Altair
Sustainable Features

  • Interactive resident management determining how the group will live together

  • Shared resources, including vehicles

  • Large Common House providing home owners with guest rooms and extra storage space, in addition to meeting rooms, a community kitchen for shared meals, and dining room (multi-purpose)

  • Central single meters for monitoring community energy use (under negotiation)

  • Site Low Impact Development – comprehensive land planning and engineering design, with a goal of maintaining and enhancing the pre-development hydrologic regime of urban and developing watersheds

  • Pervious pavement

  • Possible green roofs (most likely on the Common House)

  • Rain gardens, grass swales, ponds, cisterns, and rain barrels

  • Bio-retention and infiltration

  • Energy Conservation

  • Tight building "envelopes," super-insulation, incorporating some of the strict guidelines of the PassivHaus* Institute

  • Possible factory-built homes insuring greater quality control

  • Minimal heating and cooling expenses

  • “Hybrid” hot water

  • Extensive natural daylighting, energy-efficient windows, and skylights

  • Shared walls, clustering homes

  • Local and recycled materials

  • Minimal water usage

  • Smart Home technology in most of the homes

  • Renewable energy

  • Solar photovoltaic arrays for electricity

  • A cluster of homes specifically designed for environmentally-sensitive

  • No pesticides

  • and much more!

Passive House

What is a Passive House?

A  Passive House, a model for health and comfort, comprises five major elements:

  1. Super insulation, reducing heating and cooling loads by 90%

  2. Air tight construction

  3. Balanced ventilation through an Energy-Recovery-Ventilator

  4. Optimized solar orientation

  5. High performance windows

A few years ago, we started discussions with Richard Pedranti, Architect, who introduced us to a factory-built panelized Passive House. For more information on his work, go to his website: https://www.plantprefab.com/architects/richard-pedranti-architect.  We also worked with the BuildSmart system folks – Adam Cohen, architect and founder. 

Since then we have developed relationships with other Passive House professionals, including Holzraum – https://www.holzraumsystem.com. Our hope is to work with Blueprint Robotics out of Baltimore – http://www.blueprint-robotics.com. They can custom-make all the insulated panels plus install them on the site, along with the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and sprinkler systems.

Passive House systems cost approximately 3–10% more than conventional construction, but we feel the cost is worth it in terms of longevity, energy savings, and health! Passive Houses are designed, first and foremost, for health and comfort. Beside reducing energy bills to a minimum, the recent exponential growth of Passive House construction is resulting in more economical solutions. We now find a greater variety of options, knowledgeable professionals, and ways of building the Passive House than ever before. The trend will be greater acceptance by lenders, homeowners, and the community for the durable, locally-resourced, and environmentally-friendly Passive House.