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.

We have been managing construction projects for decades and have developed a methodical system of management and communication designed to realize all the value of the design/build process. To put it simply, design is aligned with construction to assure value.

We can engineer a building to use only as much energy as it produces. That’s pretty great isn’t it! We can also fill our pantries with healthy food, keep a bike outside our door to …

This winter nature did its own energy audit of our homes and produced striking graphs in the form of icicles hanging from our roof eaves. We read these graphs and try to understand just what they reveal about the ways our homes lose heat and what to do about it.

Over the course of our lives we travel what I call the “arc of acquisition”. We begin without much, and over time acquire more and more things. Some that we need. Others we just want. …

In this wintry season, who isn’t thinking about what’s required to be comfortable in our homes?
Not too hot and not too cold, the ability to provide thermal comfort is one of the most important functions …

When it comes to saving energy we may be getting it wrong. Like someone on a diet who wonders why, despite their best efforts, they can’t seem to lose weight, we sometimes make mistakes in our choices to save energy in our homes. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to understand which actions were the most worthwhile, even if they aren’t so obvious or aggressively promoted?

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.

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 …

There can be a big difference between what people claim and the actual facts about that claim. Big surprise!
That’s why we have scales. And rulers and levels. And now we are using a new set …