Cornell Tech Passive House Turns To Duct Sealing Innovation
Completed in 2017, The House at Cornell Tech is the world’s largest building to meet Passive House criteria, the strictest international standards for building performance and energy efficiency. At the heart of the building’s unique Passive House design is an HVAC system designed to provide exceptional comfort and indoor air quality for a fraction of the residents’ usual energy costs. The engineer’s responsible for the design of the mechanical system specified the use of aeroseal technology from the start.
“To achieve Passive House standards, it’s important to have an extremely tight building envelope, and that requires an energy efficient way to bring fresh air to all the living spaces while exhausting air from kitchens and bathrooms,” said Julie Janiski, project manager at BuroHappold Engineering, the Structure/MEP/Lighting Design engineers on the project. “All that required a lot of ductwork delivering air at very low cfm. This meant that the ducts had to be tighter than traditional manual sealing typically provides, in order to ensure that those low CFM targets were fully delivered to the living spaces.”