CT’s First Certified Passive House wins the 2012 CT Zero Energy Challenge

The Passive House we designed and built in Harwinton this year has been recognized for meeting two significant challenges. It is the first house …

Paul and Diane Honig and their family moved into their new Passive House a couple weeks ago and are marveling at the indoor comfort as winter approaches. This is what it’s all about for us, creating a home that looks great, works well, and feels good to be in.

Today’s modern home has to be resourceful, resilient, responsible, enduring, healthy, and comfortable. These features require careful, not cavalier use of space, a conscious relation with the land and the resources we rely on to live and build, a sense of stewardship about the building we care for, and a real recognition of how we use energy, and are therefor compelled to manage that use wisely.

The Zombie building industry hopes to resume life by building a better version of what we don’t need. We can’t count on the modes of operation that these zombies once lived by; notably cheap energy, easy credit, and a willingness to consume resources faster than they can be replaced. Those debts are coming due.

A few years back I heard this poem read by Manchester native Steven Straight at that great summer event at the Hillstead Museum in Farmington, the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival. It continues to stick with me as I think about what we should expect from a home. I grew up in a Cape Cod house in Newington not much different than this. As he says, a “swiss army knife” of a house.

The poem is a keeper. Really, what’s enough?

That’s the complaint.

We stand at the refrigerator and stare at the contents. We rummage through the boxes and cans and bottles and jars in the pantry. We open drawers of spices and grains and close …

In answer to one of my many “why?” questions about how poorly we understand energy, engineer Marc Rosenbaum explained, “Honeywell put us to sleep!”
What did he mean?
Not that long ago when it was cold out, …

Our houses have habits. And we learn them.
Next thing you know you’re adapting your behavior to the way your home doesn’t work. There’s no place to organize the mail, so it lands on the kitchen …

I know something new. I know how to design and build homes that are dramatically better than any I’ve ever built. What I know is radically simple. It is systematically measurable and therefore proven. It …

“He’s pictures, he’s words” the client offers as an executive summary of the service provided by the two ad agency representatives sitting in the office of London Fog’s owner.
This scene from the TV series “Mad …