Passive House (or PassivHaus) reduces Building Heat Loads by as Much as 90%

From Fine Homebuilding to the New York Times, the Passive House standard has received a lot of attention in recent years.  Often called "The World’s Most Rigorous Energy Efficiency Standard”, the concept has been proven in Europe with tens of thousands of projects – residential and commercial.  In the US, Passive House is drawing significant attention with a Passive House project winning the 2011 LEED for Homes Project of the Year Award and another Passive House project winning one of the 2012 AIA COTE top ten awards.  

Lance Wright, Brian Fuentes and Cody Farmer, members of the Denver Chapter of the National Passive House Alliance, will provide a general overview of the Passive House standard and explain the basic metrics of the standard as it applies to Colorado’s climate. Lance, Brian and Cody will illustrate how Passive House can help create a world of comfortable and healthy buildings that can be easily powered by renewables while providing a cost effective path to carbon neutrality.

About our Presenter(s)

Lance Wright built his first energy efficient house in 1998, and his low heating bills helped him convince fellow Council members to increase Building Code requirements for energy efficiency in the Town of Parker. Lance moved to Springfield, Missouri in 2004 and became the first US EPA Energy Star building partner in southern Missouri. After building Energy Star rated homes in Missouri for two years, Lance returned to Colorado and established the energy efficiency design and consulting business, Green Energy Man, Inc. Lance was among the charter group of Passive House Consultants trained by Passive House Institute, US in the fall of 2008. He and his wife live in Denver in their "Near Passive House”, which they are currently retrofitting to gain Passive House Certification.

Brian Fuentes is an architect, a member of CGBG, the AIA and a Certified Passive House Consultant with PHI in Germany as well as PHIUS in the US.  The work of fuentesdesign has been featured in Architectural Record Magazine, 5280 Magazine, The Denver Post, Boulder County Business Report, Boulder Daily Camera, the Colorado Sustainable Design Awards, and the book Prefabulous and Sustainable, by Sheri Koones.  Projects by fuentesdesign have also been featured on the Denver and Boulder Solar Home Tours in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. The firm's work focuses on natural materials and energy efficiency.

Cody Farmer is Construction Manager for MainStream Corporation.  His current work is spent providing holistic PHPP modeling, sustainability consulting and designing extreme high-performance buildings for owners. He also works with the Institute for the Built Environment running their Green Building Certification Program at Colorado State University. His Masters of Science in Construction Management, Sustainable Building degree entailed research on affordable sustainable construction and bridging the gap of recovery stimulus money with high-performance building standards. He has co-founded the Northern Colorado Green Building Education Consortium, and is currently co-founding the Rocky Mountain Passive House Alliance, and the Denver Passive House Alliance.