In his video clips he features the homeowner of the first certified Passive House built in Germany 20 years ago. Other clips include featured projects, and an interview with the founder of the Passive House standard.

Below is a short write up by Hoxie highlighting his documentary. Btw, the film was selected for the 2011 Architecture and Design Film Festival.

Video: The Passive House Revolution By Charlie Hoxie

• January 9th, 2012
• By txchnologist

Below is a wonderful story about how smart energy use and great design came together for one 13 year old boy from New York?

[The American Museum of Natural History presented Aiden with The Young Naturalist Award for his research. Click here for the original article . Also of note: Aiden has since been granted a provisional patent for his work]

ARTICLE

“I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees for they have no tongues.”?—Dr. Seuss (The Lorax)

People see winter as a cold and gloomy time in nature. The days are short. Snow blankets the ground. Lakes and ponds freeze, and animals scurry to burrows to wait for spring. The rainbow of red, yellow and orange autumn leaves has been blown away by the wind turning trees into black skeletons that stretch bony fingers of branches into the sky. It seems like nature has disappeared.

But when I went on a winter hiking trip in the Catskill Mountains in New York, I noticed something strange about the shape of the tree branches. I thought trees were a mess of tangled branches, but I saw a pattern in the way the tree branches grew. I took photos of the branches on different types of trees, and the pattern became clearer.

The branches seemed to have a spiral pattern that reached up into the sky. I had a hunch that the trees had a secret to tell about this shape. Investigating this secret led me on an expedition from the Catskill Mountains to the ancient Sanskrit poetry of India; from the 13th-century streets of Pisa, Italy, and a mysterious mathematical formula called the “divine number” to an 18th-century naturalist who saw this mathematical formula in nature; and, finally, to experimenting with the trees in my own backyard.

My investigation asked the question of whether there is a secret formula in tree design and whether the purpose of the spiral pattern is to collect sunlight better. After doing research, I put together test tools, experiments and design models to investigate how trees collect sunlight. At the end of my research project, I put the pieces of this natural puzzle together, and I discovered the answer. But the best part was that I discovered a new way to increase the efficiency of solar panels at collecting sunlight!

My investigation started with trying to understand the spiral pattern. I found the answer with a medieval mathematician and an 18th-century naturalist. In 1209 in Pisa, Leonardo of Pisano, also known as “Fibonacci,” used his skills to answer a math puzzle about how fast rabbits could reproduce in pairs over a period of time. While counting his newborn rabbits, Fibonacci came up with a numerical sequence. Fibonacci used patterns in ancient Sanskrit poetry from India to make a sequence of numbers starting with zero (0) and one (1). Fibonacci added the last two numbers in the series together, and the sum became the next number in the sequence. The number sequence started to look like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34… . The number pattern had the formula Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2 and became the Fibonacci sequence. But it seemed to have mystical powers! When the numbers in the sequence were put in ratios, the value of the ratio was the same as another number, ?, or “phi,” which has a value of 1.618. The number “phi” is nicknamed the “divine number” (Posamentier). Scientists and naturalists have discovered the Fibonacci sequence appearing in many forms in nature, such as the shape of nautilus shells, the seeds of sunflowers, falcon flight patterns and galaxies flying through space. What’s more mysterious is that the “divine” number equals your height divided by the height of your torso, and even weirder, the ratio of female bees to male bees in a typical hive! (Livio)

In 1754, a naturalist named Charles Bonnet observed that plants sprout branches and leaves in a pattern, called phyllotaxis. Bonnet saw that tree branches and leaves had a mathematical spiral pattern that could be shown as a fraction. The amazing thing is that the mathematical fractions were the same numbers as the Fibonacci sequence! On the oak tree, the Fibonacci fraction is 2/5, which means that the spiral takes five branches to spiral two times around the trunk to complete one pattern. Other trees with the Fibonacci leaf arrangement are the elm tree (1/2); the beech (1/3); the willow (3/8) and the almond tree (5/13) (Livio, Adler).

I now had my first piece of the puzzle but it did not answer the question, Why do trees have this pattern? I had the next mystery to solve. I designed experiments that attacked this question, but first I had to do field tests to understand the spiral pattern.

I built a test tool to measure the spiral pattern of different species of trees. I took a clear plastic tube and attached two circle protractors that could be rotated up and down the tube. When I put a test branch in the tube, I aligned the zero degree mark on one compass to match up with the first offshoot branch. I then moved and rotated the second compass up to the next branch spot. The second compass measured the angle between the two spots. I recorded the measurement and then moved up the branch step-by-step.

I collected samples of branches that fell to the ground from different trees, and I made measurements. My results confirmed that the Fibonacci sequence was behind the pattern.

But the question of why remained. I knew that branches and leaves collected sunlight for photosynthesis, so my next experiments investigated if the Fibonacci pattern helped. I needed a way to measure and compare the amount of sunlight collected by the pattern. I came up with the idea that I could copy the pattern of branches and leaves with solar panels and compare it with another pattern.

I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was 5 volts. The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely as possible.

I needed to compare the tree design pattern’s performance. I made a second model that was based on how man-made solar panel arrays are designed. The second model was a flat-panel array that was mounted at 45 degrees. It had the same type and number of PV solar panels as the tree design, and the same peak voltage. My idea was to track how much sunlight each model collected under the same conditions by watching how much voltage each model made.

I measured the performance of each model with a data logger. This recorded the voltage that each model made over a period of time. The data logger could download the measurements to a computer, and I could see the results in graphs.

I set the two models in the same location in my backyard facing the southern sky and measured their output over a couple of months. I moved the test location around to vary the conditions.

The sunlight conditions were also important. I started my measurements in October and tested my models through December. At that time of year the winter solstice was coming, and the Sun was moving into a lower declination in the sky. The amount of sunshine was shortening. So I was testing the Fibonacci pattern under the most difficult circumstances for collecting sunlight.

I compared my results on graphs, and they were interesting! The Fibonacci tree design performed better than the flat-panel model. The tree design made 20% more electricity and collected 2 1/2 more hours of sunlight during the day. But the most interesting results were in December, when the Sun was at its lowest point in the sky. The tree design made 50% more electricity, and the collection time of sunlight was up to 50% longer!

I had my first evidence that the Fibonacci pattern helped to collect more sunlight. But now I had to go back and figure out why it worked better. I also began to think that I might have found a new way to use nature to make solar panels work better.

I learned that making power from the Sun is not easy. The photovoltaic (“PV”) array is the way to do it. A photovoltaic array is a linked collection of multiple solar cells. Making electricity requires as much sunlight as possible. At high noon on a cloudless day at the equator, the power of the Sun is about 1 kilowatt per square meter at the Earth’s surface (Komp). Sounds easy to catch some rays, right? But the Sun doesn’t stand still. It moves through the sky, and the angle of its rays in regions outside the equator change with the seasons. This makes collecting sunlight tricky for PV arrays. Some PV arrays use tracking systems to keep the panels pointing at the Sun, but these are expensive and need maintenance. So most PV arrays use fixed mounts that face south (or north if you are below the equator).

Fixed mounts have other problems. When a PV array is shaded by another object, like a tree or a house, the solar panels get backed up with electrons like cars in a traffic jam, and the current drops. Dirt, rain, snow and changes in temperature can also hurt electricity production by as much as half! (Komp)

I began to see how nature beat this problem. Collecting sunlight is key to the survival of a tree. Leaves are the solar panels of trees, collecting sunlight for photosynthesis. Collecting the most sunlight is the difference between life and death. Trees in a forest are competing with other trees and plants for sunlight, and even each branch and leaf on a tree are competing with each other for sunlight. Evolution chose the Fibonacci pattern to help trees track the Sun moving in the sky and to collect the most sunlight even in the thickest forest.

I saw patterns that showed that the tree design avoided the problem of shade from other objects. Electricity dropped in the flat-panel array when shade fell on it. But the tree design kept making electricity under the same conditions. The Fibonacci pattern allowed some solar panels to collect sunlight even if others were in shade. Plus I observed that the Fibonacci pattern helped the branches and leaves on a tree to avoid shading each other.

My conclusions suggest that the Fibonacci pattern in trees makes an evolutionary difference. This is probably why the Fibonacci pattern is found in deciduous trees living in higher latitudes. The Fibonacci pattern gives plants like the oak tree a competitive edge while collecting sunlight when the Sun moves through the sky.

My investigation has created more questions to answer. Why are there different Fibonacci patterns among trees? Is one pattern more efficient than another? More testing of other types of trees is needed. I am testing different Fibonacci patterns now. I am improving my tree design model to see if it could be a new way of making panel arrays. My most recent tries with a bigger test model were successful.

The tree design takes up less room than flat-panel arrays and works in spots that don’t have a full southern view. It collects more sunlight in winter. Shade and bad weather like snow don’t hurt it because the panels are not flat. It even looks nicer because it looks like a tree. A design like this may work better in urban areas where space and direct sunlight can be hard to find.

But the best part of what I learned was that even in the darkest days of winter, nature is still trying to tell us its secrets!

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adler, I., D. Barabe, and R.V. Jean. “A History of the Study of Phyllotaxis.” Annals of Botany 80 (1997): 231-244.
Atela, P., C. Golé, and S. Hotton. “A Dynamical System for Plant Pattern Formation: A Rigorous Analysis.” Journal of Nonlinear Science 12.6 (2002): 641-676.
Brockman, C. Frank. Trees of North America: A Guide to Field Identification. New York: Golden Guides from St. Martin’s Press, 2001.
Geisel, Theodor Seuss (Dr. Seuss). The Lorax. New York: Random House Publishers, 1971.
Jean, Roger V. Phyllotaxis: A Systematic Study in Plant Morphogenesis. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Komp, Richard J. Practical Photovoltaics: Electricity from Solar Cells. 3rd. ed. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Aatec Publications, 2001.
Livio, Mario. The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World’s Most Astonishing Number. New York: Broadway Books, 2002.
Posamentier, A., and I. Lehman. The (Fabulous) Fibonacci Numbers. New York: Prometheus Books, 2007.

Article reposted below.

Tessa Smith and Randy Foster, owners of The Artisans Group (photo ©BE)

Women making marks in construction

Companies growing despite unique challenges of the industry

August 22, 2011

Holly Smith Peterson

Business Examiner

Builder Tessa Smith was walking toward one of her project sites when a worker on the roof whistled at her in admiration.

Surprised, she looked up at him. And then she laughed.

“I asked him, ‘Do you know who I am?’” she said. “He shook his head. So, I said, ‘I suggest you find out.’”

That’s because Smith isn’t just a builder. At 24, she’s a talented young designer and one of only 200 certified Passive House consultants in the United States.

As the co-owner of the Artisans Group construction firm in Olympia, she also was in charge of the project.

“My dad taught drafting at a local community college, so I was always on construction sites,” she said. “It’s definitely in the blood.”

Such blatant sexism, she said, is one of the challenges she occasionally encounters as a woman running construction projects. But she’s willing to brush aside such treatment for a bigger cause: advancing sustainable building in the South Sound.

“I don’t just have the issue of being a woman,” Smith said. “I’m a really young woman. So, sometimes subcontractors who aren’t clued in want to think of me as just a designer — which is traditionally the more female role in the industry. But I’m also as involved in the construction side of things as my business partner.”

Smith knows that although she’s a rarity in her industry, the gender gap is closing quickly.

National trends show, as stated in the “2011 State of Women-Owned Business Report” by American Express, that there are about 8.1 million women-owned businesses in the United States. That number has increased 50 percent in the past four years. In addition, 29 percent of companies are now female-run, generating $1.3 trillion and supporting 7.7 million jobs.

The study also found that construction and mining were the top two fields in which the combined growth of businesses and revenue for women-owned firms outpaced the industry growth level. Since 2003, there’s also been a 41 percent rise in women-owned construction businesses, a rate that trails only those in administrative and waste services (47 percent) and education (54 percent).

In the South Sound, the number of women in the construction industry is rising in all sectors, according to the Association of General Contractors in Seattle.

“I can say that women are still the minority in construction,” said Jerry VanderWood, AGC’s Washington communications director, “but I think there’s been a definite uptick, particularly in the younger generation.”

Still, as Smith has encountered, there are many hurdles for women in construction to leap, even in this region.

Patti Candiotta, owner of Pease Construction in Lakewood, also has faced some unique situations.

“It’s often a challenge for women in construction to be taken seriously,” she said. “We have to work harder in some situations at gaining trust.”

Although she’s been in the business for 28 years, Candiotta said that she sometimes still feels that she has to prove herself.

“Because I’ve built up a very good reputation, it’s not so much of an issue as it was in the beginning,” she said. “But that’s why it’s important for any woman in this business to have a good support system. And also to be a part of trade associations to stay abreast of situations going on, and for networking.”

Cynthia Densmore, co-owner of Oregon-based Cascade Tower & Rigging, has worked on construction projects throughout the South Sound, including the University of Washington Tacoma library.  She entered the field through her husband’s company and is now in charge of the finances and contracting.

“I came into this only as a wife, but I’ve become more aware of women in this business over the years,” Densmore said. “There’s a lot of opportunity, and it’s an exciting place to be. It’s a very dynamic industry that comes with a sense of accomplishment, because at the end of the day you’ve built something.”

For women interested in working in construction, she recommends looking into apprenticeships or programs through Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

“It’s a great way to become invested in the trade and to actually learn local business,” Densmore said. “And a lot of people get into construction through the military, which has training in all branches — ‘hard hats to helmets,’ as they say.”

While VanderWood said that the majority of women in construction in the South Sound are either part of a family business, like Densmore, or working in areas like safety or finance, he agreed that more opportunities are available in all sectors.

“My observation in talking with other folks in the AGC, and being at gatherings where people are talking about what they do, is that while women are still definitely in the minority, those numbers are growing,” he said. “Ten years ago, in a meeting of 20 people, there may have been just one or two women. Now, there might be eight or 10. I would suspect that official statistics would bear that out as well.”

And there are benefits to being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry, Smith said.

“I’m often seen as a novelty,” she said. “And that’s not a bad thing. A lot of clients prefer a young, fresh perspective and someone who’s very familiar with current issues and techniques. Also, when it comes to homes, the woman is often the person driving the major decisions, so a more feminine approach is more compatible — and definitely more appreciated.”

Writer Holly Smith Peterson can be reached at hpeterson@BusinessExaminer.com.

Read full article here.

Excerpt:

This blog, a report on my three-day visit to Passivhaus construction sites and the Passive House Northwest conference in Washington state, picks up where last week’s blog left off.

After leaving the North residence job site, we drove to the Freas house, another construction site in Olympia. The steep site has a dramatic view of Budd Inlet, an arm of Puget Sound, to the west.

Below are a couple articles written by Wendy Koch for USA Today. The first article highlights visits with PH owners and what the standard requires for certification. The second article features the author’s new home which was recently built to standards defined by the US Green Building Council, out of curiosity, she wanted to see how her new super green home compares to the PH standard, if you’re curious, it’s worth the read.

Article 1 | Passive Houses Aggressively Reduce Energy

Excerpt

“It’s like living in a glass thermos,” says John Eckfeldt, a physician who built one of these “passive” homes in frigid Isabella, Minn. He says the inside temperature is so even that if he sees snow falling, he’s surprised to realize it must be cold outside.

Article 2 | Does My Green House Meet the Standard?

Excerpt

“My house, nearing completion in Falls Church, Va., wasn’t designed to meet the rigorous passive standard, which focuses solely on energy efficiency, but rather the top rating of a more general program by the U.S. Green Building Council. Yet it has many of the same features of certified passive homes, so I figured: why not try?”

Check out the off-line article below about a stylish, modest-contemporary home built in Louisiana. The footprint of the home is 800 square feet, but the living area is actually much larger. The story is interesting and the design could be ideal for an small infill lot in an urban setting.

Just more fun design ideas!

“There’s no doubt that the Passive House approach works. Experience shows that buildings constructed to the standard do use dramatically less energy than conventional structures. They offer excellent air quality, resist excessive solar heating, and maintain comfortable levels of temperature and humidity with little effort on the part of their occupants. ”

(author’s note: Below, Gibson refers to “hiring a Passive House consultant is sort of like bringing in a mechanical engineer to work with the builder and architect to design the heating system“. This is where the rubber meets the road when selecting a builder. This statement creates a good example for hiring a design + build company which has a certified Passive House consultant on the design team. In our case, having a certified PH consultant as our lead designer, we’ve found this to greatly streamline our entire development process which ultimately keeps costs down ).

article continued…

Does certification matter? Alan Gibson is among the few builders who have completed a certified Passive House project without formal training. The three-bedroom SIP structure, built at a cost of $160 per square foot, was constructed as a prototype for a 36-unit co-housing project that’s still in the planning stage, and it now serves as office space for Gibson and his partner.

“Hiring a Passive House consultant is sort of like bringing in a mechanical engineer to work with the builder and architect to design the heating system,” Gibson says. “But we decided not to do it that way. We’ve used a lot of energy-modeling software, so we just got the PHPP and started filling out the spreadsheet. The training would definitely have made it easier, but we were able to do it on our own.”

Gibson’s company, G-O Logic Homes, has other Passive House projects in the works as well. It was recently awarded a contract to build a Passive House–certified residence hall at a local college. “We wanted to be the first Passive House in Maine, and we get a certain amount of mileage from that,” Gibson says.

Still, he doubts that the term “Passive House” is familiar enough to make much of an impression on the public at large. “What really gets people excited is hearing that we can build them a house they can heat with the equivalent of a couple of hair dryers,” he says. “If you said anything about kilowatt hours per square meter, they’d say, ‘huh?’” For the time being, Gibson suggests, builders in some markets might consider using the Passive House building methods and planning software without seeking certification – and without holding energy use to the extremely low level called for by the standard.

“If someone came along and wanted us to build them a certified Passive House we’d be happy to do that,” Gibson says. “But if someone had a lesser energy goal, we’d be happy to do that, too.” It’s possible, he observes, to fall far short of the strict Passive House standard and still have a very efficient house. “I did some numbers once, and as I recall, the difference between meeting the standard for heating and using half again as much as it allowed was a matter of something like $100 worth of heat over the course of a year.”

Paddling into the mainstream. As freshly credentialed Passive House consultants continue to emerge from the PHIUS training program, it will be interesting to see what the next few years bring. Klingenberg believes that the steady increase in the number of certified consultants will jump-start demand for their services. “Consultants have an interest in getting a certified project done,” she says. “To keep their certification, they need to finish a project within two years. We want to focus on training people who will use it.”

The strategy seems to be paying off. According to Klingenberg, more than 100 Passive Houses are under construction or in the process of having their plans pre-certified. “Things are happening fast,” she says. “It took many years to get to this point in Europe. In the U.S., growth is already exponential.”

There are an estimated 25,000 Passive Houses in Europe, most of them in Germany and Scandinavia. While even that is a relatively modest number, it has attracted the attention of building-product manufacturers. Passive House builders in Europe have a wide range of mission-specific products and material at their disposal, such as foams, tapes, sealants, and spectacularly well-insulated (and expensive) wood-framed windows. Hvac equipment designed to handle extremely low heating and cooling loads is also widely available overseas, including so-called “magic box” appliances, which combine an air-source heat pump, a heat-recovery ventilator, and a hot-water tank in one engineered package. Passive House boosters are hoping that a similar “mainstreaming” process could happen here, and that it will lead to thousands of U.S. and Canadian Passive Houses within a very few years. – Jon Vara

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“There’s no doubt that the Passive House approach works. Experience shows that buildings constructed to the standard do use dramatically less energy than conventional structures. They offer excellent air quality, resist excessive solar heating, and maintain comfortable levels of temperature and humidity with little effort on the part of their occupants. ”

article continued…

Planning, certification, and training. During the planning phase, Passive House builders rely heavily on energy modeling software called the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP). It’s a detailed spreadsheet that accepts user-supplied input values for insulation, glazing, framing characteristics, hvac equipment, and other characteristics, merges them with data on local temperatures and solar radiation, and provides an assessment of the expected energy performance of the completed building.

“The planning package is really complex,” says Belfast, Maine, builder Alan Gibson, whose design-build company recently completed the first certified Passive House in the state. “I’ve seen some architects look at it and just throw up their hands, and I have my own energy-loss and solar-gain spreadsheet that’s much simpler to use. But the PHPP is super detailed – it goes to the level of calculating the heat loss between your hot-water tank and individual faucets.”

The PHPP is available from PHIUS for $225. A simplified trial version can be downloaded for free from the PHIUS website at passivehouse.us/passivehouse/designtools.html.

In addition to supplying software and acting as a general clearinghouse for information, PHIUS certifies (for a variable fee) the energy performance of buildings that have been tested and found to meet its standard. The organization also conducts nine-day training sessions -in Urbana and other places across the U.S. and Canada – in the use of its software and energy-efficient construction methods. Accreditation as a certified Passive House consultant is available to participants who complete the training program – which costs about $2,000 – and pass an exam. According to PHIUS founder and director Katrin Klingenberg, more than 350 people have so far completed the training, among them architects, designers, builders, and more than a few homeowners.

Technically, it’s not necessary to take the training program to build a certified Passive House. Anyone can buy the planning software, use it to build a structure that meets the standard, and have its performance verified by PHIUS. In practice, though, that’s seldom done, and it’s not encouraged by the organization. “We try not to do that anymore,” says Klingenberg. “It’s been done successfully, but it tends to require a lot of hand-holding from us.”

Finding a niche. There’s no doubt that the Passive House approach works. Experience shows that buildings constructed to the standard do use dramatically less energy than conventional structures. They offer excellent air quality, resist excessive solar heating, and maintain comfortable levels of temperature and humidity with little effort on the part of their occupants.

For builders struggling to keep their businesses afloat in difficult times, all of that is secondary to a more fundamental question: Is climbing aboard the Passive House bandwagon a sound business decision? With only a tiny handful of Passive Houses in the U.S. so far (fewer than 20, by most counts), it’s much too soon to draw any firm conclusions. But according to several seasoned builders who have recently completed Passive House projects of their own, the answer is a cautious “yes.”

Salem, Ore., custom home builder Blake Bilyeu enrolled in a Passive House consultant training course offered in Portland in the summer of 2009. “A client had already asked us to design and build a Passive House,” he says. “I actually did the design work for the house as part of the nine-day training session.” The bulk of the training program, Bilyeu notes, was devoted to the nuts and bolts of working with the PHPP software, with much less coverage of hands-on building methods.

Fortunately, Blake and his father, Larry, had already been building high-performance homes for a number of years, including a LEED Platinum home and another built to the Oregon High Performance Home standard. As a result, Blake found the actual construction to be fairly straightforward. “We’ve built plenty that are a lot better than code or Energy Star, and this one just took us a little further,” he says. The Bilyeus’ framing sub was already familiar with the system chosen for the Passive House – double-stud walls on a modified crawlspace foundation, with a raised-heel truss roof. “A big part of making it work out was looking for methods that were most cost-effective and not foreign to our subs,” he says.

Construction of the three-bedroom home began in late August 2009 and was completed in May of the following year. According to Bilyeu, the $300,000 home was one of the company’s more profitable recent projects, which are typically priced between $140 and $175 per square foot (at $159 per foot, the Passive House fell squarely in the middle of that range). “We didn’t give it away for the experience of building one,” he says. “Passive House isn’t going to help anyone if it’s not affordable or profitable for the builder. There are so many standard homes on the market that you can’t build a new one for the same price even without a profit margin. Right now, you really need a niche.”

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