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

In my spare time I’ve been working on a design for an urban Passive House. The design is meant to fit a standard size east-west facing lot. The floorplan offers a first-floor bedroom and bath, as well as an open kitchen, living, and dining area. The second floor offers a flexible layout that can be configured to hold up to 3 bed rooms, 1 bath, and a common room. This urban Passive House works either with or without a basement. Depending on the configuration, it offers between 1,675 and 2,475 usable square feet.

The roof is designed to hold solar-thermal panels that face due south at a 55 degree angle. It also offers plenty of south-facing real estate for PV panels. Ultimately, this Passive House is designed to become a net-energy positive building, e.g. it makes more energy than it consumes and pays its inhabitants by selling excess energy to the grid.

The garage building mimics the main building’s roofline. The main body of the house would be stucco, the gable-ends lap-siding. The roofing is standing-seam metal. The trellis on the south-facade shades the windows below in the summer months. It offers the potential to grow vines on it. Additional solar panels could be located on top of the trellis if so desired.

It’s a work in progress fresh off of the virtual drafting table.

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.

Linda Wigington of Affordable Comfort, Inc. spoke at the recent 3rd North American Passive House Conference about something she calls “Deep Energy Reduction Retrofits”. A Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit project includes all the measures needed to cut 70%+ of a building’s energy consumption.

Most people in the sustainable building industry now agree that we need these kinds of energy goals in order to curb the energy use-related environmental pollution and CO2 emissions from the building sector significantly enough to achieve true sustainability.

Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit projects will typically include more insulation, better windows and doors, and likely a new or enhanced mechanical system. While that may seem like a lot, it can potentially be done without changing the layout or interior finishes much at all, therefore keeping cost to a minimum. If you start with a building that needs new siding and windows, you can essentially eliminate this cost from the deep energy retrofit budget, as it is part of the ongoing maintenance the building needs anyways. This is when Deep Energy Reduction is most affordable. In other words, you buy or own a house with obsolete mechanical system, shot siding (roofing) and windows, and you are in the optimal position to do an affordable Deep Energy Reduction Project. I am starting to advise people to consider this when purchasing a used home.

You may notice that I have not mentioned embodied energy, green building materials, or improved indoor environmental quality at all. It is my assumption that a best practice management approach goes along with any Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit project. The designer should be aware of both the energy consumption potential, as well as the necessary “greening” potential. I find that a lot of the discussion in the industry is still focused around what I call “surface greening”—meaning putting in more earth-friendly materials. In the greater scheme of things, and while this is a proper approach, green building materials and finishes alone cannot help overome the energy challenge we are facing today. It is therefore imperative to analyze each building’s potential, and put together a package that offers true sustainability and long-term value to the client. Anything short of that will likely result in a “sunk investment”, that will effectively prevent the current owner, or future owners from giving the building the make-over it needs to overcome energy obsolescence.

The duty of a building designer is not just to the client, it is also to the society as a whole.

Deep Energy Reduction Retrofits do not require Passive House standard. As a Passive House Consultant however, I will likely use tools and ideas derived from Passive House for your Deep Energy Reduction Retrofit project, which means that you will benefit from the knowledge of the arguably best building energy standard today, even if you are not building a house from scratch.

ACI’s (Affordable Comfort Inc.) Linda Wigington was one of the speakers at the recent Passive House conference in Dutluth, MN. Her organization offers initiatives to improve the performance of homes. Linda introduced the crowd to what she calls “Deep Energy Reduction Retrofits”, an effort to help overcome the energy obsolescence of the existing housing stock in the U.S. To help with deep energy reduction retrofits and encourage people to start, ACI just launched the Thousand Homes Challenge. Take a look at ACI’s website. It is a great resource offering white papers and resources on how to do deep energy reduction retrofits.

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)

During this last session of Passive House Training I learned that 25-35kWh per square meter and year are acceptable, and respectable space-conditioning energy numbers for a remodeled building. At the same time, any other requirements like air-tightness do not differ from the original Passive House requirements. While a remodel that achieves 25-35 kWh per square meter and year does not pass PHPP (Passive House Planning Package) calculations, it is a substantial achievement and definitely a significant improvement over performance before the upgrade (potentially up to 80% and more energy saved).

The Passive House Institute has researched and shown, that there is tremendous value in retrofitting to Passive House standard. Adding Passive House insulation and achieving high air-tightness helps avoid condensation and due-points at the thermal bridges and inside wall assemblies, therefore protecting the existing structure far better than a lesser improvement. This also ensures healthier indoor environmental quality.

I am a building designer—I design performance but also looks. I met with Jeff Theiss—a local bike builder—for coffee this morning and had a very inspring conversation about sustainable lifestyle and green buildings. Along the lines of bike building I remembered some amazing bike designs I had seen on Discovery Channel’s Biker Build Off show a few years back. Jeff took my my description of “an elegant bike that doesn’t have anything on it that it doesn’t need” and translated it into Russel Mitchell’s Exilebikes. Why does this matter and how is this green, you may ask. Well, the simple answer is, it doesn’t and it isn’t, at least not in the realm of sustainable buildings. Where it does matter is in terms of design! More so than the bike featured in the TV show I want to build a simple house that goes with the Black Bull bike shown above. It’s simplicity is just stunning. It reminds me a bit of a Tonka toy truck but on the toy truck not all the parts are functional. I am especially fond of this incredible reduction to the maximum, as well as the bold look—in a way this bike is big and small at the same time. In my opinion, the bike says “I am bold, capable and I will last forever”. I can see a building saying the same thing and I shall find the time “to build a house to go with that”. Now if Russell only offered the Black Bull with an electric motor that could be charged with solar or wind power, we’d be all set—and I would have to find the money to buy a motorcycle.