On April 12 Matt and David were asked to do an all-day presentation on passive house design principles for Halfmoon Education Inc., a continuing education organization that sponsors programs for architects and engineers. Around twenty architects and several engineers and… read more →
The bulldozers are on the site, and barring rain, they will begin excavation on Fairfax City’s first net zero home. The house was designed using Passive House principles, and the owner is anticipating that the 20 kw solar array planned… read more →
NESEA Conference On March 9th Matt presented the Weinberg Commons Passive House Retrofit in a presentation called Passive House Deep Energy Retrofits: Revitalizing Masonry Multifamily and Single Family Wood Frame Buildings. Matt was the project architect for this retrofit —… read more →
We have exciting news. On January 4, Matt Fine will join the firm and bring with him over 10 years of experience in affordable multifamily housing work. Since his 2010 PHIUS training, Matt has done pioneering work in high performance… read more →
The HIP modular Passive House is now completed, with all systems installed. HIP held a grand opening in late November, attended by Patricia Waiters, Mayor of Fairmount Heights, and officials from the Prince George’s County Department of Housing and… read more →
Chris Conway and crew were able to get back at the site on September 3rd for a second test, after taping of the various leaks we’d uncovered on August 26th. The big culprits, we believe, were the gaps at each… read more →
Chris Conway and Caleb Fritsch of Conway Energy performed the long-awaited blower door test for our first modular passive house today. We couldn’t have picked a more beautiful — and simultaneously more inopportune — day to have scheduled it. Good… read more →
Architects rarely see sudden transformations. Our work is composed of small incremental steps, generally forward, from fuzzy concept to finished building. The pace usually seems glacial and there is never, ever, a big WOW moment when what we do suddenly… read more →
Sitework began in mid-July. Everything is now ready for the arrival of the modules on August 11. One of the ways we controlled costs on the project was to eliminate the conditioned crawl space, which on a passive house can… read more →
One of the biggest challenges in all Passive Houses is meeting the air sealing requirement of .6 ACH @ 50Pa. It is particularly challenging on this project for two reasons: First, the relatively small size of the house means there… read more →