Thermally broken.

- Thermally broken, that's right.

And then the ERV side, you know, we have to have really good high, efficient recovery.

And so, although we had like a higher quality German Zehnder, or a Swiss product, we had a Canadian product come in, which is instead of like a 90% efficient, we're looking at a 70% efficient.

And we thought that that was a reasonable negotiation.

So what's in here right now is Lifebreath, which is a very good performing and dependable and quiet, and it's doing a great job.

Here we've got four of them in here.

And so we actually have twice the, the ventilation rate in here that a commercial building needs to have.

- I love to be in this building when my allergies are bad or when we have forest fires and lots of smoke, the air filtration system in here is very good at its job.

It really helps calm down all my symptoms.

- Instead of recycling the air, which happens a lot in the commercial space, is we're bringing in brand new air.

We're taking 70% of the temperature of the air leaving, and we're putting it right back in.

So we have a lot of fresh air in here, not just for scrubbing the, the COVID and the virus out, and all the allergies, but we're actually bringing in brand new oxygenated air from outside.

The other thing is we didn't engineer out the gasser, because gas is part of the culture here in Gilcrest, which is fine with us.

It was very close, it didn't cost us a lot to put here.

I think it was already here in fact.

So this little on-demand hot water heater just does a micro load.

And then matching it on the other side is a 97% efficient HVAC system, which you'd find in a normal residence.

Probably, half the size of this, or maybe even less.

Anyway, there's a little heater in there and, and it runs the air conditioner unit and it heats this building.

(guitar music) - So one of the passive solar features, I really love about what you designed into this, are the clerestory windows they're up here on the south side, but are well shaded.

Can you give me a little bit of the thought process on that?

A little background on clerestory windows?

- So, well the term actually hearkens back to the cathedral days of, the old churches in England and Europe.

But when we were first 3D modeling, this project, one of the ideas from the board, was that we take advantage of both the north and the south orientation.

And so obviously we've got solar panels on the south side, soaking up the sun, but we saw an opportunity to actually break the roof.

And that gave us an opportunity to not only install the clerestory windows, but added some interest with the Glulam Trusses and gave us some heightened volume.

And the sound just kind of gets lost up in there.

It's not real echoy.

And so it was kind of important to the board that we bring in as much natural light as possible.

And you can see by looking up there that it's from that high up, it's a real kind of diffused soft light.

Because glare is never good.

- Now Cody and I are hanging outside by the inverter for the solar PV system.

And Cody, I just want to ask you, I mean, this is the hub for the power of this building.

How big is the solar PV system powering The Nantes Library?

- So this is about 17 kilowatts.

- Basically these panels are probably 300 Watts per panel, somewhere in that range.

- About right, yeah.

- So it's like, so this is for a typical home, this is about double, at least a typical home size to what we'd see.

But they needed obviously, with the loads that they have in the building as far as additional lighting and things like that.

So, - Computers.

- Yeah, right.

So very, very cool.

(guitar music) Kelly I want to ask you a little bit, about this room behind us, the storm shelter.

That is not something we see in every building that we take a look at.

So can you tell me, there's an intriguing story, at least the community connection, obviously on, on this part of the building.

- So this is actually a tornado shelter.

And what that means is, it's literally a six sided concrete box.

And it was something that the board asked us to consider.

It was actually a bit alternate, because we weren't sure what the price tag would be.

I wanna say it was $40,000 added costs, which the board felt was a good value.

Because you know, here they're in a, in a small town and we are in tornado country.

And actually we had a tornado here a few weeks ago, that touched down.

And the staff, - Nearby.

- Yeah, not two miles away.

And the staff spent a little time in the tornado shelter and thankfully it didn't cause any damage, but you never know.

(guitar music) - What about this building proud of?

- I mean everything about this building is just, it's wonderful and amazing.

And I'm proud of our collection, I'm proud of the building, I'm proud of the staff that works here.

And it's just exciting to get to know people on a different level here in Gilcrest.

- I'm proud of the fact that we know this building is going to be a long time standing because it is so sustainable as far as energy goes.

And the fact that it is, it is kind of the crown jewel of the town.

It's a useful crown jewel, not just pretty.

- Very cool.

Practical crown jewel.

(upbeat music) So remember when we talked about how many hairdryers it would take to heat this building?

1.75 hairdryers could heat this building on a typical January day.

(upbeat music) The Nantes Library, what a shining example of what happens when people come together behind a common selfless cause.

The group was open-minded, and willing to take in the knowledge and passion of leading board members.

There are wise about how they chose an experienced and talented architect, who was very good about listening to the board and library staff.

The board and staff then brought in a skilled passive house consultant, as well as a quality general contractor.

Who knew how to build quality buildings and was still ready to learn about constructing high-performance buildings.

This building is a beautiful outcome of these people's collaboration.

I love having the opportunity to showcase a project where the best of a small town community, the ability to treat everyone with mutual respect, converged with the knowledge from the town to design and build the buildings of tomorrow today, with high comfort and low energy bills.

This building is very worthy of being replicated and I hope people follow their lead, and have as much joy in bringing it into reality as this group did.

I hope these stories inspire you to champion these strategies in a project you may be able to lead.

Whether as a board member, as an architect designing it, as a general contractor building it, or as the owner of a commercial building, looking for ways to reduce your energy bills while enhancing the comfort for your occupants.

Let us know if you apply these ideas to a project because who knows, you may just end up being showcased in a future episode of "Heart of a Building".

Thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) (people laughing) - This is a library.

- This is a library.

(upbeat music)