There’s a real-life green building trend coming to life in the Miami Valley.
A brand-new local green construction company, Generation Green Building, is in the process of constructing Ohio’s first Passive House.
According to the website, The Yellow Springs Passive House is nearly 1,800 square feet and encompasses three bedrooms, an office, two full bathrooms, and a very modern open floor plan. Per the site:
Passive House goes beyond green architecture to green engineering. Because they are uniquely engineered, their comprehensive building systems rely on solar gain and ambient heat sources for nearly all of their heating needs. Through careful planning and engineering, a home’s central heating source, and thus its largest greenhouse gas emissions, can be comfortably eliminated.
A few of the main characteristics of Passive Houses are:
+ An air tight envelope (.6 air changes/hour at 50 pascals)
+ Super-insulated (R-50 walls and floor, R-100 roof)
+ Fresh air heat exchanger with ducting to all living areas
+ Limited thermal bridges in walls, floors, roof, and utility penetrations
+ The latest technology in energy-efficient windows and doors
The result is a home that is approximately 90 percent more efficient than homes built with standard construction methods, and roughly 60 percent more efficient than homes built to the U.S. Government’s Energy Star standard. It is better for you and better for the planet.
One of the perks Mr. Kline predicts for the house is that the annual energy costs to be around $86. As a resident of the area, I can tell you in my traditional home, I’m lucky to pay that little for just one utility in a month. Of course, that’s only an estimate and only time will tell — especially with this being the first house of it’s kind in our area, which sees the best and the worst of all four seasons and their accompanying weather conditions.
While this Passive House was built to specs as more of an experiment, it is currently complete enough to be listed in the local housing market. The asking price of the House through Generation Green is $290,000, however there is a potential buyer according to Mr. Kline. Currently there are no plans to build another Passive House in the greater Miami Valley area, but Mr. Kline was open to working with interested parties in collaborating on another if such parties came forward. Once certified by Passive House Institute US, it will be the first new single-family residence in Ohio to meet the standard, and Kline, at age 29, will be among the youngest Passive House builders in the Midwest.
Stay tuned as I sit down with Mr. Kline to interview him about the Yellow Springs Passive House. If you have any questions you’d like answered, don’t hesitate to add them to the comments and I’ll do my best to get them answered for you!
Photo: Andrew Kline via Facebook
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