Passive House Comes to Central Ohio

What Is Passive House?

Passive House is a building performance standard — not a style, not a trend, but a measurable approach to how a home uses energy, manages airflow, and maintains comfort. Buildings designed and certified to the Passive House standard use dramatically less energy than conventional construction while delivering better air quality, greater durability, and resilience during power outages.

The standard is still rare in Ohio, but it is growing. After spending a decade in the automotive industry, Steven Rhodes shifted his energy to the built environment. Equal parts thinker and doer, he designed and personally built the first certified single-family Passive House in Central Ohio in 2024. As an engineer and Phius Certified Consultant (CPHC), he provides design services focused on high-performance building science. Working at the intersection of quality, sustainability, and affordability, he is on a mission to make our buildings better for everyone.

On this episode of the Arcfluence podcast, we sat down with Rhodes to talk about what Passive House actually means in Central Ohio, how it performs in practice, and where the state’s residential building standards are headed.

Beyond Energy Efficiency: Resilience, Comfort, and Health

Certification is run by Phius, the Passive House Institute US. The strategies it certifies against are concrete: a tighter envelope, fresh-air ventilation, smaller and more efficient mechanical systems, and a path toward net-zero-ready performance from the outset. But what Rhodes emphasizes is that the certification is about more than energy savings — it is about durability, resilience during outages, and occupant health.

On the thermal side, the argument is concrete:

“It’s not just energy efficiency — it’s durability and resilience. The ability for habitable conditions to be maintained even in a power outage. If your home is conditioned to 70 degrees, it’s going to stay a lot closer to that. Other buildings, within a day, are in the upper 80s.”

Nick offered an analogy that stuck: think of your refrigerator when the power goes out. You tell your kids to keep the doors closed, and things stay cold for a surprisingly long time. A Passive House works the same way. The insulation and air sealing retain interior conditions while conventional buildings crash toward outdoor temperatures within a day.

There is also a direct health benefit. Steven pointed to air quality and filtration as an underappreciated advantage:

“Say you’re deathly allergic to tree pollen during the spring. Having that control and filtering within your house — you’re going to be much more comfortable than in an older house that’s drafty and leaky.”

Steven credits a college textbook with sparking his interest: Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air by David JC MacKay. “I highly recommend that one. It really helped inspire me and help me to start thinking about things in a way that I found really helpful.” A chapter on housing introduced Passive House principles he would spend the next decade pursuing.

From Automotive Engineering to a Solo Build

Steven spent a decade in the automotive industry before making the switch. The pivot came down to impact:

“In the automotive industry, you’re talking about huge global companies making millions of copies of the same thing. Every person’s contribution is tiny — worldwide, but tiny. In building, one person can have a significant impact on a more local scale.”

He got his Phius CPHC certification, found a lot in Clintonville — which he described as affordable, eclectic, and full of character — and spent a year developing construction drawings while still working full time. When the permits came through, he gave notice and dove in.

The build took two years. He framed it, insulated it, tiled it, and painted it mostly alone. The biggest lesson: the value of a team. “Ironically, I learned the value of a team through trying to solo build my house.” It is a point that resonated with the hosts — a recurring theme on this podcast through conversations with everyone from real estate investors to commercial developers.

How the House Actually Performs

Rhodes says his 1,800-square-foot all-electric home averages about $41 per month in electricity — half of which is just the customer charge for being connected to the grid. He estimates a comparable code-built home would cost materially more to operate.

“You can’t just look at initial cost. What’s the total cost? Because you’re going to start paying those utility bills. And if you live in Columbus, your bills are going up with all these data centers.”

The house runs on 18 south-facing solar panels, grid-tied with net metering. He overproduces in summer, buys a small amount in winter, and nets out close to zero annually. The all-electric HVAC system is a single unit that lives entirely inside the house — no exterior condenser, no refrigerant lines penetrating the envelope. It heats, cools, dehumidifies, and provides fresh air exchange.

Rhodes says that on a sunny day when it is 20 degrees outside, the house requires no supplemental heating. Solar gain through properly oriented windows, combined with the thermal performance of the envelope, keeps the interior comfortable. Roof overhangs shade the windows from direct summer sun while allowing winter light in. The HVAC unit, as Steven describes it, “just chugs away at low power, happily doing a little bit of cooling” when needed.

During the March 13, 2026 windstorm that caused widespread AEP Ohio outages, Rhodes said his home experienced only brief flickers. When the conversation turned to resilience, Rhodes lit up about two-way EV charging — the ability to tap into an electric vehicle’s battery to power a home. Rhodes estimates a single Tesla Model S battery could run his house for four days.

Ohio’s Code Baseline Is Rising

Ohio’s code baseline has already moved upward, and the state’s residential energy requirements now place more weight on airtightness, insulation detailing, and verified performance. That still falls well short of Passive House certification, but it moves conventional practice closer to the building-science principles Passive House has emphasized for years.

Rhodes sees this as both an opportunity and a challenge. Builders will need to learn new materials and processes. Inspectors will encounter unfamiliar systems. Rhodes’s construction consulting practice addresses exactly that transition:

“I work directly with builders and their subs to implement these details correctly. The knowledge gap is real — from contractors to subcontractors to the building department inspectors.”

The direction of travel is clear; the pace of adoption depends on builder capability, enforcement, financing, and owner demand. The cost of insulation and air sealing goes up front, but the monthly utility savings begin immediately — the same total-cost-of-ownership argument Rhodes makes for his own home.

The Arcfluence Phius Revive Project

Arcfluence is currently collaborating with Rhodes on a Phius Revive certification project. Phius REVIVE 2024 is an adaptive retrofit standard focused on resilience, fortification, and decarbonization — a path for existing homes with its own allowances and challenges. The project involves a major addition to an existing house, with a full MEP package, junction-by-junction detail drawings, and an energy model that accounts for every appliance.

The project exceeds code by a significant margin. A third-party Phius Rater will provide quality assurance during construction.

Nick noted the layers of accountability: a consultant (Steven), a third-party Phius Rater for quality assurance during construction, and the city’s own inspectors. Steven’s philosophy on why this level of pre-construction rigor matters:

“There are going to be enough problems to address once construction starts. We don’t need additional issues that we just put off figuring out.”

What This Means for Homeowners

Passive House is a performance standard centered on enclosure quality, airtightness, ventilation, and low energy demand. It produces measurable outcomes: lower energy bills from day one, better indoor air quality, greater building durability, and resilience during power outages.

Adoption is not automatic. The up-front cost premium is real, and so is the demand on builder skill, third-party quality assurance during construction, and the detailing rigor required to hit certification — friction that can slow uptake even when the long-term math favors the investment. With Ohio’s code baseline rising and energy costs climbing alongside data center demand, the direction of travel is clear. The pace depends on builder capability, enforcement, financing, and owner demand.

Find Steven Rhodes at clintonvillepassivehouse.com. For architecture and design services in Central Ohio, visit arcfluence.com.