Greenlake Passive House post #3

Still waiting for our house to sell, not two weeks on the market yet so plenty of time.  In the meantime, perhaps a bit more info on the Passive House.  In our first post we provided a link to a New York Times article about “PassivHaus” in Europe, and the PassivHaus ‘movement’.  That really got interest up in the US – and is where I first heard of the standard.   More recently they ran another article, now about houses built right here in the US.  It is also a very good article and you can read it here:

New York Times

We see interest really taking hold in the US and Canada, with write-ups about the standard finding their way into magazines and local papers.  A few states, such as Oregon, have also begun to consider incentives they might provide to encourage  projects built to the standard.   Particularly encouraging to us, the design quality seems to be improving.  A recent recipient of a 2011 National AIA Housing Award is a passive house, or claims to be (I’m told it has not actually been certified).  Regardless, it is the first built US project we’ve seen that successfully  balances strong design with the energy standard – with a national award-winning result.  You can view it here:

Award winning Passive House

While on the subject of national AIA housing awards, we might as well mention that we won as well, albeit not for a passive  project – read all about it here:

Heliotrope award winning house

In the current issue of Builder magazine is another PH project that is also interesting.  It features a somewhat “cathederalish” expression which I find a bit strange for a house, but from the exterior it cuts a strong profile.  Check out the article here:

Builder Magazine

It desperately needs furniture and art too, doesn’t it?  (Sigh) to waste such great publicity with photos of an empty building… tragic.

Our goal in moving forward with the Greenlake project is to blend the strength of our design work with the efficiency of the Passive House standard – without major compromises to either design or energy efficiency.  This is a tall order, as the standard definitely sets limits on what the architecture can do.  For example: no pivot doors and inside/outside framing like the Suncrest project, no sliding glass doors or walls of glass like the North Beach project, no exposed cantilever beams, butt-glazed corner windows, etc. etc.

While the standard does reduce the number of tools we typically consider in creating strong works of architecture, it challenges us to consider new tools – tools that express the relationship of form and function with energy efficiency in the front-seat for once.

Greenlake Passive house post #2

When setting up this blog I had every intention of sticking with it, yet after my initial post an entire year went by.  Some explanation: the client for this project is my family and the writer (me, Joe Herrin of Heliotrope).  In order to finance this project we need to sell our current home in Laurelhurst, where we’ve lived for the past 16 (!) years.  We had it on the market a year ago and it was under contract, but the sale fell through (I curse the buyers that treated the sale agreement so casually!).   So anyhow… we waited a year and will be listing it again this week.  If it sells, we’re doing the project.  If it doesn’t, we wait another year.  In the meantime, an update:

We have a building permit for the project and have obtained pre-approval for the design from PHIUS (Passive House Institute U.S.).  We’ve been refining the design on the interior and playing with a new ray-tracing plug-in for Sketch-Up to help visualize it.  Below is an example of the output we’re getting at the moment (a view of the kitchen/dining area from the living-room):

This illustration shows the stair opening to the second floor, which is aligned with a large skylight above (5′X16′).  This skylight is the only glazing in the home receiving meaningful solar exposure, as we have a very large house to the south of us and our views of the lake are to the Northwest.  This skylight will provide most of our solar heat gain and, due to it’s placement in the center of the building footprint, it will provide much of the daylighting so critical to living here in the dreary Northwest.  In order to allow as much light as possible to penetrate down to the first floor, the floor of the hallway above will be glass and the stairs as open as code (and the laws of physics) will allow.  Here is a section showing how we’re maximizing the skylight/stair arrangement to maximize day-lighting:

In our year hiatus a couple of other locals have managed to actually build Passive house certified projects in Seattle.  One of them is a modular structure intended as a backyard cottage meeting the requirements of Seattle’s new detached ADU zoning.  It’s called the ‘Mini-B’ and it is currently located at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, where it can be toured.  Here’s a link:

minibpassivehouse

The second is a residence with attached ADU owned and built by Dan Whitmore at Blackbird Builders.  Here’s a link to a presentation PDF given by Dan at last year’s national Passive House conference.

whitmore passive house

As for our project, we are currently being aided by the fine folks at Schuchart/Dow with preliminary pricing and by our competent Realtor Michael Roland in selling our current home.  If all goes well we will be moving into a rental this spring and beginning construction in the summer – stay tuned!

Greenlake Passive house – post #1

Heliotrope just started this new blog, and we thought it would be a good idea to use it as an opportunity to chronicle our ongoing work toward building one of the first Passive House projects in Seattle.  Of course unless you know something about the Passive House standard this is totally meaningless, so let’s start with that.

Passive House Standard

A Passive House is a very well-insulated, virtually air-tight building that is primarily heated by passive solar gain and by internal gains from people, electrical equipment, etc. Energy losses are minimized, and any remaining heat demand is provided by an extremely small source.  An energy recovery ventilator provides a constant, balanced fresh air supply. The result is an impressive system that not only saves up to 90% of space heating costs, but also provides a uniquely terrific indoor air quality.

Central to this standard is the observation that insulation is cheap (and if using the right kind, friendly to the environment), and it is inherently less wasteful to build a super-efficient envelope than it is to add high-tech gadgetry to a structure in order to reduce its carbon footprint.

The Passive House Standard was developed in Germany and has been in use since 1990.  To date, more than 15,000 housing units and other buildings have been built to the standard, primarily in Germany, Austria and Sweden.  In 2010 it is projected that over 40% of new construction in Austria will be built to the standard, and the EU is working toward implementing it as the future building code for EU countries.  It is new to the US, but interest is growing – and Heliotrope principal Joe Herrin has taken the leap of becoming one of the Northwest’s first certified Passive House consultants.

For more information on the standard, check out these sites:

Passive House US

NY Times article

Wikipedia

Greenlake Passive House

When realized, this house should be one of the most energy efficient buildings in Seattle.  It will utilize the equivalent energy of a standard hair dryer for all heating needs, and it will use 26kBTU per square foot per year for total energy (we’re working on figuring out what the typical house average is for comparison).  It’s a testament to the standard that architects can now, on their own, predict in detail the energy requirements of their buildings.  It has been a very enlightening experience to say the least, and we are very excited about the potential of the standard.

That said, none of it has been – or will be – easy.   Just a few of the challenges we’re facing:

• Build a house 5 times more air-tight than a LEED Platinum/Energy Star home
• Build a home reliant on passive solar heat gain on a site with extremely limited solar exposure (to the south is a 4 story McMansion, only 10 feet away)
• Build a house with twice the insulation and wall-thickness of a standard home, with windows three times better than code, all with a budget target of $200/sf for construction cost

Additionally, we’ve challenged ourselves to accomplish the above without compromising the quality of the design – the spaces, quality of light, character and materiality must be of the standard set by our past “not so efficient but really nice” work.

Oh, and the site for this project is a prominent corner lot on Greenlake Way.  Yep, it’s ON Greenlake.  No pressure or anything, it’s only pretty much everyone we know driving, walking, riding or running by the place on a regular basis.

In future posts we will endeavor to follow the development of the project as it moves from schematic design through the permitting and the passive house review process – then hopefully into construction!  Along the way we’ll pass along some facts and figures interesting to us on the subject of energy use in buildings as well as other issues surrounding sustainability.