The American Passive House Network would like to support and encourage designers to show and share their work with other designers. To build more Passive Houses, designers should have the best tools available and often those new tools are created in our own community.
How can we help potential clients choose to build Passive Houses? The success rate of building Passive House projects is largely based on the ability of the designer to convey the range of benefits to the owner. Making an effective cost argument is challenging, but remains a central point of the decision. A good dashboard can powerfully convey the benefits of Passive House while also making a successful cost argument. The result? More Passive Houses are built.
Show your dashboards: Are you one of the many talented practitioners among us who has created additional tools that work above, next to, or in conjunction with the PHPP to collect and graphically display key data on a single page? Enter the contest to win money, prizes, and serious bragging rights.
Be generous - give away your work: A high tide floats all boats. We encourage you to offer your creation to others in our community. The goal of the contest is to improve our national ability to perform quick comparison studies and to showcase the most effective methods to gather and present complex technical information to clients, who are often unfamiliar with the options and the long term impact of their choices. Alternatively, you could choose to offer your dashboard for a fee. Such a transaction would take place between the tool designer and buyer and would remain outside of the contest and APHN.
Help build the next version of the PHPP. This contest has the approval of the Passive House Institute (PHI) Darmstadt. The PHPP is not a static tool, and the PHI will review the innovations demonstrated in the entries. Your dashboard features could become standard in the next PHPP update!
Be respectful of the PHPP. Since the PHPP is the creation and property of the PHI, the question comes: "What is ok?" The answer is that innovation that does not change that PHPP's calculation is encouraged. In practical terms this means that it is not ok to change or modify cells or calculations within the PHPP. It is ok to build new files or sheets outside of the PHPP Calculator that may link back and harvest data without changing it. (Source: Albert Rooks, The Small Planet Workshop in conference with PHI)
Enter the contest: Here is the entry form. Please fill it out and email a JPEG or PDF of a screen shot of your dashboard that we can post as an image. Please give as much info as you can on the three key questions: What does it do? How does it work? How hard was it to make?
If you enter, know the rules: By submitting an entry, I am guaranteeing that the submission is my original work and that the entry is not in violation of any copyright, trademark, or other applicable law. I authorize APHN to publish my work on the APHN website. I am aware that others may see and copy my ideas, which is the goal of the contest. I am responsible for any dashboard files that I share. APHN is not responsible for maintenance or performance of any dashboard file, or damage to a user’s PHPP sustained by a shared dashboard.
