Zack Semke - Passive House Accelerator
03 - Zack Semke - Passive House Accelerator
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[00:00:00]
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 Zack Semke, director at the Passive House Accelerator and host of the Reimagine Buildings Collective. Zack, welcome to the show.
Zack: Thanks so much, James. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
James: My pleasure. And 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?
Zack: Absolutely. So my main role, I guess I have two main roles. Uh, director of passive house accelerator, and host of the Reimagine Buildings collective. The passive house accelerator has been around since 2019 and we are a kind of combination of. A big community [00:01:00] and a media company dedicated to building decarbonization and, and with passive house at the center of that effort.
Zack: But understanding that passive house is one piece of building decarbonization. So that, which includes as well using low and embodied carbon or even carbon sequestering materials electrifying everything in our buildings and getting that electricity from clean energy. And so that effort at the accelerator includes weekly Zoom meetings called Passive House Accelerator Live, where we have 150 people come together and have an expert or practitioner, share a project example or a construction problem that they're, they're, they're overcoming and how they're overcoming that. Basically diving into practice and, and sharing lessons learned and pitfalls to avoid. We also have a pa, a passive house podcast
James: Yep.
Zack: been around, um, for a few years and, and was the, the brainchild of [00:02:00] the co-host Matthew Cutler Welsh, based in New Zealand which has been a really fun project.
Zack: And we have a couple of YouTube channels. Including, so one is a, essentially a library of all of our talks that have happened on passive house accelerator Live. The other is more features, more sort of short documentary style videos about, about projects. And we have a new article written on the Passive House Accelerator website every, every week. so, uh, we've got a great team of, of several folks who are kinda spread out, I mean as far as New Zealand, mo, most of us in nor or in North America.
James: Right.
Zack: and, uh, the Accelerator was founded by Michael Ingui, who is a accomplished architect based in New York and has done tons and tons of passive house retrofits of Brooklyn brownstones.
Zack: Brownstones in Manhattan other projects. And then the Reimagine Buildings Collective is our community, [00:03:00] uh, a membership community where we bring together building professionals who are stepping up to tackle climate change so that we can share knowledge with one another help each other level up our skills and build the relationships we need to, to do this work, uh, to create healthy, sustainable buildings and thrive while doing it.
James: And I will say that they are great. And as a member of the Reimagine Buildings collective, it is a wonderful place to be.
Zack: Is so great to have you there, James. Yeah, it's, yeah. Thank you.
James: Well, and I, and this kind of leads perfectly into the next. Thing, which is the main thing is that I've been sort of on the edges of the passive house world as a, not someone who builds or designs or architects or anything like that, but I've just been fascinated with it for over a decade.
James: And it was exactly the passive house. A podcast, I think probably. I knew about the accelerator, but the podcast was what really got me into the zone and then put me into the [00:04:00] Reimagine buildings space and finding that there is space for people in the industry who aren't in the construction industry per se has been really nice because I think that that's, I mean, it feels like versus 10 years ago, that that's where the kind of passive house world is today.
James: I dunno, would you agree?
Zack: Yeah, well, definitely there's space for, for, for, uh, non practitioners. I'm, I'm one of those.
James: Yes.
Zack: I mean, my background is, uh, very varied. I, uh, worked in policy advocacy around regional planning in Portland, Oregon. So
James: Cool.
Zack: re regional planning, uh, in the, in the nineties, not in the eighties. I was still in school in the eighties.
Zack: I'm not quite that old. and, then ran a nonprofit arts group called Portland Taiko the Japanese drumming group, which we've talked about
James: Very cool. Yep.
Zack: of connection. And then, then studied landscape design. And in the middle of the great recession, that's when I was starting my [00:05:00] career as my very short career a landscape designer, working at a landscape architecture firm.
Zack: And I sort of you know, we had no more work. And so I, I was like, okay, what do I do now? there was a company in Portland, called Hammer in hand, which is a construction company that's still, still quite active.
James: Right.
Zack: that was just starting to build the very first passive house buildings in the Pacific Northwest among the first to, to do
James: Amazing.
Zack: And so I got to start writing about that at, for, for Hammer in hand and building up the website. And, and, and that. It was the early days of the SEO stuff and so it didn't
James: Right.
Zack: a lot for us to, for hammer in hand to really rise to the top of all the searches for, for remodels and kitchen remodels and bathroom remodels and passive house as well.
Zack: Um, and home performance was a big deal then. So, so yeah. I think there's a, there's a, [00:06:00] I think, really important space for people to help Passive house and communicate it with it. We've been saddled with a really stupid, I'm sorry name, so we need to overcome work to overcome that and, and explain to people what, what it's all about.
James: Nice. Yeah. One of the, one of the, the name things that really got me, I think it was a Lloyd Alter article talking about passive house as opposed to passivhaus.
Zack: yes.
James: was, that was what convinced me to use the German spelling for the podcast.
Zack: Yeah.
James: that it is, it, it takes it a little bit further away from sounding like something that it's not in a way, like it's, it's not just for houses and it's not passive
Zack: yeah, definitely. Definitely. And I, I have, I have, uh, I have shared that journey as well. The, the, there's a I. It's complicated because there's also the whole, there's the whole PHIUS and PHI,
James: Mm-hmm.
Zack: [00:07:00] Bifurcation split,
James: Yep.
Zack: occurred. And so the, the, the term passivhaus and the German spelling also connotes like.
James: Ah,
Zack: with one o over the other.
James: right.
Zack: is fine. I mean, definitely def you know, but my journey has been one toward a place of, Hey, these are both awesome. the, I mean, I think the innovations and changes that are happening on the PHIUS side are, are important and exciting. And, and PHI has also has also been innovating and, and making. Some adjustments and, and things to, you know, with like the, the PER incorporating an understanding of, of the clean energy transition into its targets. but I think we're at a place where we need to focus on, know, cohesion and that practitioners are like, there's, I think these two institutions that are kind of, [00:08:00] jockeying for position and, and, and market share and kind of philosophy around it. But when it comes to practitioners, at least in the, in the US. of the practitioners I know are, will, are happy to practice in, in either like, to,
James: Right.
Zack: either certification kind of whatever works makes most sense for the project or for the, for the incentive dollars that are available or for the project teams and that kind of thing. So navigating that is not easy. And, and then,
James: Right?
Zack: the, the, the label unfortunately gets caught up into that a little bit. I.
James: Mm-hmm.
Zack: Yeah.
James: Yeah, it's kind of, maybe that's what made it so interesting. This kind of thing gets. Touched on in, in the passive house podcast, usually in like a, you know, a, a fragment or like a micro section of a conversation, which is usually, usually talking about something, a project specific or whatever. But I think it's very interesting.
James: It's, it's like a sort of marketing, [00:09:00] um, Sudoku or something. I dunno.
Zack: Yeah, exactly. It totally, totally is.
James: Yeah.
Zack: I mean, PHIUS's approach has been to call it passive building more and more, and to brand also just to decide to try to brand things with the, with the word PHIUS. So PHIUS used to be
James: Right,
Zack: letters for passive house institute US, but they, you know, they split from passive house institute in, in Germany. And so it doesn't really, that doesn't really make sense. And so they've changed it so that it's capital P and then lowercase HIUS, and it's meant to be, it's just meant to be a brand.
James: own thing. Yeah.
Zack: yeah. And which I, you know, I think makes, makes sense. You know, I think that that's a, that this seems like a, a, a smart. Direction to take. Given, given that change and the, the fact that they're not affiliated with PAs House Institute, but also given this, the weakness of the term passive house, which confuses [00:10:00] people like it just, everybody thinks it's only houses. It's, yeah. It's, it's not actually totally passive, passive, passive is, uh, you know, has a negative con connotation, unfortunately.
Zack: And yeah. So.
James: Yeah. Well, and I think that's something that I've remarked to you before is that it does feel very much like everyone inside the industry is pulling in the same direction. And so like everyone has the same goals.
Zack: Yes.
James: Like everyone wants the same ultimate outcome, which is why I, I will say like, it's May as we're recording this, and I think right now you're in the passive house accelerator.
James: You're, you're discussing other certifications
Zack: Hmm.
James: or, uh, like, which I think
Zack: right.
James: it's nice to, to not be so dogmatic because like LEED for example, like everyone's kind of wants the same ultimate outcome, which is better, healthier houses that last for a longer and. Make people more comfortable and
Zack: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and, and passive house can be [00:11:00] complimentary to lead. I often feel like it brings, like you have a kind of a breadth and a depth. So Lead
James: mm.
Zack: this breadth of a bunch of points about all sorts of stuff ranging from, some energy, uh, efficiency stuff, but also native plants and bike racks and walk score and you know, the kind of the context within which the building is being built. Um, so there's the breadth and then passive house brings the depth to energy performance to actually like predictable outcomes, uh, around energy. Or at least. Significantly more predictable than, than with, um, the, the old school green certifications,
James: Right.
Zack: well, as well as, um, some you know, kind of knowable health outcomes as well.
Zack: And so that, that breadth and depth is a totally great way to go.
James: Yeah. Now, have you ever heard of instances where they're marketed together like a co.
Zack: [00:12:00] Yes, I, I, I think that there, it is fairly uncommon. One of the first projects actually that Hammer and hand worked on wa was a, an example of one that had a whole bunch of different certifications and it was built for. who, who had the funds to,
James: Right.
Zack: experiment essentially and kind of like do, do a little bit of a case study.
Zack: And so I, that one was passive house and lead and I think there might've been another one, but also a one called Minnery P, which is a Swiss certification, um, that. Has to do with reducing energy. And the p, you know, it's passive, so it's very aligned with passive house, but it also has, it has kind of lead like, health like toxicity, considerations as well.
Zack: So it was a whole
James: Right.
Zack: of, of, of, of them. There are examples of [00:13:00] say the Winthrop Tower, which is a high rise in Boston. You know, I think. Nearly $2 billion project. It's this massive, massive, you know, it's a big building in, in banking district of, of Bo downtown Boston. That one is half lead gold and half passive house.
Zack: So they, they chose, they
James: interesting.
Zack: passive house for the, like the office, all the, the first half of the building, all the offices. And then that felt like enough to chew off, to bite off and chew for kind of really cutting edge innovation. 'cause there aren't a lot of high rise passive houses. And so, you know, there's
James: Right,
Zack: there was all sorts of back and forth with, with passive house institute to figure out how to, how to deal with different cases in the building. You know, like it's, it's not a, it's not as straightforward as doing a house or a, or an apartment building. So it was
James: right.
Zack: half commercial and then the other half was lead gold. And I think that maybe at that time that was partly because, um, I. [00:14:00] because, passive house wasn't as well known as, as
James: Right.
Zack: there was a sense that lead. But I do think that that is changing in certain markets and certainly in Massachusetts. I mean, passive house is, is of the policies there around the opt-in. Stretch code that cities can choose to require a passive house. It's, it's becoming the, the kind of touchstone for sustainable construction. So there aren't a ton. I, I, I think there aren't a ton I think is interesting.
James: Yeah, I mean, it feels like
Zack: think it's like if you're paying for one as a project, as an owner or a project team, if you're paying for one, maybe that's,
James: that's enough.
Zack: you
James: Yeah. Well I think of in terms of like at the grocery store, you see like a fair trade and organic and non GMO and like there's all these different certificate and you know, people like those little badges at a consumer products level. Obviously this is a much bigger thing, but I, I just kind of, I wonder if there's space in that sense of, [00:15:00] in people's minds for.
James: A number of lo like energy star, which like the logos that, that sort of denote something to people. 'cause that's part of it too. I mean, we're talking about these big projects, but really the, the general public, I don't know where they're at with passive house, but it's probably not on many people's radar.
James: I personally, when I talk to people, always have to explain what I mean from scratch. Now I'm not trying to sell it. Because I'm not in the industry. But
Zack: Yeah.
James: yeah, it makes sense when once explained, but it doesn't spark anything in the average person, I think.
Zack: Mm-hmm.
James: So yeah, I.
Zack: I feel like for the general public, often what will happen if, when you say, oh, well passive house is, you know, this approach to making buildings healthier and more comfortable and quieter and full of filtered fresh air. Uh, and they use a lot of less energy, and so it's like, it's, it's also a climate solution.
Zack: [00:16:00] They're like, oh, is that kind of like lead? yeah, it's like,
James: Hmm.
Zack: kind of like lead
James: Got it. So there is some recognition.
Zack: I think it's better.
James: Hmm. Yeah, that was, that was, that was something I was gonna ask if, now I'm not trying to get you to do the purpose of this podcast for me but you've spoken to lots of, of people. Is there kind of like a thing that bubbles to the top as the best sort of benefit selling point or like the, the thing that triggers the aha moment?
James: That's kind of what I'm very curious about.
Zack: Well, I feel, I mean, I feel a little bit insulated from, from this because really the people I talk to are practitioners all the time. You
James: They're post. Aha.
Zack: yeah. Right, right. Or, or it's just, I think that the, the talking points for, for people that we're reaching are d are different. So I think, I mean, GUI is a. gifted communicator about passive house, [00:17:00] and
James: Mm-hmm.
Zack: really emphasizes the importance of leading with the amenities. There's this, there
James: There is a
Zack: so the
James: benefit.
Zack: house, so
James: Yes.
Zack: no bugs and dust is one of, is one of ones of
James: Mm.
Zack: working in, in New York with these old brownstones that, that
James: Right?
Zack: out pretty darn gross.
James: Yep. Yep.
Zack: have a ton of potential and with clients who have the resources to, you know, create these amazing. Um, and they don't necessarily come to it with, oh, I wanna do a passive house. They just, they just know that they wanna live in Brooklyn and they have the, the resources to transform this old building.
Zack: This with that is, you know, gorgeous historic building, but. apart and maybe rat infested into, into a place that they will love to live. And so things like oh, well, did you know that we can make this, this, this house free of bugs and dust? And did you know that I. I mean, if you wanna have fresh [00:18:00] air and know, you know, know that you're getting filtered clean air, we can do a ventilation system, kind of like a passive house.
Zack: Or if you wanna be, you know, comfortable and have. Have more space free of, free of radiators and, and be able to like, you know, read a book at the window. We can do you know, create a better, better walls and, and windows kinda like a passive house. And so like that's his,
James: Yeah.
Zack: going through the different amenities. And. Sparking curiosity with this kind of dropping of like, you know, kind of like a passive house. And because it, by the end of that conversation they, the, his clients want all these things. And if that means they want a passive house, great. You know, like, it, it, it is not, it, it, so, but it wasn't I think the danger for, for us in this. Community because passive house attracts people, nerdy people like me and other, you know, is that you can, focus on, oh, [00:19:00] well, it's about the, we make it airtight and it has which means 0.6 air changes per hour under 50 pascals of pressure. And then we make sure that we are doing a high growth thermal analysis.
Zack: No, it's not hydrothermal, it's hygrothermal analysis because that's heat and moisture. And, and we use a wooy thing and we'd do this and like get into, get into all the like. Fun technical stuff that's, that underpins what we're doing is just like, that's just a complete non-starter.
James: Yeah. Yeah.
Zack: being, I think, I think being with amenities, but I think that also really important to, to understand who you're talking to.
Zack: 'cause, 'cause the,
James: Yep.
Zack: you know, if you're talking to a a, you know, somewhat wealthy homeowner in Brooklyn. That's a different conversation than developer of affordable housing. And the,
James: Mm.
Zack: you're gonna be talking about are really, really different.
James: Right.
Zack: and for the developer of [00:20:00] affordable housing, obviously they, they're concerned about the health, um, and comfort.
Zack: Other occupants. Absolutely. That's their mission driven. They, they wanna
James: Yeah.
Zack: spaces and they're also gonna want to know about. Economic benefits over the long term because they're holding, they're gonna hold onto the building. And
James: Right.
Zack: things like payback period and, and return on investment in, in terms of the savings on energy actually are part of that conversation.
Zack: With, with, with that, that, to kind of target audience.
James: Right. They're evaluating those options.
Zack: Yeah,
James: Yeah. Yeah.
Zack: it's important that's like really important to them to figure
James: Yeah.
Zack: how is this gonna, how is this gonna be a sustainable building for, in terms of financially sustainable building for us to hold onto.
Zack: And, and I think that there's, I mean, it's a super compelling case for a passive housing, multifamily, affordable housing
James: Mm, mm-hmm.
Zack: but the conversation, the, the marketing conversation has to be really different.
James: Yeah. Yeah. I, it, it struck [00:21:00] me. I, one, one day I wrote, I tried, I wrote a list of all the different angles I could think of, and it's just, there's many you know, marketing from. To the government too, like the lobbying is, is a form of marketing and like getting the codes changed. That's one branch and the, the different set of variables to talk to those people about why it's a good idea.
James: And then like, marketing to the, I I always think of like this one spouse like that, that, like not marketing, marketing where you're, where you've thought this is a good idea and now you have to try to get the person who's gonna make the decision with you on board.
Zack: Yeah.
James: Right. Like that's like,
Zack: often thought about that one.
James: like a sort of a handout, A PDF, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, my wife has, has followed me on this journey, but I definitely get tongue tied when I'm trying to talk about it
Zack: Yeah.
James: because I default to some of the facts that I know that are just mean nothing. They just mean nothing at all. You know, airtight sounds bad in some [00:22:00] ways.
Zack: right.
James: I gonna die?
Zack: Totally. No, I think that's the first, the first, the reaction to air tightness is, no, I don't want airtight. That sounds horrible.
James: Yeah. Yeah. And Al also, I, I mean, I think it's interesting the component manufacturers like convincing people to make compliant products if they haven't, or, you know, certified products if they haven't. Also how those people then sell their. Products to theoretically non-passive house people, just on the grounds that they're just really good, like triple glaze windows type of thing.
Zack: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Bronwyn Barry the, the, she's was, uh, the president of the passive house network then, then called the North American Passive House Network for many years, and now is on the board, but doing and doing a lot of policy advocacy in California. Got her start with passive house because she was selling triple pane windows and she realized that in order to sell triple pane windows, she had to sell the [00:23:00] concept of high performance building. And so it, it kind of, again, touches on a little bit there, like the proponent manufacturers who are doing these, these great components need some way to talk about how that component is you know, benefits the system as a whole and, and, and how, and
James: Yeah.
Zack: very quickly gets beyond the, the, the boundary condition of that component.
James: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, because it just doesn't work if you put it in a wall that's not up to snuff or whatever. Yeah. So we're getting, I'm conscious of the time, but I, I'm, I'm really curious to know if, now there's this kind of like magic wand question that works a lot if you're asking someone about a drastic change, but, but if you had a magic wand.
Zack: I.
James: you could wave that would somehow like move the passive house movement forward. What, what do you think would be like, what, what's needed? What's, what's the next [00:24:00] thing or what, what's something that's missing? So, so.
Zack: Yeah, there are a lot of, so many things and, and I mean a ton of, a ton of opportunity and, and some really encouraging transformations like, like I alluded to in Massachusetts. I think. That the magic wand would be to instill an awareness in all people of how fundamentally important buildings are to our wellbeing. And when. To make to, and I think if people had that kind of awareness that when they saw things like the wildfire smoke crises that we, that so many of us have experienced over the last several years, that they would be able to make a direct con correlation between that and their own building therefore. they wanna change that building. And and so [00:25:00] that's, and I think that that's, I guess pointing to maybe the growing importance over time of resilience as a, a theme that we need to in our marketing. Perhaps, and this, that's just, that's me. That's almost more of a, an open question than a forceful,
James: Yeah.
Zack: proclamation. And because I think it gets back to like, do people get it? Do people get that, that it our building? And sort like you, you can, I don't think pe and this also actually goes back to Michael, saying that people, when he has these conversations with folks in Brooklyn, you know,
James: Right.
Zack: with, with their, you know, draft this amazing building that needs a tremendous amount of help. His clients don't understand what's possible. They don't understand that it's possible to have fil
James: Right.
Zack: fresh air all the time. They don't understand that they can be comfortable without, you know, throughout the house without burning a, you know, without having [00:26:00] the heat blasting. They don't understand that it can be quiet even on a busy street, like all of these things.
Zack: There's just an, there's a lack of awareness of the possibility of
James: Hmm.
Zack: can be And I think that that somehow, if we could wave the magic wand and, and instill an awareness about that, you know, one of, one of the things that, this came home to me the first time. the first time I was in a passive house was in that Karuna house.
Zack: And I, and it was, I mean, just a beautiful house designed by Holt architecture in, in Portland, and and full of like natural, like wood and in, you know, in the middle of a field, in, in you know, rural Oregon. It's just, you know,
James: Beautiful.
Zack: crazy gorgeous spot. And I was really struck by. Just like the air just was so fresh and so clean inside. It wasn't something that I had been aware of before that so many times when I'm inside I can, [00:27:00] like, we're, we're in it's conditions where there's, you know, where there's a lot of CO2 or there's a lot of contaminants in the air. We just don't understand it. And, the, the, the car vent was actually the thing that, that, that was the, like the little kind of experiential thing that kind of, that then I'd be just kind of discovered for the first time.
Zack: When you do fresh air or recer there, you can feel the oxygen when you do fresh air. You know, if you don't
James: Yes.
Zack: truck in front of you, like the change between, oh gosh, I've had it on research for the last half hour, and you turn it on to fresh air, you just like. It just feels so good to get all that oxygen in your body, and it's just not something that we're aware.
Zack: That kind of stuff we're not aware of. Like we are
James: Right,
Zack: the quality of the kitchen countertops,
James: right, right. Oh, that's really good. I've never heard that before. And it's so obvious is, as you say it, and it's, it's exactly perfect. Like. Yes. Huh?
Zack: it's like, oh, the oxygen,[00:28:00]
James: The air.
Zack: That feels really
James: Yeah. Yeah. Right. And like, that's the, it's the, like you said, the awareness, like we just take for granted, especially if you've come up through renting too.
James: Like you, you kind of just, you're not in control of the building and you just take what's, what's given and you, if there's a complaint, you call the landlord and make it go away or whatever. You're not, I, I could see how that then, yeah. I dunno. I remember when my wife and I bought our house, that first realization that, well, first of all we were the ones who had to fix everything.
James: But then also that everything was kind of like up to us now and we could
Zack: Right,
James: it. I think, I think there's like a, a sort of disempowerment maybe mentality around buildings. So,
Zack: Yeah.
James: which aligns perfectly with the concept of re-imagining buildings. I, I. I had to, I have to tie that. Yeah. Yeah.
Zack: That's what we're doing in the Reimagine Buildings Collective — Come join us!
James: Yep. That is [00:29:00] the magic wand outcome.
James: Awesome. Well, this has been great and
Zack: Yeah,
James: talked about it a lot, but where, just to, to end it off, where, where's the best place for people to find you online?
Zack: Yeah, well, um, you can find me on LinkedIn, of course, uh, Zachary Semke. You feel free to, to ping me at Zack, ZACK. at Passive house accelerator dot com if you have any questions.
James: Nice.
Zack: our website is passive house accelerator dot com, and the Reimagine Buildings Collective can be found at reimagine buildings dot com. We're, we also link to it from the accelerator. But yeah, I encourage folks to check us out and, and, uh, join the mailing list if you haven't already, for the passive house accelerator so that you can get information about the latest podcast episodes that we've. Published and the upcoming event, free events and, and, and also opportunities in the collective.
James: Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks for, for joining me today.
Zack: Yeah. Thanks James. Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
James: [00:30:00] Thanks. You've been listening to Marketing Passive House. I'm James Turner and I hope you'll join me again next time.