[Manic!]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

^ if my 120 year old home only used a gas furnace I’d only be paying like $500 a year to heat my entire home. A 120 year old house with little to no insulation

I don’t think building this hermitcally sealed home and spending an additional 250k+ really justifies long term savings lol. A typical build with proper insulation, heated with a gas furnace and gas hot water will be very cheap to operate

That's at current rates. How many people wanted to buy an electric car 10 years ago vs today.

Originally Posted by GLOW

2 more things i'll add about PH:
1)
north america has their Passive House standard
europe (germany iirc) has their Passive Haus standard
i assume what most single family home builders are doing here is the NA standard

Europe is more strict, where House i believe is a bit more pragmatic and applicable to north american design in a nut shell

2) with beefing up the building envelope, trapping in all this heat to keep you warm and fuzzy so you don't need heating...in the summer, it becomes VERY hot, in a PH building you *MUST* have active cooling or you will melt, as shown on a couple of early days PH condos in the lower mainland that can be comfortably lived in ~9-10 months of the year.

if you're all about "green" and reducing "carbon footprint", you also need to consider what materials are being used to achieve this level of efficiency. i guess this is 3)

Isn't a passive house cheaper to actively cool because it keeps the cold air in and the hot air out?