Ernie Mahaffey, board member of Preservation Partners of the Fox Valley, and his wife Sheila Penrose, bought this 1929 Tudor Revival home in August 2009 to rescue it from demolition. The home needed extensive rehabilitation but they knew this was a much greener option than placing the debris from demolition into a landfill. They decided to explore if they could increase the home's sustainability further after learning about "One Watt" home design.
Marko Spiegel of La Fox, an engineer building homes in the U.S., was designing One Watt Homes using "Passivhaus," a sustainability practice used in Germany and Austria that reduced a home's carbon footprint to nearly zero. "Passivhaus" was used on new construction and had yet to be used on home rehabilitation. Mahaffey and Penrose hired Spiegel to see if it could be done.
We were invited to use their project as a case study on energy efficiency for historic homes in early 2010. We hosted several educational sessions for the public about the project as we assisted with the historic preservation standards portion.
In February of 2011, an open house was held to showcase the nearly completed project. A reporter from the Old House Journal was there and published a feature article on the project later that year (pictured).
The ultimate goal of a One Watt Home was not achieved because maintaining some of the key architectural elements conflicted with the high sustainability target. Nevertheless, Tony Botkin of Intelligent Energy Solutions estimated that the home's energy use dropped by 70% compared to its pre-renovation levels. Notably, this increased energy efficiency did not take into account how much energy was saved by avoiding demolition.
SOURCES: Frank Elder, "Geneva Breaks Convention," Old House Journal 39, no. 4 (September 2011): 28-33, USModernist Archives, https://usmodernist.org/OHJ/OHJ-2011-09.pdf; "Extreme Makover 2010" Advocate (Spring 2011): 1-3; Jean Murphy, "Study in Modern History," Daily Herald, March 14, 2010; Frank Vaisvilas, "Historic Preservation, Green Tech Collide," The Republican, February 18, 2010.