What do you think of when you hear “green home?” For most people, it’s energy efficiency. For others, it’s eco-friendly building materials. Unless you live in a severely drought-stressed area, water conservation is unlikely to be the first thing to come to mind. However, most people don’t realize how much energy is burned to [...]
June 2016 Front View On June 28, 2016 the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced that the single family Taft School Faculty Home, which BPC Green Builders built and Trillium Architects designed, in Watertown, Connecticut was awarded the national 2015 LEED Homes Award for “Outstanding Single-Family Project”. According to USGBC the annual LEED Homes [...]
Modern Breed Ridgefield Magazine, November/December 2015 This article is about a home BPC Green Builders built in Ridgefield, Connecticut begins: ““A HOUSE IS NOT JUST WHAT YOU WANT BUT WHAT THE SITE WANTS,” says architect Vincent Colangelo. That’s particularly true for the modern house he designed off Branchville Road. Finished in 2010, this stunning contemporary [...]
BPC Green Builders won the overall Grand Prize in the 2015 Housing Innovation Awards from The US Department of Energy for “Custom Innovation on the Path to Zero Net-Energy Ready Homes” for a new colonial-style home in Watertown. This home was commissioned by the Taft School as a new faculty home which could also [...]
The rear exterior of my Passive House Those of you who have hung with me through this extended series of blogs now have a pretty good idea about how a highly energy efficient house is put together. You know that it’s not just lots of insulation between the framing members, it’s also [...]
This is an energy recovery ventilator which runs 24/7/365 to bring fresh air into the house while recovering the energy in the air to essentially pre-heat the fresh air. It uses about as much energy as a CFL light bulb. Because my heating requirements are so small, my house does not need a central [...]
In my previous blogs, I’ve written about how the foundation, walls, and roof of my house are built using familiar American construction materials; but they are framed, air-sealed, and insulated somewhat differently from conventional building practice to create a thermal envelope that requires much less energy to heat and cool than a typical new home [...]
Let me answer the rhetorical question I asked at the end of part 7 of this series. Why does the triple glazing (three separate panes of glass) in most European windows and doors (W&D) have much better insulating values than the triple glazing in most American windows? After all, besides having the same three panes [...]
Is Green Building Too Expensive? By Kevin Ireton Editor, Fine Homebuilding My wife and I decided not to have children. We just couldn’t make the numbers work. From prenatal care through college tuition, we were looking at half a million dollars. Minimum. And it would be 25 years before that investment would even begin to [...]
July 2015 A new colonial-style home in Watertown, CT, has been certified as a Passive House by Passive House Institute US (PHIUS). For a home to meet this standard, it must meet a series of strict performance standards that result in an 80% reduction in energy required to operate [...]
The Design/Bid Approach for Custom Homes and Renovations Can Lead to Problems One of the ways to go about designing and building a custom home or a home renovation is the design/bid method. The design/bid approach is one in which homeowners and their architect develop plans based on what the homeowner is looking for [...]
The Passive House criterion for energy used to heat and cool the house is so stringent that it cannot be met by homes that use anything but the best performing Windows & Doors (W&D). At this point in time, I am aware of only one small American company that makes W&D that meet the requirement [...]
September 2014 Connecticut's First Passive House Certified Home Connecticut's first PHIUS certified home. The first PHIUS certified home in Connecticut is owned by Mike Trolle, co-owner of BPC Green Builders, and is now a multiple award winner: the US Department of Energy's Housing Innovation Award for "Custom Innovation on the Path to [...]
The rear exterior of my Passive House Energy Design Update newsletter, August 2014 Editor Amanda Voss Part 1 of this series begins: “Winner of the 2013 “Lowest HERS Index without Renewable Technologies” in the CT Zero Energy Challenge, the Trolle Residence in Danbury, Connecticut is the noteworthy culmination of a builder’s dream for his [...]
The Thermal Envelope Floor, wall, and roof areas that adjoin unheated spaces make up the thermal envelope (TE) of a house. Building the house with an air-tight TE is one of the most difficult PH requirements to achieve. Maintaining air barrier continuity at transition points in the TE is critical. I began by wrapping the [...]
