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:
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.
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!
