Michael Hindle, CPHC, owner of Chesapeake Passive House, has had the good fortune of joining forces with a great group of folks at Entellis Collective (formerly Hamel Green). Michael is still available for Passive House consulting and Deep Energy Retrofits on all projects, please contact him at mhindle@entellis.com
The Mountain Passive House settles into the hill and opens to the Southeast views
Chesapeake Passive House is collaborating with our design partner INDRAlogic on an exciting new Passive House in the beautiful mountains of Western Maryland! The site is challenging but gorgeous. The steep slope, the view to the east demanding significant amounts of Eastern glazing, the demanding program, and the clients desire for the house to settle unobtrusively into the hill have offered a wonderful design problem to address, particularly in light of energy performance. The selected design follows the slope and delivers a wonderful experience of the views. The design benefits from earth mass and solar gain, and is on target to hit the Passive House standard. We believe this house will be a holistic, beautiful and low impact home. Please check back as we post on our discussions, discoveries and design!
View from the Southeast
Please check out this animated video history of human generated carbon emissions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqV-kx2ClXU
I find it hard to believe anyone could watch this and then look a child in the eye and say humans are not changing the climate and that we do not have a huge ethical responsibility to future generations to change the way we are living for the better. The political will for ignorance motivated by ideology is sickening and I am getting really mad at our right leaning political leaders on this issue in particular. Where have the moderate (read sane) Republicans gone?.
Architect, Miche Booz is moving along with the initial design of the Gaddy House Passive House project. His designs are based on our schematic meetings during which we discussed assumptions of R-values and potential construction techniques that will be required to meet the Passive House standard. We will have the option of going with either site construction or flat-pack, pre-fab construction. Miche has produced a new rendering (above) and plans (see the projects page) despite his upcoming trip to France for an exhibition of his paintings. We share a background in the fine arts and I am curious to see how our mutual interest in painting informs our creative process on this project.
We made a visit to the site of the future Passive House Annapolis project to look more closely at the lot and perform some initial solar analysis. It is an absolutely beautiful setting and we enjoyed time just being in this small piece of rural Maryland preserved in this wonderful forest conservation easement. Due to the requirements to respect the forest conservation easement, solar gain will be a challenge. We believe that while taking only a few trees at a strategic distance from the house but still within the building disturbance area, we should be able to achieve sufficient gain in the winter while preserving shading in the summer to reduce cooling loads.
The building is being designed as a truly integrated design effort between INDRAlogic and Chesapeake Passive House. The process has been seamless and very enjoyable. It is remarkable how well (and easily) Passive House design can be when all the participants share the common goal of holistic sustainability and an awareness of the design principles in question.
Plans are well underway and renderings should be up soon!
source: New York Times
Michael Hindle CPHC of Chesapeake Passive House will be speaking at the Solar and Wind Expo in King of Prussia PA, just outside of Philadelphia, at the Valley Forge Convention Center on June 11th at 3-4PM.
His talk will describe the principles and methodology behind the Passive House energy standard and include a discussion of a holistic sustainability and natural materials approach to energy efficiency, including information about global warming potential and embodied toxicity of some common insulation materials.
The talk will be followed by a question and answer period and a review of case studies, time permitting.
Michael spoke at the Solar and Wind Expo at the Maryland State Fairgrounds in Timonium, Maryland on May 13th and 15th .
leave the grass high for hiding easter eggs. go to a farmers market. support local businesses. walk instead of drive. open your windows. turn off your lights. bird watch. plant some vegetables and native plants. have a zero waste weekend. make a rain barrel….
take advantage of baltimore county’s great new energy efficiency legislation, High Performance Homes (Bill 43-10), and get incredible property tax incentives. chesapeake passive house can give you the highest level offered on this bill – CARBON NEUTRAL. Passive House is the only energy modeling program that can get you to this degree of efficiency. that’s a 100% property tax credit for five years! if you are looking to be truly green in baltimore, contact us to help you get there. michael hindle, cphc was a key player to creating this bill and knows the details of how to make this payback work for you.
this bill is the first of it’s kind in maryland and the country. chesapeake passive house wants to take this innovative performance based energy legislation to all maryland county’s – baltimore city, anne arundel, howard, montgomery, harford, etc. please help us make this a success in baltimore county and sign up for your holistic home evaluation and let us help you make your home more green, healthy and energy efficient.
