Exactly ten years ago my firm began designing our first Passive House. I had taken Passive House training in 2008 and at that time only a handful had been built. I knew that the only way to develop local interest in the approach was to actually build one. Luckily for me, Brendan O’Neill, a builder […]
Net Zero Homes
Designing for a New Distributed Energy Grid
The Global Climate Strike is on.
Our office participated in the Global Climate Strike that is happening Sept. 20th-27th. We joined thousands of people in DC to interrupt business as usual and voice our concern of inaction to the looming Climate Crisis. As well, David joined with a proportional band of citizens in East Blue Hill […]
Arlington Zero Energy Passive Progress Update 1
Weather has been a huge factor as O’Neill Development has struggled to pour concrete walls and complete backfilling in between unprecedented rainstorms. All concrete for the house proper is now in place and considerable backfilling has been accomplished. Work is now proceeding on placing footings for various site retaining walls before completion of all backfilling […]
Arlington Zero Energy Passive progress: footings in place
After extensive excavation on a difficult site, the footings were poured this week, and as I write this post, the formwork for the basement walls is going up. What makes the site so difficult is the steep slope and the very little room onsite for equipment and storage of earth. The procedure for the footings […]
Work begins on our newest Net Zero home
Site work has begun on our newest net zero home. The builder is O’Neill Development, with whom we have worked on all of our Passive Houses. The first step was to de-construct the original house, in which the owners had lived for the past twenty years. De-construction is being completed this weekend by Deconstruction Services, […]
Harvard’s 9 Foundations of a Healthy Building
Good reading here in the blog of Katrin Klingenberg (Passive House Institute -US Director)… http://blog.phius.org/healthy-buildings-part-1-9-principles/
Deep Energy Retrofit of a 19th Century Maine House
This project is personal: the renovation of our family’s house in Maine. It is a work in progress. The goal has been to take care of a century of deferred maintenance and to make the house as energy-efficient as possible for year-round living. The great challenge has been to make all this work invisible, so […]
Move-in day for Fairfax Net Zero House
On Saturday, April 15 Tom and Joyce moved into their new home. There is still work to be done in completing the garage and landscaping but the house interior is totally complete right on deadline. A couple of weeks before, they opened up the house to City of Fairfax officials for a tour, which was filmed in […]
Christmas update on the Fairfax Zero Energy House
We are getting near completion of the project, as painters are busy finishing walls and trim and we continue to await the arrival of the high pressure laminate paneling for the exterior. We are now told that that will be in the first week of January. All the areas on the exterior that are now black will […]
The STATE of PH in Multifamily
I was recently asked by a high-performance product sales rep whether I can forecast the near future for acceptance and adoption of the Passive House (PH) standard in our state and local jurisdictions for the affordable housing sector of development. This is a big question in our industry and I only wish I held the […]
The Fairfax City Zero Energy Home: Building Envelope Discussion
Our last post for this project was back in June, and we have come a long way. I want to focus in this post on our decisions about the building envelope. The exterior wall framing of the house is 2×6 wood stud construction, filled with densepack cellulose insulation. Our original plan was to clad this […]
Second floor walls going up on the Net Zero home in Fairfax.
There are big changes to see since my last report. The rains finally ended, and O’Neill Development wasted no time in getting underway on the framing. This is an exciting time for both the owner and the architect, finally seeing the form of the building take place so quickly after months and months of planning. […]