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The number of multifamily residential projects targeting Passive House certification has been rising steadily over the past decade, bringing along many exciting challenges.

This has been especially prevalent in New York City, where increasingly stringent energy standards and a desire for innovation have made designing to Passive House standards an attractive goal.

As the number of Passive House projects passing through our offices in New York City; Washington, DC; Boston; and Norwalk, CT continues to grow, we have seen some important overlaps with one of our other consulting services: accessibility compliance.

In the United States, multifamily new construction projects consisting of four or more dwelling units are subject to the Fair Housing Act, as well as state, city, and local accessibility laws and codes. Projects targeting Passive House certification must comply fully with all applicable accessibility requirements.

In this blog post, we will focus on projects in NYC—although most newly constructed residential projects across the country will be subject to some variation of the criteria discussed below, for both Passive House and accessibility standards. (more…)

On the very first episode of Buildings + Beyond, Passive House pioneer Lois Arena answered the most common questions asked about meeting the high-performance requirements of the Passive House standard. You loved the episode—it’s one of our most popular of all time—and we loved recording with Lois. So, 6 years later, we decided to record a highly anticipated follow-up episode.

Listen as host Robb Aldrich poses the same 10 questions from the original episode, and a few new ones, to Lois and Dylan Martello—who both work on first-of-their-kind, largescale Passive House projects at Steven Winter Associates. What answers have remained the same, and what has changed in the last 6 years?

Click here to listen to the original episode.

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The envelope of a Passive House building is designed to be significantly airtight. Mechanical ventilation systems introduce fresh, filtered air and exhaust stale, contaminated air 24 hours a day—which is extremely important in maintaining optimal indoor air quality and occupant comfort.

As the saying goes, build tight and ventilate right.

When ventilation systems are designed correctly, but installed, commissioned, or operated incorrectly, the system ends up being leaky and inefficient and uses more energy than expected.

Project teams for Passive House buildings must find solutions for these implementation and commissioning hurdles, or the potential energy penalty can adversely effect the building’s high-performance design intent.

What happens when a Passive House construction expert and a commissioning engineer collaborate to find a solution to common ventilation system issues that cause excess energy use? We, the authors of this blog post, did just that!

Keep reading to learn about common construction issues with Passive House ventilation systems and five lessons learned based on our experiences in the field. (more…)

Each day, SWA collaborates to create more sustainable, efficient, healthy, and accessible buildings. This holistic approach to the built environment necessitates talented teams with a wide range of specializations. (Want to join us? Check out the open positions on our Careers page!)

In this profile, we’re catching up with Thomas Moore, a Senior Building Systems Consultant located in Toronto, Canada.

Thomas developed a passion for the Passive House standard early in his career: “Simply put, I wanted to reduce the impact buildings had on the environment, and I saw Passive House as an actionable way of doing this,” he says. Thomas has been working on Passive House projects for more than 5 years on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border.

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New York City: the city that never sleeps—and where buildings account for approximately two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2019, New York City Council passed Local Law 97 (LL97) to hold building owners responsible for carbon emissions. The goal is to reduce over time, eventually reducing emissions 80% by 2050. As it stands, the law applies to most buildings over 25,000 square feet, which is roughly 50,000 residential and commercial properties across the five boroughs.

One pathway to decarbonize New York City’s buildings is using the Passive House standard: a high-performance building standard that significantly reduces whole building energy consumption by up to 60-70% while providing superior comfort and indoor air quality. When coupled with renewable energy systems, Passive House makes net zero energy buildings more feasible. (more…)

Each day, SWA employees collaborate to create more sustainable, efficient, healthy, and accessible buildings. This holistic approach to the built environment necessitates talented teams with a wide range of specializations. (Want to join us? Check out the open positions on our Careers page!)

In this staff profile, we’re catching up with Michael Schmidt, a Building Systems Consultant on our Passive House team in New York City. Michael started his career as an intern with SWA, and upon graduation, joined the team where he has now worked for almost two years.
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Passive House design for large multi-family buildings aligns with and builds upon industry guidance for mitigating the spread of infectious diseases.

As the world continues to be turned on its head by the impacts of COVID-19, the building industry has been scrambling to respond, encouraging designers and building operators to learn about how their buildings are being ventilated. Industry experts have produced an array of documents and reports outlining guidelines for reopening buildings safely while minimizing the risk of transferring infectious disease. Much of the focus of this guidance has been on using mechanical ventilation and proper air distribution to dilute contaminant levels in spaces and minimize the spread of viruses. The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has produced a significant amount of guidance for designers. One of their main documents, produced in April, is the “ASHRAE Position Document on Infectious Aerosols,” which provides useful information for how buildings should be designed and operated in response to a pandemic. However, it has prompted questions from design teams about how this might conflict with the goals of very low energy buildings, such as Passive House (PH). This blogpost is written as a response to some of these questions and to highlight the benefits of Passive House design in light of recent recommendations by groups like ASHRAE.

Benefits of Passive House for Mitigating COVID Transmission

The following are some of the benefits of Passive House design for multi-family buildings compared to code requirements as well as some additional guidance for how to design to mitigate virus transmission.

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One of the most important drivers in achieving Passive House certification (or achieving any goal!) is getting the project team involved from the start. Becker + Becker, the owner, architect and developer for the creative retrofit of the Pirelli Building, hired SWA’s Passive House, LEED, Enclosures, and Accessibility teams to coordinate during early design. Becker +Becker is invested in rebuilding for resilience, sustainability, and occupant health and comfort and appreciates the necessity of getting goals defined at the outset.

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In a collaborative effort that merged financing and energy use analysis, the New York City Passive House industry finally has performance data. Working together with Bright Power, The Community Preservation Corporation, and NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development, this analysis is the first of its kind.

Why does this matter?

Energy Use Intensity (EUI) measures energy consumption on a per square foot basis to compare buildings and allows interested parties to gauge one building’s usage to another (or to a group of buildings with a similar use type). The study team compared the actual EUI of six completed Passive House-certified and Passive House-like buildings against recently completed multifamily code-built buildings. Information was gleaned from the EnergyScoreCards database and the Passive House (PH) target. The weather normalized data indicates the Passive House and Passive House-like buildings are performing much better than the comparable code-built group, but are not quite as efficient as the Passive House threshold. Industry leaders have recognized this performance gap – between predictive assumptions that rely on standardized patterns of use and the real-life habits of actual people living in the building. This gap has been a hot topic  at the past several New York Passive House conferences. The results from the current analysis provide a starting point now, so the industry can focus on strategies to continue to reduce EUIs.

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Before we get into this topic, please take a few seconds to consider the following questions:

• Do you plan to work, or have you ever worked, on a Passive House building? (If not, the rest of your answers are probably no.)
• Has your Passive House consultant ever told you that the window U-Value you provided “won’t work in their energy model?”
• Has your Passive House consultant ever told you that your window “doesn’t meet the comfort criteria?”
• Have you ever scratched your head when someone asked you to provide the “Psi-spacer” for your window?

If you answered yes to two or more of these queries, please read on. If not, you’ll still learn some useful information, so why not continue?

If you’re still reading, then you are probably somewhat familiar with a “U-Value” and you may know what “SHGC” means. If not, no worries. This article will explain both, and by the end you’ll be able to talk about these terms with most Passive House nerds.

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