Connected Design

“A passive house is a strange name. Passive house comes from one of its principles; you need to be able to orient your house so it takes advantage of the sun so that it is able to be heated and cooled passively. In my house on eastern Long Island, it can go from 70 to 75 degrees just from heat in the sun. The problem is if you don’t have a way to shield the heat in the summer, it becomes a source heat you don’t want. So the second principle involves overhangs. The low winter sun needs to come in, but the high summer sun needs to be shielded out. Another principle is the traditional way of building, there was a big way that cold would come in through the studs. Every 16 inches, you have a 1.5-in. strip up against the sheetrock that’s almost exposed to the exterior, and that was creating a lot of cold leaking into the house. This needs to be sealed up by putting insulation on the exterior. The codes have caught up, and now it’s called continuous insulation. When you insulate the exte...