Pretty Good Multi-Family Housing?
The PGH organization (and all those behind the discussions) has done excellent work in pointing people toward workable solutions and goals for safe, durable, resilient, comfortable, efficient, and affordable residential housing. Mostly, the focus is on single family housing. And while much of the design advice is pertinent to all residential housing, it seems to me that a sub-section or addendum for multi-unit residential buildings could be helpful. Is there any work being done in this area?
My questions are guided by my experience in looking for housing during many moves. And by the fact that we need a lot more housing and we’re not going to get there by building single family residences. But to get people to accept more multi-unit buildings, the buildings need to be better. I think a lot of people might consider living in condos or apartments if the average condo/apartment wasn’t so crappy. (Ignoring what might be nice-looking kitchens that of course have re-circulating “vent” fans).
Specifically and for instance:
· How to improve noise reduction, transmission, damping, etc so that every footstep isn’t telegraphed to people in the unit below and conversations aren’t heard thru walls?
· How to isolate air so that each unit is ventilated with filtered fresh air, and not with cooking smells or skunky marijuana smells from neighbors that are unfortunately much more prevalent these days?
I know that there are building science articles that address these issues directly, but those aren’t summarized or easily assessable for most people, be they builders or end users. It’d be nice to provide some affordable approaches to improving multi-unit housing and try to create some momentum with buildings that people actually enjoy. If that information was in a digestible format and collected in one place (eg, PGH.org), I think it’d be a good and useful endeavor.
Wishing for too much? Or is something out there that I haven’t found?
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Replies
I'm with you on multi-unit details.
I feel that there are some things like sound, privacy, air quality are all things that no one thought about in homes for the last 100 years. These are new thoughts and practices that turns out greatly contribute to quality if life. As we as a society improve our technology, economy and work standards, etc, turns out things like living standards come more into the light.
And when it comes to building a new structure, well it's usually from a business that doesn't care to produce a pretty good home ie: production builders. Things like sound transmission between units, well, not their problem anymore because you've already given them their money.
Custom home builders care and know about this stuff, but if you can afford a custom built home, you generally can afford the entire home and don't need a multi-unit.
I think the future of single family dwelling lots in major metro city's like Toronto, will turn into "mini-condos", something like a 4 storey structure on a 30x125 lot, where each floor is its own independent unit. These details you bring up will become more important for the proprietor/builder of these structures as the middle class family type buying a flat in such a building will want/need better quality of life. And they can leave the highrise condo buildings with highly space-efficient yet poor quality of life shoeboxes in the sky for the financially poor where they can do their debauchery on top of each other. (This is a joke).
Jamie
I work in residential multifamily and I think that smaller multifamily buildings are better suited for this than the large complexes. I worked with a builder that put some focus on sound reduction in their apartments and the problem was that it would sometimes add hundreds of thousands to the cost of the job, but it didn't change the amount that the units would rent for enough to really justify it.
All are excellent points and necessary. Unfortunately the PGH book authors and originators are all involved in relatively high-end, custom single family residential homes, with little to no experience in other housing types. We know that custom SFR is not the answer to our energy or housing needs, but they are the clients who can most easily afford to make upgrades. If someone wants to take on another housing form and write a PGH book about it, we would be happy to talk with them.
As someone transitioning from SFHs to the multifamily space, there’s nothing I would love more than PGH/GBA/FHB content focused on multifamily, although I’m not holding my breath. The market for content would be at least an order of magnitude smaller than the combination professional and homeowner SFH market that Taunton targets now. That being said, I think Taunton would be wise to include the multifamily perspective in all of their content so it can be applicable to a wider audience, particularly with the rise of ADUs and Missing Middle housing which is more appropriate to smaller less experienced operations.
Regarding your frustration about the quality of multifamily housing, I don’t think lack of education is the problem. Most multifamily projects are designed, developed, and built by seasoned professionals where there is a high level of institutional knowledge, I can pretty much guarantee the low STC/IIC floor assemblies and recirc hood were understood to be compromises that were appropriate for the project.
The key difference is that unlike many SFHs where the end user can decide to spend more for comfort/sustainability, multifamily is almost entirely based on numbers. Nice finishes are proven to pencil out, high performance detailing has only been proven to do so in higher end buildings that already have very nice finishes.
Unfortunately in a midday walkthrough a prospective tenant/owner is going to immediately notice the finishes and size of the unit; with most other residents at work, they won’t notice the smells and sounds of neighbors. Those of us here may know better, but we are the exception to the rule.
One thing most people fail to realize is that on top of it being incredibly hard to make any multifamily project pencil out in general, the vast majority of multifamily developers are using other people’s money to fund their projects and have a legal responsibility to act in their best interest. If a developer were to implement something like higher STC walls without evidence that it will be a net financial benefit, that would be a violation of their fiduciary responsibility, even if it results in better quality of life for the occupants. If you piss off your investors you won’t have anyone to fund your project and you'll soon be out of a job.
So you're saying there's a chance? ;)
Good points regarding funding with Other People's money, and the fact that people running large commercial projects have likely sharpened their pencils and done some math.
Perhaps the conclusion is that even if it's for the common good, a lot of things don't happen until they are required, eg, by building codes. If that's the case, again, it would be somewhat disheartening.
All good points. One correction, though: Taunton is no longer in existence. FHB and GBA are now owned by Active Interest Media (AIM) and the book division is owned by Abrams. There is no connection between the two anymore.
I think some things can be easily modified in national codes. For example a blower door rating is required in a house, but perhaps in a multi-unit house a blower should be required for each unit. That would significantly help the odours issue.
Of course, myself in Toronto, I have never seen a building inspector come out with a blower and test the tightness of a house....
This leads me to that there are some things that are already code and not enforced (to my best knowledge, I could very well be wrong). For example, the Ontario building code (and I believe the Canadian building code) has a minimum STC rating of 50 for part 9 buildings (small buildings like houses and multi-unit like we're talking about)
However, I've never seen a city building inspector come around with a dB meter during their inspection, and knock on the neighbours door of a semi-detached house and ask to place calibrated Bluetooth speaker to play a pitch range noise so they can do a sound transmission test.
I also don't see contractors freaking out during construction in fear of failing the STC code. Or that the designer didn't detail for good sound transmission and that they're going to get stuck with the bill of the change order to fix it after they fail the inspection.
STC 50 is pretty good. But I believe to achieve that in a partition wall, it's something like single 2x4 walls with mineral wool batting & double drywall on one or both sides. Not to mention any flanking details like the floor assembly or wall penetrations like electrical outlets. So to this, I don't see plans examiners at the city building department requiring such details in their permitting process.
So.... Ya, things are in the code books, however permitting, construction and enforcement is a whole other story.
"I think a lot of people might consider living in condos or apartments if the average condo/apartment wasn’t so crappy."
I think the average condo/apartment are crappy because people rent the lowest cost option almost every time and you get what you pay for.
I have not read the modern multifamily energy codes but my guess is the requirements of the modern codes are so high that any energy saving would not off set the extra cost in the next 25 years.
All the regulations and requirements you want to add are expensive and make the wall thicker so the tenant get to use a smaller percentage of the square footage.
I challenge you to be the leader spend your money build passive house, air and sound proof multifamily building. I am sure you can easily turn a huge profit while charging half the market rent.
Walta
I disagree, mostly. If you look at the cost drivers for large construction projects, if you design in efficiency from the outset it adds almost nothing to the costs.
As a datapoint, I was talking to the local Aerobarrier rep. Here in DC, they actually enforce blower door testing of new construction. He said that most of his business comes from two sources. The first is the builder who built a new house and needs to get a C-of-O to sell it, and gets hung up on the blower door requirement. After having guys go around the house with spray foam and caulk and still not passing, he calls in Aerobarrier. Almost certainly that builder would have been better off just sealing as he goes, I'm sure next time he will.
The second category is condo owners who want to seal their unit against smells. In particular, cannabis, which is legal here. So air sealing is something that people are willing to pay for.
I'm fully on board with minimum energy requirements for new construction. What I don't quite get is the case for air sealing between units in multi-family construction, I don't see the compelling public interest in requiring it. Same with soundproofing. I could get on board with a system of certification and required disclosure.
Architect friends of mine design high-performance multi-families and say that all the time: the lift from code-minimum to even Passive House levels is minimal. Developers typically like to squeeze every nickel out of a project, and many don't care about occupant health and comfort or environmental impacts, so getting them to spend the tiny percentage extra to get a high-performance building can be tough. But as more people get used to living in Pretty Good (or better) homes and apartments, hopefully that will change.
“if you design in efficiency from the outset it adds almost nothing to the costs."
It is a straw man argument. If you compare good efficient work to someone else’s poor expensive work, it is easy to say mine is better and costs the same.
If I take a passive house design and remove 33% of the insulation did, I make a sizable change in the building costs and still be code compliant? It is the same straw man argument.
Aerobarrier has a market and when people see value they will chouse to spend their money but making it a requirement is something else.
“I'm fully on board with minimum energy requirements for new construction.”
I don’t see a problem with minimum energy requirements that make economic sense and I think the modern codes are at that level given today’s fuel costs.
I was listening the Beer & BS pod cast and it seems multifamily code currently has sound requirements.
Walta