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Typical Passive House Characteristics: 1) Virtually thermal bridge free construction.

Great care is given to the detailing of the building envelope to ensure that the insulation layer is continuous. Particular scrutiny is given to the intersections of floor and wall and roof, and where windows and doors are installed. Where thermal bridges cannot be eliminated, they are calculated in the PHPP. (A thermal bridge is a material or assembly of poor insulating value that allows heat to easily escape through the building envelope. 2) Superinsulation. Invariably, in optimizing the elements, slab, wall and roof insulation become much thicker than in typical construction they become superinsulated. A slab value of R20, walls with R40 and roofs of R60 or greater are not uncommon in Passive House construction. 3) Triple-pane windows. Windows often have a U value < .2, with insulated frames and multiple seals. The windows are often casement or fixed, as double-hung windows cannot provide the air-tightness required. In heating climates, windows will also have a relatively high solar transmission ratio, becoming a major component of the passive heating calculation in the PHPP. 4) Air-Tightness. Air-tightness testing occurs during construction or renovation. Air-tightness is verified with blower-door tests. Like the insulation, the air-tight layer must be continuous. This air-tight layer must be accessible at the time of the first blower-door test, because the house is likely to fail the first time. (Note that you can open the windows in an air-tight Passive House. Common sense says just dont open them when you have the air-conditioning or heating on). 5) High efficiency heat recovery ventilation. A Passive House has continuous ventilation with heat recovery efficiency greater than 75% in an air-tight house. A heat recovery ventilator has a heat exchange core through which the continuous exhaust air passes, transferring the interior heat to the continuous incoming fresh air without intermingling the air-streams. If the heat recovery ventilator is not of adequate efficiency it will undermine all the advatages of the Passive House thermal envelope. This low volume ventilation is constant and provides 100% filtered fresh air to the house providing superior indoor air quality. Air is supplied to bedrooms and living rooms and continuously exhausted from bathroom and kitchens, in a mechanically balanced air-flow. 6) Thermal Comfort. The combination of air-tightness, superinsulation and high performance windows eliminates typical air temperature stratification so that the temperature at the floor is the same as that at the ceiling, and is virtually the same at the exterior wall as it is at the interior wall. Because the fresh filtered airflow is constant in all occupied rooms, there is much less dust in the space. All these improvements not only lead to greater occupant comfort and health, but occupant comfort at higher temperatures in the summer and lower temperatures in the winter than would be typical. Finally, a word about PHPP. Fundamental to understanding the Passive House methodology is the role of the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP). The PHPP is the most sophisticated static energy model in use today. It is continually being refined and updated from field measurements and dynamic modeling study. With the PHPP, one enters a straight-forward yet exhaustive array of information from basics of climate and treatable floor area to shading elements, window frame profiles, wall assemblies, and the motor efficiency of the ventilation systems, to name just a few. The resulting verification sheet clearly and precisely predicts the energy usage of the proposed building indicating whether or not the building will meet Passive House standards. Occupant load is one of the PHPP inputs for both energy gains and loads and ventilation requirements. For typical usages, the PH approach of constant fresh air provides exceptionally good air-quality. The ventilation systems typically have very simple controls where one can put on a high fan speed if there is a party and greater

air-changes are needed. For special gathering spaces, one might have a dedicated ventilation system, and in such cases it's really a mechanical engineering issue how to meet the precise requirements of that space. One can then manipulate all the element inputs based on cost effectiveness, construct ability, design priorities, etc and arrive at the appropriate combination of elements to meet the standards - providing a truly integrated design.

What makes it passive?


The word "passive" turns up a lot in green building, and it can refer to several different things. When I say we're building an almost passive house, I'm referring to the Passivhaus building approach that was standardized in Europe and inspired by energy-efficient building methods pioneered in North America. The Passive House Institute US site summarizes: A "passive" house achieves overall energy savings of 60-70% and 90% of space heating without applying expensive "active" technologies like photovoltaics or solar thermal hot water systems. Energy losses are minimized, and gains are maximized. Superinsulation and air-tight construction minimize losses. Passivhaus certification is somewhat easier to attain in Europe than in North America, mostly because of their relatively moderate climate, but also because you can buy much more appropriate building products over there (post on European windows). Avoid thermal bridges, sealing the house extremely tightly, using mechanical fresh-air systems, etc. The term "passive house" is easily confused with another green-building term: passive solar. According to the the most recent editor of the Wikipedia article on passive solar building design, In passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy in the form of heat in the winter (Passive Solar Heating) and reject solar heat in the summer (Passive Solar Cooling). This is called "passive" solar design (or climatic design) because, unlike "active" ( solar heating, photovoltaic, etc.) solar systems, passive solar systems do not involve the use of mechanical or electrical devices, fans, pumps, etc.

Passive solar home design was undoubtedly discovered by cave dwellers who noticed that south-facing caves were more comfortable year-round than caves facing other directions (cave dwellers in the southern hemisphere would have chosen north-facing caves). This is because the sun is angled low in winter and high in summer, meaning that winter light and heat will penetrate deeply into a south-facing cave, and summer sunlight will be

blocked by the cave overhang. Furthermore, a cave with a solid earth floor retains winter heat gains even after sunset, because earth floors have a high thermal mass which absorbs heat during the day and then slowly releases it at night. The cliff-dwellings at Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado are the textbook example of passive solar building. The dwellings face south and are protected from the hot summer sun by a gigantic overhang, but during the winter they are bathed in light. The advent of mechanical heating and cooling systems made it easier for builders to ignore passive solar techniques. The problem got worse when people started building houses with ginormous windows, often facing a nice view in a direction other than south. Ted's parents' house has a great room with floor-to-ceiling windows facing a lovely view toward the west. Every afternoon the room is flooded with light, which brings welcome solar gains in winter (they can turn off their heater for much of the day) but way too much heat during the summer. It is much easier to achieve Passivhaus certification if you maximize solar gains with clever window placement, thereby reducing the need for mechanical heating. Our building site isn't perfect for passive solar since we have quite a few trees blocking the sun toward the south, but it's not too bad, particularly since most of those trees will lose their leaves every autumn. Be careful to order windows with a high solar heat gain coefficient (SHCG), which means that the glass won't filter out too much of the warm sunlight. Again, refer to my future post on windows for more about SHGC. [ For more information on Passive Houses, see What is a Passive House? ]

What is a thermal bridge?


The goal of a good house is structural soundness, but be VERY aware of avoiding Thermal Bridges. This is one of the central tenets of Passivhaus construction To paraphrase Homes for a Changing Climate, thermal bridges are the path of least resistance for heat to flow out from a house. They occur when an element in the house has higher heat conductivity than the surrounding materials. For example, a balcony slab that isn't thermally isolated from an interior concrete floor can suck the heat right out of the house.

The most common thermal bridge in a wood-frame house might be the wall studs themselves. In a 2x6 wall, studs extend through the thickness of the wall. The inside of a stud wall is normally covered by drywall sheets on the inside of the house and cladding outside the house. In the diagram at the right, you can see that the wall is full of fiberglass insulation, except for where the studs are. So the insulated parts of the wall will have an Rvalue of, say, R-19, but the studs themselves are only about R-6, meaning that much more heat will escape through the studs than through the insulation batts.

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