"Passivhaus"

Passivhaus / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Passive House

The Passive-aggressive house - our history of a Passivhaus build

First, the background to this Passivhaus My partner and I are geeks. Our idea of a romantic dream was to build a house so well insulated you could heat it with a hairdryer. For added fun, we wanted to do this on a tight budget while raising a young child. The hairdryer part wasn’t a pipe dream – it’s a common way of de...

Passive House

Everything you need to know about Passive House certification

...Passivhaus Planning Package (or PHPP), and did not have permission to change the software often stated as converting it from metric to English measurement units (although again, opinions vary). Feist also stated that PHIUS had begun a “competing professional certification scheme” while not following their official Pass...

Passive House

An owner/builder's account of building a Passive House

Building a Passive House that's also LEED certified This is an owner blog Ecohome posted following the personal experience of Sarah Cobb and William Murray of Rocket Construction Inc. as they built a home in Abercorn, Montérégie, Quebec. Setting the bar about as high as you can, they targeted both LEED certification an...

Passive House

The North Park Passive House on Vancouver Island, BC

Passive House construction on Vancouver Island Building the first certified Passive House on Vancouver Island, a duplex shared with our son Mark’s family, convinced us that the market in Victoria was ready for Passive House market condominiums. To follow through, we built the North Park Passive house, a six-unit urban ...

B.C.’s First Passive House was built in Whistler in 2012.

The Rainbow Duplex in Whistler is the first Passive House in BC The passive solar design and orientation of homes is anything but new. Solar heat collection is a technique that has been used in home construction for thousands of years. What is relatively new is the rating system developed to certify them. The Passive H...

Tiny house

Tiny houses - Washington State promotes tiny homes & eco-villages for affordable Housing in WA

WA paves the way for tiny home eco-villages: Tiny houses, also colloquially referred to as tiny homes, are both an increasingly attractive and affordable housing option as well as a trending alternative lifestyle choice across North America and Canada as people realize that “quality of life” doesn’t depend on surroundi...

Efficient home design

"The Most Resilient House in North America"

A resilient home for sustainability Northern Quebec isn’t a place where one might expect to look for a model of resilience. It’s bone-chilling cold in the winter with 10,450 heating degree days per year (Fahrenheit degree-days, base 65°F); there isn’t all that much sunlight in the winter, and Quebec—let alone northern ...

Passive solar home design

Ecohome Kenogami House wins Home of the Year Award

Along with its unprecedented achievements, the Kenogami House continues to act as a laboratory for resilient, cold climate building practices. Through software energy modeling it was determined that the Kenogami House would likely require 14.6 kWh of heat per square metre per year, but its actual performance seems to b...

Passive solar home design

Ecohome design wins House of the Year Award from Green Builder Magazine

The most resilient house in North America The first house designed under our Passive Solar Index (PSI) program won "Most Resilient House" in the 2013 Green Builder® Home of the Year Awards. The Kenogami House is a living laboratory of high performance design and technology, called "The Most Resilient House in North Ame...

Passive solar home design

The principal designer of the house that inspired the global Passivhaus movement reflects on the project that started it all.

...PassivHaus program that started in Germany and eventually became the global Passive House movement. Here is a presentation Harold recently gave on the Saskatchewan Conservation House, which he has graciously allowed us to republish. His contributions to the building industry are immeasurable. The Saskatchewan Conserva...

Efficient home design

The Kenogami House: designed to ENDURE

Alex Wilson is the founder of the journal Environmental Building News, Green Building, GreenSpec and recently the Resilient Design Institute. The following is a brief description of his vision, and the steps our team took as designers, builders and homeowners to meet that criteria for the Kenogami House. The acronym: ...