Tag: Passivhaus

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The Passivhaus Standard sometimes gets confused with a passive solar design approach, particularly when it comes to solar orientation. This often means people assume that solar orientation is critical for passivhaus, like it is for passive solar design.

On the other hand, sometimes those who particularly favour a passive solar approach assume that the opposite is true. That solar orientation doesn’t matter at all for passivhaus. And if you pick up a book on passivhaus, such as the one I reviewed last week, solar orientation doesn’t feature in the list of key methods or principles.

So which is it?

The key to passivhaus is an integrated approach to design. Solar orientation does matter for passivhaus. However, it doesn’t need to be the driving factor.

Solar orientation impacts on solar gain. The importance of solar gain depends on the type of building. (Passivhaus isn’t just for houses, remember?) And windows have other purposes besides heating!

009 Passivhaus Solar Orientation

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This blog post is a review of An Introduction to Passive House by Justin Bere published in December 2013. Justin Bere, a pioneering passivhaus architect in the UK, wrote and compiled this slim and beautifully presented volume.

This is first and foremost a book addressed to the architectural industry, as Dr. Wolfgang Feist writes in the foreword:

Justin Bere uses the language of an architect … and shows how Passive House opens up new possibilities for creative design.

The two key themes for the book are set in the Preface:

  • Integrated Design for the 21st century, that is to say, for the anthropocene, and
  • Building Physics – using the right tools & process to eliminate guesswork

The following sections of the book pack in a wealth of interesting and useful context, history, introductory technical guidance and wide-ranging inspirational case studies.

Throughout the book there are reminders, directly and indirectly, that architecture must also be beautiful to be successful.

008 Passivhaus-Architects-Intro-JBere

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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

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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 →

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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 →