The Postgreen Team got a very nice Christmas present this holiday in the form of a closing. The second home in the Passive Project (AKA The Philadelphia Passive House) closed last Thursday finally wrapping up this long lived project. We thank our buyers and wish them the best as they move into their new home.

This does not mark the end of our writing about the project of course. We realize we are somewhat behind in our discussion of the Passive Project and plan to have a variety of wrap-up posts over the next few weeks. We will be discussing things like windows, mechanical systems and the solar issue. If there is anything else you want to hear about be sure to let us know in the comments.

The end of this project is particularly exciting because it allows us to focus our full attention on the Skinny Project. We hope to break ground on these next three houses in the coming month and that means we have a bit of work ahead. We are going to be sharing updated floor plans, changes to our framing tactics, mechanical updates and the continued revision of our basic specs. And again, if you ever want more, just ask. The comments are always open.

So ends a post of promises. Think of it as a preface to the coming months of writing which we hope will be educational and entertaining for both you and us.

The Philadelphia Passive House is about to pass into the possession of its new owners. We held two final tour sessions of the home yesterday which were very well attended. Thanks to all of you who came out. Between tour sessions I took some final pictures, and while I may be adding to these over the weekend as we make the place sparkle for the new owners, I figured I would show you what I have so far. We will go with an “image followed by explanatory text” format here.

Above is an image of the house numbers on the outside of the Philadelphia Passive House. These are our “Neutra Style” numbers against the fiber cement lap siding. You can, of course, find these numbers and several other choices in our home customization tool at www.postgreenhomes.com.

I know it is somewhat unorthodox to start with the second floor, but that is just the crazy kind of guy I am. Well, that and I am somewhat more proud of my fist floor photography and would like to finish strong. Anyway, you can see from these pictures that, unlike the M&M clients, these buyers chose not to have a different core color. Thus, Postgreen Gray prevails throughout. The flooring, which we will be cleaning and taking some better shots of, is birch plywood cut to 2×8 sheets and finished with a low-voc product called Parlay 21.

This is another shot taken of the second floor from the opposite direction. Here we are looking front to back along the birch plywood railing. Perhaps the most interesting part of this shot is the solar PV inverter visible to the right. We left this exposed as a conversation piece of sorts. Unfortunately, it is right outside the bathroom which is not generally considered an ideal location for extended conversation.

Speaking of the bathroom, here is the best shot I have taken in there so far. This shot is lit solely by the light from the Solatube and highlights the IKEA bath package with the double sink, double drawer upgrade. Again, repeating an earlier shameless plug, you can design your own bathroom at www.postgreenhomes.com, and we will be adding more options and functionality there as we move forward (end shameless plug). Also in this image you will note our Kohler dual flush toilet. And, while I’m at it, I would like to commend our buyers for their choice in bathroom colors.

These next two images are capturing the first floor from the front (top) and the back (bottom) doors. You will note the finished concrete floors that have been sanded down and coated with Poly-Soy. You also get a nice view of the kitchen and stair, both of which we will get to in a minute. Throughout these images you have probably noticed the windows and back door. These are Serious Materials triple-glazed windows. They have an R-9 rating which is pretty ridiculous for a window, and they happen to look good as well.

These images give you a nice look at our Birch Plywood stair. The wall and the treads are both made of birch plywood that was cut and finished for us by Pappajohn Woodworking. The stringers are made from PSLs which we think look great as a finish. You’ll also notice the “window” cut in the wall which is a favorite of every little kid that has visited the homes.

And finally, the kitchen. This kitchen features our base IKEA cabinets in black lowers and white, aluminum trimmed uppers. The counter is also our base choice. It is made from strand woven bamboo plywood and is finished with a natural oil. The backsplash is more of the birch plywood you have seen throughout and the sink and faucet are both IKEA. The appliances, however, are our highest available upgrade on the Postgreen Homes site. This is the LG appliance package complete with a beautiful full induction cooktop. I will tell you that I am personally very jealous of this kitchen.

Well, that is all the photos I have for you right now. As always, I apologize for the amateur photography, but I will be trying to improve on it in the next batch. If you have any questions on what you see in these images, please hit us up in the comments.

The first of the two houses in the Passive Project has settled, and the new owners are happy to finally be in their new Postgreen Home. The always hectic lead up to this closing has limited our blogging (as you probably noticed) and made it difficult to take the time for really good images. I did the best I could with these pictures. I hope that give you some idea of the exceptional coolness of this house.

Picture one is a wide view of the kitchen area taken from the front of the house. You can see the concrete floor in the foreground and the edge of the OSB stair wall on the left. The cabinets are made of bamboo as is the backsplash. These clients chose to upgrade to the Bosch appliance package which includes a beautiful induction cooktop, an electric convection oven, a super efficient dishwasher and an Fisher and Paykel fridge since Bosch doesn’t make one that fits in that spot. The kitchen also features an Ecotop counter, an Elkay undermount sink and an IKEA faucet.

This is a closer view of the kitchen. The middle cabinet above the cooktop houses a recirculating vent fan which takes the really sticky stuff out of the air before our ERV takes it out of the house. This picture also gives a good look at the nice contrast between the light and dark bamboo.

Here is a better look at the Bamboo cabinets which are an upgrade from our normal IKEA line. We are very happy with how they turned out.

The Ecotop counters, supplied by Greenable, also turned out great. We are really happy with the clean look they give this kitchen and the material itself feels like it will last a lifetime and then some which seems surprising for something made out of recycled paper and bamboo.

The stair in the M&M House is made with PSL (Parallel Strand Lumber) stringers and OSB stair treads. There is also a OSB wall that hangs above the steps. We are really pleased with how interesting the PSLs look and Pappajohn Woodworking to a great job fabricating and finishing our treads and other OSB.

These shots of the scond floor give you a pretty good look at the OSB floor created for us by Pappajohn Woodworking. You can also see the OSB half wall and the upgraded core color putting a dark accent on the space. This house, unlike others we have done, has a separate bedroom with its own door. The other bedroom area remains open.

The backyard is the “Easiest Maze” landscape option designed by Studio Bryan Haynes and put together by the hardworking crew at Garden Hangouts. We are already happy with how this turned out but it is going to look a lot better with some plants in those boxes. The fence is a custom ISA design also built by Garden Hangouts. We expect this fence to the be the base option whenever we build the Tiger facade.

That’s all the images for now. I will be taking a bunch more of the Passive House next door and we will get some nice exterior shots soon as well. Let us know what you think in the comments.

This is just a quick update on the Passive House Project which is wrapping up this week. This has, for a variety of reasons, been a hurry up and wait kind of project, and right now we are in final hurry up mode. A crazy amount of stuff is getting wrapped up each day. These are a few pictures I managed to take amidst the work.

The image below shows the birch plywood back-splash wall in the Passive House. The mess in front of the walls is made up of kitchen cabinets and assembly instructions. Those will likely all be installed tomorrow.

The next picture is the best I could get of the OSB wall in the M&M House. The stairs themselves are still not finished and you can see the temporary treads in the image. Expect better pictures of this beautiful details soon, but this will have to do for now.

Moving upstairs in the M&M we can see the crew installing the OSB floor in 2×8 sheets. You will also notice the OSB covered half wall on the left side of the picture.

And finally here is picture of the birch floor in the Passive House. It isn’t a great shot, but it will give you an idea of how the 2×8 sheets go down.

I will be posting again with final pictures next week so stay tuned. Any questions or comments on what you’ve seen here are welcome as long as they don’t mock my photography skills.

After the expected construction delays and difficulties associated with a standard as ambitious as Passive House, the Passive Project is finally getting wrapped up. Drywall is up, finish work is underway, and we are finally getting a look at the backlog of blog posts we owe you on this process. They are coming.

The most noticeable change at the site has been the exterior. Paint is on and other than some detail work at the base of the homes and the addition of our window shades, the outside of the houses are finished. So, for those that don’t attend to our Flickr page regularly, here are some of the images of the facades in all their glory.

So, how did we get here? How did these facades reach this particular point? This may be good time for a history lesson, or to be less pedagogical, a retrospective.

Some of you may remember the beginning of the Passive House facades. The early designs (pictured below) featured a variety of different materials.

We eventually moved away from these ideas due to the complexity of construction and the difficulty of working with multiple materials. From the discussions around revisions with ISA we reached the concept of single material facades (in this case fiber cement lap siding) as a design element. This thinking led to the lap siding version of the home, initially rendered like this . . .

From there color was added to give a sense of depth and excitement.

This addition received mixed reactions and was eventually toned down to this, our actual homes.

So, what do you think? Use the comments for praise, biting critique, partially formed emotional outpourings, worshipful haiku or any other expression of your feelings.

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 details in a future post. For windows, U-values are used that equate to the more recognized R-values used to define wall and roof insulation. The lower the U-value, the higher the R-value. In our region of the US, a U-value of 0.32 (R-3.1) is required to reach Energy Star status. Many are surprised at how low insulation values for energy efficient windows are compared to even the lowest R-19 code built wall.

In the 100K project, we used the bare minimum for Energy Star in a Jeld-Wen builder grade window. For the Passiv Project, we upgraded to the only US window manufacturer capable of meeting the specs required by the Passiv Haus standard, Serious Windows. Below is the comparison.

Energy Star: U 0.32 (R-3.1)

100K House: U 0.32 (R-3.1) Jeld-Wen Builder Grade Wood Clad Casement

Passive Project: U 0.17 (R-5.9) Serious Windows 925 Series

To further increase the overall window insulation in the Passive Project, we increased the amount of glazing % taken up by picture windows. The 925 serious of Serious Windows figures for picture windows increases to U 0.14 (R-7.1). Over 2/3′s of the glazing in the Passive House is comprised of these picture windows.

See the diagram below for a comparison of some of the leading window manufacturers in the US. Notice that Serious offers windows that achieve R values all the way up to R-11.2.

So how does Serious achieve these higher efficiency figures? Below is a diagram of how the Serious Windows are constructed. They start with their frames by using fiberglass which is a better insulator than any other window frame material commonly seen such as wood, aluminum and even vinyl. They then fill these frames completely with spray foam. There are a bunch of small energy saving features inside the windows, but the biggest difference with Serious is that they offer triple and even quadruple glazing. They save cost and weight by using suspended films rather than full sheets of glass for the layers inside the inner and outer most glass panes.

There is a lot more to cover on the subject of uber-efficient windows, but we’ll cut off this discussion for here. For those interested in cost difference, we spent just over double the amount on the Passive Project windows as we did on the 100K windows.

]]> http://www.100khouse.com/2009/09/11/super-efficient-windows-for-the-passive-project/feed/ 11 http://www.100khouse.com/2009/07/15/new-passive-project-page/ http://www.100khouse.com/2009/07/15/new-passive-project-page/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:13:57 +0000 Chad Ludeman http://www.100khouse.com/?p=1118

The goal of the 100K House blog is to facilitate learning about sensible, green building on the interweb. So many times when we find a good project out there, little details are provided on the construction especially in one concise format. That’s where we are trying to fill the void with the 100K blog.

To that end we have just revamped our project page format with the new Passive Project Summary Page. The new page format gives a bunch of the overall details split up into different subjects. There are not a lot of posts on the Passive Project yet, but as we get more up, the most pertinent ones will be linked on this page as well. You will notice there are a few linked already.

All of this detail is followed up by a nice photo gallery of the project. Right now I just have this gallery displaying some of our photos from framing. When a project is completed, there could be a nice assortment of photos throughout construction as well as final photos and initial renderings.

Next will come the revamping of the 100K House Project page. This could take a bit longer as there could be a lot more posts linked from it. I may also just wait until we have done final summary posts of the 100K project.

Take a gander and let me know if you think we should add any more categories or details on this summary page. There is probably a couple day window that I will actually keep working on this thing until I shelve it for next year… If you are astute, you will also notice a series of ads and links to our new PostgreenHomes.com site at the bottom of the page. This is a work in progress that will be launched the 30th. At that time the links will be directed to specific pages on the new site.

Many have been waiting for us to start posting on specifics of our Passive Project which contains two homes – one of which is seeking the stringent Passive House certification for extreme energy efficiency. We have been waiting to post until we have completed each section of the build. This ensures that we post once on exactly what we ended up building rather than what we hope to build.

Now that we have finished pouring our foundation and have begun putting up our first SIPs panels, we can dig into the nitty gritty of our Passiv Haus construction details. Let’s start with the foundation wall/slab construction and insulation details.

Our Passive House consultants from PHIUS (Passive House Institute of the US) gave us the following basic design rules for our foundation and slab insulation:

1. Under slab insulation of R-50 (10″ of XPS Rigid insulation)
2. Outer foundation wall insulation of R-10 (2″ of XPS Rigid insulation)
3. Separation of the floating slab from all foundation walls with a minimum of 1″ (R-5) of rigid XPS Insulation

I’ll spare you the details, but we did not get to this design in one day. Once these reqs were finalized, we came up with our own version of how we would build the foundation and had it approved by PHIUS. Below are the three main types of foundation details we needed to cover. The standard foundation wall is how most of the perimeter of the foundation is built. The new party wall is the foundation wall in between the two new homes we are building. Finally, the existing party wall is the detail for the party wall next to the existing home on the site next to our Passive House.

Standard Passive House Foundation Wall Detail

Passive House New Party Wall Foundation Detail

Passive House Existing Party Wall Foundation Detail

There are some air sealing details in the above diagrams that we will talk about in more detail in another post coming up. The basic main issue that was difficult to pull off in our foundation, was ensuring that the slab was completely floating and isolated from the foundation walls with at least 1″ of rigid. Typically in Philly, the slabs will rest right on top of the foundation walls for extra support. In our case that would cause too much thermal bridging from the slab to the foundation.

Below are a few more pics of the actual construction.

We just realized that we have been uncharacteristically quiet about our next project. We are due to break ground in just a couple of weeks, and we have barely written a word about it. This is very unlike us, and I will begin to remedy the situation right now.

Our next project is similar in scale and ambition to the first. We will be building two homes, side-by-side, just a block and a half from the original 100k Site at the corner of Amber and Arizona (map). These two homes will share the original vision of providing healthy, energy efficient and professionally designed homes at a reasonable price. The corner home, known as the M&M House, is already under agreement, and our buyers, Mario and Mel, anxiously await its completion. The true infill home will go on the market when we break ground.

In an effort to continue improving our energy efficiency we will be pursuing the Passive House standard in this project. This is a German building standard that aims to reduce the heating and cooling load of a home by 90% (you may have read about it recently in the New York Times). We are working with PHIUS (Passive House Institute US) to finalize the design and get our Passive House certification. The process has been fairly smooth so far, and we think we have a great home in the works.

While we won’t be pursuing LEED Platinum on these two homes (one standard at a time), they will be built to the same or better standards. We will definitely return to LEED after this project, but we see the Passive House standard as a great way to improve some very specific aspects of our houses, mainly the envelope and the mechanical systems. In these two areas, Passive House far exceeds even the highest standards of LEED.

The goal, as always, is to pursue this new standard in an affordable manner. The infill home, which will act as the true case study for this project, will be a two bedroom, one bath, loft style row home (much like the 100k). The house will come in at about 1300 square feet. Our goal is to adhere to the same requirement as the 100k House project and build this home for less than $100 per square foot in hard construction costs. With any luck this will allow us to provide one of the most affordable Passive Homes ever built in the US.

We will be going into a lot more detail on this project as we go forward including talking about the new mechanical system, insulation, windows and other changes the new standard requires, but for now, I will leave you with a couple early concept sketches of the new facade.

So, what are your thoughts on the Passive House standard? Are there reasons more people aren’t pursuing this standard in the US? What do you think of the new facade concepts? What materials would you like to see forming this new facade (stucco, lap siding, metal)?

Show up in the comments.

You may remember a post a few weeks ago about a couple of readers coming to us with a request to build them a slightly larger version of the 100K House for them in the same neighborhood as the 100K Project. Well, we have had a number of discussions and even a few meetings to discuss the feasibility of such a project. As it turns out, it looks like this just might work.

So we are going to call this project the “M&M 100K Plus House” for lack of a better name. The ‘M&M’ represents the client (no they’re not bite sized chocolate candies and if we can get a cease and desist letter from Hershey’s it would be great for the portfolio) and the ’100K Plus’ is intended to indicate that this is an upgraded version of the 100K House.

Enough of my rambling. Here is our first stab at the floorplan for the house:

Here is a list of upgrades over the standard 100K House Plan:

1. An extra flex room (guest room/office/den)
2. An extra bathroom with a shower stall
3. A deck on the second floor
4. Access to a roof deck/green roof
5. A storage shed/fence in the back yard (not shown)

There are many other minor aspects of the house that we are still discussing, but these are the major differences from the 100K House. The floorplan as shown is actually only 4′ deeper than the 100K plan and about 7″ narrower. The kitchen is also the same, just simply turned 90 degrees to make the best use of the living/dining area in the front of the house. The bath area on the second floor may also be modified a bit to accommodate a bit more closet space as well.

Well, there it is. We’ll have more details coming in the future and if I can find the time, maybe even a dedicated project page. Have a great holiday weekend everyone and try to maintain a safe ratio of alcohol and explosives.

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100K House Design/Build Service?