MPR picked up on the Passive House in the Woods and conducted an interview with Gary Konkol, the owner.

You can also find the interview on MPR’s website.

Due to popular demand we added another opportunity to see this amazing project on Thursday, July 1st at 2 pm.

Please RSVP to Amanda at Morr Construction: amanda@morrconstruction.com

Metro Hippie aka Josh Foss put up a blog post about his recent visit to the Passive House in the Woods project. You can find it at this link.

The Pioneer Press published an article about the Passive House in the Woods: “Hudson, Wis. / House’s energy use puts it nearly off the grid”

Thanks for signing up for the construction tour today. We look forward to having you and to show you around this amazing home. We’ll see you at the site at Noon.

Directions and Parking Instructions

The property is located at 908 Kirkwood Way North, Town of Hudson, WI 54016 (directions, see below). We encourage people to car-pool, seek parking on 10th Avenue, and walk 1/2 block to the property from there.

• From the West (metro area)
• I-94 East to Exit 1 in Wisconsin for Hudson and WI 35 North (just past the St. Croix River)
• Take Exit 1 North towards Hudson, State Rd 35 (2nd St. S)
• Take State Rd 35 (2nd St. S) for about 3 miles North
• Take a right on Krattley Ln/Krattley Ln N, head uphill (East)
• Take a left on Tenth St. N
• SEEK PARKING NEAR THE INTERSECTION OF Tenth St. N and Kirkwood Way N!
• Walk left on Kirkwood Way N (note: road sign only on the right) 1/2 block
• The property is located at 908 Kirkwood Way North, immediately to the left once the road turns from asphalt to gravel
• Meet at the construction trailer

Due to popular demand, we added an additional tour of the Passive House in the Woods (PhitW) project this Thursday, 5/27 at Noon. For RSVPs please contact Amanda at Morr Construction.

This week we embarked on a little mini-series, highlighting 5 reasons why the Passive House in the Woods project is a sustainable project.

The leapfrog design of the Passive House in the Woods is based on integrated design and the holistic idea of building and living. Gary approached us with a vision of carbon-neutral, low impact building. That in itself does not sound like much. But we quickly realized how serious he is about it, and embraced the idea by assembling and leading a team of experts to deliver on all fronts of sustainability.

Follow the entire series at www.passivehouseinthewoods.com

Passive House in the Woods front entry perspective

The Passive House in the Woods will be open for a Construction Tour on 5/21/2010. We’ll have two tours that day. The first one is scheduled for 1.30 pm, the second one for 3.30 pm. If you are interested to see this high-performance building in person, please RSVP by 5/18 to Amanda at Morr Construction: amanda@morrconstruction.com

Richard Defendorf at greenbuildingadvisor.com just posted a nice article about the Passive House in the Woods:

Passive House in the (Wisconsin) Woods
A Passive House project nearing completion on the state’s western border aims for energy-positive performance and a high profile

The Passive House in the Woods project was just written up by the local Hudson Star Observer: “North Hudson man takes building ‘green’ to a new level”.

Martin Holladay at GreenBuildingAdvisor.com kicked off another fabulous subject on their blog entitled: Energy Efficiency Retrofits: Insulation or Solar Power?

As a certified Passive House Consultant, I am partial to the insulation. However, Martin makes a good point when comparing the two approaches. As the discussion goes, many points about this subject are being addressed. This is my reply:

Other selling points
by Tim Eian, TE Studio

Our firm has been working to get a viable DER business off the ground for the last two years. We practice in an extremely cold climate (MN). After the first year, we found that there were not enough selling points to overcome the first-day cost—and even calculations favoring a DER approach in the long run may not entice owners enough to go into debt—let alone their banks who cannot begin to understand what DER actually is and why it would create value and equity.

Year two has been more successful for us, as we have been focusing on more immediately tangible advantages of indoor environmental quality and health, as well as comfort (a big thing in a cold climate) and survivability. In addition, we are trying to single out the DER measures as Read the rest of this entry »

Green Builder Magazine featured the Passive House in the Woods project in its March issue in the Green Scene section. Thanks for the tip Josh.

We greatly appreciate all the wonderful conversations you brought to us at the Living Green Expo. We talked about Passive House for residential and commercial applications, proper site placement of buildings, sustainable building design in general, ventilation systems and indoor air-quality, lifecycle cost, quality construction, insulation, and so much more. We appreciate all your positive feedback about what we do and look forward to another year of extremely energy efficient building design until next year’s Expo.

We are in booth U21E on the upper floor of the Living Green Expo this weekend. We’ve had lots of enjoyable conversations about Passive House and energy-efficient building design. Come join us—it’s free!

Grandstand, MN State Fairgrounds

Tomorrow Sunday, we’ll be there from 10 until 5pm.

Jetson Green posted this wonderful article about the Passive House in the Woods today.