PORTLAND, OREGON PASSIVE HOUSE FUTUREFIT
Welcome to the Everhart Passive House Remodel Website. We are glad you came by for a visit! Our site, like our home, is not 100% finished, but we hope you will find inspiration and information here about passive house designing and low-carbon heating and cooling of buildings.
New this year, we have installed a supremely efficient heat pump for hot water, and on November 1, we began to heat our house with “extra” hot water energy in a large wall radiator.
Passive House Day November 10/11, 2017: Come see our house with a Free Tour
Come join us for a free tour on Friday, November 10th from Noon to 5pm and then Saturday, November 11th from 9am to 6pm. Our Passive House is located at 539 SE 59th Court, and street parking is available on SE Stark and SE 58th Street.
>>> Read more about this exciting international event here. <<<
What Is a Passive House?
A Passive House is a very well-insulated, virtually air-tight building that is primarily heated by passive solar gain and by internal gains from people, electrical equipment, and cooking.
What Makes a Passive House Special?
A Passive House is about ten times as air tight as typical new construction. It is heavily insulated to keep warm/cool air in. Our walls are 11 inches thicker than they were, as built to code in 1998. There are over 10,000 of these homes in Europe, so it is not as space-age as you might think.
Instead of fresh air coming in through cold leaks, fresh air is constantly brought in by a Heat Recovery Ventilator that captures 80% of the heat of the outgoing stale air. Thanks to capture of the heat energy, a Passive House can stay warm simply from everyday sources such as sun through the windows, body heat, appliance operation heat, cooking, and, for example, 2000 watts of supplemental heat for the coldest days in Portland, Oregon.
It is an elegantly simple standard to meet to be a certified passive house—one air-tightness measure with a blower-door test, and one measure of the heating/cooling energy use per square foot of living space.
Now, HOW to reach these benchmarks is a big complicated story…welcome to our website!