22 - Naomi Beal - passivhausMaine
===

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.

I'm your host, James Turner, and today I'm joined by Naomi Beal, executive director and founding member of passivhausMaine. Naomi, welcome to the show.

Thanks very much for having me.

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

Sure. I am a Mainer. I grew up in Maine and went away, came back to raise a family. I came into passive house really through the back door as a photographer doing portfolio work for architects and engineers and just, you know, was introduced to the passive house concept. I actually had coincidentally a year away in Germany.

We lived in Heidelberg for sabbatical. In 2009, 2010. And I was still taking pictures. And at that point in Heidelberg, there's a lot of energy, a lot, almost every development was passive house motivated. I was connected with architects there. And when I came back from that year, I was like, okay, I know all the people that are doing cool work in Maine. We can bring passive house for real to and and to others. And I have pretty decent connections. With the international institute and then with others across New England. So in 2000, Spring of 2011, we sort of started gathering around the coffee table kind of organizing level. We became finally a 501 C3 in 2016, and we're currently sitting in our new, physical space. We have a number of developed programs regarding training, retrofits, and advocacy. And, and here we are in our current landscape.

Wonderful. Well, and congratulations and I definitely wanna hear more about what it takes to start a, a chapter in the, in the back of my mind, that's something that maybe I could be involved with here in New Brunswick. So yeah, I think of I'm, I transparently, I joined Passive House, Maine, and we met at your 2025 conference and that was the closest passive house conference to me and probably to the whole east coast of Canada, I would think. Maybe some in Montreal, depending on where you are in the East Coast would be closer. I suppose my, my point in saying it really was just to say thank you for providing this, you know, anchor point for. This, this part, our part of the world, my part of the world and and, and your new facility.

So since I came to the conference, that's come into play and I'd love to hear a bit more about what went into that and your thinking behind having such a, a publicly visible spot.

The vision for having a physical space was born in, I think, 2022, passivhausMaine went to Glasgow to the cop 22 and signed a letter of understanding, memorandum of understanding with the United Nations environmental program. And it was this sort of a, this very exciting moment with a lot of energy and a lot of international connections and, and still feeling like it was sort of a small community. I've lived in Freeport for a long time I was like, what if we had like a storefront that was available to, in my, literally what I said was when people walk from Gap to LL Bean, which is sort of defines Main Street in Freeport.

Okay.

I came back from that meeting like all jazzed. I had a vision that was so clear and. connected with the Chamber of Commerce and she connected me with a realtor. She immediately showed me actually this space and then discovered that it wasn't available. It belonged to somebody who didn't mind the loss in their portfolio.

Evidently they just weren't interested in developing it. And so we looked and went down pretty far down a road with a different space relatively across the street from here. And. And ultimately we just could not get a deal with them. It was a funny series of negotiations in which they, it just didn't work.

It ended in a pretty friendly note, but I was like, wow, you guys just really, that that space is still empty to this day. this police, I heard that the owner had passed away and so I call, I out to that realtor and he was like, changed. Because of this new situation, they're like, well, actually, yes.

So we started negotiations almost 18 months ago wanting to use the space, the the presence just off of Main Street, a lot, a ton of pedestrian traffic, high ceilings that make that sort of industrial work that's happening downstairs feel comfortable and two floors to divide trainings and sort of education downstairs, public facing, and upstairs

are, our offices, we have bunch more employees at this point. We're a team of five.

We are i nstalling some training structures downstairs for yeah, wall and insulation installation. So, yeah, I would say it's really stretching us in some good ways but financially for sure, we're very conscious of the cost associated with having this space and really wanting to use it to its full potential. So that we're educating and reaching people as best we can and you know, events and our trainings and, and our partners here as well.

Right. Yeah. It, it feels like a really integral, it's sort of like does for the com Well, it's a community center, you know, to put it, to put it another way, if you can have a space where you can have related events and like, you know, the, your partner companies probably don't have such public facing spots where they can bring people in.

So you're, you're sort of providing that for them, which to my mind is very much key to this whole concept of marketing passive house. I don't think of marketing as like ads and it, it's this, it's spreading the word outreach.

Also not coincidentally, the high school is like one block in this direction, and Freeport Community Services, which are our local, you know, sort of front lines, community organization is just down the hill, the in the other direction. So we really appreciate having that, central location in Freeport community specifically,

Nice.

Which is where passivhausMaine has been based for a long time.

That's great. So a question about the, the, the street front. Do you, can people walk in? Is there, is there like an a sort of

We're determining how to do that in a wise way.

Right.

I mean, I think to begin with, we'll have kind of limited hours speculating that we'll have one workday open to the public, kind of nine to five or nine to three or whatever,

Nice.

And then Saturday. Because a lot of it has to do with staffing the space too.

It's just one more job.

Right.

so, wanting to consolidate those visits for the beginning, like to see how the flow goes, what the interest is, and.

Mm-hmm.

yeah, go from there.

Nice. Have you had any fun stories of, of like interactions with the public where people who are like, what is this?

I definitely have had that conversation out on the street. We haven't had the public into the space really yet. Oh. Actually, the very first event that we had here was it was a community, organization, we, we headed this effort, but it was making window inserts. So like a pine frame with a plastic membrane, double-paned sort of membrane that people can put into their buildings.

And it's a, a, I don't know if it exists up where you guys are, but it's across the state here in Maine called Window Dressers, and it's an opportunity for many members of the community to come together. Yeah. to provide those window inserts for our low income neighbors and also any income can come on in and pay for window inserts for themselves.

So it's kind of a big thing. That was the very first event that we had in the space, but it was literally no furnishings at that point at all. We had nothing. Nothing in the

Bring your own chair.

Totally. Literally,

Yeah. Yeah.

had somebody bring their own chair. So that was a, that was a couple a month or so ago. But yeah, so since then we're, people are curious, but right now it's a lot, not a lot of details.

We're building the, the exhibit space and fitting out the classroom. We already have had a couple trainings in here, but it's all a bit temporary sort of provisions for that. So we're excited to have a real installation.

I bet I like, I really like that the, the a, a community craft vibe, but with a practical outcome that, that, I think I know the window inserts, it essentially would make a double pane, a window, a triple pane window.

exactly. Kind of

what a great way to get across. Like one aspect of the passive house.

Exactly. That's part of our retrofit initiative. Obviously it's not anything close to passive house, but it's just a moment to talk more about weatherization, about the customization required. You know, have people that, go into the house and measure the, the frame, you know, the place where those inserts are gonna go.

Make sure they're the appropriate size and have the conversations with the homeowners about what's happening and it's just an entry point also for the other kind of retrofit work that we do.

Yeah. No, it's, it's brilliant all around, I think. I hope if you're listening to this and you have an organization that's a, there's a community involving thing you can do. Mm-hmm.

yeah.

And the schools. You said you were close to the school and I think I remember seeing something about some school involvement or a program.

Is that, am I right about that?

Well, we do the training. Director does go into all age schools. She has some, some preschool stuff that she's done all through grade school, high school presentations and community college and university level presentations. That's part, just part of our outreach that is important for just general education. And just before the conference, maybe you, I don't know if you noticed that when you were there last year, but Erin had gone into the community college and given a presentation and I think she got like 10. Kids out of that class that who then came to the conference, they were amazing additions to the audience and they learned a a lot about what was available to them in the trades. And really upended their assumptions about what the trades might look like in terms of demographic and who their colleagues could be and what kind of work they could be doing was actually very impactful. those visits into, into classrooms are. Yeah, critical part of our outreach and really enjoyable as well.

I bet it's so, it's so important just that idea that like, things can be different. Like

Mm-hmm.

just challenging those assumptions, like, or not even challenging assumptions. It, it's bigger, right? It's like

I

widening the aperture, like there's, there's more than you think.

more than you. More than you think. More than you thought.

Yeah.

Yeah. We'd heard

Yeah.

and over from those guys like. What we had no idea that this world was out there.

Mm. Mm-hmm. I mean, that's kind of how it felt for me. My personally, my journey to passive has started with earthships and I was just taken with this, this just taken with this idea that like, oh, right, A house doesn't have to be just the regular kind or, you know,

right.

you know, this particular era's architecture versus, you know, in Victorian or whatever like it I'd never just thought about the fact that houses are.

Completely up to us. And then from there it broadened. And then I met a guy who was like, passive house. Passive house. And then that put the bug in my ear. His name's Garth Hood.

Yeah,

should, I should probably talk to him.

coast.

No, no. He's in f Fredericton. He or he was in Fredericton. He's in New Brunswick.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

I should talk to him and get him on here.

Yeah, the name is totally familiar, I don't remember where I've seen it, but

Yeah,

Yeah, he's probably the first in New Brunswick, maybe the only, or one of the only, CPHC or DS in New Brunswick. Yeah. And I mean, this was 2012 that he put this bug in my ear. So I've been kind of a lurker for many, many years in the passive house world. Yeah. And so having an organization I think is a really.

It's really hearing you saying all these things. These are all things that a company would be hard pressed, like a, a, sorry. A builder or an architect would be hard pressed to do, right. They'd have to like justify a, a completely separate business line on education and outreach.

Exactly. That's why organizations like us, exist. You know, in some ways it presents like a trade organization because it's a lot of training, continuing ed programming meetups, you know, various kind of opportunities to learn. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

But the whole, the retrofit piece is a very is a really different. program. So really an offshoot from that sort of general education for professionals because it's really pointed at homeowners. And the program that that we have was funded, unfortunately, and not surprisingly, no longer funded by the federal department of Energy,

Right.

Its aim was to scale low income retrofit. electrification and weatherization focused mostly on, on electrification.

Hmm.

the grant that we wrote focused on the higher, higher emphasis on weatherization and cost reductions and resilience. And that was a very generous and very well designed program in terms of providing us with cash as a grassroots organization and expertise across the federal landscape and national labs and, various other, research organizations that could provide us with real data and expertise in analyzing. It was an amazing program and I'm so disappointed. It brought us right up to this cusp of the our pilot project, which we've continued through this year but now at the, the moment when we're supposed to be scaling, literally had our, our legs kicked out from underneath us.

So that is, we are just one example of so many in the United States who are in that position. But, yeah, so we're. Figuring out different pathways for that. Anyway, that's a whole other thing. Also combating climate change as carbon reduction, but also climate mitigation as resilience and c reating a community around and business around.

The theme of retrofits is is where we're, we're trying to do. Still.

Nice. Well, I hope that you can keep the good fight up

Thank you.

and, and how frustrating. Well, how, how nice to see that, like you could see the path, like it was

such a

yeah.

like really, really well thought out. And really, you know, not top down in the same way that in the states, I dunno if it's the same in Canada, but it's like a federal weatherization program that is. It, it just is a, you know, it comes from federal government. Then there's this regional kind of organizations that distribute funds.

Hmm.

very literal, top down. And this the what was called buildings up the funding went to the grassroots organizations, the people who had the real connections with the community

Right.

and just juicing it a little bit to to. See how that worked, which I just, it was perfect for us. It was really great.

Yeah.

I, I think that other programs had real success with it,

Nice.

so it's a, anyway, moving on.

Moving on. Yeah, I, I mean, I feel very personally close to this because rural New Brunswick and rural Maine are. Yeah,

Very

basically the same,

Okay.

you know, like different,

Same climate. Same building stock. And same reliance on number two, heating oil, which is just like Maine and the Maritimes

Mm-hmm.

quite you know, they're the same and kind of oddballs because we don't have very much natural gas infrastructure at all. It's just too rural. So the majority of our single family homes are heated with number two, heating oil, and polluting and expensive. And a stressor i n the winter when people are making choices between food, heat, and medicine.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

And same in, the Maritimes, I think.

Yep. Yeah, I was actually just, just two days ago, I walked around my neighborhood and was struck by like, almost everyone has a heat pump in this, you know, just my walking distance from my house. But 10 years ago that wasn't true. And it's also due to federal programs like,

Same.

know, yeah.

I, I have to say I give credit to the Republican governor before our current democrat governor really supported heat pump programs for cost efficiency. And they continue, it's a really good, solid program here in Maine. A lot of people are transitioning. I don't have the stats off the top of my head, but it's significant, the number that are transitioning to heat pumps as a way of escaping the stress of the of the heat oil bill in winter.

But

Yeah.

even with those people who have them installed with confusion, I was literally just talking to somebody yesterday who was like, it's so cold. I have to turn off my heat pumps and fire up my boiler. And I'm like, Why are you doing that? You don't have to.

Hmm.

So there's still a fair bit of misunderstanding, but we're getting there. Yeah,

Yeah, I, it's interesting to me that, I mean, this falls in my mind in the sort of under the umbrella of passive house ish things and

resilience,

yeah,

cost savings. Yep.

And, and how much, how important it is ... 'cause you come across the sort of idea that passive host is elitist and like, oh yeah, if you could afford,

Well,

you know, multimillion dollar single family homes working with, with an architect.

But it, it, I, I think it's just such an interesting thing that it actually would be a much better choice for all program-based, a ffordable housing initiatives and

Yeah, especially the multifamily world. It's just a no brainer, you know, and I think that Maine has proven that, and many states in the US have, have embraced that reality. Like if you have a fairly simple shape, there's cost parity in developing to passive house standard, you know, once you get, economies of scale.

Maine has definitely embraced that. That's work that passivhausMaine did, advocacy work, which has been great. Single family home. I'm a big believer in the pretty, pretty good. Like we don't need to go to single family home passive house, although there's literally no harm if that, if you wanted to do that, that's awesome. It's a bit expensive, I'd say, and, and honestly, I do think it's a bit of a hole that passive house through no fault of their own. Honestly, if you're not gonna get support from leadership, then it is gonna be the individual homeowners who sort of pave the way, and those fancy houses, you know, built somebody's piece of paradise in their very expensive and beautiful home. Like it is passive house, but was that the expensive part of that house? You know...

yeah. Yeah, that's a good point.

yeah. So that I, you know, that's been our reputation and an image of passive house that we've really had to push back against. And it became very clear in my, in my work early days, that the new construction and code but actually it's quite important because I do feel like at a certain point, like there was all this talk about new construction and right after the Great Recession, people were striving to build new, very cheap. Like, Chris Corson at EcoCor. I don't know if you've ever met or talked with him.

He's one of the early guys. And he was like, yeah, I could bill for $135 a square foot or whatever. Like, that was a long time ago. in our construction costs timeline. But that was sort of the, we were striving for that. And you know, after the COVID, you know, all, you know, hopes put on low cost construction of any type. You know, were drained away, but became really clear to me that new construction is a challenge and something to pay attention to. And I do sit on the the building code boards and always um, encouraging highest standards for new construction. But that retrofits are the biggest challenge and we just have so many buildings that need attention so that the people who live in them have healthy interiors, have safety and security in extreme weather. And and Maine's building stock like New Brunswick's is just this underbuilt wood that, you know, we grew up with a discomfort being, literally something to brag about, right?

Like, When did you turn on your heater? Like we're going to Thanksgiving this year. You know, it's like this badge of honor to be as frugal as possible, which I respect actually a hundred percent. But there's a whole level of stress there that is eliminated if you can switch your heat system and just add a little bit of in insulation and people who are well resourced can kind of figure that out a lot. And people who are not well resourced, it's a challenge. So, my work really turned to that sort of equity, uh, piece. You know, the low-income multifamilies being a highly you know, high performance buildings was one thing. And now working on the single family home rural state across New England,

you know, and Maritimes or Canada's. Yeah, it's just a big challenge everywhere. In Northern Hemisphere and Southern, but northern Hemisphere anyway, with the cold and extreme weather. Yeah,

Wow. So a lot of advocacy work then goes into a.

yeah, exactly. And partnering with other organizations that are already in that field helps public health organizations, other housing groups, indoor air quality groups. Yeah. There's a, a bunch who are, who are doing that and that, the retrofit's a bit of a, you know, it solves a lot of problems at, at once.

Right, right.

And, and in this area, I'm not so hung up on passive house retrofit. That's like,

Hmm.

it's a, that's the unicorn that you know

Yep,

is possible. A hundred percent. But for. A rural New Englander is not really in the realm of possibility. Yeah,

like point pointing in the direction of like

And for

the principles, the same principles. Yeah.

for all the same reasons: that carbon reduction, cost reduction, resilience.

Conscious of our time, I, I did wanna just ask about have you noticed a change since you started the organization to now? Have you noticed a

A hundred percent, of course. That that was the olden days, right? So that was 2009. I went to the first, my first international passivhaus conference it was like nobody knew anything in the State, in Maine. Like there was this little cluster of builders and designers who were interested in high performance and and I knew those guys, but we were really starting at the beginning. Now to be able to be in a physical space and meet random people and they're like, Passsive House, you know what that is. And it's just, just extraordinary actually to me when I meet someone who I don't know personally, or who isn't a friend of a friend who's heard of passive house and, and or heard of building science and are just more engaged in the, know, what, what can we do for in our house or, yeah, it's, they're, I would almost say everybody's heard of it and taken some sort of position. Either it's too much and can't be bothered or it's awesome and aim in that direction, or it's been initiated as building code and it must be done. It's just part of the conversation generally.,

That's great.

Which is extraordinary.

Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, that widened aperture, right? Like it's there, there's more, yeah. A wider view for all. Well this has been great. Before we go, where can people find out more about you and connect with you online?

Yep. passivhausMaine.org. P-A-S-S-I-V-H-A-U-S. Maine, M-A-I-N-E dot org and yeah, or you can come by downtown Freeport or right between Gap and American Eagle,

literally, in the commercial stretch.

Excellent. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.

You're very, very welcome. Good luck and it's been great to speak.

Same. You've been listening to Marketing Passivhaus. I'm James Turner and I hope you'll join me again next time.

​