Can A Home Run on Less Energy than a Hair Dryer?

There might be a silver lining to the torpid residential building market. Some designers and developers are using this time to learn about and develop more energy efficient houses. Inspired by the trend in German speaking and Scandinavian countries, many are attempting to recreate passive houses here in the U.S.

For those who don’t know, the passive house was developed just outside of Frankfurt, Germany a number of years ago. According to the mandate set down by the Passive House Institute the house must not use more energy than would be required to power a common hair dryer.  By using innovations in insulation, advanced development in window design, and air exchange, the passive house requires no heater and avoids the pitfalls of solar housing of days gone by. Because of advances in ventilation, passive houses avoid the problem with mold that affected many of their energy efficient predecessors.

All of this taken together means a house that doesn’t require a furnace. The house isn’t heated as much as its design allows for the warmth that is already in the house to stay in the house. The house is so well insulated that it can actually be heated by the home’s appliances or even by the body heat of its inhabitants. Moreover, the requirements for passive houses in exceed those set down by LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards. There are numerous arguments for such a revolution in design to sweep America.

However, there is a downside. Various components required to build such a house are still available only in Europe, and for architects hoping to learn about passive house design, there is the language barrier to consider; many of the discoveries and research concerning passive housing are written in German with few translations, thus slowing down the flow of information considerably.

Still the technology is promising enough. There are now branches of the Passivhaus Institute in both Great Britain and the United States.

For more information, check out these websites:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?scp=1&sq=No%20Furnaces%20but%20Heat%20Aplenty%20in%20%E2%80%98Passive%20Houses%E2%80%99&st=cse

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/passive-design-not-passive-house.php

http://www.housingzone.com/custombuilder/articleXml/LN963699854.html