The
modular housing industry is poised to become the leader in passive house
building. Both the prefab home styles of the West Coast factories as well as
their modular home siblings in the
East Coast are looking for the newest and affordable ways to achieve energy
independence.
So-called passive houses, which have been around in Europe
but never really caught on in the
around the idea of making houses airtight, super-insulated and energy
efficient.
The goal: a house that creates nearly as much energy as it consumes. Think of
being able to keep your house warm without a traditional big furnace, cool with
no air conditioning unit.
There is no reason that both the prefab and modular home factories can’t become
the stars of the passive world. In fact, Preferred Building Systems built a passive house for a VT chapter of Habitat for Humanity in 2010.
Signature features often include thick outside walls and roofs,
highly-insulated windows and frames, and a south-facing orientation. The
ventilation system pulls in fresh outdoor air and pumps out stale indoor air,
but not before it’s used to heat or cool the incoming air to the same
temperature.
Houses built this way can stay comfortable using 90 percent less energy than
traditional construction homes, according to the Passive House Institute
Illinois-based certification, research and consulting group.
Though the idea was born in the
the roughly 20,000 internationally certified passive houses worldwide are in
Europe — predominantly
