News

Fruit of partnership between architect, manufacturer When Elizabeth Scott ordered her new energy-efficient home, a factory in Searsmont, Maine, went to work. The house arrived in pieces on four trucks in rural Guilderland at the beginning of March. A team of workers unloaded the wall and roof sections on a Wednesday, hoisting them into place on the previously poured foundation. By Saturday, the house was mostly assembled, and finishing work, including plumbing and electrical systems, has since begun. For Scott,…

When JLC first encountered Passive House builder Chris Corson of Belfast, Maine, back in 2011, Corson was working on his first Passive House, and his most advanced piece of equipment might have been the refrigerator dolly he was using to roll himself around the foundation slab to snap layout lines after wrecking his knee in a soccer game. That project, besides resulting in Maine’s first certified Passive House, also resulted in a two-part JLC article describing Corson’s innovative wall system,…

A house is assembled in New York from panels manufactured in Maine, while Phoenix Haus in Detroit moves into high gear A crane lowers a prefabricated wall section into place in Altamont, New York. It’s the first in a line of panelized homes from a Pennsylvania-based architect and a Maine components manufacturer designed to meet the Passive House standard. It took four carpenters and six crane days to assemble Elizabeth Scott’s new house in Altamont, New York, and when they…

Living in a home that’s wrapped in layers saves energy and money. And it makes your home more comfortable and your indoor air healthier to boot. How do you keep warm in your home in the winter? Do you crank the thermostat in the hall up past 78 so you can keep your bedroom at 68? Do you stuff foam tubes under doors and tape plastic over drafty windows? Do you take a space heater into a room that’s too…

The average cost per square foot of a SOLSKEN model home is $237. For architect Richard Pedranti, AIA, CPHC, CPHB, HERS, PHIUS +, LEED, the fact that green building hasn’t yet become the standard in new construction points to a problem inherent in the building construction industry itself. A nearly 30-year veteran of the building industry, Pedranti led a team that worked on the $2.5 billion Tokyo International Forum building and has worked with respected residential architects in some of…

When we wrote about high tech wood prefabs in Sweden, readers asked “why can’t we have this in America?” In fact, you now can. Not only that, you can have it built to Passivhaus, or Passive House standard of insulation and air quality. (Don’t know Passivhaus? See related links at bottom) That’s because Maine builder ECOCOR is importing the fancy RANDEK tools that slice and dice wood with such accuracy and assemble such perfect wall panels. You also get good…

Plants on both sides of North America specialize in superinsulated panelized building components. Factories designed to turn out prefabricated components for Passive House buildings are up and running on both sides of North America. In Pemberton, British Columbia, a company called BC Passive House operates the BC Passive House Factory, a 16,146-square-foot production facility that makes panelized parts for Passive House buildings as well as panels for timber-frame buildings.   BC Passive House completed in 2014 Vancouver-based Hemsworth Architecture, which…

A brilliant new partnership announced today could revolutionize the way Americans build their homes. Ecocor has teamed up with sustainability-minded design firm Richard Pedranti Architect (RPA) to design and build North America’s most energy-efficient prefab Passive Houses starting with eleven model home designs. The factory-built homes not only give Americans the opportunity to buy a super insulated, energy-efficient home at what we presume will be an affordable price, but will also allow them to modify and customize their eco-friendly home…