Here are three excellent Passive House resources prepared by the folks at the Passive House Institute. One is for retrofits: One for new construction: And the third for non-domestic: Eco Brooklyn is a passive house builder in New York City, where there are very few Passive House projects. The vast majority of Passive House projects are …
Here are two useful videos on Passive House principles, insulation and air tightness. Eco Brooklyn is a New York Passive House builder and we are committed to spreading Passive House information. It is good stuff, especially when combined with green building strategies of recycling and salvage. In the video you well see Tomas O’leary, our …
Passive House Principles, Insulation and Airtightness Read More »
Here is an excellent pdf on Passive House. It shows the construction methods and results of a group of Passive House buildings in Hannover, Germany, giving a great insight into how Passive House works. PEP-Info1_Passive_Houses_Kronsberg As Passive House builders in New York this information is invaluable to us. In NY we are definitely experimenting with …
We have been working on the first slated Passive House in Harlem, Manhattan, for a couple months now. It was a complete burnt out shell when we started. Since then we have cleaned it out, put in floors, stairs and a roof. Check out the pics below. [salbumthumbs=92|199,2,n,y] In this Passive House project we are …
We are building a Passive House in a Manhattan brownstone. Instead of using more synthetic materials to air seal the brick walls (crucial for PH) we are using clay. Here are some notes to a successful clay application over New York brownstone brick walls: – Use reinforcment mesh (fiberglass is best, hemp is mesh also usable, …
Since Eco Brooklyns larger projects in New York are all Passive House standard now we have become very interested in Energy Recovery Systems (ERV). An ERV passes air between the house and the outside so that there is a constant fresh supply of air in the house. This is needed since Passive Houses, and all good green …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
