Deep energy retrofits are key to decarbonizing our building stock. They also allow us to salvage building materials, prolonging their life cycles and keeping them from the landfill. Examples below include single-family homes, multifamily buildings, and even a hotel in Spain. We'll be taking a few weeks off from programing for the holidays, but we'll be back in January with more great articles and videos.
See you in 2024!
Videos
2/22/23
Six & Kane: First EnerPhit Plus Commercial Building in the United States
Norm Horn (New Ecology Inc) and Gary Moshier (Moshier Studio) join Construction Tech to discuss Six&Kane, the first EnerPHit Plus Certified Commercial Building in the United States.
Video, Commercial, Passive House Accelerator Live, Construction Tech Tuesday
3/22/23
Industrial Retrofits: Moving from Concept to Construction
We were joined by four retrofit experts who share their collective experience creating solutions to upgrade existing buildings and scale for greater production in the future.
Video, Retrofit, PH Summit or Roundtable
4/28/23
Touring an Architect's Eco-Friendly Brooklyn NYC Townhouse | Passive Pads
Passive Pads is a series that shows Passive House from the homeowner's perspective. This week, we visit the home of NYC-based Passive House Architect and founder of Passive House Accelerator, Michael Ingui and his wife and home co-designer, Dayan Ingui.
Video, Retrofit, Reimagine Buildings
5/18/23
BPI Episode 3: Retrofitting and Remodelling a Timber Frame House to EnerPHit Standard
The third episode of BPI provides lessons and thoughts on DIY deep retrofit and radical remodelling for space and amenity.
Video, Retrofit, Single Family, Building Performance Interactive
6/2/23
INSIDE a DIY Deep Energy Retrofit (a Passive House EnerPHit)
Maybe you've dreamt of doing your own DIY Passive House retrofit, or maybe you're knee-deep in your own deep energy retrofit right now. We're excited to share the story of Es Tresidder and the DIY retrofit of his family's home in the Western highlands of Scotland.
Video, Retrofit, Single Family, Reimagine Buildings
6/9/23
Iconic Retrofits Bring Passive House to Brooklyn, NYC | Massive Passive
Our inaugural episode of Massive Passive takes us to Bushwick, Brooklyn, where we delve into the Casa Pasiva retrofit initiative that is bringing beautiful new facades to affordable housing buildings throughout the neighborhood.
Video, Retrofit, Affordable Housing, Reimagine Buildings
6/21/23
Hot Climate, Cool Solutions: Inside Seville's Passive House Hotel
Juan Manuel Castaño Salvador of Castaño & Asociados Passivhaus discusses the process of building the first Passive House certified hotel in Seville's historic center.
Video, Hot Humid Climates, Passive House Accelerator Live
6/23/23
How A Passive House Retrofit Protected Couple’s Home From Fire
Finished just two months before the devastating Marshall Fire in Colorado, Mark Attard's Passive House retrofit came just in time.
Video, Resilience, Retrofit, Reimagine Buildings
7/12/23
High Energy Performance With Low Carbon Building Materials
Paul Shepski of Vancouver, BC based Geography Contracting discusses high energy performance and low carbon materials.
Video, Embodied Carbon, Envelope and Structure, Passive House Accelerator Live
10/18/23
NYC Holistic Decarbonization: The Role of Retrofit
Ana Leopold, Vera A. Voropaeva and Paul Castrucci of Paul Castrucci Architects join the Accelerator to review their approach to replicable retrofit pathways.
Video, Retrofit, Passive House Accelerator Live
12/13/23
Layering Thermal Control into an Existing Building
Nakita Reed shares insights into the retrofit of the Compound Rowhouse project in Baltimore, which involves the transformation of four dilapidated row homes into two cutting-edge communal residential units.
Video, Retrofit, Passive House Accelerator Live
Articles
3/17/23
Real-World Benefits of a Passive House Retrofit
Mark Attard of Hammerwell, Inc discusses the benefits of retrofitting homes to Passive House standards in regions that are seeing more fires, more smoke damage to homes, and more days with poor air quality.
Building Science, Durability, Health & IAQ
3/31/23
Going Solo in a Montana EnerPHit
David Karon of Karon Custom Built is performing an EnerPHit retrofit of his home in Livingston, and he's playing the roles of general contractor, architect, engineer, builder, investor, and occupant all at the same time.
Retrofit, Single Family
4/21/23
Applying EnerPHit Lessons to Social Housing in Mexico
In an effort to make homes more resilient to the extreme heat of Mexico, a pilot project has been launched to develop energy retrofit packages, evaluate their technical and financial feasibility, and identify the most suitable mass-scale bundle of energy efficiency and renewable energy measures.
Hot Humid Climates
5/25/23
Metro Vancouver Housing Retrofits
Metro Vancouver Housing has issued RFPs for two buildings that participated in the Reframed Lab: Crown Manor in Coquitlam and Le Chateau Place in New Westminster.
News
7/19/23
Response to the NESEA BE Boston 2023 Wednesday Keynote, “Why we Stopped Doing Deep Energy Retrofits”
"Unless the commons are assigned a value, and every economic decision is inclusive of the cost of harm to said commons, 'cost benefit' is a one-sided fiction," Hindle writes. "In short Rachel and Brendan were applying a cost-benefit analysis for a micro-economic context to make a statement about our industry’s strategic responses to a crisis of the global commons known as the atmosphere. The tool does not fit the task."
Retrofit
8/4/23
Efficient Housing—Old and New: Densification Via New Construction and Retrofit
The Beacon, a multi-use Buildings of Excellence award-winning project designed by Paul A. Castrucci Architects, stands to become a replicable model for fully electrified, deeply efficient, healthy, decarbonized, resilient, and Passive House construction on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
Multifamily, Retrofit
9/8/23
Mainstreaming Clean Energy on Main Street USA
A Gilded Age bank building goes green with a plan that respects what’s best for an Upstate New York community’s climate, culture, and economy.
Retrofit
9/15/23
A Deep Energy Retrofit: Our Experiment + Experience
Carri Beer—homeowner, architect, permaculture designer, and owner of CommONEcology Radical Architecture + Design—details the experience of retrofitting her home, which she describes as "an architect’s dream and a Passive House consultant’s worst nightmare."
Retrofit, Single Family
10/20/23
Buildings UP Award Goes to passivhausMAINE
passivhausMAINE received a big boost for its retrofitMAINE initiative last week from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Buildings Upgrade Prize (Buildings UP) to create a more comprehensive, local retrofit training program.
News
12/1/23
Early Design Support Helps Two MAP Projects Explore Novel Solutions
NYSERDA's Buildings of Excellence Early Design Support program has given Magnusson Architecture and Planning the opportunity to study novel design solutions for projects in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx.
News, Multifamily
12/8/23
Passive Resilience Gets Valued
A report commissioned by the U.S. DOE’s Building Technologies Office provides a better understanding of the value of energy efficiency and passive building methodologies.
Resilience