Query:

After doing my homework, I believe the best green building standard is the ultra-efficient Passive House. That said, I know Passive House focus’ mainly on energy use (or conservation rather). Because designing and building a house is a complicated and involved process, I want to consider a full scope of ‘green’ while I’m at it. What else should I have in mind while I’m talking to designers and builders?

Answer:

Great Question, an enormous question, but a good one.  Let’s begin with the feasibility and design process, knowing your goals before pen ever hits paper is key.  An excellent place to begin the establishment of these goals can often be researching and selecting a recognized certification or standard to certify your project under, such as Passive House, LEED for Home, Living building challenge, Built Green, and Energy Star, for example.  Hiring the right professional designer with a much deeper background than designing to any certification is extremely relevant, but a sustainable approach is really only supported and quantified by third party documentation and review.

The quickest route to a “Green” project is through reducing operational energy (conservation essentially) my preference, for reasons of cost benefit, comfort, and longevity is Passive House, but this is just a very big piece of the pie, not the whole pie, by any means.  For a truly comprehensively sustainable project there is a lot more than just efficiency, for example, reducing potable water consumption, using durable, low emitting, recycled, locally sourced materials, non invasive and native landscaping. Some certifications are broader than others, for example a LEED for Home project I designed recognized the relationship of the site to a greater community, bus lines, parks, proximity to amenities, this reduces the dependency on driving and takes better advantage of an existing infrastructure thus encouraging a lower carbon footprint on a daily basis.  LEED for Home also awards more points for a small home than a large home, the smallest home that effectively meets your needs is always the most environmentally conscious choice.

As I mention above picking the right certification for your project is a great place to begin, and I can’t stress enough how hiring the right team to support that with experience and creativity is equally as potent. For example, not every choice on a checklist makes sense for every home, only experience can judge this, and conversely not every choice that can affect the greater impact of a home will be addressed by any single certification.  For example, I try to build a great deal of  flexibility into my designs  which offers the homeowners the greatest freedom over time as their family and needs change; with the structure in place, the house naturally evolves with the family. Invest time and resources in enduring beauty and design, something that is valuable by its design is better cared for, and so becomes as much a part of sustainability as longevity, energy consumption and social equity. Put something on the planet worthy of care, and it will be cared for.

Dear Editor-

It was strikingly dramatic for me to read John Dodge’s recent article about the Passive House movement, and even more poignant to consider that The Olympian’s readership is becoming more keenly aware of this amazing approach to energy efficient homes.  I am Tessa Smith, Certified Passive House Consultant (CPHC) at The Artisans Group.  I have the pleasure of producing home designs that we build which meet the stringent energy performance standard of Passive House.

As the article describes, Passive House is a specific approach to design and construction that yields a house 90% more efficient than a typical code built home.  Unfortunately there is a lot of confusion around whether this is just a recycled version of the passive solar movement from the seventies, or something entirely different.  Good ideas do benefit from the work of previous pioneers, and the Passive House approach does include super insulation and solar gain management.  However, Passive House is a unique and much more specific approach – it relies on the best of many advances in green building, and the approach removes the need for a large heating system, solar or otherwise.  Passive House conservation measures are so optimized that homes can be heated with as little energy as it takes to run a hair dryer.  This makes the Passive House approach applicable to any project, regardless of solar access.  The approach is the best way to meet a growing demand for affordable and energy efficient homes.

A true Passive House goes through a rigorous design process, with attention being paid to the building science of the structure related to both performance and longevity.  A Certified Passive House Consultant designs the project to be a Passive House from the start.  This maximizes efficiency and reduces the cost to construct.  The design is evaluated through a holistic and data intense modeling process, using the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), including third party verification and regulation from PHIUS (Passive House Institute of the United States).  Performance markers and verification during construction ensure the quality and final performance of your Passive House.

When I first became a CPHC, local interest was sporadic, and more often than not the first time my clients heard about Passive House was from me.  Now, interest in Passive House is being propelled by financial realities: a modest increase in the cost of construction, and a quick return on this investment.  The savings on energy bills pay off the upfront costs in a short period of time.  National interest is overwhelming, and The Artisans Group is being contacted on a regular basis by people interested in Passive House design-build projects.

In response to this rapidly growing market, I have witnessed some firms make claims of offering “passive-like” houses, as if a partial approach could possibly compare to the “real deal”!  One of the many beauties of Passive House is either you meet the criteria or you don’t, and there are no exceptions.  Beware of green washing, if a home isn’t a Certified Passive House, then it isn’t a Passive House at all.  Unless the Passive House standard is fully achieved, a quick return on investment will not be realized; partially meeting the standard will result in a less comfortable, and less efficient house, and one that is more expensive to build and own.

If you want to know more about Passive House, feel free to contact me at the Artisans Group.  You can swing by to take a peek at several Passive House projects that are currently in the design phase.  The Artisans Group will begin construction of the North Residence in July, the first in our county and the second in the state of Washington.  We will be photo-documenting the process, and updating our blogs on a weekly basis!

Authored by Jefferson Kolle, in the March edition, Fine Homebuilding did a great job featuring two new Passive House projects, one  in Massachusetts and one in Minnesota. The Minnesota project employed the use of other renewable resources, such as a photovoltaic system, to get the Passive House in a net-zero mode. Both of these projects are aesthetically beautiful homes.

The article is really a superb summary of the Passive House standard. It begins with a brief description of Passive House and covers a bit of the history. The author went on to cover the salient parts of the building envelop and air handling system. He effectively covers the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) modeling software used to remove the guesswork of performance results once the project is complete. Finally, he talks about getting accredited as a Certified Passive House Consultant.

This is an excellent piece, and concisely written. This article very effectively puts the Passive House concept into a nutshell. Complete with project photos and a labeled cutaway wall section.

The article (.pdf) can be downloaded from the Passive House US (PHIUS) website. The article is called: “The Passive House, Green without Gizmos”

Tessa, our designer, wrote a little editorial on the subject:

“Are the materials to build a Passive House the same as a traditional house?” Emphatically yes!  That is the beauty of the approach, it is open to developing technologies, but entirely achievable with common place American building materials.  The simple answer is we just end up using a bit more of those ordinary materials such as insulation and framing.  It is easy to think that a Passive House, with its 90% reduction in energy use, would employ outlandish technology, hovering tools and beams of alien light, but that is not the case.

Construction is similar in process and even material choice, the only variance being the extra care and testing taken for air tightness requirements and longevity.  The wall could still very well be composed of studs, insulation, sheathing and drywall.  How they are arranged in the assembly is where you will see the biggest difference, for example, you might have a double stud wall to eliminate thermal bridging, deeper and filled with more insulation.  The sheathing would likely be on the interior under the drywall.  Then an open diffusion fiber board would occur on the exterior of the wall in conjunction with a rain screen siding application, et Voila!  The 200 year house is born, no alien technology required.  The same kind of thinking gets applied to other assemblies and components of a Passive House, floors, roofs, etc.  Two of the places you will see a bigger difference in “typical” construction materials is the mechanical system, Heat or Energy Recovery Ventilators being the choice of the day for fresh air delivery and in some cases even space conditioning delivery.  The other being specific high performance Passive windows, it’s still looks like a typical window mind you, it is just substantially better performing.

The energy performance is the standard, how you get there is up to you, your budget, your location, your network and expertise, it is the advantage of a holistic approach.  The Germans have a larger Passive House Market than we do, and subsequently they have many construction means and methods being developed specifically to reduce cost and speed up construction, once our American market is flooded with Passive House’s we will see those same kind of leaps and strides in progress.

One of my Passive House clients and I were chatting the other day, and being intelligent, informed and excited about his own Passive House in the design process he stated, “You can drive a hybrid, or you can just not drive at all!”  In other words, you can toss technology at the “problem” or you can eliminate the problem. Passive House design simply eliminates problems.

See full Wikipedia post.

Passive House History

The Passive House standard originated from a conversation in May 1988 between Professors Bo Adamson of Lund University, Sweden, and Wolfgang Feist of the Institut für Wohnen und Umwelt (Institute for Housing and the Environment ). Their concept was developed through a number of research projects , aided by financial assistance from the German state of Hesse. The eventual building of four row houses (also known as terraced houses or town homes) was designed for four private clients by architects professor Bott, Ridder and Westermeyer.

The first Passivhaus buildings were built in Darmstadt, Germany, in 1990, and occupied the following year. In September 1996 the Passivhaus-Institut was founded in Darmstadt to promote and control the standard. Since then, thousands of Passive Houses have been built, to an estimate of 15,000 currently most of them in Germany and Austria, with others in various countries worldwide.

After the concept had been validated at Darmstadt, with space heating 90% less than required for a standard new building of the time, the ‘Economical Passive Houses Working Group’ was created in 1996. This developed the planning package (modeling software) and initiated the production of the novel components that had been used, notably the windows and the high-efficiency ventilation systems. Meanwhile further passive houses were built in Stuttgart (1993), Naumburg, Hesse, Wiesbaden, and Cologne (1997) .

The products developed for the Passivhaus were further commercialized during and following the European Union sponsored CEPHEUS* project, which proved the concept in 5 European countries over the winter of 2000-2001.

In North America the first Passivhaus was built in Urbana, Illinois in 2003,  and the first to be certified was built near Bemidji, Minnesota in Waldsee, the German camp of the Concordia Language Villages in 2006.
The world’s first standardised pre-fabricated passive house was built in Ireland in 2005 by Scandinavian Homes, a Swedish company that has since also built passive houses in England and Poland.

*Mike Karnegis, one of the primary leaders in Passive House in this country, confirmed for me that the Wikipedia information is accurate.

We were greatly pleased to win the award for the Best Whole House Remodel in the $150,000-500,000 category. The home we submitted was a charming and modest, albeit, funky waterfront home that was due for some serious attention. I wrote up a three part posting on it a few months back if you are interested in the full story.

The short story was that it badly needed a new roof; time had it’s way with the old one and the framing was severely compromised, also  the kitchen and baths were seriously outdated as were all surfaces: floors, walls, ceilings. The home is located on a stunning east facing parcel that stares Mt. Rainier in the eye… it’s a fabulous location!

The home owners wanted to keep the project in perspective with the modest nature of the existing home. The result is a very fine example of how excellent design can bring together smart selections based in value. Once in place, all the individual pieces culminate in a space that is refined and sophisticated yet personable and retreat-like.

We all really enjoyed this project, and the client”s were outstanding and very engaged in the process.

Below are a few ‘After’ images, for more pics, check out the full story.

By the way, this home will be in the Tour of Homes this summer, hopefully you’ll get a chance to come out and see it… it’s worth a visit!

By Randy Foster, Owner, The Artisans Group

I recently completed the first three days of training as a Certified Passive House Consultant last week.  During the first day of class, I was struck by the fact that there are a lot of really smart people studying the Passive House approach.  I was impressed by that, and I felt really honored to have been accepted into this year’s training program!  Each of the 25 students in my class seemed to fully grasp the fact that designing and building a Passive House is rooted in attention paid to many small details culminating in a very simple yet ultra high-performance home.

Passive House is about the creation of buildings that use less than 20% of the energy consumed by typical buildings; buildings that offer superior indoor air quality and comfort, buildings that are inexpensive to own and simple to operate.

The training program is my first in-depth look at the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), which is a house modeling software, a compilation of research and development tools 20 + years in the making – tools that are integrated into a somewhat massive computer model that allow a Certified PH Consultant to select and balance each detail of a Passive House.  The model allows an experienced user the specific ability to drive down the cost of the home being designed, while identifying the details that must be retained if a Passive House project is to be successful. Once a Passive House is built, in order for it to be certified, it must pass specific performance tests, the PHPP is the most precise tool available to design for a certifiable outcome.

The Artisans Group currently has three Passive House projects in design development, created by our Certified Passive House Consultant, Tessa Smith. It’s really very exciting to see the market ready and eager to accept these standards. It’s not a tough decision once people get a sense for the comfort, beauty, endurance, performance and amazingly short payback of a Passive House, relative to a code-built home.

For more information about the Passive House standards, go to the PHIUS website.

I will report back occasionally as our projects become more fully developed!

Randy

Passive House Design- The Artisans Group

This is a link to a short article in USA Today. It’s about a recently certified Passive House in Salt Lake City. Passive House design can take on many architectural styles to suit the varied tastes out there, (note the Portland Remodel post), this Salt Lake house embodies a clean simplicity that ‘feels’ good to look at.

The homeowners started a project blog that is fun to look at, especially the performance numbers if you are into that sort of thing. One of the primary numbers Passive House nerds like to discuss is ‘how many ACH?’ which translates to “How many air changes per hour go through the house when a blower door test is conducted at 50 pascals”… this one comes in at .47… not bad.

To learn more about passive house design please visit the Passive House Institute US.

Here is an article about a 1997 Portland based home that was remodeled to Passive stands in 2009.

Coincidentally, the owner of this home was at our regional Passive House meeting a few weeks ago as a speaker, talking about the process of remodeling his relatively new home to a high performance Passive House. In closing, he was asked what it’s like now that the project is complete… he replied, “it’s boring… the house doesn’t do anything any more, no noises, no strange drafts to track down, no fiddling with the thermostat…”

Original article here.

Oprah Winfry Earth Day show includes look at Portland passive home

By Bridget A. Otto, The Oregonian

April 22, 2010, 3:41AM

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The Everhart’s 1997 home they retrofit to meet strict high-efficiency building standards.ln the summer of 2008, Tad Everhart decided to attend training at the Passive House Institute US in Urbana, Ill., to become certified as a passive-house consultant.

He then turned around and, with the help of his brother, Garth, remodeled his 2,100-square-foot home in Southeast Portland according to passive-house building standards, which allow no more than 0.6 air changes per hour. (In comparison, an Earth Advantage home allows seven air changes per hour.)

Now, seven months since their September 2009 start date (after months of planning), the Everharts are well on their way to cutting the amount of energy their home consumes by 90 percent.

They no longer have a furnace — the family alarm clock, Maria Everhart says — and rely on “internal” heat gains, a 2,000-watt radiator in the ceiling, and a small amount of hydronic heating from the existing natural gas water heater.

The key to indoor comfort is a central ventilation system that expels warm, stagnant air through a heat-recovery ventilator, or HRV. Everhart’s HRV was shipped from the Netherlands; his super-insulated windows were manufactured by SeriousWindows, a company in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The HRV works like this: Stagnant indoor air passes by incoming streams of fresh outdoor air, and the heat transfers to the fresh-air current without mixing the two streams of air.

In addition to new windows, Everhart “coated” his home in 11-inch-thick walls created from Larsen Trusses he modified to hold sleeves of insulation made from recycled paper.

Seven months into the project, Maria Everhart says the house is living up to their expectations.

They always kept their house at 68 degrees, but now that 68 feels warmer. She laughs, knowing that sounds silly, but since there is less air movement, the house just feels cozier. It is also quieter, she says. Those thick walls have cut the noise from nearby Southeast Stark Street to nearly nothing.

She says they have yet to be able to compare their costs year-to-year fairly — some windows remained plywood through the winter — and the attic and crawl space still need more insulation.

The Everharts’ efforts to reduce their carbon footprint and live in a far more energy-efficient manner caught the attention of Oprah, who sent a crew to Portland earlier this month.

For more information:
Tad Everhart, Portland, tad.everhart@comcast.net, 503-239-8961; passivehouse.us
Two previous stories in The Oregonian on Everhart and passive homes are on the Homes & Gardens Web page.

– Bridget A. Otto