IBE Green Building Certificate Online Instructor
"The National Passive House Conference recently brought building scientists, architects, engineers, designers and builders, and high-tech vendors to Denver the last week of September. One of our very own Cody Farmer was a featured speaker on construction management and cost control of building one of Colorado’s first Passive House’. Cody finished his Masters in Sustainable Building in 2010 and with his wife Lisa turned their focus on Passive Building taking their company MainStream to the next level and later co-founded Rocky Mountain Passive House, and became founding members of Denver Passive House Alliance.
The conference covered every detail of building Passive House buildings including cost and management, delivery methods, creating business from Passive House, case studies, and monitoring actual performance. Both Cody and Lisa spoke about their project Passivista, a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house that was on-tour Sunday for over 80 conference attendees. More than 200 people have now toured the Passivista including representation from the EPA, DOE, HUD, USGBC, and Dept. of Indian Affairs. (http://www.passivehouse.us/phc2012/)
Besides the 5,000 recycled newspapers in the Passivista thermal envelop, and the continuous filtered fresh air system, the hype over the building is likely its simplicity in makeup and intent study of removing energy losses from the building alone. The jury is still out on how the owners will impact the predicted energy usage of the 3,000 sqft home. The current heating demand without any renewables is 3.7 btu/Sqft/yr. And heat will be supplied by a cute little Vermont Castings direct vent gas stove.
People picture our first imported Heat Recovery Ventilation System, AirPohoda, from Czech: from Left to Right (Michal Placek, Roman Salomoun, Cody Farmer, Lisa Farmer)."
