New York's Most Efficient House: The Hudson Passive Project

New York's Most Efficient House: The Hudson Passive Project

The Hudson Passive Project is poised to be the first certified Passive House in New York State. Located in Claverack, NY, in the stunningly beautiful Hudson River Valley, architect Dennis Wedlick built the Hudson House as a prototype of the "home-of-tomorrow" - a highly sustainable, extraordinarily energy-efficient home. Wedlick says of his objectives in building the home, "We want to empower industry practitioners and homeowners with the understanding that better-built, better-designed homes can be a powerful and relatively simple way to conserve our nation's resources."Aesthetically, Wedlick wanted to make a radical break from the green architecture movement's focus on starkly modern design. Instead, the three-bedroom house draws its inspiration from the old stone barns that dot surrounding rural landscape. The interior space, framed by graceful bow-arch beams, features an open, loft-life floor plan. The full wall of glass on the Southern faade lends the house a distinctly modern feel and plays a central role in the home's efficient design. The Importance of Windows In the Passive HouseThe Passive House standard, which grew out of the PassivHaus movement in Germany, is one of the strictest building standards in the United States. The primary objective is to reduce the heating related energy consumption of a home by 90% compared with an average house. Because heat loss and gain through windows accounts for up to 50% of a home's heating and cooling needs, according to ENERGY STAR, the windows you use in a Passive House are of paramount importance. Because the Hudson House does not rely on any onsite energy generation to the Passive House Standard, the windows played an even more important role. Instead, passive heating through the wall of South-facing windows contributes the majority of the necessary heating energy. To achieve Passive House performance, the South-facing windows had to have two main attributes: extraordinary insulation values combined with high solar heat gain to take advantage of the sun's energy to passively heat the home. Serious SuccessWedlick chose 725 Series fiberglass framed windows. In order to deliver full-frame R-values of up to 7, these super-insulating windows employ suspended film technology, state-of-the-art low-e coatings and inert gas fills. Additionally, the windows offer a broad range of both low and high solar heat gain options, which allows for custom tuning to optimize passive solar heating. Wedlick ensured that the Hudson House would take full advantage of winter sunlight by selecting 725 Series windows with high solar heat gain for the south-facing glass wall. As Wedlick himself says, "the windows turned out to be the key factor between success and failure."

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