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Chad Ludeman

Tezuka Architects Japanese Design Inspiration

March 11, 2010

I had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Takaharu Tezuka of Tezuka Architects give a lecture at UPenn recently. Tezuka is one of my favorite Japanese firms that has been producing amazing homes for about two decades and is getting into some interesting larger commercial commissions as they have grown in the past 5-10 years. If [...]

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Moving from SIPs to Double Stud Walls in Skinny

February 25, 2010

In our first few projects at Postgreen, we used EPS SIPs (Structurally Insulated Panels) for our exterior walls and roofs which were very popular with the kids. We have decided to move away from SIPs in the Skinny Project in favor of using Advanced Framing Techniques and a Double Stud Wall design. Many of you [...]

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Duplex Inspiration – Japanese 9 Tsubo House

January 23, 2010

Recently, we were approached by someone to design and build a small duplex on a tight infill house in Philadelphia. Without getting into too much detail, the lot is roughly 27′ wide by 20′ deep. Tight constraints to say the least. This footprint reminded us of one of our favorite Japanese small house designs – [...]

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Passive House Ventilation Design

January 20, 2010

We thought it would be a good idea to review our new ventilation strategy and design implemented in the recent Passive Project. The ventilation strategy in the 100K House was different than most typical houses and the Passive Project took things a step further. We’ll start with the outline:

Use a very efficient mechanical ventilation system [...]

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Hidden Kitchen Range Ventilation

January 16, 2010

One of the hurdles in designing a minimalist kitchen layout is always the ventilation above the range. If you have the budget you can have options like beautiful steel and glass hoods or flush vents that pop up from the countertop only when in use. There are even really fancy, slim new vents that mount [...]

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New Modern Ceiling Fan Options for Postgreen Homes

January 5, 2010

While we’ve been working on finishing the Passive Project and launching the Skinny Project, we’ve also been working on new options for Postgreen Homes in the background. We really want to offer easy to implement options on the site that allow people to really customize their home to that next level. Ceiling fans and light [...]

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Building Gaskets and Air Sealing Tape

October 30, 2009

Yesterday we looked at some lessons learned from our aggressive air sealing goals on the Passive Project. In doing so we mentioned that we will be utilizing building gaskets and air sealing tape to help obtain the very difficult building air tightness goal of 0.6 ACH @ 50Pa that is required by the Passive House [...]

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Passive House Air Sealing – Lessons Learned

October 28, 2009

It’s been a while since we posted on any technical aspects of the Passive House we are trying to build in the Passive Project. We recently tested our air sealing with a blower door test prior to drywall at the homes and I figured it would be a good time to bring up some thoughts [...]

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The Skinny Project – 3 New Postgreen Homes

October 6, 2009

We realized last week that we hadn’t officially announced the sale of our next project – The Skinny Project – on the blog yet. If you attended our web launch party, you heard about it, but we should officially notify everyone who may have missed out here.

The third project takes the best lessons learned [...]

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Super Efficient Windows for the Passive Project

September 11, 2009

In addition to insulation levels and air sealing details, the windows and external window shading in the Passive Project is upgraded from the 100K House Project.
There is a lot more to windows than insulation levels, but in order to keep things simple we will focus on this aspect and cover energy efficient windows in more [...]

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