3 ms·

There's a countermovement, the "Pretty Good House" idea ( https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/pretty-good-house-2-0 https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.co

There's a countermovement, the "Pretty Good House" idea ( https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/pretty-good-house-2-0 https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/pretty-good-hou... .) It has the goals like "simplicity" and "avoiding diminshing returns" (the 80-20 rule: 20% of the work gets you 80% of the improvements, in this case.) It avoids certification and excessive rigor. (One article about it mentioned the split between Passivhaus and Passive House. As I recall it was over the amount of shading from one southern tree.) My point, if any, is that it's not "Passivhaus or nothing."

simonsarris 7y ago
Oh thank god. This is the approach I had when I built my house. This is IMO the most desirable territory: Just try to maximize the easy assets of wind and light using traditional methods, and add in modern insulation. Few(???) architects and zero builders seem to understand light/wind/circulation like people apparently intuitively did 200 years ago. You might be better off with the average curious engineer designing a house after reading a couple books than the average architect. Everyone is astonishingly lazy, even mansions around here have terrible light/circulation problems. But if you care, you can totally design a good one yourself that has very low operating costs (our electric bills are 50-80 a month in a 2200sqft house. We use maybe 3 cords of wood a year, but that's very approximate). It does not take a lot of work to design a house, especially if you want to build an efficient Colonial style. My goals were simple: Build something that appears traditional, maximizes light and airflow and wood burning heat. Think about ventilation passageways as the windows and doors, and think of the wind as coming and going. Since heating is easier than cooling (we built in no AC system and zero ducting), make your ceilings taller. A little wood stove (Vermont Castings Encore) heats the whole thing. Spray foam insulation in the walls (plus fiberglass), tall ceilings, and modern windows (lots of them) is all you need. Some pics of what I built, with design sketches: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1183143604925190144 https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1183143604925190144
- pbowyer 7y ago
  > Few(???) architects and zero builders seem to understand light/wind/circulation like people apparently intuitively did 200 years ago. You might be better off with the average curious engineer designing a house after reading a couple books than the average architect. Any book recommendations, especially around wind/circulation?
  - simonsarris 7y ago
    None of that specifically but read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher I realized that the cupola on my 1840's house growing up, this was it's function. Wind pulls air through, which pulls air up into the attic, which cools the first and second floors. Then read The Timeless Way of Building and perhaps A Pattern Language Then Get Your House Right, or a condensed (...in a way) version is Drawing for Architecture by Krier. Hmm there are probably others I cannot recall right now, but those are a great start.
ip26 7y ago
Both definitely have their place, the pretty good house is an achievable goal even if you're retrofitting and gets you most of the benefit. The passivhaus pushes the envelope, figures out what's attainable, & develops new techniques & appliances that can trickle down.

simonsarris 7y ago

Oh thank god. This is the approach I had when I built my house. This is IMO the most desirable territory: Just try to maximize the easy assets of wind and light using traditional methods, and add in modern insulation. Few(???) architects and zero builders seem to understand light/wind/circulation like people apparently intuitively did 200 years ago. You might be better off with the average curious engineer designing a house after reading a couple books than the average architect. Everyone is astonishingly lazy, even mansions around here have terrible light/circulation problems. But if you care, you can totally design a good one yourself that has very low operating costs (our electric bills are 50-80 a month in a 2200sqft house. We use maybe 3 cords of wood a year, but that's very approximate). It does not take a lot of work to design a house, especially if you want to build an efficient Colonial style. My goals were simple: Build something that appears traditional, maximizes light and airflow and wood burning heat. Think about ventilation passageways as the windows and doors, and think of the wind as coming and going. Since heating is easier than cooling (we built in no AC system and zero ducting), make your ceilings taller. A little wood stove (Vermont Castings Encore) heats the whole thing. Spray foam insulation in the walls (plus fiberglass), tall ceilings, and modern windows (lots of them) is all you need. Some pics of what I built, with design sketches: https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1183143604925190144 https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1183143604925190144

pbowyer 7y ago
> Few(???) architects and zero builders seem to understand light/wind/circulation like people apparently intuitively did 200 years ago. You might be better off with the average curious engineer designing a house after reading a couple books than the average architect. Any book recommendations, especially around wind/circulation?
- simonsarris 7y ago
  None of that specifically but read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windcatcher I realized that the cupola on my 1840's house growing up, this was it's function. Wind pulls air through, which pulls air up into the attic, which cools the first and second floors. Then read The Timeless Way of Building and perhaps A Pattern Language Then Get Your House Right, or a condensed (...in a way) version is Drawing for Architecture by Krier. Hmm there are probably others I cannot recall right now, but those are a great start.

ip26 7y ago

Both definitely have their place, the pretty good house is an achievable goal even if you're retrofitting and gets you most of the benefit. The passivhaus pushes the envelope, figures out what's attainable, & develops new techniques & appliances that can trickle down.