Passive House at 174 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY; credit: Loadingdock5

What mixture of building systems will deliver a truly “sustainable” high rise? We’re not aware of anyone who knows the answer yet (if you do, please call). And if we don’t know where we are ultimately aiming, we may not be making the right investments now. For instance, we worry about how in the last ten years the energy performance of mechanical systems has improved while that of envelopes has generally declined (see NYC Green Codes Task Force recommendation EF3 Limit Heat Loss Through Exterior Walls).

In contrast, we are in far better shape when it comes to low-rise construction, thanks to Passive House. The standard has proven that we can achieve enormous energy reductions in homes through a combination of a well-insulated and air-sealed envelope, heat recovery ventilation, and smart use of the sun. Compared with conventional U.S. homes, Passive House is thought to reduce energy for heating and cooling by 90% and overall usage by 75%; for Energy Star, it’s a 30% overall energy reduction. This is why we wholeheartedly embrace the Passive House standard and see it as a lighthouse for where small-scale construction needs to go.

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Right, Passive House.  Left, not Passive House.  Enough said?

We hope you can join us on April 6th for a presentation and discussion of the principles of the Passive House standard.

Years of hard work by folks like Katrin Klingenberg at the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) are beginning to pay big dividends as interest in the German standard rises every day across the country.  While PHIUS handles certification of projects in the US, the Passive House Alliance has been created to advance education and outreach efforts nationally, and to support the efforts of local chapters such as our very own NY Passive House group.  This formidable local group is organizing monthly meetings and tours of local Passive House projects.  On April 6th we are lucky to have two of the real forces behind NYPH presenting the principles and methodology of the standard; Ken Levenson and Floris Buisman.

Even if you are not considering Passive House certification for your project the basic principles of the standard are sound for any building because learning about Passive House is also learning about the fundamentals of low energy design.  Every architect or engineer that learns even the most basic elements of Passive House is a small victory against the forces of darkness.

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Lloyd Alter at Treehugger offers up this excellent photograph of a passive house project in ultra-hip Williamsburg, Brooklyn showing, rather elegantly, how little heat escapes from the house compared to the adjacent structures (red is heat in the photo.)  Mr. Alter asks the salient question: Why would anyone build “any other way any more?”

The New York Passive House group has arranged a tour of the Grand Street project on January 18th.  If you think you are cool enough to walk those sidewalks I recommend you attend.  Click here for the NYPH website, then click on events for their calendar. They have some more details about the house here.

An elegantly simple introduction to the Passive House standard on the GreenSpec site.

Tom Zeller Jr. has a great piece in the Times on the introduction of the Passive House standard in the United States.  It’s a carefully researched summary of the challenges facing broad adoption of this important standard and well worth your time even if you are familiar with the issues at hand.  It really is a strong piece.  Zeller has done his homework, addresses the issues head on, does so in language lay people can follow without dumbing down the content much, and avoids the snarky “Gee-this-green-stuff-is-just-so-hard” tone that pervades so many pieces on green building in the major media.

It just so happens that our annual conference this week, Urban Green Expo, features a panel on just this subject.  It’s called “The Active State of Passive House” and includes Tomas O’Leary, Founder of the Irish Passive House Academy, who has traveled here specifically for the conference and will outline the lessons he’s learned over 15+ years of implementing the Passive House standard in Ireland.  The panel also features local luminaries in the Passive House community, architect Ken Levenson and engineer David White, as well as Brian Philips, the Philadelphia architect responsible for the “100k” house.  I hope you’ll be there.

Continuing on our recent European theme- I’ll point you to a couple articles on high performance windows from across the pond.  The first focuses on triple glazed windows, and the second on Passive House certified windows.  It’s amazing to see the difference in technology and quality of the units available from places like Germany and Sweden- most of which are triple glazed.  It’s a shame that our codes don’t require these type of windows but it’s even more of a shame how difficult it is to source them even if you want to take the plunge.  This is one of the issues we hope to address at our conference, Urban Green Expo 2010, the theme of which is Pushing the Envelope.

All the cool kids are talking about Passive House these days.  In a futile attempt to ingratiate myself with the ‘in’ crowd I’ll point all of you to this fantastic and unbelievably thorough overview of Passive House by Alex Wilson at buildinggreen.com.  Even the Daily News got in on the act last year with an article focusing on the low-tech, cost-effective aspects of the German standard.

I hope to develop some educational programs on Passive House later this year.  It has enormous potential to transform the way we think about energy use in buildings- focusing on an energy conserving envelope and airtightness, rather than expensive technologies or incentive-dependent renewables.  If you have an interest in Passive House there is a NYC meetup group that you can join here.  Jeremy Shannon, the organizer of the meetup, has his own blog on retrofitting a Brooklyn rowhouse to the Passive House standard.

Lloyd Alter at Treehugger writes on this under-construction Passivhaus project in California. Most Passivhaus projects have been in northern climates and have gone to great lengths to minimize square footage and exterior surface area (leading to squat though not always inelegant boxes.) This CA house aims to show the standard can be achieved with a more conventional (by American standards) sized home in a courtyard configuration. We’ll be following this project as it develops.