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High performance and Passive House retrofit projects hold the key to decarbonizing our existing building stock. We’ve selected a collection of thought leadership, project case studies, news stories, videos, and podcasts to showcase the retrofit highlights from 2021. Here’s to more retrofits in 2022!
“The house next to ours was identical to what ours was before our Passive House remodel,” says Trey Farmer, architect and principal of Forge Craft Architecture + Design in Austin, Texas. “After 12 hours without power, it was below freezing inside in the home next door.” Meanwhile, Farmer’s home, which had been retrofitted to meet Passive House performance levels, had dropped to 60 degrees inside after the first night without power. Read the full article.
A small commercial Passive House retrofit building, dubbed The Wilds, will be completed soon in the northern Pennsylvania town of Kane. Retrofitted from the shell of an 1897 structure, the revamped energy-efficient building will be used by organizations that support rural economic development while promoting sustainable energy practices throughout the Pennsylvania Wilds. Read the full article.
The release of the IPCC’s most recent report makes patently clear how critical it is to design buildings to minimize carbon emissions impact, if there had been any question. But, with the climate already changing, adaptation and resilience strategies have started garnering more attention. Enter Ilana Judah, principal of ACORN Resilience & Sustainability. Read the full article.
Financing can be the trickiest part of the deep energy retrofit equation. The EnergyFirst Mortgage, now in its pilot phase, is a green mortgage program designed to solve that aspect of the equation. The pilot was created in partnership with the Vermont-based credit union VSECU (Vermont State Employees Credit Union), ClearlyEnergy, and Energy Futures Group. Read the full article.
RetrofitMAINE, a passivhausMAINE initiative, is encouraging, promoting, and collaborating on Passive House and Energiesprong-inspired retrofits of typical New England residential building stock: single family homes, duplexes, and the three-story apartment buildings commonly known as triple deckers. The open-source initiative, which is the brainchild of Naomi Beal, the director of passivhausMAINE, straddles the divide between research and practice, helping to develop and document optimized retrofit practices with an aim to identifying efficiencies of time and cost. Read the full article.
Affordable housing is a major concern in the United States, and there is an especially growing need for affordable senior housing as members of the Baby Boom generation rock on for much longer than their predecessors did. In Connecticut the graying of the population is particularly evident; the state has a median age of 41 compared to the U.S. median of 34 years. Read the full article.
Part 1 Construction
Part 2 Design