Passive Project Update: Completion is Imminent
This is just a quick update on the Passive House Project which is wrapping up this week. This has, for a variety of reasons, been a hurry up and wait kind of project, and right now we are in final hurry up mode. A crazy amount of stuff is getting wrapped up each day. These are a few pictures I managed to take amidst the work. The image below shows the birch plywood back-splash wall in the Passive House. The mess in front of the walls is made up of kitchen cabinets and assembly instructions. Those will likely all be installed tomorrow.

Transit Oriented Development- Laying Down The Tracks of the Future
Yvette, as most of you know, is interning with us. This is post is part of her ongoing contribution to our blog conversation. Read it and grace her with some of your expertise and ideas in the comments. From November 2nd to November11th Philadelphia’s highways, bridges, and local roads were unusually congested with frustrated commuters aggressively weaving through traffic while talking on the phone, drinking coffee, and screaming defamatory remarks at the rival commuter. Strange how quickly the dormant road rage monster within can rear its ugly head in the most seemingly passive and normal people. The city has been turned upside down with the

The Extra Bedroom Problem
We tend toward large homes in the US and this tendency has become more and more pronounced despite the shrinking of our average family size. Much of this growth is probably a result of cheap space and cheap energy. There is simply a lack of significant economic incentive toward modesty. Land is relatively abundant and affordable, providing ample space for our swelling dwellings (ridiculous phrase but I couldn’t resist). The energy to condition and power the extra space is some of the least expensive in the world. We are almost encouraged to tack on extra rooms even to the point at which we run out of names for them. Only in the US would you actually have a space called a “bon

Land Ethics- And Idea of the Past or a Solution for the Future?
Yvette, as many of you know by know, is interning with us. This is her second post (catch up with the first). Read it and grace her with some of your expertise and ideas in the comments. With every year that passes it seems like more rich farmland is being converted into sprawling residential developments forcing food to travel farther and farther to our dinner plates and as a result increasing the carbon footprint. When you live in the suburbs you are almost as likely to see deer, skunks, and possums on the road as you are other drivers because their habitat is

Building Gaskets and Air Sealing Tape
Yesterday we looked at some lessons learned from our aggressive air sealing goals on the Passive Project. In doing so we mentioned that we will be utilizing building gaskets and air sealing tape to help obtain the very difficult building air tightness goal of 0.6 ACH @ 50Pa that is required by the Passive House standard. Let’s take a more detailed look at the technology and economics of these two construction mate