Gaulhofer Windows: Passive House Standards

Posted on

The Passive House (or ‘Passivhaus’) movement in building design and construction – by which buildings adhere to rigorous standards of energy efficiency – is still fairly new to North America, but has been widely adopted beyond our borders. As this New York Times article noted in 2010, there were some 25,000 certified passive structures in Europe, and just 13 in the United States.

However, passive home building has taken off in the last few years, and at Gaulhofer Windows, we were proud to be a part of one such project a while back – The Menlo Passive home built by Clarum Homes.

This impressive California home not only meets the strict standards of passive home building, but even exceeded them in some respects. As Clarum Homes explains on their website, “One of the most integral components of the passive house is an air tight building envelope,” and the Menlo home went on to exceed those standards by an astonishing 65%.  And their comments about Gaulhofer Windows in particular:

“The Gaulhofer windows are wood inside and out and are so high performance that you can actually hear them sealing when they close. They have the highest R value you can buy and come with a unique “tilt and turn” function to open them.”

Having the very best windows is critically important to an energy efficient projects like these. (For more details on the types of windows, check out these pages on our Natureline: Solid Wood Windows and Fusionline: Aluminum Clad Wood Windows.)

Here are some photos of the Menlo Passive house, both in construction and the impressive final results. An amazing home and we were honoured to have played a small part in its success.

*All photos are property of Clarum Homes and used here with their permission.

Comments are closed.