passive design | good design

Brach Design is proud to be Utah's first Certified Passive House Consultant and the architect of the first Certified Passive House in the western United States.

What is a Certified PH

The Passive House Institute U.S. is an independent, not for profit third party organization that oversees a rigorous certificaiton process.  Gone are the days of ignoring regional climate and relying on expensive, complicated and energy-guzzling mechanical equipment to provide a comfortable interior environment for the occupants. Instead, we use smart design to create buildings that capture and store energy in the winter, and block out heat energy in the summer.

We accomplish this by employing passive design strategies to the greatest extent possible. These solutions utilize very low-tech building elements to keep the inside of a building comfortable—warm in winter and cool in summer. This allows us to help clients drastically reduce the energy demand to a point where a relatively small renewable energy system (solar electric and solar hot water panels) can be added to bring annual energy consumption effectively to zero.

We believe that we have a responsibility to provide our clients with the very highest level of aesthetic and technical design. We don't design a building and then see how much it costs to heat and cool; we ask the client how much energy they want to consume and then develop designs that meet their goal.