Jarrod Denton has built what he calls his library of details. Within these figurative records, the architect from St. Helena’s Lail Design Group holds the information he uses when completing a project. He tweaks these details, edits them, but for the most part, he just goes with them because he knows they’re efficient and knows […]

Imagine spending a long Illinois winter in a cozy house with no cold corners or drafts—and heating bills half the norm—or sailing through a sultry Louisiana summer in cool comfort with bills that cost a fraction of the neighbors’. Passive House, the latest set of building standards sweeping North America, uses seven simple principles to […]

It began on a cross-country flight a couple of years ago. Rooting around in her carry-on, stockbroker and hedge fund trader Cathy O’Neill with dismay found herself with only one book in her briefcase — a dry, technical tome on “passive houses” that her contractor had given her to peruse. It wasn’t exactly a light […]

“The Passive House standard is the most rigorous building energy standard in the world.” —Graham Irwin, Essential Habitat Brrrr. It’s mid-winter, and heating a house in the North Bay can be expensive. Especially if you live in a mid-century, ranch-style home built on an uninsulated concrete slab, with lots of windows. But even on the […]

When Catherine O’Neill’s contractor first proposed remodeling her Sonoma, California, fixer into a hyperefficient “passive” house, she had one directive: “I don’t live in ugly.” A retired hedge fund trader, O’Neill pored over a book on passive construction, trying to learn about the technical aspects of keeping a house at a constant comfortable temperature using […]