The Passive House Approach

Why is Byggmeister interested in Passive House, an extremely high standard of building performance? (To get a sense of the Passive House standards, the technically-minded can review them at www.passivhaustagung.de.)

We're interested primarily because of our frustration with the fact that, for the most part, attempts at energy-efficiency improvements in homes in the United States take the approach of "we'll do the best we can." There's no specific target goal, and often there's not even any follow-up with regard to what level of performance a home was actually able to achieve — no one tries to keep score. This lack of goals, and lack of score-keeping, has gotten the US where it is today: that is to say, despite significant improvements in the efficiency of various components of a home, a typical house still consumes about as much overall energy as it did 50 years ago. This is partly because our homes are bigger and partly because we all have more things in those homes that need to be tied to the electrical grid (large-screen TVs, multiple refrigerators, even electric toothbrushes). But the primary reason we're not becoming a more efficient society, at least where residential energy consumption is concerned, is because very few homeowners have any idea how much energy their house consumes, or how much it could or should consume.

In contrast, the Passive House approach sets a very clear "energy budget" for a house. To simplify somewhat, it's a budget that equals approximately 10% or 15% of what a typical home in Massachusetts might consume today. This energy budget is not arbitrary, it ties into work done in Switzerland regarding the "2000-Watt Society." The fundamental idea of the 2000-Watt Society philosophy is to establish a per-capita energy consumption threshold for the world that achieves two goals: equitable distribution of energy resources, and atmospheric carbon stabilization. Their research has led them to the goal of a 2000-Watt society — that is to say, a per capita energy budget of about 17,500 kWh per person for all activities — homes, work, transportation, and infrastructure. (Learn more about the 2000-Watt Society at www.novatlantis.ch.) Once you back out of this total an appropriate budget for residential energy consumption, you're pretty much right at Passive House standards — so there is some method to this Passive House madness.

One Passive House has been built so far in Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard, and Paul Eldrenkamp is consulting on one in Waterbury, CT. We're eager to see this approach to residential design and construction get a firm foothold in New England — not only with new construction, but with retrofits of existing homes. If you're interested in learning more about Passive House, or have a project idea, please e-mail Paul.

Learn more about us

Our services

Our projects

Sometimes the best way to understand what it's like to work with a company is to hear real stories from real people. Browse our portfolio of projects and read what our clients have to say.