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

The Gaddy House will achieve net Zero with its PV array.

The Gaddy House project progresses well. We are almost ready to submit for pre-certification through PHIUS.  There are still details to work out as we determine how the envelope can best be panelized and pre-fabricated. Final selection of windows also awaits final analysis and pricing. We were pleased to be able to put up a display board at the 6th Annual North American Passive House Conference in Silver Spring, MD.  Thanks to Miche Booz and his staff at Miche Booz Architect for putting the display together. You can find many of the wonderful presentations given at the conference by going to the schedule tab of the conference page (linked above).

Even for those not ready to make the jump to a fully passive home, there are steps every builder can take to dramatically boost a home’s performance. Passive building may seem like the cutting edge in energy-efficient construction, but its principles are far from new—and in an industry where the stakes are too high to take a chance on a fad, that’s a good thing. Fortunately for builders, people around the world have been using passive building to keep their homes comfortable for more than a thousand years. Why? Because they work, and free energy doesn’t go out of style. more….

Hudson Valley Passive House by Dennis Wedlick Architects

Comments of prior post apply.

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?.

The building will be aggressively air-sealed and insulated in all accessible framing cavities of the original timber-frame structure with an additional thermal break layer furred out on the interior walls and against some roof rafters. The insulation will be comprised of a minimal close cell spray foam flash for better air sealing and urea-formaldehyde free blown in fiberglass.

The renovation of the second floor office space will include various “sustainable” materials; floating marmoleum flooring, floating cork flooring, floating bamboo flooring, wool carpeting tiles, zero-VOC paint, NAUF pantry cabinets, bamboo vanity + credenza, concrete counters, Icestone counters, Alchemy counters, and Water Sense fixtures.

Since the existing building prior to renovation had some very challenging design features, had been poorly renovated in the past, had a dangerous and cobbled together heating “system”, and was anything but air tight, it would be very hard to establish a baseline of performance for the existing structure.  (It would have been completely impossible to perform a blower-door test anywhere near 50 pascals.)

That being said, the energy performance of the building should be dramatically improved.  I would not be uncomfortable claiming 60% energy demand reductions, though given a lack of a baseline I cannot provide data.  All of the energy modeling was based on conservative estimates and shows between 59% and 63% reduction in heating demands and a 52% decrease in cooling demand. Let’s just say this building was an environmental and occupant health disaster, and it will now boast a quite respectable level of performance and reductions in carbon footprint.

The project is currently under construction and we will be following up with details and construction photos.

significant thermal bridging of timber frame requires internal thermal break layer

But I feel that I, as a Certified Passive House Consultant, and the owner of a business dedicated to Passive House as a design standard and methodology, need to make some statement with regards to the legitimacy of Passive House and how we intend to move forward as designers and energy consultants.

The most important thing to say is that for the purposes of our work and the implementation of the Passive House standard in our projects, nothing has changed.  The standard is science based and dependable, and we have done and will do everything we can do to be sure that our projects are planned, modeled and constructed in strict compliance with the standard.

There may be some changes in certification of projects (whether to certify as North American Passive Houses though PHIUS or as international Passive Houses through PHI) but these will essentially be administrative decisions that should not affect the experience of clients or the quality of the buildings.  The key will be, as it always has been, with the accuracy of the energy model, the appropriate detailing of the building envelope, and the accurate accounting of site conditions.

How one chooses to certify will, in my opinion, be decided based on which organization can best provide support and information for designers relevant to both the unchanging limiting criteria of the standard itself, and locally and regionally appropriate building science and climate-sensitive building strategies.

As in all such situations, the truth is hard discern when there are competing versions of events. I have a great deal of confidence in Katrin Klingenberg. I have watched her on many occasions speak sincerely and knowledgably about Passive House in general, and regarding the minutia of specific applications.  I have spoken with her personally on numerous occasions, and while this may lead to a bias on my part, I can also attest to her sincerity and the depth of her commitment.  She has worked tirelessly to advance the standard and climate sensitive design across North America. While advocating the PH standard she has also been very forthcoming bout where she feels more work needs to be done. For the leader of an organization dedicated to a particular approach, in my experience she is far from dogmatic or partisan.

While the birth of the PH movement in the US has not been without some complications, and undoubtedly some things could have more organized and better handled, I trust PHIUS to be a good faith partner that will do everything it can to be sure Passive House is implemented accurately, diligently and safely through all climate zones in the US.

We must remember several things as principal concerns:

1) We need to reduce carbon emissions by 85% from current levels by 2050 to avoid the more dire predictions of climate scientists, though climate models are proving, if anything, to be conservative, not alarmist.

2) Passive House can achieve these sorts of results cost-effectively NOW, building by building.

3) The culture of design and construction in this country is one of inertial adherence to unwise and appallingly wasteful design and building practices.  We must change this culture by raising awareness of impacts, such that good-willed people can choose for themselves. The best way is to lead by example.

4) We cannot for a moment allow such controversy undermine the legitimacy of the low-energy building effort in general, or to sway us from diligently and aggressively pushing for the wide-spread adoption of SANE building practices, which I believe are very well and reliably modeled and implemented using the Passive House approach, regardless of who is certifying a given project.

Consistent with the Passive House approach of reducing demands and mitigating harm, rather than trying to engineer solutions to our destructive behavior, I would like to suggest that we all work for healing this rift and refrain from language and behavior that exacerbates the it.  We must start from an assumption of good faith by all concerned and work to help PHIUS and PHI find a way back to productive collaboration. Reconciliation would be beneficial for all.

Given the nature of our political discourse, we all can see what happens when people resort to vitriol and posturing rather than compassionately working to understand and correct misperceptions and mistakes – which we all must remember are inevitable in any such undertaking. I, for one, am going to get back to work and avoid partisanship to whatever degree possible, while honoring the contributions of both parties.

It is time to come together and work assiduously to save the climate and our children’s future.