The Scope of Green Building Q&A...

A recent inquiry on our website rendered some great feedback from our designer, Tessa Smith, worthy of sharing: 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,...

Passive House Heating 101-Energy Efficie...

Passive Houses are so energy efficient, it often it takes mentioning a few times for the reality of this statement to sink in: “Passive Houses are built without central heating systems“. It’s so curious and novel and almost unbelievable, in this day and age where the greatest part of our monthly utility bill goes toward space conditioning. How this actually works is quite simple when compared to a thermos bottle, since a thermos is so well insulated the contents retain most of its heat, sidestepping the need to constantly produce new heat to keep the...

Passive House Upfront Costs & Payba...

Ultra- Energy Efficient Home-Passive House We get loads of questions about Passive House, but the two bottom line biggies are: How affordable is the upgrade to design to the Passive House standard? What is the typical payback period? The question of money, and fortunately the strongest selling point of the Passive House  approach! As for affordability, the two main aspects that must be considered are the upfront construction costs and the operating costs. The upfront costs can be fairly modest ranging from 5% to 10% on average. In a Passive House there are no...

Passive House Video...

This is a great little video feature by CNN about a Swedish Passive House and what it’s like to live in this ultra efficient...

Passive House Fine Home Building Article...

For those of you that want a snap shot of what it means when someone says “Passive House Design“, this is the article to read. 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...

Passive House-Olympian Article...

John Dodge, of The Olympian, wrote an article about us that appeared on the front page of last Sunday’s paper. You can read the online article here. This is reposted. Passive homes for those committed to the environment THE OLYMPIAN | • Published May 16, 2010 The next generation of energy-efficient homes is about to make its debut in South Sound. Passive homes is an architectural design that eliminates the need for a central heating and cooling system in a building through super insulation, airtight construction that wipes out thermal bridges, and ...

The Sustainable Future of Lighting...

Most of us are familiar with Solatube type passive daylighting, which is functionally nice, but for my eye an aesthetic compromise. I was looking over the Green Source magazine this morning, whose audience is mostly commercial, but this product review caught my eye because it’s this kind of sustainable technology I believe we’ll see in homes in the very near future. It’s the next generation of bringing natural daylighting in to spaces that otherwise need some type of energy-intensive electrical lighting. Parans daylighting system provides natural daylight...

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 ...

Passive House Design-The Heating System...

We talk about Passive House quite a lot and will likely continue since it’s one of our favorite subjects. I’m excited to report that Tessa, our designer, has three Passive Houses in Design Development right now and we receive questions daily from folks cruising the web. The Passive House ‘buzz’ that is starting to happen is very energizing for all of us at The Artisans Group! I have a favorite question that gets asked in response to when a person discovers that a Passive House requires no heating system. No heating system is so revolutionary a...

How is Energy Efficiency Measured?...

HOW IS ENERGY EFFICIENCY MEASURED?* If you’ve read my previous posts on the origin of Passive House, you’ll know it originated out of Europe and the Passive House standards were born of the Low Energy House standards. The chart below references European homes and is in kWh per square meters per year, but you can imagine use patterns are not extremely dissimilar in the U.S. On the other hand, since we are notoriously heavy energy consumers, the energy savings indicated would be that much more graphic! Energy efficiency ratings of cars are measured in miles per...