Wait a minute, is this a high performance home or a personalized performance home?

Motivations 1 Minute

While the subtitle of this blog is “A Personalized Performance Home”, the first post talks a about a high performance home.

What’s the difference? Why the change?

Originally we started off on the path of building a Passive House. In April 2018, shortly after purchasing the land to build on, we engaged the services of a Certified Passive House Designer (Architect) and we were off to the races!

Initial Sketch for a Passive House Design

Through our own research, and a lot of Q&A posed to those in the know, we decided a full-on Passive Certified home would be too expensive to build. The stand out point for us was the diminishing returns of extra insulation to achieve passive standards.

So by September, 2018 we had jumped off the Passive train on to the High Performance line. However, we felt a house designed with many Passive-Leaning principles, would be in our budget. This would be a high performing home!

Some of Passive-Leaning principles include:
• Very tight construction, minimal air changes with the outside
• Passive house rated windows
• Better than code levels of insulation
• A high efficiency HVAC system
• Minimize thermal bridging
• Many Passive Design Principles

We then started to think a little more deeply about the many definitions of performance:
Comfortable, safety, healthy, superb Indoor Air Quality (IAQ), energy efficient,

Sustainable, durable, green, climate change aware, budget complying, code complying

Aligning with specific rating systems: HERS, Energy Star, Zero Energy Ready, LEED for Homes, EPA Indoor airPlus, etc

With 3o years of industry affiliations, conferences, discussions, contacts and networking, I knew too much about a variety of performance aspects to make a clear choice of one aspect.

So it got personal.

This would be our personalized performance home!

The facets we want to focus on are: an attractive house that flatters the view, a very comfortable home (great control of temperature and humidity), superb Indoor Air Quality (Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels, odors, particulates, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), etc., low energy consumption, all electric and solar power.

And realistically, performance has to include a budget. As in order to enjoy the benefits, the house has to be affordable to be built,exist and lived in.

There you go, A Personalized Performance home!

Published by BillSpohn

OK, so he’s an engineer by training, please don’t hold that against him. Some say he’s a nice guy. Bill co-owns www.TruTechTools.com, which if you haven’t guessed by now… It’s a place to buy Tools… For Techs… Yes, it’s Tru. TruTech also provides and networks with many educational resources for the HVACR and Building Performance trades. Bill networks with a lot of people to support and who support the industry, If you have a measurement-related question in HVAC, Building Performance, or Indoor Air Quality, and Bill doesn’t have an answer, he probably knows someone who does. He fancies himself a good communicator, some agree. He’s written many articles, conducted many presentations and webinars, and now hosts two podcasts: Building HVAC Science and RESTalk, you'll find them on any major podcast app/system. Recently he helped to design a high-performance home that he’s built and lives in. The home design embodies wisdom from his network. or as he says "it's built with ideas stolen from the future." Follow the details on this blow or ask (nicely to join his private Facebook group: Spohns’ Personalized Performance Next up for Bill: the Internet of Things (IoT) – say what? Email: Bill@TruTechTools.com

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4 thoughts on “Wait a minute, is this a high performance home or a personalized performance home?”

  1. Thank you for posting your journey here. I learned about your house on your podcast (I think it was with Corbett) and became aware of your online site from Energy Star Homes, the Horrors. I’m sure that won’t apply to your house!
    I’m looking forward to following your progress and the processes you use.

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  2. The only other certification I would look at would be Living Building Challenge. Not easily achievable, but like Passive House, definitely worth moving toward their standards. Were you aware of them?

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  3. Pingback: Build like the future depends on it. – SpohnHome

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