The First U.S. Passive House – Super-Efficient, Affordable

March 11, 2009 in green building by nils | Add your comment

The Big Wall of Windows

While the passive house concept is taking off in Europe, where over 10,000 passive houses have been built, there are still very few in the States. I have posted before about Nabih Taleb's passive house remodel in Berkeley, and I've heard about a few more which I'll be posting soon. But this month the Taunton Press's Green Building Advisor website is featuring an article on America's first "passive house."

Built by Katrin Klingenberg, a European-trained architect who is co-director of the Passive House Institute U.S., the house uses massive amounts of insulation - including 14" inches below the slab, as well as up to 16" in the walls. Klingenberg also took care to site the house for maximum solar gain in the winter, as well as many other details to increase the house's energy efficiency.

The results have been excellent - although not without some learning opportunities. Those windows that allowed the sun's heat to warm the house in the winter overheated it in summer. Klingenberg installed a grape arbor over the windows, and now its bare branches in winter let in the sun, and its leafs provide effective shading for the windows in summer, while also giving a beatiful view.

Klingenberg was not just after efficiency, but also affordability in this house. And the results on both sides were very good:

At $94 per square foot, the house topped the highest averages for new construction in the region, although not by much. With Katrin's modest budget and her goal of using the home as a model for affordable housing, however, the cost was more than she would have liked. But she points out that this was a prototype that would likely cost less on a production scale. Besides, in her opinion, the successes in the area of sustainability, efficiency, and comfort were well worth the investment.