A newly-completed Passive House-certified home in Santa Rosa, designed by Signum Architecture to replace a structure lost in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, provides a model for recovery after wildfire that is healthy, resilient, sustainable and financially achievable. The recently-completed home was designed by the team at Napa-based Signum Architecture—led by partner and co-founder Jarrod Denton, a LEED Accredited Professional and a pioneering expert in sustainable, high-efficiency design who was one of the earliest certified Passive House consultants in the United States—and constructed by Sonoma County-based Wright Residential Construction.
This project was a unique meeting of the minds between the architect and husband-wife clients—both high tech executives—who had done an enormous amount of research on the U.S. The Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Home program, had developed a deep well of knowledge about high-performance homes, and were 100% committed to building a Passive House-certified house for themselves, with a goal of net zero energy consumption. Extremely tech-savvy, these clients have future-proofed their home by embedding technologies and systems—such as an app-controlled SPAN electrical panel that enables them to selectively shed energy use—which can be updated as technology evolves. The annual heating demand of the home is just over 4 BTUs per square foot—a fifth of the average demand between 20 and 40 BTUs per square foot, according to the Pacific Power energy usage calculator.
Though Passive House design is not a replacement for fire-safe design and construction, the overlap between energy-efficient, airtight design and fire-resilient design and construction methods is significant, and the benefits are universal. Built to a strict budget, this home demonstrates that highly sustainable, resilient design and construction is achievable for a broad range of homeowners. To achieve the construction loan, the team was able to successfully establish the positive impact of the Passive House technologies on the value of the completed structure.
The essence of the design was to distill the home down to a simple set of forms: a mono-pitched, offset gable roof echoes the street’s significant slope, and the 3,250-square-foot, U-shaped home was created from the inside out. Living spaces are arranged around a central courtyard, with kitchen, dining and living spaces aligned along the rear facade, a guest bedroom and downstairs office facing the street, and additional bedrooms above. A separate structure houses both pool equipment and a workshop. Balancing function, efficiency, fire-resiliency and budget, Signum turned the clients’ functional program into a joyful home.
