Passive House owner interviewed: “It’s awesome…There are no drafts, there are no cold corners.”

Jetson Green’s interview with the owners of the Breezeway House discusses the payoff of first-adopter challenges.

Preston Passive House in UtahKoerner’s conversation with the denizens of the Passive House project in Utah covers green design inspiration, financing challenges (resolved by working with a credit union), construction process, and, the experience of living day-to-day in a superinsulated, airtight, mechanically ventilated home.  The beautiful pics (by Amanda Nelson Photography and Design) included in the Jetson Green blog post give further credence to the notion that Passive House projects needn’t sacrifice on design aesthetics or integrity.

In response to Koerner’s question “can you tell me about things like temperature, comfort, humidity, daylighting, noise levels, etc?“, owner Joe Turner responds:

“It’s awesome. It’s definitely different than a traditional house. There are no drafts, there are no cold corners. The house heats and cools very slowly. In our old home (post war boom house with single pane windows) you would feel cold right before the furnace kicked on and hot after it turned off for a little, but the days of 4 degree swings in our home are over. That doesn’t happen in this house. It takes the home four hours to add or lose a degree.

“We have concrete floors, without radiant, that we can walk on barefoot even in the dead of winter because they don’t leak their heat into the ground because of the thermal barriers.”

Take a look at the video below … it’s a nice project.  For more about Passive House, please visit our Passive House page.

-Zack

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