Month: December 2014

Posted on
by

The Passivhaus Standard is the world’s foremost standard for energy efficient and comfortable buildings. Buildings certified to the Passivhaus Standard are often more energy efficient than conventional buildings by a factor of 10. In the face of climate change, architecture in the anthropocene must change. Buildings need to consume radically less energy to emit radically less CO2.

Buildings certified to the Passivhaus Standard are also incredibly successful at meeting design predictions. The performance gap is eliminated. And passivhaus buildings maintain their performance over time. The rigorous integrated design and quality assurance requirements of certification process for the Passivhaus Standard ensure this.

And yet there are many misunderstandings about what the Passivhaus Standard is. In some cases it gets confused with other aspirations. In other cases the standard gets accused of not being one thing or another, regardless of what it actually is! There is even a sense of the ‘tall poppy syndrome’ at play within the sustainable / green building community sometimes.

This blog will help clear up some of the common misconceptions around the Passivhaus Standard.

016 What the Passivhaus Standard is Not
Continue reading →

Posted on
by

This blog post is a review of “PHPP Illustrated: A Designer’s Companion to the Passive House Planning Package” published in October 2014. Sarah Lewis, architect and Certified European Passivhaus Designer wrote this delightful and chunky volume.

The Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) can seem like a monster spreadsheet at 30+ worksheets (tabs). And the last thing most architects would consider a ‘design tool’. However, once architects understand passivhaus and start to design passivhaus buildings, they quickly realise that the passivhaus spreadsheet PHPP is an essential element of the design process. For without the PHPP there would be no passivhaus buildings as Dr Wolfgang Feist writes in the foreword:

Behind the success of the [Passivhaus] Standard lies the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), the Passive House energy balance and design tool. A tool of proven accuracy and demonstrated reliability in predicting building energy consumption…

The next step up is to gain enough understanding and fluency with the PHPP to fully integrate it as a passivhaus design tool. And that is where the strength of this book lies for passivhaus architects.

Sarah guides the reader towards fluency with the passivhaus spreadsheet PHPP using three key tools throughout the book:

  • Common mistakes
  • Drawings and annotated screenshots
  • “The Flow Chart” (as seen on the cover)

Camden Passivhaus, the first certified passivhaus building in London UK, is used throughout the book to give real-world context each step of the way. It is also a seminal bere:architects passivhaus project and one that Sarah worked on previously while as a Director of the practice.

An unfamiliar tool can appear as an obstacle to design. Once understood and put into practice it can powerfully inform and support design decision making.

015 Passivhaus Spreadsheet PHPP Design Tool
Continue reading →