This article appeared in the November 2013 issue of Organic Hudson Valley. (A direct link is under Links to Articles.)

When Bill Stratton took on the project of building a house that would be environmentally friendly, energy saving and still practical in a residential setting, a task that is not easy, he didn’t realize he was building his own house.  Stratton took this project on after being presented with the idea by Dennis Wedlick, the architect who designed the house.

“The architect presented it to me as something he’d been working on design-wise, and basically asked me if I wanted to do it on speculation,” Stratton said.  “My company agreed to do it, and we found a piece of land.”  They worked with Wedlick’s firm, BarlisWedlick, to secure the land and began building the house.

“He had a lot of the design of the house, in the concept and the science and the calculations,” Stratton said of beginning the project with Wedlick.  The house was designed to successfully meet the criteria for the High Performance Energy Challenge put forth by the New York State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA).  This provided third party verification of the ideas for the project.  NYSERDA also monitored the construction process.

“My wife and I moved into it,” Stratton said.  “We like it very much.”

The home, known as the Hudson Valley Passive Project, is located in the Hudson, New York, and is the first certified passive house in New York State and also ranks among the highest performing homes in the world.

The project began in 2008, when the recession caused Wedlick to consider downsizing his firm if he didn’t find a worthy use of the talent and resources working there.  Along with his partner, Alan Barlis, he began doing research and they became fascinated by the first passive house in the country, located in Minnesota.  They thought it would be a great idea to test out the technology and see how it compared to solar technology, which they were working with at the time.

“We took it on as a research and development project, with no client in mind,” Wedlick said.  In 2010 “we received certification and we broke records on the performance of the house.  In 2011, we monitored it for a full year and by 2012 we had the data, and it turned out to be 99 percent better in its performance than the models had predicted.”  The house uses no energy for heating and 84 percent less energy for cooling, with no solar or geothermal technology.

The passive standard was developed in Germany, and is widely used there and in other parts of Europe.  It’s a measurable standard of energy consumption that has to be met to receive certification, which is granted by the German Passivhaus Institut.  The home is very well insulated, almost airtight and gets its energy for heating mainly from the sun and solar power as well as from the people residing in it.  The design has the potential to reduce overall energy consumption by an incredible 90 percent.

“Passive blows way by any of the LEED [Leadership In Energy and Environmental Design] on insulation and energy consumption,” Stratton said, explaining the differences in green technology certifications.  “They score you on where the materials came from and those kind of environmental things.  You can incorporate solar panels into the energy use and be net zero.”

The energy used by the house is electricity and the energy bill is under $800 a year, according to Stratton.  That bill includes heating and cooling, as well as regular everyday use of electricity for things like lights and television and running appliances.

The home uses energy efficient fixtures and LED lights.  The largest energy saver, however, is the level of air tightness that the house has.  “The installation of the insulation as well as the amount of insulation makes it virtually airtight so it maintains the temperature easily,” Stratton said.  Once the house is brought to a particular temperature, it maintains that temperature for a long time, cutting down on the necessity of heating or cooling the home, something especially helpful in cutting down energy in the winter, when heating bills go up as people try to keep warm.  “The windows were carefully chosen and carefully placed,” Stratton said.  “They were chosen to pick up temperature and get solar heat at the same time.”

When Stratton and his wife sold the house last year, they were glad to have had the experience of living in it.  “We kept it on the market while we lived there,” he said.  “We sold it last December.”  Stratton was happy to be able to talk about the functionality of the house and give firsthand knowledge of how everything worked to any prospective buyers.  “We can speak to what we experienced firsthand,” he continued.

The technology used to build the passive house can be applied to almost any type of construction.  Wedlick did some work for the non-profit organization Habitat for Humanity, where this type of technology is particularly applicable.  “Every man, woman and child should have a decent, safe and affordable place to live,” the web site for the organization reads.  “We build and repair houses all over the world using volunteer labor and donations.”  Energy saving construction methods, which, in turn, leads to money saving, are a great breakthrough when building homes for low income families and people recovering from disasters.

“It could become cheaper as the materials come down in price as more people apply the technology,” Wedlick said.  If that were to happen, passive technology would be the ideal solution for organizations such as Habitat for Humanity to use for construction, as it would keep the price of maintaining the home low for the often low-income residents.

“That was also pretty exciting,” Stratton said of the work with Habitat for Humanity.  “We did a little bit to help down there.  There were a couple things that I didn’t want to leave and one of them was the installation and air sealing around the windows, so our crew went down and put those in.  They did a good job.”

General residential construction can also make use of the green technology used in the Hudson Valley Passive Project.  It can even be built by anyone with construction knowledge, no special degree in passive construction technology necessary.  “When we did the first one, a reporter asked me if anybody could build this and we took that from the basis of someone who has a baseline in building and then the answer is yes,” Stratton said.  “It was really a lot of attention to detail and a focus on what’s at hand.  When it comes to assembling the building, it’s not that much different.  If you have a strong baseline, you’re just adapting skills and focusing on the energy and things.”

For the average person, the main concern in considering using this type of technology in new construction is going to be the cost.  There is a 15 to 20 percent higher cost up front, according to Stratton, but that cost quickly goes away as you use the building and save on energy.  Without the added expense of energy costs, you get back your initial extra investment pretty quickly.

“People often wonder about the payback period on saving energy,” Wedlick said.  “That is the buzz kill phrase for any environmental advocate or green architect.  We should be doing everything we can to save energy and we shouldn’t be focused on the payback period.”

“It could be used not only in residential, but in commercial and businesses, and you start thinking about apartments, and not just single family housing, but all levels of housing could adapt it,” Stratton said of the wide applicability the technology has for use in construction projects to cut down on energy use everywhere.

“It’s definitely technology that can be easily adapted for any buildings and, interestingly enough, the larger the building, the more cost effective it is to use this technology,” Wedlick said.

Any concern about the type of land or weather, such as the thought that there might not be enough sun in the northeast for solar power, is unnecessary.  “It’s more about getting some orientation to south light so it really could be figured out to be in any region, and it could be built on any topography really, sloping or flat,” Stratton said.

Wedlick expanded on the explanation of how the technology functions to save energy, regardless of the location of the building.  “This is calibrated to minimize the energy lost to the outdoor climate.  If you have hot climates, you’re minimizing the amount of energy absorbed, you’re minimizing the cooling energy needed,” Wedlick said.  “It’s not dependent on the sun, but we do use the sun to help offset heat loss.  We’re calibrating the design around the weather.”

Stratton said his company has been fortunate enough to have worked on four passive projects so far, and he thinks the technology will expand to different markets, something he thinks should happen, as it’s beneficial to both the owner and the planet.

The Hudson Valley Passive Project was built on relatively flat land, but the same kind of construction could be used on different topographical layouts, such as a piece of land Stratton is currently working on.  His company is building on a piece of land that was fairly wooded, with less than optimal sun exposure.  “We had to clear just enough trees to get the sunlight,” Stratton said, describing how they worked with the topography they had to create conditions that would let the technology function well.  “It takes the design of the house and it calculates the footage and the amount of glass and its orientation and the region and all the things, good and bad, and you play with the specs of the building so you can meet the standard.”

Stratton explains that if the design has a lot of glass, you figure out a way to compensate for that somewhere else in the construction, such as using a stronger material somewhere else that can counteract the glass, creating a give and take in the design that allows for a building that provides the necessary features for the resident or business and the ability to take advantage of green technologies to create an energy-saving building.

Reflecting back on his time living in the Hudson Valley Passive Project, Stratton said that one of his favorite aspects of living in the house was the design.  “The design was really nice,” he said.  “It was fun to live in that.  It was also fun to not have an energy bill.

“One of my favorite lines was, ‘You can have a house that looks like this, but it doesn’t have to be passive or you could have a house that’s passive, and it doesn’t have to look like this,’” Stratton said of the Hudson Valley Passive Project.