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 (more…)

Martin Holladay at Greenbuildingadvisor.com posted an interesting article about “magic boxes”—integrated heating, cooling, ventilation (and sometimes hot water) devices for Passivhaus construction. A great read: Magic-box your Passive House

The Homestar Energy Efficiency Retrofit Program could be the government’s cash for clunkers for homes equivalent. Read more about the offering that is in the works at this link.

In this writer’s humble opinion, the incentives offered may be low compared to the real cost of any significant and holistic energy efficiency upgrade in a home—especially in a cold climate. However, it’s a starting point.

Treehugger just posted a short article about Passive House in the U.S. See it here. Meanwhile, BuildingGreen.com offers an article on whether or not Passive House can revolutionize the way we build here.

Repost of an article about Passive House on builderonline.com

Repost of an article by Martin Holladay about his visit at the 4th North American Passive House Conference this past weekend in Urbana, IL: “Clearing away misconceptions will improve the dialogue between Passivhaus advocates and American builders”

I just read a passage in ACI‘s “Moving Homes Toward Carbon Neutrality” whitepaper that I find to be a wonderful summary of the paradigm shift the building industry needs to accomplish. In my opinion designers, contractors and homeowners alike need to consider the building as a system in order to understand how to make significant and truly valuable improvements—not just in regards to energy.

In housing we have discovered that moisture and mold problems, combustion spillage, and indoor air pollution can only be addressed by the systems approach, whereas the component by component approach of old did not work. With all of these problems, the interactions between components of the house were very important, but were not always obvious when we looked at one component or area at a time. For example, while the moisture problem may have seemed worse in the bedroom of a sick child, it often started either outside or in the basement/crawl space. Combustion spillage problems in the utility room were sometimes caused by the powerful new kitchen range hood. Changing a natural draft furnace to a high-efficiency one, without introducing controlled, low-rate ventilation, often resulted in the build-up of pollution indoors that was worse than the occasional spillage problem from that furnace. All these were system problems and they were much more easily identified when the systems approach was used.

I encourage anybody who is thinking about remodeling to look at ACI’s whitepaper and consider the opportunities it highlights. A building is like a set of dominoes: tip the first one over and a whole bunch of others will start to fall also. Each component has an impact on other components. Together, they work in concert—creating a wonderful symphony, or a ghastly amount of noise. It is therefore of utmost importance to carefully and decisively create a retrofit composition that enhances the features as well as the performance of a building, and returns the favor with a Whole that is greater than the sum of its parts (okay, I borrowed that one from the last Passive House conference).

Beauty, delight, performance, efficiency: those are some of the things that fascinate me with buildings. Hence the company slogan: beautiful, resource-efficient buildings. The systems approach is key to success on these fronts.

The U of M recently published a lecture by Joe Shuster, the author of “Beyond Fossil Fools”. It is great to have these lectures in the public realm. While Passive House’s biggest concern is conservation, this is still a very interesting recording with a focus on energy. Please click this link to view the lecture.

Germany.info published a website dedicated to the Transatlantic Climate Bridge: “For decades, Americans and Europeans have joined forces successfully to address the key challenges facing us. Today, an opportunity exists to tackle the common challenge of climate change and energy security together in the form of the Transatlantic Climate Bridge.”

One subsection focuses on the potential of Passive House design. Please find the article using this link. The Transatlantic Climate Bridge website can be found at this link.

I just came across this article on CNN, which I find worth reposting. CNN asked readers to tell President Obama what they think needs to happen under his administration. This article is called “Green Tax Credits” and it deals with an issue that is brought to my doorstep all-too-often these days. Many people agree that improving their home is important and they are willing to do the work, but they don’t know how to afford the initial cost of construction. I believe that the idea submitted by Tom Julian is great and hope to see some of it turn into reality under President Obama. 

Here is the link. And here is a clipping of the actual letter as published by CNN:

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Many of you alerted me to this recent NYT article on Passive House: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?pagewanted=1&em

 
Pat Murphy, the executive director of Community Solutions and author of Plan C, wrote a summary of the 3rd North American Passive House Conference this past November in Duluth.  Just a quick correction: The R-values that Pat talks about are based on his location in Yellow Springs. R-values for Passive Houses will vary locally based on climate conditions.

A Passive House remodel project in California made the news on ABC. Find the article and video at this link.

For those who have not seen the story of stuff, here is a link: http://www.storyofstuff.com/ It is somewhat similar to what Cradle to Cradle describes. I enjoyed the animations and the straight forward comments by the author.

I always meant to post this talk by James Howard Kunstler. As a “foreigner” in the U.S. I cannot help but observe certain differences from my native Germany and Europe as a whole, that really have a profound impact on day-to-day living here—especially in the Midwest. James makes a lot of points along those lines that I sympathize with. I encourage you to watch this lecture carefully. I believe that it is our responsibility as building designers, architects, and urban planners to better understand the human nature and human desires—then turn them into a built environment worth caring for, worth being proud of. I believe it is important for people to identify with their surroundings. As a result, we have the opportunity to create comfortable, efficient, and enjoyable space (indoors and outside) that will empower us, encourage us, and impact the environment less, while at the same time help define who we are and what we stand for.

(Please note, the talk contains some strong language that may not be appropriate for children)