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Old Posted Mar 31, 2015, 3:47 PM
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The Passive House in New York

The Passive House in New York


MARCH 27, 2015

By ALISON GREGOR

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/re...york-city.html

Quote:
It was less than a decade ago that a building design philosophy from Germany called “passive house” jumped the Atlantic Ocean and quietly took root in Brooklyn. Now, with a few dozen homes and small projects built or retrofitted to this still exotic standard, passive buildings appear poised to enter New York City’s housing market in a much bigger way.

- Passive buildings maintain a comfortable interior climate without active heating and cooling systems — that means no more radiators or air-conditioning units for people who live in environments more temperate than New York’s. This is done using, among other things, an airtight building envelope and a system that exchanges interior and exterior air, usuallly an energy recovery ventilator. In New York, small heating and cooling systems are generally included in passive homes.

- A house built to passive standards uses less than a quarter of the energy of a traditionally powered home, according to the Passivhaus Institut, which developed the standard in Germany. Besides lower energy bills, benefits include quiet interiors because of thick, insulated walls, along with fresher, cleaner air, thanks to the filters in energy recovery ventilators. Builders and residents of passive houses say the filters can help eliminate allergies and asthmatic symptoms.

- With a small group of developers, builders and architects convinced that passive standards can now be achieved at little or no extra cost, proponents hope to see a revolution in how homes and other structures are built in the city. --- “Building to passive-house standards just makes a lot of sense,” said Stephen Lynch, an architect and principal of Caliper Studio, who retrofitted his townhouse in South Slope, Brooklyn, using passive house principles two years ago. There are some cost hurdles and a learning curve, but those challenges can be overcome, he said, “and then you realize how amazing it is that we don’t already build to these standards.”

- Officials working to implement Mayor Bill de Blasio’s sweeping green-building initiative, which has a target of an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, are studying passive-house standards as they overhaul performance standards for new construction. --- Worldwide, buildings are responsible for about 40 percent of carbon emissions, but in New York City, it’s closer to 71 percent. The Mayor’s Carbon Challenge Progress Report of 2013 found that residential buildings account for 37 percent of the city’s emissions.

- The cost of creating a passive house has been much debated. A few years ago, the Passivhaus Institut put the additional cost in the United States at somewhere around 6 percent. But proponents say costs have come down as prices for materials dropped and contractors have become more familiar with passive-building methods. Triple-pane windows and added insulation may add costs upfront, but these expenses are offset by the smaller boilers and smaller heating and air-conditioning systems passive houses require.

- Other passive-building proponents see passive certification as only a step on the road toward developing net zero energy buildings — buildings that use no energy or produce the energy they need — and even buildings that generate carbon credits to sell. --- “Many people are targeting zero energy, not passive house,” said Sam McAfee, a passive-building consultant and the founder of sg.Build who is working on many projects in New York. “Passive house is just a gateway to this. All the competing passive-house religions will achieve this goal ultimately.”

.....



New York buildings adhering to passive-house principles include 803 Knickerbocker Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn. Credit Pablo Enriquez for The New York Times


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