(Updated Nov 4 2009) There was a bit of a stir lately within the building science online communities when a well-known and respected building scientist published a review of the Passive House standard. John Straube published a review of the Passive House standard on BuildingScience.com compared to standards and practices applicable in the U.S. and [...]

Tiffany Otis & Christoph Reinhart of Harvard have published a presentation-document “Daylighting rules of thumb: A design Sequence for Diffuse Daylighting” (PDF). Really, it’s more than just rules of thumb. There’s geometric calculations and multiple steps. This is a great way to start off a building design with daylighting in mind.

Have you ever gone to all the work of creating a building energy model in RETScreen, only to be left wondering how to convert those annual gigajoules into a specific equipment capacity? This situation can occur when the capital cost of installing a greener heating system, such as a “geothermal” ground source heat pump, depends [...]

Architects designing custom homes often seem to go overboard on the complexity of the shape, seemingly unaware of the impacts on construction cost and operational cost. Let’s look at the walls of two custom homes of equal floor area but different shape. Both homes are 5400 square feet on one level, nice sprawling ranch homes [...]

Natural Resources Canada has published a 10-page review of the design process for low energy solar homes. It includes a look at several standards for measuring and certifying low-energy houses, including the eQulibrium design competition, the Building America program, California Solar Homes Partnership, and Passive House standard.

Integrated Environmental Solutions Limited has released a free energy modeling plug-in for Google Sketchup. This looks promising. Other free energy modeling with a 3-D interface is eQuest and a beta Google Sketchup interface for EnergyPlus. Of course, the idea of the free back end and plugin is to get you hooked enough to buy the [...]