Heart of a Building’s episode on the Sierra Grande PK-12 school in Blanca, CO -airing/streaming beginning in early 2023- references “Passive House” performance standards as the guiding principles for the design and construction of this school building. To learn more about Passive House please check out the following links: Passive House US | Passive House Institute
We were thrilled to kick off June on the Better Buildings Better Society podcast. You can watch and listen here or head to their YouTube channel and see this and other great episodes. Don’t forget to subscribe! Please let us know if you have questions or would like more information about anything you heard here! From the show notes: “Without a question, we need better airtightness and better insulation. That is the best place to spend your dollars,” shares Paul…
My Net Zero Home Got Me Through a Wisconsin Winter — Here’s What I Learned By Amber Westerman Is it really possible to get through a Wisconsin winter on solar electricity alone? We had a 10-day cold snap last February and it got down to minus 17 degrees F. My air-source heat pump (mini-split) was working hard — and consuming lots of power. When I set out to build a net-zero house (and afford it), I knew my design had to…
Thrive Vitality Homes, Denver, Colorado | Each Vitality home features luxurious architecture combined with Thrive’s trademark Zero Energy construction, LEED certification, and a focus on cleaner indoor air. Vitality Thrive Homes are production built, single-family homes, which deliver zero-energy and zero-emission housing available to hundreds of home buyers every year in the Denver Metro area. Thrive’s decades-long vision was to optimize the health of the buyer. They did this by enhancing indoor air quality, comfort, and eliminating the home’s carbon…
Nantes Public Library, Gilcrest, Colorado | Nantes Public Library is a near passive house-compliant public building. The building design brought outstanding daylighting and comfort for occupants while delivering low utility bills [for the taxpayers of the district]. It has become the gem of the High Plains Library District. The project has merged people who had both conservative and progressive viewpoints to work together to create a building that is an example of being in ever greater harmony with Nature. Project…
L’Avenir Luxury Townhomes, Ft. Collins, Colorado | The L’Avenir townhomes, a 4-unit rowhome nestled next to Old Town Ft. Collins, Colorado, embodies a lifetime of design work and learning from the wife and husband team of Laurie and Bob Davis of Davis/Davis Architects. They deliver homes with an exceptionally light footprint on the Earth. Project Highlights Net zero-energy/zero-emissions 1-foot thick walls with extensive air-sealing, filled wall cavities, and exterior insulation Ground-source heat pump for heating and cooling with radiant delivery…
These “production built” single-family homes make zero-energy/zero-emission housing available to hundreds of home buyers every year in the Denver Metro area. Optimizing the health of the buyers via enhanced indoor air-quality, comfort and no operational carbon footprint were the vision, which has been delivered in these homes.
Great news! We just heard that our THREE NEW EPISODES will air on Rocky Mountain PBS on Sundays in November: the 7th, 14th, and 21st! Thrive’s Vitality Collection indoor air safe/net-zero energy/zero emissions homes in Denver (to air/begin streaming on 11/7 at 10am) Nantes Library a near Passive House compliant public library in Gilcrest, CO (Weld County) (to air/begin streaming on 11/14 at 10am) and L’Avenir project net-zero/zero emission/LEED Platinum townhome project in Ft. Collins (to air/begin streaming on 11/21 at 10am). AND – if you…
Greenspire Apartments, Longmont, Colorado | Greenspire is Colorado’s first Passive House-inspired apartment building, providing 44 healthy, affordable studio apartments built with the heart-centered “why” of leaving the world a better place for future generations. Developer/Builder Gary Kinzie worked with Cody and Lisa Farmer of Mainstream Corporation to design a building that uses features like airtight construction and 30% more insulation than Code requires to optimize regenerative performance and affordability. Cody and Lisa Farmer did the energy-efficiency analysis and Passive House…
First Universalist Church, Denver, Colorado | This community put their ‘why’ into action by honoring one of the central tenets of their faith —“respect the interdependent web of all existence” — with a large-scale renovation of their existing building. Using recycled and repurposed materials, spray-foam insulation, solar panels, and a geothermal heat system, the new worship sanctuary and event space were constructed to operate entirely on clean, renewable energy — with zero greenhouse gas emissions. Jessica Montgomerie, a staff member…
Paul Kriescher, Executive Producer/Host
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