When Passive-aggressive Behavior is Good

Do you find the variety of terms in environmentally-friendly design and construction a bit baffling? Can you tell me the common element in green, sustainable, energy-efficient, net-zero and passive home design? Well the winning answer is energy.  And all these trends and terms in modern building science mean the house uses less energy, which is good for the planet. 

See the thing is . . . electrical energy and natural gas provided by PG&E and other large utility companies sort of unavoidably makes us all owners of many environmentally damaging and polluting activities such as coal-burning energy plants and global warming. Big energy utilities also require big distribution systems, big pipelines, and problematic stuff like that.

When I first heard of the idea of zero net energy consumption for building design a couple of years ago, I wondered if that was really possible. So naturally I was really excited to hear about the theories of the passive house, which originated in Germany, and had zero net energy consumption as a green design goal for all new houses. And that’s why I was equally thrilled when an example of this type of construction showed up right here in Menlo Park.

The new passive house design strategy implemented by homebuilder Clarum Homes in their latest Spanish Colonial-style, 4-bedroom, 3-bath offering in West Menlo has an overall building wall and roof insulation level that is approximately one and half times above current building code requirements. Throw in high-performance windows, solar water and PV electric solar panels, and some other high performance features and you get a house that uses almost no energy from PG&E. 

Clarum could have called this house “the cigar box house” after the miniature heater that provides all the heat for this structure. That’s how energy-efficient this design is;  1000-watts is all it takes. That is about the size of some portable electric heaters! And this house has approximately 3300 square feet of living space. 

More information about this exciting precedent in energy efficient living can be seen at Clarum Homes website. The house is located at 1206 North Lemmon Avenue in Menlo Park. For some other examples of net-zero designs in the news lately, see the links below.

Green office building design

Energy efficient multi-unit residential