The Smart Sustainable Resilient Infrastructure Association (SSRIA) is here to present its Green Building Technologies Network (GBTN) Spotlight Series. This series will be featuring a project team once every other month until March 2023. The aim is to get to know the projects and teams working in the GBTN and support further collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing among our members.

Our guest this month is Butterwick Projects, welcome!

Project Type: Residential | Retrofit

Project Aim: Deep Energy Retrofits (DER)

Project Summary: Click here for the complete project summary

Butterwick Projects collaborates with clients to design and build exceptional buildings. Utilizing high-performance building practices with a craftsman style approach. Their Experience and understanding of how buildings function enables them to deliver projects that boast both unmatched resilience and revolutionary energy efficiency. We interviewed project team members Peter Amerongen and Logan Gilmore to find out more!

What advice do you have for homeowners who are interested in the realities of deep energy retrofits but are overwhelmed or not ready to commit to a novel idea?

Start with a comprehensive plan. Doing deep retrofits that will not waste money or lock in the remaining emissions is and will be complicated until we’ve done a bunch of them. We think that the Retrofit roadmap we are developing will make this a lot easier. Please stay tuned. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

Butterwick projects has been working on a large-scale DER project in Sundance, Edmonton. What are some of the initial takeaways from that project?

We’ve learned from Sundance and other projects that deep energy retrofits are complicated and take a lot of careful planning to do cost-effectively. There are significant efficiencies to be gained from scanning the building to capture the geometry electronically and using that to fabricate retrofit wall panels that can be fabricated off-site while the on-site preparation is going on. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

I did some early investigations into photogrammetry on a few of the buildings in that project, and it lead me toward developing my own software, as the off-the-shelf software available was not usable for us. – Logan Gilmore, 3D Reconstruction Software Specialist

What has been the greatest challenge thus far in coordinating a DER project with 3 different homeowners with 3 different house typologies?

One of the big benefits of comprehensive deep retrofits is that it provides the opportunity to completely redo and update the exterior. The three houses are quite different and so are the owner’s tastes and the architectural opportunities for these beautiful new looks. It is a little more work to work out the details with three owners, but not unreasonably so. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

From a photogrammetric perspective, single-family homes often have other buildings nearby, fences, and vegetation that all make it difficult to get good photographs for reconstruction. Having the vantage provided by a drone has been a big help with this. – Logan Gilmore, 3D Reconstruction Software Specialist

What are the transferable skills of current trades towards skills needed for deep energy retrofits? What additional training or certification could be considered or created to transfer these skills?

There are different skills needed at different stages of the project. At the planning stage, we need energy modellers who can work with contractors to dial in the most cost-effective set of energy upgrade measures to get that house to nearly net-zero performance either all at once or in a series of logical steps that don’t involve backtracking or rework -which is what happens with most piecemeal retrofits. At the construction stage, we need carpenters and workers to understand the whole project objectives and are really good at the details: airtightness, thermal bridge free construction, and building durability details- the same skills needed for new net-zero construction. A lot of this is addressed in the project drawings, but because these are essentially renovation projects, many decisions are made in the field. Some classroom training would be useful, but with good leadership, a lot of it can be learned on the job. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

Logan Gilmore, the 3D reconstruction software specialist has created a method for completing site analysis more effectively and more accurately. Can you explain how it works and why it is so important in DER work?

Logan starts by using a drone to take multiple photos of the building. Photos that see the same building feature from the biggest angle to the next photo provide the best accuracy. The drone is a great way to take these photos because it can be positioned pretty much anywhere. Logan picks a dozen or so and starts to draw lines along the points of interest for the panel drawing production – wall corners, bottoms, roof intersections and window and door outlines. He then tells his software that the window appearing in the first photo is actually the same window- the same size- like the one traced in the adjacent photo and that it should resize and position those lines in space so they fit both photos and are constrained vertically, horizontally or laterally. He goes around the building until he has picked out a complete wireframe and outlines of windows and doors. Prior to flying the drone, he installs targets or picks out points that form large triangles on each of two sides of the building. He measures these points’ accuracy with a laser tape measure or a Total Station survey instrument and instructs the software to resize the wireframe so that it fits those real points. The process is so accurate that measurements taken on the other two sides will be accurate to about 4mm which is great for panelization. This is important to the panelization process because if the panels don’t fit the building, all the advantages of efficient manufacturing go out the window. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

The process involves going to the site, taking around 100 photos with a pro-sumer drone, and recording several coordinate reference points with a surveying tool (total-station). I then return to the office and essentially draw a 3D model directly on top of the photographs, then use the total-station coordinates to scale the reconstruction and constrain it. The way the software works is based on non-linear optimization to simultaneously find the 3D location and rotation of where the camera was when each photo was taken, as well as the coordinates of the rectified 3D geometry in the CAD model. – Logan Gilmore, 3D Reconstruction Software Specialist

How are houses assessed in order to justify a recommendation for a deep energy retrofit?

Houses with the worst current energy performance – the most room for improvement- and that can most benefit from a renewed exterior, usually older with substantial deferred maintenance make the most sense. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

Will the data collected from this project provide the needed scientific support to attract homeowners and policymakers towards embracing this innovation?

We expect data and learnings from the project to have multiple benefits:

• These case studies will help determine the cost savings that can result from panelized retrofits in particular and of well planned one shot deep retrofits in general.
• Performance monitoring taken of the winter of 2022-2023 will provide a comparison of actual as opposed to modelled energy and GHG savings that will help with future projects.
• We expect that once we compile this data and work out the impact on the total cost of ownership for these houses that it will show that even though the upfront costs are more than people might want to spend upfront, over a reasonable time, the avoided energy costs, the reduced ongoing maintenance costs, higher resale value, available subsidies and the ability to look your kids in the eye will all add up to a compelling case for doing this.

We are also expecting that several of the solutions we are pioneering will be useful additions the library of solutions we are compiling. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

The data collected to verify the photogrammetric process has been used to publish a journal article in Automation in Construction: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0926580521005331 – Logan Gilmore, 3D Reconstruction Software Specialist

Could you tell us about Retrofit Canada and how that is assisting with the scaling of DER?

There is a growing realization that emissions from existing building operations must be eliminated if we are to have any hope of maintaining a liveable planet. To address those emissions from Canada’s 8,000,000 single family houses, we need to kick start a massive new industry fast. The know how that this industry needs for this needs to be compiled, refined and made freely available to the designers, energy modelers, contractors and workers so they can rapidly scale up and drive down the costs. That is Retrofit Canada’s mission. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

In your view, what will be the greatest reward or takeaway from this project?

Our hope is that we prove the business and greenhouse gas reduction case for panelized deep energy retrofits. – Peter Amerongen, Butterwick Projects

Hopefully, we can help mitigate climate change! – Logan Gilmore, 3D Reconstruction Software Specialist

Have questions for Butterwick Projects, send us a message and we will get in touch. Send Mail