Passive House
Energy Efficient Front Doors
It is striking that despite the many green building going on in the US that there still remains some blaring gaps in our knowledge and available products.
I encountered another of these gaps recently in my search for a good front door for a Brooklyn Passive House style brownstone. I was looking for something super energy [...]
Hybrid House Book
Broadly speaking there are two kinds of green building books: one looks to the latest scientific innovations for solutions and the other looks to revive ancient techniques. Lets call them the futurists and the traditionalists.
In the futurists camp you have high tech, in the traditionalists you have low tech.
Futurists design houses with complex energy calculations. [...]
HRV / ERV Efficiency
With our new Passive House building standard a key component of our green brownstone renovations are the ERV or HRV, or Energy Recovery Ventilator and Heat Recovery Ventilator.
Both units perform the same task of clearing the house of stale air and providing it with fresh air from the outside. In a “normal” brownstone this task [...]
CEPHEUS – Living Comfort Without Heating
The book CEPHEUS – Living Comfort Without Heating is actually the compilation of Passive House (PH) results for buildings in Central Europe. They turned their findings into a book to give a great overview of different houses with the one common element of being Passive House.
As a Brooklyn Passive House contractor I found it very [...]
Passive House Defined
The term Passive House comes from Germany. It is not to be confused with passive solar heating or cooling, although that plays a part.
From the German Passiv Haus site:
A passive house is a building in which a comfortable interior climate can be maintained without active heating and cooling systems (Adamson 1987 and Feist 1988). The [...]
GardenFork.TV Visits Brooklyn Green Show House
My friend Eric Gunnar Rochow from the great show GardenFork.TV came by the Brooklyn Green Show House to see our green renovation progress. If you are interested in a five minute tour of the show house with me and Eric check this out.
GarenFork.TV is a cool show where Eric combines wholesome living with intelligent insight. [...]
Brooklyn Passive House
I’ve been discussing a lot with my colleagues how best to reach Passive House standards in a green Brooklyn brownstone renovation. Passive House (a German building system not to be confused with passive solar) is a good benchmark because if you do it correctly you really don’t need a heating system.
Here is one comment [...]
Passive House in Brooklyn’s Space Craved Brownstones
How feasible is it to green renovate a Brooklyn Brownstone along Passive House standards? After looking into it the main issue I see is the lack of space. A brownstone has a fixed building line, usually something along the dimensions of 20×40 feet. At least a foot of that is taken up by bricks, leaving [...]
Insight PassivHaus Becomes Active—Further Commentary on PassivHaus
Here is an interesting Comment by John Straube, which was responded to by the Passiv Haus people here.. His comments give good US insights into a German standard. His points are that Passiv Haus standards are not brand new and that US and Canada have had them for a while. Not that many have implemented [...]
Passive House
The Passive House building system from Germany is one of my favorite benchmarks. I have yet to renovate a Brooklyn brownstone by Passive House standards, although the Brooklyn Green Show House of ours comes very close.
We hope to do a Passive House brownstone renovation very soon though.
A recent article by John Straube of Building Science [...]
Passive House
The Passive House guidelines are the best benchmark I know of right now for building a house. According to the Passive House Planning Package, there is no requirement that a house be designed by an official Passive House Consultant.
The main requirements are:
1) Maximum of 15 kWh/(m^2a) heat load
2) Maximum of 0.6 ACH(50) air [...]