Xcel announces historic incentive package for Passive House rebuilds in the Marshall Fire area

Xcel Energy has announced a tiered incentive package designed to encourage families who were affected by the Marshall Fire in Boulder County Colorado, to consider rebuilding to a higher standard than baseline building code. Those who pursue Passive House certification…

Teaching the Way: the Shining Mountain Waldorf School Students Put Passive House to the Test

This is the story of a lucky, very timely coincidence. Back in February 2018, as part of our curriculum development for North American Passive House training, Emu Systems added a hands-on workshop to the  Certified Passive House Tradesperson course. After…

Emu’s Passive Pod CPHT Workshop to be presented in China.

With a desire to share lessons learned from the process we've been going through over the past couple years in offering advanced builder training in North America, we submitted a paper for the International Passive House Conference, scheduled for September…

Beartooth Passive House nails Blower Door Test at 0.16-0.19 ACH50 on first try.

With U.S. building codes now starting to address airtightness with respect to energy efficiency, many builders find themselves struggling to meet the defined ACH50 values (air changes per hour at 50 Pascal) required by their local codes. This measurement is…

Passive House Too Tight – Builder to Refund $5k in Damaged Testing Equipment

Notice: please read to the END of this article, and note the date. #thingswethoughtwedidnthavetoexplain 😉 Gally Tullagher, a builder in Red Lodge MT, was court ordered to refund $5k in damaged testing equipment to the company performing the blower door…

Meet the newest Emu class of Passive House trained tradespeople.

We'd like to introduce you to an amazing group of professionals visiting us this week from all over North America for our 4-day course to become PHI Certified Passive House Tradespeople. We're on the last day of class now, gearing…

The results of the Emu Mockup naming competition at our last happy hour

In December, at another one of our rockin' Passive House happy hours, we unveiled a rough prototype of a mockup (which we creatively called "The Box" at the time) to be used as part of the new hands-on workshop curriculum in our classes to become a Certified Passive House Tradesperson. We decided to open up a naming competition for "The Box" to come up with some genius, clever name from the collective pool of intellectual prowess represented by the happy hour attendees.

Passive House builder training opportunities with Emu in New England this autumn

One of the most important aspects of a successful Passive House build (or any quality build, for that matter) is an informed and capable crew. Part of Emu's mission is to reach out to as many tradespeople as possible, and…

Emu Systems and Phoenix Haus, ruffling the feathers of the construction industry.

Since February, Emu has been working out of a new office in Tradecraft Industries, a co-working space for the construction industry in Denver, Colorado. Recently, we've gained a few new neighbors with like-minded objectives. One of these is the prefab panel…