The HIP modular Passive House is now completed, with all systems installed. HIP held a grand opening in late November, attended by Patricia Waiters, Mayor of Fairmount Heights, and officials from the Prince George’s County Department of Housing and… read more →
Chris Conway and crew were able to get back at the site on September 3rd for a second test, after taping of the various leaks we’d uncovered on August 26th. The big culprits, we believe, were the gaps at each… read more →
Chris Conway and Caleb Fritsch of Conway Energy performed the long-awaited blower door test for our first modular passive house today. We couldn’t have picked a more beautiful — and simultaneously more inopportune — day to have scheduled it. Good… read more →
Architects rarely see sudden transformations. Our work is composed of small incremental steps, generally forward, from fuzzy concept to finished building. The pace usually seems glacial and there is never, ever, a big WOW moment when what we do suddenly… read more →
Sitework began in mid-July. Everything is now ready for the arrival of the modules on August 11. One of the ways we controlled costs on the project was to eliminate the conditioned crawl space, which on a passive house can… read more →
One of the biggest challenges in all Passive Houses is meeting the air sealing requirement of .6 ACH @ 50Pa. It is particularly challenging on this project for two reasons: First, the relatively small size of the house means there… read more →
This week Beracah Homes in Greenwood, Delaware began construction of our — and their — first modular Passive House. The house is sponsored by the Housing Initiative Partnership(HIP), a Maryland non-profit organization committed to providing affordable housing. HIP had seen… read more →