Embracing Passive House Techniques in Home Construction and Remodeling
As we look toward the future and see the challenges of climate change and increased energy costs, we see the huge opportunity for our clients and our planet in implementing passive house techniques into our projects.
Passive house techniques offer a tremendous benefits to homeowners in both new builds and remodeling projects. Benefits include reduced energy consumption, improved indoor air quality, and enhanced comfort. By embracing passive house design, homeowners can not only contribute to a sustainable future but also enjoy long-term cost savings.
It may sound daunting and expensive, but with a small investment now, you will reap the benefits for the life of your home.
Understanding passive house design
Passive house design, also known as "passivhaus" in German, represents a design standard that prioritizes healthy, comfortable, and efficient homes through a holistic approach. The beauty of these homes lies in their ability to self-regulate temperature.
Unlike traditional reliance on solar or wind power, which can be challenging to implement in dense cities like New York, passive house techniques achieve decreased energy consumption by focusing on exceptional airtightness and insulation. We can employ various techniques such as insulating and sealing the entire home envelope, installing energy-efficient windows and doors, selecting ventilation systems with energy recovery capabilities, and eliminating thermal bridges that disrupt the even flow of heat within the building envelope.
The benefits of passive house principals
Sustainable Living: Passive house design provides an exceptional opportunity to live sustainably. By significantly reducing energy consumption, these homes have a smaller carbon footprint, helping to combat climate change. Embracing passive house techniques allows homeowners to play an active role in creating a greener future for themselves and future generations.
Enhanced Comfort: One of the key advantages of passive house techniques is the exceptional level of comfort they offer. The airtight and well-insulated design ensures stable indoor temperatures throughout the year, reducing drafts and cold spots. Homeowners can enjoy a comfortable living environment regardless of external weather conditions and outdoor air quality. With the average age of a home in New York City hovering around 90 years old, the comfort benefits of implementing passive house techniques into a remodel can be extensive.
Long-Term Cost Savings: While the upfront investment in passive house construction may be slightly higher, it pays off with long-term cost savings. These energy-efficient homes require significantly less heating and cooling, resulting in substantial reductions in utility bills. Moreover, homeowners may be eligible for tax incentives and financial benefits associated with sustainable construction practices.
Resilience and Future-Proofing: Passive house design incorporates resilience and future-proofing into home construction. These homes are built to withstand changing environmental conditions, such as extreme weather events, providing homeowners with a sense of security and stability.
Health and Well-being: Passive house techniques prioritize indoor air quality, creating a healthy living environment for occupants. With efficient ventilation systems that filter and provide fresh air, these homes minimize the presence of allergens, pollutants, and other harmful substances. Improved air quality positively impacts residents' health, reducing respiratory issues and allergies, and enhancing overall well-being.
Increased Home Value: Discerning buyers now look for these benefits when purchasing a home, so there is potential for increased home value with passive house upgrades.
Our experience with passive house principals
We have been implementing high performance membranes into many of our recent projects. These include both internal and external systems.
Addressing vulnerabilities
Are your windows energy efficient? is there Indoor/outdoor air exchange around windows, doors or through your HVAC system? As part of our job proposals, in collaboration with your architecture and the design teams, we assess your home’s weaknesses, propose methods and materials to improve the efficiency of your home and identify passive house techniques that can level up your home’s value and your comfort.
Internal membranes
Intello Plus high performance interior membrane acts as a vapor retarder in winter, protecting against condensation, and maximum vapor openness in summer to facilitate rapid drying. This semi-translucent material allows dense packed cellulose-base blown-in insulation to be inspected after installation and ensure very high R values. This is a simple cost-effective way to implement passive house principals, lower the carbon footprint and improve air quality in a New York City home.
External barriers
When an external barrier is a better option, we have implemented the use of BlueskinVP160. It’s a water-resistive air barrier and acoustic insulation that creates an energy-efficient building envelope with superior weather protection. It blocks out the cold in the winter and sun in the summer and helps reduce noise from the outside.
Air Exchange
When you increase insulation and seal off a home, even with one of these advanced membranes, ventilation is paramount. When working on a superinsulated house with very low air leakage rates we include an EVR (energy-recovery ventilator) in the plans to enable fresh air exchange. These mechanical systems have a core through which both incoming and outgoing air travel to transfer energy and moisture. ERVs are designed to keep indoor humidity levels more comfortable regardless of the season.
The adoption of passive house techniques presents an incredible opportunity for homeowners to embrace sustainable living, enhance comfort, achieve long-term cost savings, and future-proof their homes. By leveraging these techniques, we can create homes that not only minimize environmental impact but also prioritize the health and well-being of occupants. As a home builder, we are excited about the immense potential of passive house design and are committed to helping homeowners seize the opportunity to create energy-efficient, comfortable, and environmentally conscious homes for a better future. Please reach out if you have any questions on how you can include passive house principals into your next home project.
