Year: 2014

Posted on
by

Integrated design is a key element of successful passivhaus design, as I wrote about in a previous post. Certified passivhaus designers and consultants are often architects, building services engineers or sustainability specialists. So how important to the integrated design process is the structural engineer? The answer is: vitally important!

There are significant benefits in having a structural engineer who is also a certified passivhaus designer on the team as this post explores. Where this isn’t possible, at the very least the structural engineer needs a good understanding of passivhaus and the importance of their role in the design process.

Structural engineering has a significant impact on design simplicity, thermal continuity, airtightness and more.

007 Passivhaus-Structural-Engineering

Continue reading →

Posted on
by

Is passivhaus a niche pursuit for ‘energy geeks’ and ‘treehuggers’? It may have started that way but it is rapidly gaining momentum in the UK and becoming highly relevant to the mainstream construction industry.

My friend Darren Lester, the founder of SpecifiedBy, invited me to write a guest blog for his site. (If you haven’t discovered it yet, SpecifiedBy is an incredibly useful resource, the online Building Regulations section have been a life saver for me!) The readers of his blog are from a broad spectrum of the UK construction industry, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to discuss three reasons why passivhaus is highly relevant to the mainstream UK construction industry.

The reasons I discuss are:

  • Climate Change
  • EU legislation
  • Making a difference

Please visit the SpecifiedBy.com blog and have a read.

And please share the blog with friends, colleagues and acquaintances in the UK construction industry so they can learn why passivhaus is relevant to them.

Thank you!

SpecifiedBy passivhaus-geeks

Posted on
by

Passivhaus buildings are sometimes criticised by environmentally minded designers as being “hermetically sealed” boxes that can’t “breathe”. These designers have the best intentions of creating healthy and energy efficient buildings where people have direct control over their indoor environment and a close relationship with the outdoor environment. And they fear the passivhaus standard won’t allow a building to provide this. Luckily, their fear is unfounded. Let’s take a closer look at the two aspects of this criticism:

What does it mean for a building to be “hermetically sealed” and does the Passivhaus Standard require this?

What does it mean for a building to “breath” and does the Passivhaus Standard allow this?

006 Passivhaus Hermetically Sealed Continue reading →

Posted on
by

It is often assumed that the Passivhaus Standard only applies to individual houses, or perhaps semi-detached or terraced houses. It is true that the Passivhaus Standard was originally developed for houses. And the translation of the German word “Passivhaus” into English as “Passive House” reinforces this assumption. However, once established, the Passivhaus Standard rapidly expanded to include many other building types as people realised the benefits it consistently delivers. And as other types of buildings have been delivered to the Passivhaus Standard, the Passive House Planning Package used in the design and certification process has evolved and developed also. Now it is possible for almost any type of building to achieve certification to the Passivhaus Standard.

Quality assured design and construction, reliable indoor comfort and radical reductions in energy consumption – who wouldn’t want these outcomes for any kind of building?

005 Passivhaus-NotJustHouses Continue reading →

Posted on
by

False.
I often read and hear people, including passivhaus experts, state that once a building is airtight it requires mechanical ventilation. This is not strictly true. And there are many examples of passivhaus buildings that operate using ‘natural ventilation’ during the summer months. An airtight building significantly reduces air movement through the building fabric: walls, floor, roof, window frames and junctions etc.. And we should never rely on this kind of air movement to provide the air that we breath inside a building, for ventilation, that is. (Fancy drinking the water that seeps through a leaking roof? It’s kind of similar.) A ventilation strategy and system that genuinely does work, and is used properly all year round, is needed in any building, airtight or not. Once you add comfort and energy efficiency into the equation, this almost always means mechanical ventilation with heat recovery will be required for some of the year. The comfort and energy efficiency benchmarks of the Passivhaus Standard certainly mean this is the case.

And this is where airtightness and mechanical ventilation converge – both are needed for comfort and energy efficiency.

004 Airtight-Passivhaus-MVHR Continue reading →