Tag: Energy Efficiency

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The Passivhaus Standard delivers radically energy efficient buildings with excellent occupant comfort. I have written about the comfort aspects of passivhaus before in the Gary Vaynerchuk inspired post and in one of the LovePH series.

Heating is a key element of occupant comfort. So why does the Passivhaus Standard have a limiting benchmark for heating energy of 15kWh/m2 per annum? Isn’t this contradictory?

While this may seem contradictory, there are good reasons for it. Firstly, heating makes up a significant proportion of energy consumption in buildings, so it needs to be addressed to improve energy efficiency and reduce climate change impact. Secondly, setting a very low heating energy benchmark drives a fabric first approach, which has several benefits, comfort being a key one. And thirdly, having a heating energy benchmark singled out from primary energy means it can’t be achieved by offsetting with renewables or any other energy accounting cheats.

15kWh/m2 for comfort – delivered with radical energy efficiency, fabric first design and no cheating!

022 Passivhaus Less Heating More Comfort
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What is the fundamental purpose of a building?

Buildings serve several needs of society – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the human habitat (a place of comfort and safety) and the outside (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful).
– Wikipedia

As you can see, comfort is fundamental to the purpose of a building. So why do we find it so hard to ensure our buildings are actually comfortable? Why does our ‘world-class’ architecture still fail to provide comfortable buildings to live, work, learn and play in? (Besides using far too much energy and emitting far too much CO2!)

The Passivhaus Standard is known as the world’s foremost building energy efficiency standard. And it is that, but it is also a comfort standard. After all, what is the point of a building being energy efficient (or low carbon for that matter) if it compromises the functionality and comfort of the people who use the building? Passivhaus buildings provide exemplary comfort for the occupants by maintaining a healthy comfortable temperature, by being quiet, by having fresh air and by being draught-free.

Comfort is a reason to Love Passivhaus!

019 Love Passivhaus Comfort
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integrity
/ɪnˈtɛɡrɪti/
noun
1. the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.
2.the state of being whole and undivided.

Breaking promises damages your integrity. Do you make promises about the performance of buildings you design or construct? And do your buildings keep those promises?

Let me share a short story with you.

On a commission where I was the project architect, we reassured our clients that their new building would be super energy efficient, among other things. And yet, once the building had been handed over, I found myself in an embarrassing situation.

In a meeting with the clients, they put me on the spot and asked me why the energy bills were so high. No matter how many times I explained that the new building was much larger than their old building and had a lot more energy consuming equipment in it, there was no way out: in the clients’ mind we had not delivered on the promise of a super energy efficient building.

In fact, the new building was very energy efficient. However, we had never quantified what we meant by a “super energy efficient” new building. Therefore, the clients’ interpretation of this was lower energy bills and all they had to compare were the energy bills from their old building.

Needless to say, this project wasn’t a certified passivhaus building. Had it been, we could have given the clients an accurate prediction of what the (radically low) energy consumption would be. They would have had a good estimate of the expected energy bills. And the building would have performed as predicted. Our promise would have been kept.

Integrity is a reason to Love Passivhaus!

018 Love Passivhaus Integrity
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Architectural design is typically carried out with little or no environmental consideration integral to the process. Once the design has reached a certain stage environmental considerations – whether material toxicity, water conservation, carbon emissions or energy conservation or something else – are then assessed. At this point decisions are made to revise and iterate the design for better environmental outcomes or to add ‘environmental features’. We know the results of this disjointed design process and we know this has to change if buildings are going to be better for people and the planet!

Unfortunately many environmental standards reinforce this process in two ways. Firstly by being separate from the design process, often as an assessment procedure. Secondly by requiring ‘environmental features’ be added in order to score points or increase the rating of the design.

The Passivhaus Standard is different. Unlike most environmental standards for architecture, design is central to the Passivhaus Standard. And the Passivhaus Standard is central to the design process.

Design is a reason to Love Passivhaus!

017 Love Passivhaus Design
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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
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