Passive House Retrofitting: EnerPHit
Retrofitting with Passive House tools offers ultimate energy reduction for existing buildings—achieving measurable results and a quality-controlled product. A Passive House retrofit is called EnerPHit and it brings existing buildings in line with a global vision for climate-neutrality. EnerPHit provides you with amazing winter and summer comfort, as well as continuous filtered outside air. Best of all, like any Passive House, you get the lowest operating cost over the life of the building.
Read about the 7 steps to a successful retrofit below, or keep scrolling down to learn why you should retrofit. Then, let us know how we can improve your existing building.
Successful Retrofitting in 7 Steps
We offer an easy and transparent path to get on top of retrofitting: It all starts with a virtual, or in-person meeting at your building to review current conditions and the state of things. Then, we sit down with you to discuss your vision and goals.
In the TwinCities metro area, we charge a flat fee for this first step. For one price, you will come away with a professional opinion of where things stand, as well as a guided conversation about what is possible and feasible. Then, you can make an educated decision if you and your building are ready to advance.
Step 1: Existing Conditions & Project Goals
In an effort to make a project, it is important to understand the starting position, as well as the finish line. The project then becomes what is in between.
Where are we?
(What is the state and condition of the existing structure?)Where do we want to/ need to go?
(What are the goals and targets for the building when everything is said and done?)How do we get there?
(The project/s)
Drawings of the existing building and site are the foundation of every good planning effort as they become the underlay for any design, cost estimating, permitting and construction. We call these drawings “as-builts” (for the building) and “survey” (for the site). While we create the as-builts, we work with surveyor partners to commission the site surveys.
As buildings are dynamic things, investigations of existing conditions may also include blower door testing, thermography, or light intrusive investigation to reveal the assemblies and materials that make up your building today. This information is key as no single size fits all when it comes to resilient and durable retrofits.
Step 2: As-Builts and Site Survey
Step 3: The Project, or Project Buckets
As we record the as-builts, we start to think about a project, or project buckets—a grouping of various projects that provide synergies, or efficiencies if completed at the same time.
We collaborate with you through conversations and in workshops to learn about your observations and motivation for the retrofit. As a team we then decide what projects may best meet your goals and cure the shortcomings you wish to remedy.
We bring decades of experience with designs for existing buildings to the table to help inform our conversation and enable you to make smart decisions.
Step 4: Schematics and Feasibility
Once the project, or project buckets are determined, we start on initial schematics and partner with a local, professional builder to illuminate project cost to help you make educated decisions on feasibility.
Once we understand that the project is feasible, planning commences in earnest to prepare the actual plans and specifications, which we call construction documents.
Step 5: Construction Documents
We create the permit ready documents like floor plans, elevations, sections, or details and engineer assemblies and systems, then select materials, equipment and finishes for the actual project to be permitted and built.
Detailed construction documents are the foundation for a successful and predictable project outcome.
Your project is being built by your builder.
We remain by your side for quality assurance and overall assistance to the contractor/s. We conduct site visits, preload site testing and observe key moments during construction to help ensure that you get what you pay for.
Step 6: Construction
Building certification adds value to the project as a third party certifies the successful achievement of the EnerPHit.
EnerPHit certification is also a mechanism to create value for financing, appraisals, or subsidies, and may play a role in the way that taxes and fees are calculated in the near future.
Step 7: Certification
Feasibility
EnerPHit projects typically include more insulation, better windows and doors, and likely a new or enhanced mechanical system with heat-recovery ventilation. While that may seem like a lot, it can potentially be done without changing the layout or interior finishes much at all, therefore keeping cost to a minimum.
In most cases, retrofits offer the potential for synergies—replacing obsolete components like old windows and doors, or worn siding and roofing at the same time as improving them—effectively amping up the value of “normal” maintenance by inserting a significant pay-back component.
The cheapest way to do a project and maximize returns is to combine retrofitting for energy efficiency with maintenance repairs and overdue fixes.
In general, we encourage owners to think holistically when it comes to building retrofits. Based on decades of experience we understand the building envelope in particular to be one line item with changes to the mechanical system following suit (as heating, cooling and ventilation loads are changed).
Please retrofit your entire building envelope at once!
You will be glad you did as smaller partial retrofit measures significantly increase overall cost, draw out schedules and cause extended interruptions to your life, provide much less immediate payback and extend the overall payback period. They also create interim conditions that are unfavorable from a building science perspective, or may never get completed properly.
Efficiency
People in the building industry agree that we need leap frog energy efficiency improvements for existing buildings to significantly curb energy use and related environmental pollution such as CO2 emissions from the building sector. Photovoltaic solar panels alone will not be able to solve the wasteful consumption of poorly insulated buildings in cold climates. Retrofitting with EnerPHit offers true sustainability, meets international climate action targets, as well as keeps the scale of our yet-to-be-built “clean” electricity grid manageable and affordable.
Efficiency is the first renewable!
Anything short of this will result in a sunk investment that will effectively prevent you from being able to reap the maximum benefits that come from a comprehensive makeover—chiefly comfort, lower operating cost, improved indoor environmental quality, resiliency and durability.
Sustainability
Sustainable low-energy buildings are an asset to you as well as society as a whole. They offer the lowest operating cost over time and help insulate you from the ups and downs of energy costs, or carbon taxes, and make operating costs predictable for the foreseeable future.
While energy is definitely the 800-pound gorilla in the room, we won’t overlook embodied energy, green building materials, improved indoor environmental quality and renewable energy systems as part of the retrofit. They are very important in their own right and it is our conviction that a best practice approach, which includes all of the above, should go along with any EnerPHit project.
Once you invest in sustainability you will realize that many benefits happen at the same time.
Legacy
Existing buildings and their performance impact both the owner and inhabitants, as well as the society as a whole. In response, our duty is not just to you but also to our society as a whole, as well as future generations.
A successful sustainable energy-efficiency retrofit project creates a responsible and meaningful legacy.
