RPA’s Scranton Passive House Certified by Passive House Institute US (PHIUS)

PRweb

December 30, 2015

Broadpath, Robert Kreis

Scranton, PA Passive House is the 112th PHIUS-Certified Building in North America

Richard Pedranti Architect (RPA), a full service architecture firm focused on energy efficient design, announced that its first Passive House, built in Scranton, PA, was recently certified by the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS). In order to become a certified Passive House, RPA needed to design the home to PHIUS’ rigorous energy standards. RPA’s detailed design drawings of the home were featured at PHIUS’ NAPH15 conference in September as a clear and concise example of Passive House design.

“The Scranton Passive House features a simple thermal envelop with additional architectural elements outside of the thermal boundary, a very efficient and elegant design technique,” said Lisa White, certification manager for PHIUS. “As a result, PHIUS has decided to use the home as a PHIUS+ Certification case study, as well as the example project for WUFI Passive training courses.”

A Passive House is the most stringent building energy standard in the world, and uses 80% less energy than conventional homes. A Passive House creates a virtually air-tight, super insulated, compact building envelope that uses the sun and internal gains to achieve space conditioning, and in that way provides both comfort and exceptional energy conservation. Superior indoor air quality is provided by a heat recovery ventilator (HRV). With the addition of small renewable energy systems, Passive House buildings are able to achieve a Zero Energy Building (ZEB) standard.

“We love the house,” said owner Christie Karpiak. “Every day we wake-up and notice how much we enjoy living here. It is serving all the purposes we wanted.”

The Scranton Passive House is one of a 112 PHIUS-certified buildings in North America. PHIUS is recommended by the Department of Energy as the next step in high-performance and passive building standards. PHIUS is committed to making high-performance passive building principals the mainstream best-building practice, and the mainstream market energy performance standard.

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About RPA

Richard Pedranti Architect is an innovative architecture firm located in the heart of the Upper Delaware River Region specializing in environmentally conscious building strategies. The firm is distinguished by its proven ability to create beautiful buildings that achieve the rigorous Passive House standard. Combining intelligent modern design and 21st Century building standards, RPA creates simply extraordinary places that exist in harmony with the environment and fulfill the unique aspirations of each client.