Passive House - Beyond Single Family Residential

Passive House Northwest has opened registration for their Fall PHNW Conference to be held in Seattle on Sept 16^th, 2011 at Seattle Pacific University.  There will be additional classes that will be held at the Integrated Design Lab in Seattle the day before.

This is the first conference for Seattle and we are taking things up a notch – we are tackling the realm of larger construction projects such as multi-family, commercial, or institutional.   We have a wonderful collection of speakers attending who will speak to the additional needs or considerations that these larger projects carry have for achieving Passive House certification.

Our Keynote speaker Gunter Lang, Owner of Lang Consulting, former CEO of Passivhaus Austria, has been involved with the direction of and in partnership with many Passivhaus projects.  Additionally he has researched and written many articles and presented at more than 200 Passivehuas conferences, seminars, & classes throughout the world.  Having him come to the West Coast started a feeding frenzy among the Passive House groups here – he will be involved with the events surrounding PHCA’s conference on remodeling Sept 9, 10th, and PHNW’s Portland chapter has snagged him for the day before our Conference on Sept 15^th. 

Additionally we will have Adam Cohen of Structures DB in Virginia who has built the CEED Passive House School, is in the process of building a Passive House Student Assembly Building, and will soon start work on the world’s first Passive House Dental Clinic.  In addition to speaking at our conference, Adam is also teaching a half day class the day before on Passive House considerations that larger projects have.

I was fortunate to take a WUFI class earlier this year and met Andre Desjarlais who was one of the instructors.  He is also the head of the Board on Building Envelopes at Oak Ridge National Labs.  He really knows moisture in constructions.  Like Adam he will be presenting at the conference and also reaching a half day class on moisture considerations when designing buildings the day before.  Registration for the full day of classes is currently open to PHNW members until August 7^th and is limited to the first 30 people who sign up.  (If you want a good excuse to join, you can save $30 on the class if you are a member and sign up before August 7^th!)

Our local talent will also shine as we welcome Mike Hatten from Solarc in Oregon.  He will be addressing energy modeling for the larger constructions.  He brings a wealth of information and a great background in lighting, shell, and mechanical design and implementation strategies.  Also joining us from Solarc will be Peter Reppe who has researched projects in Europe and visited some recently when he attended the International Passive House conference in Innsbruck.

If you are unsure as to just what all this Passive House stuff is about, there will be a PH101 breakaway session to help bring you up to speed while others are oohing and awing over the nuts and bolts stuff.  A great lunch will be served and additional speakers are being lined up even as I write this.  It should be a wonderful time.  And if you just don’t want it to end, after the conference the wonderful folks at Green Home Solutions will host a gathering at their newly remodeled store where in addition to the beer, you can also have a good time meeting and networking with other Passive House enthusiasts. 

If you are interested in attending the conference, signups are open now at http://PHNW.org on the events page.  If you are a member you should have received an email with a members only link to sign up for the day before classes at a discounted rate.  If you did not receive that email, be sure to let us know.  Non-members can sign up for the classes starting August 7^th (if there are any spots left!) and a public link will be available on the events page on that date.  The Small Planet Workshop will have a vendors table at the conference - stop in and say hi!