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Salt Lake City, UT (MMD Newswire) April 30, 2010 — The Breezeway House, designed by Brach Design Architecture and located in Millcreek Township (near Salt Lake City) was completed in December of 2009 and has been certified by the Illinois-based Passive House Institute of the United States
(PHIUS) as a Certified Passive House TM. It is the first building in the Western U.S. to receive the honor and one of the first 10 nationwide.
A Certified Passive House is a building that is designed and constructed according to the world’s strictest energy efficiency standard and a very rigorous design methodology. The standard requires low-tech strategies like very high-R walls and windows without thermal bridges, passive solar heat, air-tight construction, energy-recovery mechanical ventilation, and proper solar shading to prevent over-heating. “It doesn’t make sense to rely on expensive and energy guzzling mechanical equipment to heat and cool our buildings anymore,” says architect Dave Brach. “We need to start relying on smart design and low-energy passive solutions that assure comfort.” The result is a house that uses about 10% of the energy of an average existing home and about 20% of the energy of an average NEW house built to code. Further, a Passive House can reach net-zero annual energy consumption with the addition of a very modest number of solar panels.
Unlike the generic passive solar homes of the 1970s, a certified passive house is planned in a very precise and scientific way using energy modeling software developed the German Physicist Wofgang Feist, who built the first passive house in Germany in 1990. The software is open source, predictable and accurate and shows the designer in a very quantitative way what the energy performance of the building will be during the design phase, allowing her to optimize the design for cost-effectiveness.
Energy efficiency is at the heart of the passive house concept, but other benefits are increased comfort, ultra-low utility bills and a very quiet interior environment. Because the walls and windows are so well-insulated, the inside of all exterior walls is warm and uniform. This means a very small, inexpensive heating system can be used with no cold spots and no discomfort or condensation issues even on the coldest nights of the year.
Since passive houses are built air-tight, they require a mechanical ventilation machine which exhausts stale indoor air and replaces it with fresh outdoor air. With this air distribution system, the homeowner can control the amount of air coming into the house and can filter it if desired, resulting in a very high level of control over indoor air quality. Of course, ventilating the house by opening the windows is also an option in a Passive House just as it is in a conventional home and it is common to turn off the mechanical ventilation in the summer.
The Breezeway House is a three-bedroom, 2.5 bath home with about 2800 finished square feet of living space and a beautiful stone patio with a built-in steel and canvas shading frame for outdoor dining and entertaining. Construction began on the house in May of 2009 and was completed in December and because the home is so efficient, it’s 2.2 kilowatt solar array and hot water solar panels should provide about 75% of the home’s annual energy needs. The home was recently chosen by USA Today’s Green House blog as “Green House of the Week”.
Contact: Dave Brach AIA, CPHC
Brach Design Architecture
Phone 801-865-7648
dave@brachdesign.com
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