We’ve been talking about passivhaus a little too many times in recent posts, and you’ve also probably been wondering about what’s so great about passivhaus. Depending on what kind of research you’ve been doing about building or remodeling you might have come across the term ‘Passive House’. Well, passivhaus is the German term for the same.

Passivhaus is a building technique, or rather a set of building principles which result in creating a house that is extremely efficiently heated and cooled without the need for any external cooling/heating system. To make things simpler – imagine your current expenditure on heating and cooling – in terms of the system/equipment, the energy usage and the maintenance. Now bring this expenditure to almost 10% of its cost – this is what the Passivhaus technique looks at achieving.

Passivhaus achieves such efficiency by the inherent design and plan of the building itself, ambient and incident sunlight and weather conditions like windiness, cloudiness and sunshine. The principles of passivhaus are rigorous and strict ensuring that the structure built is extremely air-tight, optimally utilizes ventilation, super-insulated, and can remain at constant temperatures regardless of outside weather. Most of all – passive houses are sustainable, minimizing usage of energy and creating extremely healthy indoor air quality. Any energy, is required is produced with the help of solar systems – further reducing the carbon footprint and cost.

And contrary to what you might think, passive houses are as normal looking as regular homes and also not as expensive to build as others.

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