Cathy O’Neill’s cozy white home blends into its neighborhood in Sonoma, Calif. Yet it’s still distinctive in one way. It’s so energy-efficient that its mechanical system can fit into a linen closet. It’s one of only a dozen homes in the United States, and the first retrofitted one, to be certified by the Passive House […]

On Mondays, we post a new home whose design is presented in the builder’s or designer’s own words. This week: Builder: Rick Milburn, Solar Knights Construction, Napa, Calif. Architect:Jarrod Denton, Lail Design Group, St. Helena, Calif. Passive house consulting: Graham Irwin,  Essential Habitat Consulting. Interior design:Jann Blazona, Sonoma, Calif. Landscape architect: Chandler & Chandler, Napa. Location: Sonoma Project description: Constructed in 1960, the residence was originally two […]

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 […]

How one project team transformed a 1960’s eyesore into a super-efficient, net-zero-energy home and building America program prototype.  Passivworks Historic Oneil Passive house retrofit made the cover of Solar Today Magazine for it’s pioneer energy innovation in California.  Read Article below! Click here to read the magazine:  http://www.solartoday-digital.org/solartoday/20120304#pg1