Want to know more about Passive Houses and why they are one answer to the puzzle of climate change? Check out seven Bay Area homes on Saturday, September 10th throughout the San Francisco Bay Area to see for yourself why these homes are on the leading edge of energy efficient home building. To learn more and see our beautiful jewel in Sonoma, please visit this link to the Passive House California website.
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has been monitoring our Sonoma retrofit since the beginning and their preliminary findings show that our house is kicking butt! Please visit this website to download the PDF of the PowerPoint presentation showing a comparison of deep retrofits (using a variety of techniques) in Northern California. Ours is Project P3.
After more than a year in progress, our Passive House retrofit project in Sonoma is finally complete.
Isn't she a beauty?
Homeowner Cathy O'Neill is in love with her new modern farmhouse (and so are the neighbors, now that all of the trucks are out of the way!) It's been an incredible effort and now so satisfying to see California's first Passive House and the country's first Passive House retrofit finally come to fruition. We couldn't be more proud.
... and the first certified Passive House retrofit in the country!
Get your mind out of the gutter! In Northern California, this is the month when construction picks up again. The tax payments of April are forgotten, projects are started or contemplated, and things appear to have limitless potential.
OK, it rained most of the month and my crew gave me a wide berth. I am an intense and passionate guy - my intent is to meet or beat schedules and budgets. May saw progress but not enough. The scope of work left has to do with the "frosting or the finish work of the house. As a company we excel at this phase of work. In fact, the goal is to have a finished product that Sunset Magazine would be proud to advocate. The potential for attractive well designed houses and remodels to meet the Passive House Standard in California is limitless.
We started giving tours of the project twice a day on Fridays to anybody that will listen to THE PASSIVE HOUSE MESSAGE. What's the message? In Northern California you can build a building that uses 80% less energy for heating and cooling, throw-out the AC and the furnace, have a more durable building, and excellent air quality for 5%-10% more up front.
Conduit and cables for Department of Energy monitoring for their Building America
Program. The O'Neill retrofit has been selected as a "prototype" home and will
be monitored via computer by the Davis Energy Group to determine and verify
its performance.
Passive House is applied building science. It has a twenty year track record in Europe. The buildings' performance have been monitored and the results verified. It is not green bullshit. Passive House is about Better Buildings.
Oops! Unfoamed conduit!
The month of fools found me excited about the positive blower door results in March and humbled by my friend Murphy. Two days after the initial blower door test we found an 1 1/2" open conduit to the exterior - Oops! We still passed and by sealing the penetration we should be better than our initial read at 0.4 ACH @ 50 pascal.
The month was largely dedicated to prepping for our all trades inspection and sheetrock. This is the part of a project I like the least - it is a grind. The weather this year has been wet and unpredictable making it hard to push forward on wrapping up the exterior.
One positive note - the sprung floor installation and assembly is going very well. I am happy about this in particular; this takes a tried and true construction assembly (most gymnasium floors are a variant in North America) and gives Passive House an approach to retro-fitting slab on grade. It is simple and effective.
I started the month living in fear and questioning my commitment to the Passive House Standard. I had been working towards this goal for over a year and had convinced my client that the goal could be achieved. The project had been pre-certified by the Passive House Institute U.S. (PHIUS), this is certification that your modeling and planning met the standard. None of this means anything unless your building performs at or below 0.6 ACH at 50 Pascal. An Energy Star home performs at 5.0 or 6.0 ACH, depending on the climate zone. On March 24th, Bill Mattinson from Sol•Data arrived onsite to perform our first blower door test. I had invited Jarrod Denton of Lail Design Group (the architect and long-time supporter), Graham Irwin of Essential Habitat Consulting (the energy modeler and one of the first Passive House Consultants in the US), Prudence Ferreira of Integral Impact, Inc. (President of the local USGBC chapter and President of Passive Buildings California), and the crew to witness the results. On his arrival, Bill assured me that they had never seen anything below 2.0 ACH at 50 Pascal. An hour later, Bill was amazed and I was thrilled. My crew and subcontractors had achieved 0.39 ACH at 50 Pascal! And this is before sheetrock. To date, this is the first retrofit in the country to meet and exceed the Passive House Standard. Now all we have to do is make sure the project looks as good as it performs.
Our first blower door test at 0.39 ACH at 50 Pascal. After ensuring
that the equipment was indeed working correctly, Bill Mattinson of
Sol•Data (veteran performance firm) was truly amazed!
I have bought, installed and fixed all of the major window brands manufactured in North America. Optiwin, a German window manufacturer, delivered the window package for the O’Neill house earlier this month. I have to say, it was the best window experience of my career. They sent glass cups with the order to ensure the unloading went smoothly and the quality of the product is truly amazing. I had been living in fear since writing the deposit check. I was sure disaster would strike. I framed the Rough-outs big. Boy, the whole experience was a non-event and for me that is the highest praise. The installation technique was different and resulted in some head scratching the first day, after that it was back to our normal pace. We continued to air seal and insulate the envelope preparing for our first blower door test scheduled in early March.
Optiwin 3 Wood window frame prepped for installation, notice the magic tape
Tape of the window frame adheres to window buck for airtight seal
I was a little stressed at the beginning of the month - three months of non-stop rain were imminent. We spent the first part of the month racing to dry-in the thermal break layer of the roof. We used 2 1/2" of EPS adhered to 1/2" plywood covered by 30 lb. felt for this final layer. We made it by the skin of our teeth. We installed the 2nd layer of 1 1/4” R-TEC EPS to the wall assemblies and set the batts for the rainscreen. My subs spent the end of the month figuring out their rough installations and implementing the plan.
IF YOU GIVE A PERSON A FOAM GUN, THEY WILL GO NUTS!
Dried in roof with 30 lb. felt
