The House that Saved the World...

Great title. The House that Saved the World is a thirteen part production featuring  Eco-Home Builders that are breaking the trail for sustainable buildings. The production will feature the different phases of project development and critical stages of construction on these integrated energy efficient homes. The owners, designers, craftsmen and crew will share their challenges and triumphs as construction moves along. For those of you that have been following our blogs, you’ll recognize Dan Whitmore’s house as one of the homes featured in the production. I...

Brooklyn Cohousing Project-Passive House...

Another well written Passive House article worthy of a post. This article is written by Ken Levenson who is an architect in Brooklyn, NY. His client, the Brooklyn Cohousing group,  chose Passive House design over other ‘green’ building standards for their project. The entire article can be read here. Below is an excerpt to whet your appetite: Passive House Retrofit Characteristics: Brooklyn Cohousing August 21st, 2009 “I recently have undertaken a building project with Brooklyn Cohousing following Passive House standards. My clients decided to...

Best Whole-House Remodel Award...

The Olympia Master Builders graciously hosted the annual Remodel Excellence Awards (REX) this past week. There were many beautiful projects submitted and it’s always a delight to see the craftsmanship of all the fine builders in Olympia. 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...

Passive House Training...

Passive House Training 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...

Passive House New Construction...

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...

Passive House Remodel Portland Oregon...

I wrote a few days ago California’s first certified Passive House remodel coming on board in July. As Passive House design picks up momentum, I thought you might enjoy reading about other projects around the nation. 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...

How to: Outdoor Kitchen...

Outdoor Kitchen Project-The Artisans Group Seems like all us PNW-ers like to do ’stuff’ outdoors, whether it’s raining or not. Fortunately, our winters are mild and the other seasons are heavenly, a fair balance, I think. We also seem to like to cook food and gather with friends. Because it’s so mild here year round, it’s an ideal place for an outdoor kitchen. An outdoor kitchen doesn’t have to be elaborate or costly. In our climate, a very basic outdoor kitchen will commonly have overhead coverage, a cooking unit, usually a grill,...

Passive House Remodel California...

I was snooping around this morning to see what’s happening out in the world with Passive House remodels. With housing stock being what it is with a big chunk of the pie dedicated to existing homes and as energy/life costs rise, Passive House remodels will quickly gain a foothold as Americans start to realize the inherent value in energy savings, comfort, and air quality. It’s true, a new Passive House would be easier to build, but, the fact remains that many of us REALLY like our current inefficient,  leaky homes. The only way to super-improve the performance...

Passive House NW Regional Meeting...

Last Friday, three of us from The Artisans Group attended the first regional meeting of Passive House Northwest. (Randy Foster, Owner, Tessa Smith PH Consultant, and me Zeta Kelly, Marketing Director.) (If you are up on these standards, skip this note in italics: Passive House standards, out of Germany, are the most rigorous energy efficiency building standards in the industry today (not to be confused with a passive solar home). A home built to Passive House standards can be certified once the completed building performance is measured and verified. As a result of ...

Mid Century Bathroom Remodel...

As the marketing person at The Artisans Group, part of my job is to coordinate photo shoots of our projects. Yesterday,  I had the opportunity to go  to a lovely bathroom remodel project we recently completed out on Cooper Point, with a 180 degree  view of Bud Bay.  The home originally started out as a cabin sometime in the early part of the last century, some time around the mid century the cabin was remodeled into a home with definitive modern architectural elements. Clean lines, large low pitched roof planes, pleasing geometry. The current homeowners had been living...