After shivering for 20 winters inside their drafty 1576 sq ft 1945 Garrison Colonial in Melrose, MA, owners David Fink and Barbara Simko requested a MassSave energy audit. The auditor stated that the house would be an excellent candidate for the National Grid DER program. Thus began their journey towards zero net energy. The owners […]

We bought an 1,142 sf one story house with full basement, gutted and superinsulated it, and added 192 sf on piers. The initial blower door test was 3,117 CFM50. Interior finishes were in poor shape; the floor plan was worse. We wanted to fix an existing building on a developed site rather than build new, […]

The owners, Peter and Rachel Stevens, are also the architects. As they started renovations, it became clear that most of the systems and finishes needed replacing, which made this two-family a perfect candidate for a Deep Energy Retrofit. All the exterior finishes had lived out their lifespan (and the aluminum siding recycles well), so exterior […]

One barrier to broader adoption of ZNE practice is the perception of ZNE as expensive and exotic. In this project we addressed this issue directly, demonstrating that ZNE renovation can be straightforward and practicable, providing qualitative improvements, significant savings in energy and carbon emissions, and excellent return on investment. We started with our small, simple, […]

The goal of the Midtown Passive House project was to design to the Passive House for the production home builder Brookfield Homes.

The inspiration for this house came from three sources: Marc Rosenbaum (especially the Hanover NH house), Carter Scott (Transformations Inc. and the Coppersmith Way development in Townsend MA) and Sarah Susanka’s book – The Not So Big House. I was introduced to all three by the NESEA Building Energy conferences. The motivation for this house […]