Vermont Architect – Robert Swinburne

Environmental Building News has a very thorough article on Passive house system and its relevance in North America. This is a very good and current third party state of the state of the art in energy efficient residential construction. Passive house represents an important step towards a zero energy home and meeting the 2030 challenge:The fossil fuel reduction standard for all new buildings and major renovations shall be increased to:

60% in 2010
70% in 2015
80% in 2020
90% in 2025
Carbon-neutral in 2030 (using no fossil fuel GHG emitting energy to operate)..

A lovely little quote lifted from BSI-014 “Deciding on Energy Priorities when Building New” from Buildingscience.com

Hence, if you doubt energy prices are going to triple over the next 25 years, and have a hunch that PVs will soon get cheap enough to compete with grid-supplied coal power, you might choose to skip the ground-source heat pump, R75 attic insulation and R25 basement insulation, HRV, and LED lights in your next house design. If your hunch is wrong, and energy prices double over the next ten years, or if natural gas becomes very expensive, the owner has a number of significant, low-cost, and easy-to-implement energy-saving upgrades available. For around $5000-7500 all of these changes, except the GSHP, could be implemented in a typical 2200 square foot house. And perhaps just as importantly, ensuring that the design includes a good area of sloped unshaded south-facing roof provides the future occupant of the house the potential to add PV and/or solar hot water.

Building Science.com - I am ashamed at my oversight. This is an amazing organization. They are central to the residential building industry and if one were to manage to read their entire website, one would have received quite an education. I have referred to them for years when I have a question or need a good explanation for a client but forgot to add them into my links in this blog.