Acton Passive House Featured on NBC Boston

Owner Philippe Lam talks to the NBC Boston crew about his new net zero home.

ZED’s Acton Passive House was featured on NBC Boston, providing an inside look at the benefits of a net zero, Passive House Certified home. The piece includes interviews with ZED’s Stephanie Horowitz, Contractor Adams & Beasley’s Dave Wittig, and Owner Philippe Lam.

Take a look at the video that gives an overview of the home’s many high performance features, such as rooftop solar panels that produce more energy than it uses over the course of a year, making it net positive energy. The environmental benefits to the owner include remarkable thermal comfort, excellent indoor air quality, low operational cost, a durable, long-lasting structure, low embodied carbon materials, and most importantly, a happy client enjoying his beautiful new home.

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Acton Passive House Achieves PHIUS+ Certification

ZED’s new home in Acton is now officially a PHIUS+ 2018 & Source Zero Certified Project! This 1,650 SF residence was constructed for small operational impact, vastly reduced embodied energy, and energy efficiency. In addition, rooftop solar panels will produce enough energy to arrive at net zero or net positive energy.

Passive Home certification requires very precise and tighter construction than what is used for typical built-to-code homes. The result is an exceptionally tranquil living space that is comfortable year-round, provides excellent air quality, and has extremely low energy use. ZED and contractor Adams & Beasley are incredibly proud of this achievement.

Source Zero is an additional recognition that advances community goals of carbon neutrality and climate resilience at the project level. Achieving PHIUS+ means dramatically reducing demand; achieving PHIUS+ Source Zero means meeting the small remainder with on-site renewable energy.

The Passive House Building Energy Standard is the most rigorous building energy standard in the world

Builder's Notebook Podcast: Stephanie Horowitz Joins!

ZED’s Stephanie Horowitz joins hosts Sarah Lawson and Bruce Irving to discuss the differences between high-performance, net zero, and passive homes and what it takes to design them. Stephanie, Sarah and Bruce also share their knowledge on updating an older home to make it more energy efficient, and why windows can make a world of a difference.

Follow your preferred link to listen!

Anchor FM | Apple | Spotify

Builder's Notebook: The Podcast shares practical advice to help listeners make informed and intelligent decisions about renovating or building a home. Hosted by Sarah Lawson and Bruce Irving, this informative, nuts and bolts series on home design, construction, and renovation will welcome industry experts and touch on a variety of topics.

Passive House Incentives for Multi-Family High-Rise Buildings

Mass Save recently announced financial incentives and assistance to support the construction of multi-family high-rise buildings with Passive House certification or similar levels of energy efficiency.

Why Passive House?

Passive House Building techniques provide the occupants with shelter from rising energy costs through a building envelope that requires only a fraction of the heating and cooling energy consumed by a typical new building. The super-insulated structure eliminates drafts and temperature swings throughout the building thereby ensuring maximum thermal comfort and also helps with noise attenuation by mitigating any surrounding outdoor noise. Additionally, houses built in accordance with Passive House standards require a smaller investment in mechanical systems and have a lower carbon footprint compared to buildings built to code.

Eligibility Criteria

The Mass Save Passive House incentives are available to projects that enroll prior to reaching 100% Schematic Design. Eligible buildings should be four stories or higher with at least five units and pursue Passive House certification and monitor and provide the Sponsors with whole-building gas and electric consumption as well as on-site production. A PHI or PHIUS-certified Passive House consultant is required to conduct a feasibility study and serve as consultant throughout the design and certification process.

Buildings will be eligible to receive post-construction incentives if they at least achieve pre-certification. If the building does not achieve pre-certification, you will be eligible for the standard Multi-Family High-Rise incentives.

Passive House Consulting by ZED

ZeroEnergy Design provides Passive House Consulting services for developers and architects seeking exceptional energy performance and targeting PHI or PHIUS+ certification.

ZED will guide building envelope improvements and mechanical systems to best accommodate project goals such as comfort, durability, indoor air quality, aesthetics, cost effectiveness, efficiency, and certification.

Depending on project goals and requirements, ZED can assist with:

• Passive House FEASIBILITY

• Passive House ENERGY MODELING

• Passive House PRE-CERTIFICATION AND CERTIFICATION FACILITATION

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PASSIVE HOUSE CONSULTING

ZED CONTINUES TO LEAD THE FIGHT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE

According to the newly released 2018 Summary of the AIA 2030 Commitment report, ZeroEnergy Design is one of only 16 firms nationwide to achieve 70% or greater predicted EUI savings across their entire architectural portfolio in 2018.

The AIA 2030 Commitment program supports the AIA 2030 challenge, which calls for all new construction and major renovations to be carbon neutral by the year 2030 and provides architects, engineers, and owners a global platform to demonstrate action against climate change through energy-efficient design. Every year, the 2030 signatories track and report their annual progress against increasingly aggressive energy reduction targets.

This year, ZED reported an impressive 92.6% reduction in pEUI savings across its entire architectural portfolio, achieving the targeted 70% carbon reduction for the ninth consecutive year.

The 2030 Commitment currently has 549 active signatories, out of which 252 firms submitted portfolios in 2018 on projects totaling almost three billion square feet across 92 countries. Together, these projects accounted for an overall pEUI reduction equivalent to avoiding 17.7 million tons of CO2 emissions as well as operating savings of greater than $3.3 billion over the baseline equivalent.

Click on the link below to read the new full report.

MORE: 2018 AIA 2030 SUMMARY

Hollis Montessori Goes Net Positive

The Hollis Montessori School celebrated their tenth anniversary with a transition to renewable energy. As the first Certified Passive House elementary school in the U.S., the building already has an exceptionally efficient enclosure paired with high performance systems (for heating, cooling, hot water, lighting, and ventilation). The new installation of a 56.8 kW photovoltaic system completes the vision developed by the board of directors. The system is expected to offset all the energy demand of the high-performance building, with extra energy available for use for the other buildings on the school campus. The building is now net positive energy, and contributing to the goal of net zero energy for the entire campus.

ZED provided Passive House Consulting and Mechanical Design for the project.

MORE: HOLLIS MONTESSORI CASE STUDY

Greenport Passive House - New Passive House Consulting & Mechanical Design Project

ZeroEnergy Design is excited to present a new Passive House Consulting and Mechanical Design case study - the Greenport Passive House in Greenport, New York.

Designed by the Turett Collaborative, the architect’s decisions regarding the home’s orientation and upside-down layout maximize natural light and passive solar gain in the upper level living-areas. ZED then assisted with consulting for the Passive House-aligned airtight building envelope, continuous insulation, meticulous air sealing, triple-glazed windows, and high-efficiency HVAC and hot water systems - all of which work together to ensure exceptional energy performance, improved indoor air quality, and first-rate comfort for the occupants.

Read the full case study below.

MORE: GREENPORT PASSIVE HOUSE

Chicago Passive House Listed in the Passive House Database

The Ellis Passive House, which was the first PHI certified passive house in Chicago, is now officially listed in the international Passive House database.

The Passive House database is a joint project of the Passive House Institute, the Passivhaus Dienstleistung GmbH, the IG Passivhaus Deutschland and the iPHA (International Passive House Association) and contains a detailed overview of realized Passive Houses from around the world.

In this case, the antiquated 1890s greystone was renovated by Kenwood Construction Services with ZeroEnergy Design providing Passive House Consulting and Mechanical Design. The Passive House EnerPHit certified project is an excellent example of the renovation possibilities for an aging, residential masonry building. It proves that families who wish to live in a sustainable city home need not be limited by the age of the building nor do they have to compromise on style, space or comfort.

The Ellis Passive House was also recently featured on the Treehugger website for its impressive performance throughout the past winter.

MORE: PASSIVE HOUSE DATABASE | ZED CASE STUDY

Greenport Passive House featured in Inhabitat

Popular green architecture and home design website, Inhabitat, just published an article on the Greenport Passive House, designed and built by architect Wayne Turett of The Turett Collaborative. ZeroEnergy Design’s Jordan Goldman provided Passive House Consulting and Mechanical Design for this project.

The airtight dwelling was created in alignment with the Passive House standard, which focuses on the building envelope and passive solar gain to achieve exceptionally low energy consumption and operational carbon footprint. In addition to the airtight building envelope and continuous insulation, the all-electric home features a ducted air source heat pump for heating and cooling and an energy recovery ventilation system for fresh, filtered indoor air.

MORE: INHABITAT

PassivHaus Maine Aims to Spread Awareness about Historic Retrofits

In an article published in MaineBiz last week, Naomi Beal, executive director of PassivHaus Maine, a non-profit organization that works to support the passive house industry and community in Maine, said that Passive House retrofits of historic buildings could be the new frontier.

Passive House retrofits of historic buildings present several challenges like exterior appearance, interior logistics concerning installation of ventilation and delivery systems, the complexity of insulating brick exteriors, and so on. PassivHaus Maine hopes that their winter lecture “Historical Retrofits: A Path to Passive House” will spread awareness about how historical retrofits are being completed in other cities like Philadelphia and Boston. While Passive House construction is gradually gaining traction in Maine, there hasn’t yet been a passive house retrofit of a historic building.

The conference is tonight, Feb 25, 5-6.30 p.m. at Mechanics Hall, Portland. Three experts, including ZeroEnergy Design’s John Mucciarone, will speak about their experiences in historical passive house retrofits and answer the audience’s questions. John will discuss a Victoria-era Boston rowhome that was retrofitted by ZED for modern living and energy efficiency while preserving the original architectural details.

TICKETS: EVENTBRITE

MORE: PASSIVHAUS MAINE, MAINEBIZ

2018 PHIUS Passive House Conference

Stephanie Horowitz, President of Passive House Massachusetts, welcomes the crowd to Boston at the opening night (last night) of the 2018 PHIUS Passive House Conference. (Sold out).

MORE: PHIUS PASSIVE HOUSE CONFERENCE

Illinois Gets Its First Passive House Institute Certified Home

After a thorough renovation and completing a rigorous review process, Ellis Passivhaus in Chicago becomes the first Passive House Institute certified home in Illinois.

A development of Kenwood Construction Services with the Passive House consulting services of  ZeroEnergy Design, the Ellis Passivhaus transforms an antiquated 1890’s rowhome into a progressive, urban, green living environment.  

The newly renovated home now provides exceptional energy performance, healthy indoor air quality, thermal comfort, and long term resilience, all within a Chicago row house aesthetic.  

MORE:  PRESS RELEASE