PASSIVE HOUSE DESIGN
'Passiv design’ is design that works with the local climate to maintain a comfortable temperature in the home, 365 days a year.
'Passiv design’ is design that works with the local climate to maintain a comfortable temperature in the home, 365 days a year.
Better energy efficiency and performance means lower utility and maintenance costs. Since 1992, ENERGY STAR® and its partners helped American families and businesses save more than 4 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity and achieve over 3.5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas reductions, equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 750 million cars. Homes earning the ENERGY STAR® label use 15-30 percent less energy than typical new homes, and even more when compared to most resale homes on the market today.
ENERGY STAR® 's goal is to help consumers, businesses, and industry save money and protect the environment through the adoption of energy-efficient products and practices.
You’ll see, feel, and hear the difference of a heating and cooling system that has been engineered and installed to efficiently deliver comfort. Enjoy consistent temperatures across every room and a constant supply of fresh, filtered air reducing indoor pollutants, dust, pollen, and other allergens.
Passiv house buildings provide a comfortable indoor climate, without the need for a conventional heating or cooling system - they do not require conventional furnaces or air conditioners. This makes us able to build Passive Houses for little or no additional cost compared to ordinary buildings.
Being up to 90% more efficient than typical construction, they require less maintenance, and are more comfortable, healthy, and environmentally responsible.
The construction industry is slowly realizing the benefits of Passive Housing design, which can bring breakthroughs in affordable housing.
Developed in Germany in the late 1980s, a 'Passiv' house is a rigorous, voluntary standard for building energy efficient buildings. Passive building principles can be applied to all building typologies -from single-family homes to apartment buildings to offices and skyscrapers. Passiv House Design is growing in popularity and is changing the way we design and build homes.
A continuous layer of insulation wraps Passive House buildings, keeping them warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
A continuous layer of insulation wraps Passive House buildings, keeping them warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
We design building assemblies so that their vapor profiles are appropriate for the climate, their drying potential is maximized, and they are protected from any moisture buildup.
Because the insulation layer is continuous, it is free of weak spots that allow thermal transfer across the building envelope. Heat stays in during the winter and cool stays in during the summer.
The delivery of filtered fresh air with heat recovery helps make Passive House buildings havens of clean air and energy efficiency. HRVs (heat recovery ventilators) and ERVs (energy recovery ventilators) are “balanced ventilation” components that supply a continuous stream of fresh air to living spaces while simultaneously extracting stale air, odors, and indoor pollutants from kitchens and bathrooms. Inside these devices, a heat exchanger—a honeycomb of straws that creates a very large surface area between air streams—allows heat energy in the outgoing air to passively transfer to and warm the incoming air without the two airstreams ever mixing. (In the summertime, the opposite happens, with cool outgoing air cooling the incoming air.) Filters in the unit remove pollen and pollutants, with pre-filters available to protect indoor air from intense outdoor pollution events.
While the “free” heat from solar gain may be a hot commodity in Passive House design, it must be managed with good shading to avoid too much heat gain during warm seasons. Deciduous trees are great for this, with their bare branches in winter and shade-providing leaves in summer. Architectural elements like overhangs can also play a role. So too, can window shades and screens, especially ones located at the exterior of the building.
Building orientation and form are fundamental design decisions that set the stage for how easy or difficult it will be for a building to achieve Passive House performance.When the site allows, we design the main axis and orientation of the building to optimize solar gains in a way that is appropriate for the climate and building typology of the project. The key is to orient the building in a way that will maximize that particular building's energy performance.
Natural daylighting and passive solar heat gain can provide energy “freebies” to Passive House buildings. For many buildings, solar heat gain—the heat energy captured in a building when sunlight shines through windows—can be an invaluable “free” resource in Passive House design. For other buildings, particularly ones that already have significant internal heat gains, big solar heat gains can be a liability. Passive House design allows us to optimize this based on climate and building typology through building orientation, shading, high performance window selection, and layout.
A thermal bridge is any building element that allows heat or cool to bypass a building’s thermal barrier. It’s like a hidden thief of thermal energy, undermining performance and durability.
For example: a concrete floor that continues from inside to outside; a poor window frame; or a steel beam that penetrates an exterior wall. We eliminate thermal bridges by introducing thermal breaks into those assemblies—gaps or insulative elements that stop the flow of thermal energy through an assembly. Read More
A Passive House building’s airtight layer is like a windbreaker, stopping air from penetrating to the inside. Establishing this unbroken air barrier is central to Passive House performance and durability. In design, we do the “red pencil test” to check that an air barrier line can be drawn around each cross-section of the building without the pencil ever leaving the paper.
In the field, this air barrier is built through a combination of sheet membranes, fluid-applied membranes, tapes, and sealants that transition without interruption between components of the building envelope. Airtightness is verified with a blower door test, a key measure of performance and construction quality.
With each window and door opening we make in a Passive House building, we are essentially punching a hole through an advanced wall assembly and its airtight, weather-resistant, and insulative layers. So, the performance of the windows and doors that go into those holes, and how well we tie them into the surrounding wall assembly, is mission-critical to maintaining the integrity of the Passive House building envelope.
