24 - Hans Breaux - Project CO+OP
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James: Hello and welcome to Marketing Passive House, the podcast where we hear from architects, designers, builders, suppliers, owners, and other experts in the passive house and high performance building space. We'll be talking about what's working and what's needed when it comes to marketing buildings that meet or aspire to the passive house standard.

James: I'm your host, James Turner, and today I am joined by Hans Breaux, founder and principal architect at Project Co-Op. Hans, welcome to the show.

Hans: Thanks, James. Good to see you.

James: Same. So before we get into it, and for people who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit more about who you are, what you do, and how you started on your passive house journey?

Hans: Sure, sure. It's not a linear path, but I'll start with where I am now. So, I'm in Portland, Maine working as an architect that focuses primarily on high performance, really sustainable design, and it's a great place to do that kind of work. But originally I'm from South Louisiana. The deep south of the United States, and in some ways I consider myself a bit of a climate refugee. After graduate school, I, I was kind of disillusioned with the world and hiked the Appalachian Trail to Maine. Thought I'd be here for just a year to figure things out. And now I'm here, what, on a 15 years later the tagline for the state is, life is good here. And yeah, it certainly is. A little bit more about me.

Hans: I, I started out, for as long as I can remember, being really into outdoor adventuring, you know, playing outside, building things outta sticks and mud and playing with Legos, building things, making things, not really understanding why, but I was just, just compelled to do it. And part of that was space making.

Hans: Okay. What are, what are, you know, where occupiable spaces like designing buildings, not necessarily buildings, but just different. Constructions and like, imagine what's it like to be here? What's it, what would it be like if this not realized thing existed? And where are the implications of that, which is designing, right?

Hans: That's what architecture is. We're envisioning a future that doesn't exist at trying to understand it as much as we can before it's executed, so that what is executed, you know, fulfills fulfills what we're thinking. So that's has been a part of me as long as I can remember. So, where I am now as an architect and personally focused on sustainability is kinda a natural extension for that. And you know, throughout that I've always spent a lot of time in the outdoors. And so there's a real connect connection to sort of natural processes, wildlife, the weather, as you know, the weather is not boring at all.

James: No.

Hans: I mean, it drives everything. And, and, and, and really, you know, when you spend a lot of time outdoors you know, you, you experience whatever is happening out there.

Hans: And we are as humans and other animals are. for certain environments that are very comfortable and when things change, it is not quite so comfortable or hospitable. So what do we do? What are the adaptations, you know, or what, what do we do to create shelter and what, what sort of works and what doesn't work? it's funny, I was before we started this, this meeting, I thought about one experience I had years ago when I was playing with a cousin of mine out in some woods down south Louisiana, maybe like 10 or 15 maybe, probably about 10 years old. And know, we were out in the woods and then a torrential downpour started to happen.

Hans: It's raining, lots of wind and things like that. And like we could've just gone inside, you know, like, forget it. This is too much for us to handle. But instead what we did was we had a, I think some sort of tarp or something and we, we crafted this field expedient sort of wilderness shelter to get outta the rain and we just kind of huddle next to each other under this small tarp while the kind of, the rain was beating down and the wind was kind of blowing and things like that.

Hans: And, you know, it was a real. Really interesting 'cause we had it, it, it stood out as a incredible moment, really memorable moment of like having these conversations with who was a person who was a really close friend of mine and a family member. Just kind of weathering, literally weathering this storm and understanding that part of what

Hans: brought us together was actually that we were adapting really directly and minimally to what was really kind of an inhospitable, weather event.

Hans: You know, climactic event. And so it really draw the, it really drew the link between, you know, kind of that, I don't know, the, the sort of the technical response to how do we shelter ourselves against, you know an environment we need to mitigate against to like what the human experience is that we can have like, as a result of that.

Hans: And being also being very connected with it at the same time. And so these are kind of ideas that, you know, these nuggets of experience I had when I was younger and then continued to adulthood with outdoor adventuring. That kind of led me to kind of a really innate conviction about, you know, creating a nexus between what it means for, you know, human life to enhance human life and interaction and with how we interface with the rest of our context and the natural world. So yeah, that's a good start. I think.

James: I think so too. A great start. I wanted to ask if you were still living out of a backpack 15 years later, but I won't do that.

Hans: Figuratively. Yes. I'm always thinking about it.

James: that's a great origin story.

Hans: Yeah.

James: and so the passive house part, I'm curious to know about that like as, as distinct from just the. Architecture, building, shelter, you know, creating an environment for humans within the broader environment. But

Hans: Mm-hmm.

James: how did the, or where did the, the passive house-ness of it all come into play for you?

James: What, what caught your eye?

Hans: it feels like a really direct result. You know, when I, you think through these issues, you think about. What are the human factors that are important? So that's, you know, physical health, emotional health, you know, living full lives, et cetera. you think about what the impacts are on the, sort of the greater context, right?

Hans: The, the people, there's occupants of the building, but then there's everything else that's affected by say, a building, right? And we're kind of aware of those sorts of things, right? We talk about, you know, the carbon footprint of buildings, we talk about, you know, energy use and all the, all the things associated with that. And when you start to trace through all those issues which are complex and, and complicated and difficult to measure in terms of impacts that just presuming we wanna have a positive impact passive house answers a lot of those questions really quickly and efficiently and effectively and measurably in a way that doesn't require reinventing the wheel every time we design a building. Because the reality is there's a lot of construction is happening, right? It needs to happen. It needs to happen within a certain timeline to be useful. Right? We can, can, we can spend lots of time developing the best building in the world, which I think passive house is pretty close to that. But is it ever executed?

Hans: Right? Perfect. The enemy of the good. Right. You know, we, we can kind of, things have to move forward, right? This is a tangible thing. It's not a theoretical thing. And so I think passive house gives practitioners. who are, you know, manifesting these things. Sort of a guide, a guideline for probably the best buildings we can at this point based on our sort of collective understanding of how to create shelter. all driven by my wanting, having a personal professional mission of kind of having a net good or net positive impact on whatever this effort is. Right? And that, you know, that is measured in lots of different arenas. And part of that is. Being efficient about it. Passive House gives me that sort of easy button get much closer to that, much more quickly.

James: I like that. An easy button for architect to care about, that sort of thing.

Hans: Mm-hmm. And I

James: Hmm.

Hans: everyone should and, and does fundamentally, I mean, it, it's not a once you, you know, if we're talking about how conversations with someone who's not familiar with passive house, you talk through the issues that it's addressing. It's like, oh, obviously these are, are great ways to address those things. You know, once we work through each one of 'em, and of course, but it's complicated, right? So that's why it's so great to say passive house, which encompasses all these things and addresses all these things. But you're saying one word, but it, it, it's an, it's an easy way to get there

James: Hmm.

Hans: or to start on, on the journey to address a lot of complex things.

James: Right. Yeah, I remember. So we met, you're one of the, the first people on this podcast who I've met in actual person, which is

Hans: Oh, great.

James: I've a feature of living in Frederickton New Brunswick as I do. But I remember when we met that you made. An not offhanded remark, but you, you quite confidently said like, the technical side of passive house is figured out.

James: Like it's,

Hans: Mm-hmm.

James: there's no mysteries there, there's no like stuff. I mean, not, not, yeah. There's no stuff left, left to figure out in that regard. Like that's not what's holding it back.

Hans: Mm-hmm.

James: And I, I wondered if you. Remembered that it still, still agree. Feel free to take it back. I changed my opinion when, when in, when needed.

Hans: don't remember, I don't remember saying that, but it sounds like something I would say, so I, I trust you. It happens often, but no, I totally stand By that I mean the, so the technical, the scientific, the, the physics, right. We'll call it the physics of a building that's fairly well understood. the, the. Way it's applied isn't uniform. And I think that creates some confusion. The way we think about buildings isn't necessarily uniform. That does also create some additional confusion. You know, we have evolving generations of practitioners with different ideas on how to approach things and that evolves along with the marketplace, right?

Hans: I think that

James: Hmm.

Hans: a lots to do with that. And so though there are. You take those factors out in terms of just kind of the more, the academic approach of, you know, called building science or, the sort of technical aspects. It's all there, right? I mean, all the information's there for us to, to use, to apply, to understand how to create a building that is comfortable in any environment at all times, using minimal amount of energy. we understand indoor environmental quality and how, and the effects on human health. We, a little less tangible, but still, I think fairly well understood by, should be understood by architects is like what, what, what encompasses human wellbeing and human experience. The processes of being a human inside of a space, like, you know, like a family, right.

Hans: Going through, you know, life changes, you know, a little harder to say like it's a mathematical formula, but there's a lot understood there,

James: Hmm.

Hans: It's, it's not sort of unknown. The, the idea that everything creative. When designing a building has to be sort of new or, or innovative, I think kind of misses the point. I think where the real creativity or the innovation comes is the application of these things that are already known a unique situation. Because every building is a unique mix of certain factors, but each one of those factors has a wealth of knowledge in our, know, species.

James: Right.

Hans: that we can apply and, and bring to bear.

Hans: And so I think passive house falls well within line of, of that thinking that we can know things and we can apply things and there's no reason to willfully be ignorant of best practices in any particular aspect of a building. It just for each particular building, it's a unique mix, a relatively unique mix of those factors, right?

Hans: Depending on who's gonna be there, you know, what's the. You know what's driving the project, where it is the climate, you know, all, all sorts of very specific things. But again, there's nothing new under the sun.

James: Yeah. So then if that's the case, what do you think is holding it back if it's not? Knowledge or a lack of knowledge, or why aren't all the houses passive built to passive house standard

Hans: You

James: and what?

Hans: it's an interesting question. You know, I think there's different perspectives and frames to, to look at it. One of the things that comes to mind initially is like, why are buildings. The way we build buildings changing so frequently the technologies and approaches, right? You look at a building that's built today versus a building that's built 10 years, 20, 30, 40, you know, go back over the last 150 years.

Hans: You're like, well that building's from X time period. That building's from X time period. And I can tell really quickly because this was how people were approaching adaptation to a climate that, I mean, there is climate change, but isn't that different?

James: Right.

Hans: I mean, why are we building buildings that are so different over time periods, right?

Hans: Is is, is it because something wrong initially and we've learned more or, you know, there are a lot of complex interactions, right? Some of them are frankly, you know, probably self-serving economic drivers. Some of them are probably is good information driven by good move, driven by good information potentially.

Hans: But you know, you, you look at that and you look even further back to when, when buildings truly were passive and then you had kind of a stability of what a building looked like. Just take, take a house, for example, right? So you just, I don't know, kind of make a hypothetical, like a thatched roof hut, It's built from envir, you know, materials from the place it's from, it can last. Some of these lasted, like, there's documented use of some of these thatched homes, I think in the UK that might have been occupied. For like with 500 years

James: Right.

Hans: something, like, incredible. Right? And there's, and they, you know, there's a little, you can add more material to it and whatnot, but when it's done, it just, it just disappeared within a year, right?

Hans: Back into the landscape, things like that. But it was, it was a design or approach that persisted for such a long period of time. And so I think one of the things we're, we're faced with passive house as a concept. Proper is maybe initially from the mid nineties, right? In Germany, it's become, last me 20 years, a little more popular. More worldwide and in the United States, still relatively new. I mean, it's still a relatively new thing in building to really say, Hey, let's, let's take all the science and knowledge and hard information we know about building the best buildings we can and apply it. that's, ways, that's a very fresh perspective.

Hans: And so

James: Hmm.

Hans: still kind of a bleeding edge to it that even though it seems so logical and straightforward, there are still awareness, there's still convincing that needs to happen, right? 'cause there are people who've worked in buildings for their entire career and feel like they know how to do buildings right.

Hans: Based on whatever time period they happen to come up. Right. And that's happened

James: Right.

Hans: over again, right? And we keep seeing that. And so there's this there's a little bit of tension, this generational tension between between those practitioners. Like, okay, what is, what does it really means to build a building?

Hans: What's a good building? And, and so I think passive house is. the moment probably the best example of what we have, and I think it's part of the evolution on a continuum and but I think it's still at the same time, very positive and and piece to that ongoing puzzle. What it means to build a good building.

James: Nice. Yeah. So do you think maybe it's just, just time, like just one or two more generations of architects, builders, suppliers, homeowners, developers, and it'll just be

Hans: Time and those, those who are willing to put in the time to make it happen over that time, right? Like it takes effort. It takes, we, we, we who know and understand the value of this, who are in the weeds of the details, need to be the ones who are part of these conversations in the different arenas, right? As practitioners, right? So one thing I do and other practitioners do is often will say, okay, passive house is our minimum standard. Like, that's just what we do, right? We're not code minimum

James: Right.

Hans: or builders. We're like, we know barely legal isn't a good building. We need to kind of go ahead of that. So we'll do passive house. But then there's like, okay, well what, what are the other aspects? Of course, there's education, right? Doing outreach, being part of. Either organizations that advocate for passive house, just having conversations like we are having now

James: Yep.

Hans: sort of let people know more about it and let them know why it's important, how it's valuable, what it, what it brings to bear, how it works, and then being involved in essentially the power structure that either causes it to be challenging to execute or, or makes it easier.

Hans: So that means getting involved in sort of legislation potentially, or you know, your local city. Municipal codes and things like that that can have a big impact. And I've done all those things and some of them have, have had success. And I think without sort of the tangible sort of, yes, there's a win, just having the conversations has been really big.

Hans: Right. And sometimes you can't measure that. But you have a conversation, say for example, legislators, like explain, okay, this is why this is important. This

James: Mm.

Hans: this fits into moving us towards. Better buildings, then like, okay, I don't know when that's gonna affect their life or what they do in the future, but moved the needle a little bit,

James: Right.

Hans: So when a question comes up in some meeting, some boardroom down the road, they're, they're not building professionals, but they'll think, man, you know, I don't, I'd like to do something. I don't know what it is because this isn't my realm of expertise, but I heard this word passive house. And some people who seem really smart and know what they're talking about said this is a good thing to do, so let's at least explore that. Right? it's just two words, right? Like I were saying earlier within it contains so many aspects. When you say do a passive house, there so many factors and building you're addressing that make it a better building. And it's just really great to be able to say like, just follow this and then you've taken care of so many important things in building that you just don't have to. Trip over yourself with. You don't have to experiment, potentially fail by trying to address in ways that we already know how to address, essentially. So,

James: All right. Well, so do you have any advice or tips or anecdotes about how to, to talk to get that? Information to those people, like did anything to share that's worked for you that others could try or like how do you

Hans: you know, there's, again, there's, there's different arenas. You know, in the United States also have to have to talk about financial cost.

James: Right.

Hans: always it comes down to. I mean, buildings are expensive. And they're one of the most expensive and complicated things we build or create.

Hans: And you know, a lot of the conversation gets framed that way. I don't think that's what people care about primarily, but that's what the conversation usually comes down to. That's kind of the common.

James: Yeah.

Hans: Factor that everyone can agree upon as like where that the value of the building lies. I think most people, if you talk to them one-on-one, will value other aspects like human health kind of the planet, those sorts of things.

Hans: Like we all, we all do care about that, but you know, when, when it comes down to it, we have to sort of frame it in financial terms. And so, you know, I think. I and many other practitioners, you know, have become really adept at framing things in terms of the financial cost of, for example, demonstrating how most buildings, the quote, additional cost isn't necessarily an additional cost to go the route of passive house, just by the numbers financially.

Hans: Sometimes there's a little bit of an increase based on maybe called code minimum building code minimum energy efficiency of a building. maybe a few percent touch points just depending on the, on the project. But that's, that's also kind of controversial. But when you look at what you're getting, I mean, what, what is the, what is the cost that you're offsetting or, or pushing it someplace else?

Hans: 'cause there is a cost and by not investing in the best building you possibly can on the front end, you're creating greater cost somewhere else.

James: Yeah.

Hans: That's always the case.

James: Yeah.

Hans: You that cost is easily measured, not financially. That, that like, right. I mean, if we have a building that people are less comfortable in, well, who wants that?

Hans: I mean, or, or a building that makes people sick. Right. Who wants that? I mean, it kind of comes down to who's paying for it, I guess, is really what you're trying to, to

James: Yeah.

Hans: you're having these conversations, right? 'cause you're, you're, you're trying to convince whoever's paying for this building to, to, to value that their investment is a shared investment.

Hans: And we're sort of better off by doing that. Even though they might not necessarily be financially on the hook down the road because someone got sick, 'cause of this building, just to create a simple example maybe they would be, I'm not sure, but to, to see that the fact that they're commissioning a building and, and lots of people who they don't know are gonna be inside of it potentially, and to care about their experience as a human or, or, or amongst other issues. I think is, is is a really important value. And I think, you know, my company, that's, that's a, that's a core value that we have. We try to instill that in our clients to understand that.

James: All right.

Hans: And also have conversations outside of professional work to try to, to shift, the frame of thinking, to see that, you know, we have this collective responsibility, to each other to, to do the best we can when we have, 'cause these things, we know that it'll affect people, right.

James: Yeah.

Hans: We know if we do a pass fast, we are positively impacting so many people, the users of the building. You know, it's to think globally, act locally 'cause we're using less energy, right? And all that, all that sort of stuff. We, we know that's there. And so you know, if we can shift the understanding of where, where cost lies, I think that that would go a really long way.

James: So

Hans: said, that being said, it's not hard to say, to show, to demonstrate at this point that you can come out on top financially. a passive house, right? I mean,

James: right.

Hans: spending so much less on energy. You have so much less complicated systems, right? They're really straightforward to maintain. If you're, say it's a apartment building that you're renting, you can command a greater rent potentially because you're offering such a higher quality building.

James: Mm.

Hans: there are all sorts of sort of financial positives that you can make work. You just have to understand it. You have to understand the value of. It.

James: Yeah.

Hans: think helping everyone understand what those, those, those values are beyond sort of the super technical stuff why it's a good idea, I think is really helpful.

James: And, and how

Hans: almost like live, live and breathe and think it like just everywhere you go, every conversation you have. Educate your barista on passive house.

James: Right. How, how, particularly though, I'm, I'm sorry to keep digging on this, but I'm really, I, this is something that's befuddled me for a long time. Do you just call up legislators or do, is it just that when they commission a building or No? Yeah. You literally just look up the,

Hans: Yeah.

James: building code.

Hans: I, there's, I've done there. This is what others have done. I know. There's one colleague of mine, he, he has done that. He, he's called I think most law states have an organization that helps award funding for income housing projects. In the us Most, most US states have that.

Hans: And there's just this, the way those are set up, they, they, they kind of allocate points to proposed projects and each developer's kind of competing with this kind of point system to get their project selected. The lower income project

James: Hmm.

Hans: built. So the developers are kind of in this competition thing.

Hans: And so there are different things that get you more points. And so this one this person started calling these state organizations saying, Hey, couldn't you just like, say if you're. If they're gonna pursue passive house, that counts as some points

James: Hmm.

Hans: more likely to go forward. Which is, I mean, that's is a great thing.

James: Yeah.

Hans: multifamily, especially low income housing, the, the positive impacts of doing passive house are just, you know,

James: astronomically

Hans: good and astronomically positive. And it works out well for everyone. It's very win-win. And so just that, just that question, I think he's able to get a number of these state organizations to say, yeah, sure.

Hans: Why not? So whenever a developer is wanting to pursue passive house, they suddenly have a leg up over another project that isn't willing to pursue

James: Hmm.

Hans: house. And so there are these kind of leverage points. There are these kind of places where you can you can, you can just kind of cold call and say, Hey, why not?

James: Right.

Hans: it, it is just that easy. Right? And, and, and that's what again, what's so beautiful a passive house. It's two words or one word, I guess if you're looking at the German that encompasses so much and, and it can make a lot of great change and. And kind of done easily that way. In the same vein you know, I live in northern New England and there's a really strong referendum process of, you know, the citizenry governing.

James: Right.

Hans: and so I was involved in

James: I.

Hans: the municipality here where the voters we put to vote a potential change or a change to the, the local municipal rules that said, well, you know, if you're gonna have a public project with a certain amount of public money in it, in the city, you need to pursue some, some goals.

Hans: And passive house there are a number of 'em that you could choose from, but passive house was one of them. So suddenly, you know, that just increased that likelihood of high performance projects being built. And it makes sense from a public standpoint because

James: Hmm.

Hans: if the public's gonna invest in it, why? I mean, let's spend less on energy.

Hans: Let's make it a healthier building. Like there's no, there's no lose with that.

James: Yeah. Yeah.

Hans: Yeah. So it doesn't have to be super effortful. And of course there are other ways you can get much more involved. And I've been involved in helping co-author some legislation that really, you know, use deep technical knowledge to make sure it made sense technically.

Hans: And that's, that is important, right? I mean, people who aren't experts in these things who have the technical information need to be reviewing it so that when you know rulemaking happens, it. Does align with the facts on the ground of how it all works, that that's critically important. And sometimes, well, I'll just say it's scary how often that, or how easily that could not happen, how experts could not be involved in this process.

Hans: And so I think, you know, for everyone just to have more awareness of how that works and look for those points where you can just be in the room even add a comment. That can be enough, especially if you're someone who really understands how this works.

James: So public projects, if you can figure out how to find out about the, the commissioning phase of, of public projects that, that sort of thing.

Hans: yeah, for, for

James: Hmm.

Hans: or, you know, really are lots of touch points.

James: I.

Hans: You know, it doesn't even have to be a project. It could be like you know, there are lots of public meetings that that happen where people are talking about, tangential issues, any issues that deal with the, the built environment. You know, I think these things start to come to bear because it's all systems, it's interacting systems, right? So

James: Hmm.

Hans: like I said, you can't talk about it enough and, and help people understand the intersections of these sorts of things. And, and at the same time, it, you know, we, we don't wanna be in a silo either, right?

Hans: And so we want to also be influenced by others who, have other expertise and, and, and knowledge and understand how it interacts with, with those arenas. So. So it's really important, I think, to continue to be part of that stew,

James: Yeah,

Hans: and understand it's an evolving stew. We need to, you know, continue to be a part of, part of that.

Hans: And as the flavor changes, you know, remain dynamic.

James: I like that the stew analogy or gumbo perhaps

Hans: well that would be my preferred. I make a mean gumbo

James: I bet.

Hans: Spicy for New Englanders, but.

James: Two, two things. That I definitely wanna ask about before we get going. One is the name of your company, Project CO+OP. I'm sure there's a, a reason like that's a very sort of bold company name. So

Hans: Mm-hmm.

James: just like, talk about that a bit?

Hans: Totally.

James: I.

Hans: so it, when I founded it, it's a, it's a worker cooperative. It's set up as a worker cooperative, so that means that there's democratic control between all of us who are collaborating together. In the company and it's, I think it's really important that, you know, sustainability and the values we espouse, you know, that really starts at home and that really projects into, to what we do as our professional work. And you know, there, there are different ways. I, I it's an evolving idea and one of the things that I think the, it's important within the company and important within the work is the sense of shared ownership. investment, kind of like what we talking about earlier, right? Like we all kind of have a responsibility to other, like to wellbeing of, of each other, and that we're all better off.

Hans: We're all thinking those terms.

James: Hmm.

Hans: I've seen happen in the cooperative business movement. That's a very established thing that's that I'm a part of. I, I work with other cooperatives and they're different cooperatives in different arenas, and, and that's kind of, that's the idea, right? We're mutually supportive. For, all of us involved in the enterprise, but also for our community and the rest of the planet. So there's this stated sense of responsibility mutual responsibility, and so far it's worked wonderfully. The, I like the easy button. I like easy mode. And when everyone's happy and getting along and feels respected and it's equitable. It makes interact, it makes everything very pleasant. And that's how I like to go about things. And, and it's worked, really, it's extended to, to working with clients who, you know really focus on building relationships and they seem to really appreciate that approach of, of, you know, understanding and empathy and understanding that we all kind of have this collective responsibility to each other, to, to build the best built environment that we can.

James: Wonderful and very also like brand aligned with the, the passive house ethos too, right? Like, like that, that all just, it feels all pointing in the same direction. And brings me neatly to the other thing I was gonna ask about, which is clients. So when I met you, you were speaking at the passivhausMaine conference, and you and a client were presenting

Hans: Mm-hmm.

James: about the house that.

James: You and he and another had built together. And I just, I wondered something that came up in that was that you had projected the numbers that you thought it would, the performance, and then by being a collaborative, cooperative client who was super into tracking the numbers, you were able to actually like check up on it over time and

Hans: Mm-hmm.

James: panned out, right?

James: Like that.

Hans: Oh, that was, it's, yeah, it's an so part of the passive house. It is a certified passive house and part of the process is we do an energy model during the design phase where we're like, okay, this is what we project the energy use will be, you know, how much energy it takes to heat it.

Hans: Cool it, and this is just how much electricity it needs to run per year.

James: Right.

Hans: The energy model and the actual measured use of the house were within like 0.01%

James: Amazing.

Hans: In other words, al's totally right on which, which. Shocking you know, we assume there's, it's like miles per gallon sticker for a car, right?

Hans: It can, it, miles will vary based on use

James: Right?

Hans: you know, it just shows that we were all very well aligned,

James: Hmm.

Hans: and, and owner and and everyone on the project. And so then it felt really good to know that what we built, what was built was what we designed. It's operating as intended, actually better than it intended.

Hans: It's using. Even less energy from what I understand

James: Amazing.

Hans: year. yeah, it's quite a project. Quite a project. They just put solar panels on it and I think we're going to the certification, it's, it's Phius certified, 2021, but they just put PV panels on the roof and I think it should be certified as Source Zero within the next month or so because it's

James: Cool.

Hans: onsite energy to kind of zero out the energy it takes at the power plant to power. Oh, so

James: Awesome. I'm gonna actually have them on here a little later. We're, we're talking a little later this month, so I, I'm,

Hans: that's

James: and, and the builder as well. Katrina we have. Yeah. So there, there, this may end up being part of, I mean, I won't release them as a, a suite, but

Hans: Sure.

James: it'll be cool to have this touch point of different perspectives on the same build.

James: But the thing I thought about that, like in terms of marketing, passive house being able to call your shot, I mean, and not there's still that your mileage may vary, right? Like I'm sure you're not going out there being like, that's it. I can see the future. And,

Hans: Mm-hmm.

James: but it's such a good, proof. It's, it's such a like, like social proof or whatever, like if to to, to then sell the next passive house.

James: Be like, you know, it's not always gonna be this perfect, but like this modeling stuff really makes a difference and really, yeah.

Hans: absolutely. Yeah. And, and you know, again, it, it, it factors into some other, it, it translates into some other things that are really beneficial to really promoting passive house too. Being able to reasonably predict the energy use, you know, that that's nice for a single family home. That's, that's great. I mean, we, we love that. But when it starts to become a bigger project, when the financing structure becomes more dependent on what the real operation costs will be, and you're, we're demonstrating like, wow, well, what you. might've been in the proforma, we are, you know, it's only gonna be 25% of that energy costs in operation. Suddenly, the, the, the, any potential additional costs to build a passive house, it evaporates because you're saving so much in operation day one,

James: Right.

Hans: becomes like a, why wouldn't you do that? Every people are doing better for everyone else and you're making more money. I mean, who, who's gonna argue with that? Ask.

James: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's, it's great. Like data, data is a great leverage just for the, particularly like not the single family home, but when, when, when the person. Develop developing. It wants to make a profit from that house or that building, I should say.

Hans: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

James: Well this has been great. Before we go, where can people go to find out more about you online?

Hans: Yeah. Well our website's probably the best place to start and that's www dot project dot COOP so we have a special URL. It's not dot com, it's dot C-O-O-P,

James: Awesome.

Hans: So our website aligns great with our company name.

James: Perfect. Well, thanks so much for joining me today.

Hans: Yeah, sure thing. James. Happy to chat with you.

James: You've been listening to Marketing Passive House. I'm James Turner, and I hope you'll join me again next time. I.