The passive house is anything but.
“The definition of a passive house is a house that heats and cools itself,” says Michael Murphy, director of new project development for Murphy Brothers Contracting in Mamaroneck. “There”™s no greener building than the passive house.”
The concept began with a 1988 conversation between two academics ”“ Sweden”™s Bo Adamson and Germany”™s Wolfgang Feist, who founded the Passivhaus-Institut in Darmstadt in 1996. To date, more than 25,000 homes have been built ”“ mainly in Austria and Germany, with the passive house becoming standard for energy-challenged Ireland.
But will it catch on here? Murphy Brothers is betting that it will. Recently, the company hosted a Power Point presentation by architect Tomas O”™Leary of MosArt, an environmental design firm in Ireland that drafted the passive house guidelines for the country, and Simon Barcoe, vice president of engineering and construction for Enterprise Ireland, the country”™s Trade & Technology Office overseas. Murphy Brothers intends to work with architects to ensure that clients know the passive house is a viable home-building option.
Characterized by thicker walls and triple-glaze windows, passive-house design is best suited to new building, although Michael Murphy says commercial buildings in Ireland are being retrofitted with thicker envelopes (walls and roofs), as if the buildings were teeth being capped.
“It”™s slow to take off here,” he adds, in part because America is far richer in energy resources than a place like Ireland and because “most Americans equate the passive home with the ugly home.”
Indeed, early passive homes in Darmstadt look boxy and undistinguished. But, Murphy says, “with the passive home, you can still have a beautiful design in the bones of the house.”
That might satisfy Americans aesthetically. They”™d still probably want to have central air and heating, Murphy says.
Nevertheless, he adds, “this is where we as a company are going to go.”
