Presenting…The Phius 2021 Certification Guidebook

Presenting…The Phius 2021 Certification Guidebook

by | Jul 28, 2021 | Passive House

Dear Readers,

The Passive House Institute of the United States (Phius) has officially released the most recent certification guidebook. Yay!!

You can check out the guidebook here. It is 190 pages…and yes, I “read” through the whole thing. Did I understand all of it? Especially the bit about inputting information into the WUFI software? Nope. But was it a great way to get more of a holistic view of what William and I are getting ourselves into? Yup.

For those who are interested, here’s 190 pages of passive building guidance condensed into 11 bullet points. Again, these are a result of my version of “reading” in this specific scenario.

– Building to passive standards really is a necessary stepping stone to achieve the Living Building Challenge (LBC). The Energy Petal of the LBC requires a home or building to produce 105% of its energy needs through on-site renewables. Passive building not only makes this possible by reducing operational carbon in the first place, but it also paves the way to make embodied carbon the next beast of a challenge to tackle.

– We NEED to find a Phius Certified Rater (the person who periodically comes out to inspect our home through the build process) that is as close to the Land of the Laurels as possible. Not only would it decrease the burden for them as far as drive time~ especially with our back roads…~ but it would also be nice for us with the whole ‘building on a budget thing’… Sooo….Perry County friends….if any of you are interested in becoming a Phius Certified Rater…that would be cool! 😉

Large Problems

Large Problems

by | Jan 27, 2021 | Small Footprint

Dear Readers,

The title of this blog makes me chuckle…our whole house is one large problem. And the reason we are trying to build it, is to solve environmental and social problems. We are facing a problem, so to conquer another problem. Problems, problems, problems. The funny thing about it, is that the more William and I say the word “problem” to one another, the less it sounds like an actual word, and more like something that is just there. And we need to have fun navigating it.

Ready? Try it with me: Problem. Problem. Problem. Problem. Problem. Problem. Problem. Problem.

And now that you have thoroughly realized that you have wasted your time repeating something that initially invokes large amounts of stress…and in reality, it is just a ‘problem,’ we take a deeeeeeeeepppppp breattthhhhh….

….and we move forward.

So! What are William and I’s problems? More specifically, what are the large problems we need to solve before we begin to build The Seed? Well, large problems that don’t include funding…that’s a whole other problem on its own. Problems. Ten of them, for now, to be exact.