Colorado has a new statewide model energy code — the Model Low Energy and Carbon Code, or MLECC. It became the state minimum on July 1, 2026, and it applies to a given project once that project's jurisdiction adopts it.

Two "official" load numbers for the same building, 1.80x apart.

That's what our Manual J/S/D and PHPP models came back with on a Longmont, Colorado duplex: Manual J at 30,384 Btu/h building-wide, PHPP at 16,920 Btu/h.

Passive House isn't won at the blower door. It's won three months earlier, on the day someone decides which layer is the air barrier — and whether the whole crew knows it.

Last week we sat down for our Q3 planning meeting at Point 6. A full day away from projects — no site visits, no PHPP models open — just the business itself on the table.

Some folks in our industry would call that a lost day. We call it what we call a blower-door test: non-negotiable.

That's not a habit we drifted into. It's the premise we started Point 6 on: a building can't be more disciplined than the business that delivers it.

A Passive House detail is only as good as the crew that builds it — and a crew is only as good as the detail it's handed. The airtightness number doesn't come from the design or from the field. It comes from the two staying connected.

For a Passive House — a building that uses a fraction of the energy of a conventional one — the right tool for heating and cooling load is PHPP. It models the real building: tested airtightness, actual window performance, orientation, the whole enclosure working as one system. It produces a whole-house heating and cooling load you can trust.