The townhouse at 23 Park Place in Park Slope underwent an extensive renovation to become New York City's first certified passive house, which means that its nearly airtight and consumes very little energy. In fact, it uses 75 percent less energy than its neighbors. Design firm Fabrica718 completed the retrofit of the original brownstone last summer, and Sam McAfee of SG Build took the above thermal image this past January to show just how energy efficient the house really is. The images captured a cold winter night, and the red glow of the neighboring buildings shows they are leaking heat out of their windows and through their facades. Conversely, the cool blue color of the passive house shows it is retaining its interior heat thanks to superior insulation and high performance windows. "There are dozens upon dozens of these projects under way around NYC and they mostly look the same as typical, until you look at them this way," says McAfee.
McAfee says homes like this "cost about the same to build" as traditional houses, "but save hundreds of thousands of money in energy cost over the life of the building (plus a dozen or so other positive attributes like being super quiet and 3x better interior air quality)." He also said that "This is the only situations in the US where the best performing and worst performing building are directly next to each other. People may hate the idea, but the market and interest for this type of building is exploding."
· Here Now, Meet NYC's First Certified Passive House [Curbed]
· SG Build [official]
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