Tag: fabric first

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The first thing you read about Passivhaus is often the set of technical requirements and performance metrics. It’s got to be airtight. No thermal bridges are allowed. 15kWh/m2.a, 10W/m2, 120kWh/m2.a, 0.6 ach. . . But these figures don’t help you understand how to design a Passivhaus building. These figures don’t tell you what is different about designing a Passivhaus building to designing any other building.

Passivhaus might be the world’s most stringent and fastest growing building energy efficiency standard, but does it work in urban locations? Must a Passivhaus building strictly face south?

This post is a simple and brief introduction to 5 things to know about Passivhaus before you get into the technical requirements:

  1. Integrated Design
  2. Location
  3. Orientation
  4. Form
  5. Construction System

Once you have a grasp of these 5 things, then you’ll be in a good place to start digging deeper into what is required for Passivhaus.
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This is a Passivhaus Basics blog post that gives an overview of a specific aspect of the Passivhaus Standard.

In passivhaus design and construction, there are frequent references to the “building envelope” and the “thermal envelope.” Neither are exclusive to the Passivhaus Standard, but both are important aspects of the standard.

A building envelope is the physical separators between the conditioned and unconditioned environment of a building including the resistance to air, water, heat, light, and noise transfer. The three basic elements of a building envelope area weather barrier, air barrier, and thermal barrier. [Wikipedia]

In simple terms, this means that the building envelope is made up of the walls, floors, roofs (or ceilings), windows and doors that separate the inside from the outside. The passivhaus building envelope is also made up of these elements, but there are some key aspects that make the passivhaus building envelope distinct.

The passivhaus building envelope requires a high-performance thermal envelope, it must be continuous and it is key to the fabric first approach.

028 What is the Passivhaus Building Envelope
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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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