Tag: Ventilation

Posted on
by

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
Continue reading →

Posted on
by

Climate change is one of the biggest threats we face today, as I wrote in a previous blog about ‘Zero-Carbon Buildings’. Clearly we need to reduce CO2 emissions globally to zero, or to less than zero, to address climate change. We need to approach this in two ways: radical energy efficiency to reduce demand and de-carbonisation of energy generation, in other words, a massive scaling-up of renewable energy generation.*

In some situations these two approaches are going to manifest as ‘Zero-Carbon Buildings’ or ‘Net-Zero Energy Buildings’. Even though there are many reasons why this is the wrong target (and if you read the comments you’ll find there are more than just the 9 reasons I wrote about.)

What then, is the best approach to achieving these notional targets of ‘Zero-Carbon Buildings’ or ‘Net-Zero Energy Buildings’?

Passivhaus First is the best approach and I explore why in this blog.

014 Zero Carbon Buidings Passivhaus First
Continue reading →

Posted on
by

As the EU moves towards ‘Near Zero Energy Buildings‘ and the UK moves towards implementing this by requiring ‘Zero Carbon Buildings’, understanding the Passivhaus Standard as one reliable route towards delivering ‘Zero Carbon Buildings’ is vital.

Passivhaus is known as the world’s leading building energy efficiency standard. It is also a comfort standard with stringent indoor thermal comfort and ventilation requirements. The majority of industry discussion around passivhaus focuses on the technical details and energy benchmarks required to meet the standard. While this is understandable as we come to grips with the challenges of delivering buildings to such a high standard, there is less attention paid to the benefits delivered by the standard and wider aspects of the passivhaus design process.

11 Passivhaus Pointers
Continue reading →

Posted on
by

I was first introduced to Passivhaus several year back when we decided to pursue it in the architect’s practice where I work. It seemed like the right step forward in so many ways. However, learning about the Passivhaus Standard and everything that is required for certification, presented many challenges. There were some technical challenges, but probably the biggest challenges were to the received wisdom that I held firmly onto at the time.

This somewhat tongue-in-cheek post explores some of those mindset challenges with the benefit of hindsight. It also explores some other mindset challenges that arise from delivering passivhaus architecture.

010 10 Things I hate About Passivhaus

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 →