Interview with Passive House Consultant

Interview with Lois Arena, Passive House Consultant
at Steven Winter Associates

I recently had the pleasure to sit down with Lois Arena, the Senior Mechanical Engineer for Steven Winter Associates. She is one of the leading Passive House consultants in the country. Lois is the Passive House consultant on the world’s tallest and largest Passive House for Cornell’s new technical campus on Roosevelt Island.

This 26-Story High-Rise Will Be The Biggest Passive Building In The World

NG: How did you get involved in this exciting new field of Passive House?
LA: My undergraduate degree was from the University of Connecticut in Resource Management. I received my masters in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Colorado with a focus on energy use in buildings. My first job was with the state energy office for 6 years, and then I got my General Contractor’s license and did some remodeling jobs on spec for about 8-9 years. Then I contacted Steven Winter right after the market crash and that’s when I started working here. My engineering background was perfect.

My work here evolved from research to Passive House consulting. It started about 5 years when we received some inquiries from clients about Passive House. This motivated me to get certified and as soon as I did, we received a request to consult on a Passive House project in Ithaca, New York. It was for 7 homes and was a great learning experience for us. It snowballed from there, with us getting the Cornell project, which will be the tallest and largest Passive House in the world.

NG: Where do you see the fastest growth in Passive House?
LA: The exposure from Cornell has given us great exposure. But the biggest area of growth has been in the Affordable Housing Market. I have to give credit to Tim McDonald from Pennsylvania. He is with a major university in the state and he has been working with the Pennsylvania Housing Authority to get Passive House as a tax credit option on the project team’s application. This has spurred a lot of work for us all throughout the state. Eight of the thirty-two affordable homes that were approved will be Passive House. Tim has been reaching out to surrounding states to get the neile type of Passive House tax credit options.

NG: What are your thoughts about the New York City Mayor’s plan “One City: Built to Last”?
LA: New York City has established very aggressive carbon goals. In order to meet these goals, there will need to be very extreme actions and this will take time. This past April we went to Brussels to see how they are achieving similar carbon goals. Brussels has adopted Passive House as their building code. They started this process 10 years ago and today all new construction in Brussels must be Passive House. So for New York City to be successful, many things need to be in place and to understand that such lofty goals take time.

NG: How important are Exterior Shading Solutions for the Passive House?
LA: When we were in Brussels, the exterior shades were everywhere, basically a building standard. For the Passive House in general, exterior shades help balance out the solar heat gain conditions from winter to summer. We want the solar heat in the wintertime. In fact the windows for Passive House are designed to allow the solar heat gain to enter through the glass during the winter. Obviously that needs to be controlled in the summer months and exterior shades work best for those conditions.