We’re Diane and Kristof Irwin, both owners and principals of a niche residential MEP engineering and building science consulting company called Positive Energy in Austin, TX. Prior to starting our innovative little firm, we both had careers in policy and research engineering, respectively, only later finding ourselves with a thirst for doing something meaningful with our own two hands. That’s when we decided to start building houses in Austin, TX and we started a company called Blue Heron Builders.

As many do, we cut our teeth learning on the job, but time and time again we found ourselves asking in moments of frustration “why do people build houses so badly?” That’s when our education in building science began. Not only did we build houses, we dived straight into the weird world of diagnostic performance testing and offered forensic building science consulting to architects and builders all over central Texas.

This was the foundation that Positive Energy was born from. We moved in the direction of MEP engineering because we realized we’d spent a lot of time chasing problems instead of preventing them to begin with. It became so clear that better designs and better project team collaborations lead to better outcomes.

And now that Positive Energy has become a nationally recognized firm doing some of the most progressive and interesting projects in North America, it’s time for our family to get back to building, only this time it’s a house for us to live in and enjoy.

The concept of Spring Street Passive House is centered on and designed around ideals that we’ve made central to our work at Positive Energy: healthy indoor spaces, a durable/efficient building envelope, low energy use, and immaculate thermal comfort designed for the way our bodies experience thermal environments. We are so excited to share this journey with you and deeply appreciate you following along.