Yobi Apartments is one of our most exciting new housing
projects. We've written about the
project in earlier posts, discussing its innovative approach to micro-housing
and design features that promote community among the residents. The project will be featured in the NW GreenHome Tour on April 25th & 26th, so I thought we’d take a post to review the project’s sustainability.
The project has a number of notable sustainable features. Like most of our work, it is certified Built
Green 4 Star, which means that it has met performance criteria over a broad
range of categories, including stormwater management, water use, energy use,
indoor air quality, and waste reduction.
The project is particularly interesting when you look at its energy
usage.
Yobi Apartments has a number of energy saving features,
including a high performance exterior envelope, spray foam insulation, passive
solar design, high efficiency lighting, and high efficiency gas boilers. All together, the project has an energy use
budget that is 60% of what is required under the current energy code. That’s pretty good in and of itself, but it’s
only half of the picture.
Energy use for buildings is usually measured in a unit
called EUI (Mbtu/sf/year). EUI is useful for comparing one building to another
in terms of energy use per square foot. Micro-housing is very space efficient
& each occupant uses dramatically less square footage than what you see in typical housing, so to really understand the building’s
performance you have to look a bit beyond EUI.
A typical code compliant apartment building will have an EUI
of about 40. If you include common areas
and circulation, a conventional apartment takes up about 800sf of floor area
for each unit. Yobi Apartments has rather
ordinary EUI of 38, but Yobi uses only 280sf per unit. So, when you take space efficiency into
account, you start to see just how energy efficient small apartments can be. A person living in the Yobi uses roughly 1/3
of the energy of someone living in a conventionally designed apartment
building.
EUI (Mbtu/sf/yr)
|
SF
per unit
|
EU per unit
(Mbtu/yr)
|
% Energy use compared to typical
apartment
|
|
Typical Apartment Building
|
40
|
800
|
32
|
100%
|
Yobi Apartments
|
38.7
|
280
|
10.8
|
33.8%
|
The Yobi apartments represents a very important housing
type, providing private market affordable housing in a desirable location,
designed to promote community and a featuring a carbon footprint per occupant
that is leaps and bounds ahead of conventional housing. Ironically, Yobi may be both the first and
last project of its kind. Projects like
Yobi were largely banned by anti-microhousing legislation passed in November
the city council. It is our hope that
city officials and council-members will take advantage of the Green home tour to
see Yobi and come to an understanding of just how much baby was thrown out with
the bathwater.
Yobi Apartments Project Team:
Architect: David Neiman and Liz Pisciotta - Neiman Taber Architects
Structural Engineer: Todd Valentine and Brice Parrish - Harriott Valentine Engineers
Landscape Architect: Patricia Lenssen, Philbin Landscape Architects
General Contractor and Development Services: Trent Mummery, Metropolitan Company
Marketing and Leasing: Chasten Fulbright, Blanton Turner
