Posts Tagged ‘Passive House’

In order to be called as a ‘passive house’ a house must be built with certain standards in mind. These standards were created in Europe and hence apply to homes built in the European countries, but are used more or less in the same manner throughout the world:

1. The house should not consume more than 15kWh/m2 in a year for heating and cooling requirements.
2. Its total energy consumption in a year must not be more than 42kWh/m2

In the US, these standards change a little in the following manner:

A house to be called a passive house must be designed in such a way that it consumes 1 btu per square foot per heating degree day for space heating purposes, compared to traditional homes which use anywhere between 5 to 15 btu. Your contractor should be able to explain better what standards he expects to achieve.

Along with these there are also standards for insulation and air-tightness. The structure should not leak air any more than 0.6 times the volume of the house.

Standards of this type make most people think that achieving them will be rather expensive. However, in the long run, the energy consumption of a passive house is less than 25% than that of a normal house. Plus, the overall cost of building, installing and operating a regular house and a passive house are almost the same.

Passivhaus – The Origin

It might surprise you to know that Passivhaus is not a latest trend in green building. IT’s been around for quite some time, since 1988, to be precise. However, green building, sustainability and the environmental awareness is a relatively new concept, which is why many are hearing about Passive Houses only lately.

The technique and principles actually emerged in Sweden in 1988 and the first ‘passive house’ was built in Germany 2 years later and 6 years after that, the Passivahus-Institut was founded in Germany. After that, over 15,000 houses have been built, largely in Europe and particularly in Scandinavia using the passivhaus technique. Closer home, the first passive house was constructed in Illinois in 2003. In the US, passivhaus is looked at as a relatively new concept, but one that architects and builders will be quick to embrace, given its potential and possibilities.

The first principles of passivhaus required homes to have a space heating requirement which was 90% less than other houses. To this, other engineers, builders, and architects added their own innovations which made achieving this standard easier and economical. Eventually, building products like construction materials, window and door frames, glass came to be designed specifically for passive houses. Of special mention is a software program called the Passivhaus Planning Package developed and sold by the Passivhaus-Institut that helps architects design and create passive houses. The European Union in 2008 called for a binding requirement that from 2011, all houses built requiring heating and cooling should be built by the passivhaus standard.

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.