Imagine owning a home that can maintain comfortable temperatures in summer and winter without needing any heat or air conditioning. That’s the claim made by Marken Projects regarding the home below. It is a 2400 square-foot, four bedroom single family that consumes 90 percent less energy for heating, cooling and building operation than a typical home.

This home is being built in Vancouver, BC and the builders will seek LEED Home Canada Platinum certification. The home uses a European modular wood building system.

The extensive list of Green Building features includes a highly energy efficient heat recovery ventilation and geothermal system, a flat roof mounted Solar Photovoltaic (Electricity) and Solar Thermal system (Hot Water), a rainwater harvesting and greywater recycling system, a green herb garden roof, south oriented triple glazed windows and sliding doors and last but not least the use of renewable, low-VOC materials throughout the design, making it a super green home.

Marken describes itself as company with the goal to bring a fresh and forward-thinking approach to managing, developing and designing green projects across North America. The company is actively pursuing passive technologies that have been developed in Austria and Germany.

We are actually already working on a Passive House prefab collection with different designs and floorplans and are seeking a manufacturing partner here in Canada for this project. This concept is already well established back in Austria, said Alexander Maurer, founder of Marken. The concept is easily adaptable for multi family projects.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has extensive information on the design criteria for passive solar homes and includes these five elements in its literature.

• Aperture – or large glass window area facing within 30 degrees of true south;
• Absorber – something to well, absorb the heat like water or masonry and stone;
• Thermal Mass- the material behind the absorber that stores the heat;
• Distribution – systems for heat movement that employ conduction, convection and radiation; and
• Control – Shade, differential thermostats, vents, dampers, low-emissivity blinds and awnings.

By some accounts the US lags behind other countries, particularly the Scandinavian countries and Germany, in the construction of homes with passive designs. Earlier this year one source put the number of passive-design homes worldwide at 15,000.

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