Designer builds efficient off-grid Passive House in Colorado

this is called the Front Range we're just about an hour north of Denver and the mountains just start so this is 7600 foot Mountain and then the mountains just got bigger and bigger meters so it was interesting to escape escape the grid so to speak it was quite affordable here originally just set up a home the land was fairly cheap I bought a cabin for $60,000 a silver cabin the Miele and fell apart on me the first time I moved into it 20 years ago so we just been fixing it and working on it ever since so originally there was a shop here that has the exact same shape as the roof now and we built in a rammed earth tire wall was the back foundation so it was a way to get the thermal envelope push back but still be able to use the original foundation that was here it's like your easy storage down here on this foundation are layers and layers of tires set like bricks and rammed with earth and so this is where the passive ass wall starts right here we have about 18 inches of insulation behind this the house is a passive house pass house is an international building standard the focuses on how to reduce energy consumption and building by about 90 percent and they did it by physics really it wasn't developed by builders is developed by physicists everything how a building interacts with its environment the thermal dynamics of how heat transfers through materials the way that energy is produced in the building how solar gains come in to the building or avoid it in a building so this entire building is basically designed in the spreadsheet so these are old water pipes from a project that failed and there's just abandoned so we've buried them in the ground they go behind the building in the ground for six to eight feet and then they go up to the heat recovery ventilation system and what they do is they precondition the air when they're coming in so they make the heat recovery a lot more energy-efficient but in the summertime they cool the air coming in so I can just flip to them only so it actually a trickle cools the house all through summer for free and right now part of the reason why the house is so this is 71 degrees and all of the times because we're just trickling a little bit of cool air coming from the earth literally it's a very simple way to do it it's not really geothermal it's really it's called an earth tube it's preconditioning essentially the air before it comes in where it's red was the original cabin that was here was about 400 square feet and then I put an addition to it and they share the same solar electric system so this is a house that can only use electricity that's produced from those panels I don't even really want to use a generator now we have two houses on a fairly small system I figure at the most when I have the heating system on in the house and the HRV we're probably running about maybe about 60 watts of electricity which most people couldn't even get their house down there to that level if they turned everything off this house is essentially a thermal battery bank if you look at it just from a thermal dynamics point of view the wedge shape in the back in the front are very simple forms and passive also you'd like to keep really simple applied forms so you don't have a lot of walls on the exterior but also the house is a wedge shape because it faces a little bit more south for passive solar and also if you can see we have three trees one in the back one in the front here and one on the side over there and we want to wedge the house and maintain the tree canopy around the building in the front trees actively shade in the summer and fall time so it helps tremendously just with the raw performance in this case it also helped make it really interesting give the house a lot more personality when you come in usually you don't want the first thing you see is the kitchen so we had to be really careful with the kitchen and and make it as simple and elemental as I could I was really struggling with the American model of designing floor plans I decided just to erase any labels for rooms and make it one continuous space as much as I could so I can't remember what the record a number of people on there at one time is I think it's about seven kids it's a lounger it's uh you know again it doesn't have a definition yeah yeah but there I haven't slept on that you can nap there for sure depends on yeah your comfort threshold it's a way to extend the living space but also to let light in so it's not cave like up there so the light bounces off the floor and back into the room again which is really neat so that's the formal thing but it's also freaking cool to build them that bed I mean who didn't want to build a net bed what we just bolted it in the idea of walls is you know often counterproductive a space like this you have much smaller space to work with so every time you put a wall in it makes a small space even smaller so the staircase is used a lot in Japan is the idea of the multi you stare okay so this is based off those old staircases that were actually cabinets so people get up to their attics and Japanese farmhouses so we took that general principle but the boxes of themselves we actually originally had it double so there's the same number of boxes on the other side and then I Shrunk the staircase because it was just too big but turned out at all these boxes as a result and these this is like one step so it's built off that basic thing and then with all these boxes sitting around we kept using them as furniture so if you're just having a drink and up just taking the box you know wherever you're at and throw your cup on it and then outside using it for tables for food or whatever I got totally obsessed with boxes I need to make a lot more since they've stack into each other it's really nice to have them available for when everything's changed so it's around that theme of adaptability as the building constantly adapts to Evers using it for whatever needs our kids always never ibly run and kind of camp out in that little space I never would have thought that that would be a place for people to hang out and so it's like a little Clubhouse I guess that's one of the interesting discoveries about designing really slowly and figuring those things out as we went along by accident really in that sense okay and that this bed right here converts into a queen-size bed taking it to people this sleep in here pretty comfortably there's a kid I always liked the smallest bedroom in the house for some reason and I I had one bedroom that was outside the house itself it was the old stairway this kind of reminds me of that that compressed this I think the idea of that huge space you're just overwhelming light and view this is the opposite of that we just flip it you know but also you get the form of a building like this the space that you're in is really reinforced here so it becomes much more about the building itself in a funny way these are just two by four seater and it's called a nail lamp nail laminated wood vertical right yeah you can see on the side here so I didn't even bother taking the labels off so they're just nailed together and stacked as we build it we put the crown standing up so as a little bit more bounce to it it's really quick to put together it took takes about a day to put this together you don't have to finish the top or the bottom it's done just like that exactly and it's the wall that supports the whole thing is the same same exact thing so the nail lamp is you know super simple so we used it again to play with the idea of massing in the idea of woods and that contrast to give some texture but this time it's structural well against the wall this is just cedar picket fence just plain old cedar picket fence it's just a facade so here we're able to combine the facade and the structure and finishes all together in one unit so it's just like a drum very strong and flips up then it almost becomes like a big piece of furniture in a way do you know the rawness is really appealing for kind of a rural space like this but also the richness I just love how the space gets so much more depth and this is another space that doesn't have a real definition right now it's the junk drawer these are going to be water heating and space heating so Ellen never be finished I mean it's a self milled so that's the nature of yeah I mean I I hire people to help me but this is self built that's I'm a building background remember I bought that house 20 years ago a little cabin that broke so I've been learning how to build just here and professionally for a number of years but it started with just buying tools and putting things together building systems and I think the only way you can really do really deep design is understanding how to build it yourself physically like the plumbing and the electrical and the solar and the framing and the insulation and all those stuff to really understand its potential you have to know how to do it yourself like I'm learning all the design software now but it pre puts everything together for you often so you don't even understand what's inside the layers of a wall anymore you just take the wall and just pluck it somewhere and we're losing that texture and that viability understanding materials which if you really look at closely especially in passive house that's that's what drives these projects is the understanding of how materials come together and how they function not just individually but systems together this is all insulation so it's just a really typical 2x4 wall and then we put plywood on the outside of the 2x4 wall and that's our airtight layer so we literally tape it and connect it to the roof into the floor here's where the 2x4 wall is went from here out is about 16 inches of insulation just cellulose insulation and then on the outside of that is something called mineral wool board and the building functionally doesn't have outside air coming into it to lose heat from you can see the triple pane windows so we have very high-tech windows of the spacers even are made out of low conductive material and then the glass itself lets in lots of heat but let's out very little heat in the wintertime if it's really cold outside you can just sit right here next to the window and be perfectly comfortable in the t-shirt it's fantastic so you just kick your heels up and just watch the snow the blizzard blow-by thing about passive offices we often bury the frames inside the insulation is one of the hundreds of details for a passive house so you don't lose heat it's really a death by a thousand cuts the way that buildings loose and gain heat so we have to be careful about all of them doors are the same type of system they're also very airtight it's a big part of it if I close the door right now this building would hold temperature for this if the Sun disappeared from the sky and it got below minus 50 degrees even this house would hold temperature for a long time in that sense it's a big thermos it could it could be days and slowly loses heat over time and then slowly gains heat just from the activities of the building or from the passive solar we put in a just a simple drop down cook stove usually it's nice they just drop them down like that so it makes a little bit more space up here and this is for boats actually it turns out the boating hardware where it's really good for small spaces too we do use propane propane is a total must when you're living off-grid there's just certain things that you can't do well with electricity like heating water for instance so to be able to heat water and to cook you typically have propane but we really try to minimize them out propane yeah it's a cutting board is made for boats it came with it came with it so it's made for multiple uses so we're just stealing somebody else's good idea boats are Drayton's fresh I sailed for many years so materials are great this is the concrete countertop the rawness is about the landscape again you know how when you walk out its rawness you know so inside there's a certain level of rawness to so this is a polypropylene greenhouse glass double walled stuff that you see often and then we just made plywood boxes for it very simple too big theme of this house is plywood yes I was terrified so probably about 80% of its plywood floor it was pretty easy to put in seven coats of polyurethane and it's holding up extremely well you know it's plywood so you don't if it gets dings it's not really a problem it becomes a part of the character of this space like this piece of plywood right here I want to show you this this is kind of ridiculous well we saved this one slice right here I love to the rich grain of this one each plywood when you're sitting on your hands and knees all day putting this stuff in each one has its own personality that turned out to be my favorite piece right there there's this beautiful tight grain to it which is completely different from this even though it's the same species from the same lot in this room is the idea of not being overwhelmed by space again it's sort of like that upper space where you feel a little bit more protected from the elements for cooling you want one high small window in one low big window for cross ventilation and it's so delightful to have a big open space to sit in front of and you can that's when you can hear the winds and everything coming by and we need the screens for the summertime but in the wintertime and take the screens off it's really quite wonderful to be just kind of projects down to the space it's a good good thinkin space so these as you can tell we have the tile and a heavy dark slate tile keeping in tracking it from the outside inside so one of the ideas is like if you have to use the restroom you don't have to take your shoes off and then the restroom takes the tile theme so you start with these tiles these are 16 by 16 so you have this big scale and then you drop to these six by sixes as you come in and it kind of transitions from wall to this gray space and then we go from the six by six to the four by four which is even more intimate space and then finally we ended with these little two by two tiles so we were just playing very subtly with the idea of scale so I almost want the tiles to disappear when we were putting the tile on there's this big bump in the tile right here so I had to put something on there just to cover up that booboo so and to put this rack and I was thinking about the idea of play was to have kids have holes and air some pegs that they could make playing with so I may take it down and finish that idea so this is a ventilation so this is a wet room so wherever my pollution sources are in a passive house you take it from where you have pollution so this is extracting the stale air from the building putting it outside this is this is a reflection of the kitchen area right here I just left all the markings it's almost like a no to me never finishing anything this house is very much about the place it's in and very much about the very specifics of sitting here on this particular piece of land you're kind of inside and outside the building right here away aren't you yeah the window heights were designed of course just to be comfortable to sit in so just a facto furniture I happen to use the window sills as a desk so you can tell the landscape keeps changing that tree in front of us is dying for some reason so next year it'll be mostly just naked branches and then beyond that that streak of green at the top of the mountain that was a fire that happened in 1999 burned about 10,000 acres so this land is very much in flux so it's a big roof I have two downspouts on it this is a sediment filter right here and then it goes into this little pipe and down into a tank that's underneath the deck there that's about 1,500 gallons it's by law in Australia you have to put a water catchment system in in Colorado by law you can't put one in when I originally put it in it was illegal and then it became legal afterwards so it's a it's it's a huge disappointment to think that things are moving so slowly in high desert region where water is one of our most difficult resources to manage that we can't even do simple things like capture our own water these are logs that were cut right here when we had to place the building so we just peeled them and use them for supports this is just a big bench it's it's the nap space this is you know where you end up spending many lazy afternoons this space is designed to project you out and back into the forest again but in a protected sense and what's best about this space is that there is no Wi-Fi on this corner so there's a lot of people who come up move into the mountains and last for a few years and then they said well you know they would say it's too far from the city or something like that and they move back and it's really not about the city it's really having to be with yourself so you get you have to really know yourself to be out here for any length of time my wife always compared as you know the Walden Pond the Thoreau esque kind of quality but I think that's oversimplifying the fact is that it's not just your relationship with yourself what's your relationship with a landscape that's really important so understanding what a forest is a forest is a really complex living organism and if you turn around you'll see some trees on the ground those just got knocked over and a snow two months ago so this forest is very dynamic changing place even just understanding that has a lot of positive impacts on just the way of being in the world and seeing the world

Channel: Kirsten Dirksen

Views: 1,646,935

Rating: 4.8726072 out of 5

Keywords: Passivhaus, passive house, passive solar, thermal house, hyper insulated house, home insulation, low energy bills, tiny energy bills, net bed, small home, small house, off grid, off grid house, solar, PV, photovoltaics, rainwater capture, fort collins, colorado, rocky mountains, hyperlocalization of architecture, hyperlocal architecture, simple living, off grid hideaway, home energy, home energy rating, hammock bedroom, open plan living, andrew michler, thermos house

Id: HMT3wb4h234

Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 24 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/oregoon]

Cannot wait for this matte-ply construction material design trend to die. All the places built with hyper-exposed plywood, stickers still sticking out of flooring, crappy joinery are going to look so, so bad when they've had 10 years of weathering.

[u/RowingCox]

I feel like he lives in a county with no building codes which has his positives and negatives. Seems silly that there is no railing on the staircase.

Most municipalities won't allow a lot of these construction methods because of safety issues. Passive house are really awesome though and I plan on becoming certified one day.

[u/FedEx_Potatoes]

Is there a way to live off the grid/travelling without having to be wealthy in the first place? It's like you either have to be rich already or just be homeless. Don't think I've ever come across a middle-ground.

[u/ecky--ptang-zooboing]

I could totally live there, awesome.

[u/dirtymoney]

I absolutely cannot stand the 'no labels' philosophy.

The rooms have no labels, maaaaaaaaan!

[u/btadeus]

Passively showing off his wealth?

[u/TheOldBean]

The energy efficiency is really nice.

But I hate the whole design of that house, it looks like a shack and inside seems pretty soul-less. Bare wooden walls and kinda small, poorly laid out rooms.

[u/iltis2010]

Dude sounds like Lil'Finger turned Hipster Architect...

[u/marsh283]

space