A so-called passive home like the one the Landaus are now building is so purposefully designed and built — from its orientation toward the sun and superthick insulation to its algorithmic design and virtually unbroken air envelope — that it requires minimal heating, even in chilly New England.
In a place as cold as Minnesota, a passive home's walls would have to be 18 inches thick, but even in the more temperate Portland, Ore., 12 to 14 inches is typical.
Yet the market remains minuscule, and the materials and expertise needed to build passive homes are often hard to find.
The truth is that in this country, architects have been successfully designing and building passive homes and commercial buildings since the early 1970s.
Mr. Aguayo, who has installed energy recovery ventilators in the two-bedroom units at 96 St. Marks, acknowledged that with many of the components for passive houses not made in the United States, it costs more to create passive homes.
Proponents of the standard, who note that passive homes often use up to 90 percent less heating and cooling energy than similar homes built to local code, say the Landaus embody the willingness of more homeowners to embrace passive building in the United States.
Add photovoltaic solar panels or other energy harvesting systems, and passive homes can quickly become zero-energy-use homes — or even power generators that can feed electricity back to the grid, according to Katrin Klingenberg, the director of the Passive House Institute-U.S. Institute-U.S..
And while many people are interested in passive homes for their cold-weather benefits, researchers in both Europe and the United States are looking into more applications for warmer climates, using a different balance of insulation, window technology and air control to achieve similar efficiencies.
The passive-home standard, perhaps because it's unfamiliar to many officials who create efficiency stimulus programs, is eligible for few direct government subsidies, despite the fact that homes using it can be up to 80 percent more energy-efficient, over all, than standard new houses and consume just 10 percent of the heating and cooling energy.
90% more energy efficient than any normal home, a Passive House applies a number of strict building standards, which help to conserve heat by utilising heat sources and solar gains.
Built to passive house standards, the homes also have solar collectors capable of feeding more energy into the grid than they waste - hence the name 'plus-energy' houses.
