Passive house
[19] The term passive can be partly attributed to William Shurcliff, an American physicist who contributed to the WWII Manhattan Project, and in the 1970s became an advocate for energy-efficient home design: What name should be given to this new system?
In 1996, after the concept had been validated at the Institute in Darmstadt, with space heating at 90% less than that required for a standard new building at the time, the economical passive houses working group was created.
This group developed the planning package and initiated the production of the innovative components that had been used, notably the windows and the high-efficiency ventilation systems.
The first certified house was built in 2006 near Bemidji, Minnesota, in Camp Waldsee of the German Concordia Language Villages.
[24] The first US passive retrofit project, the remodeled craftsman O'Neill house in Sonoma, California,[25] was certified in July 2010.
[26] Later, she and builder Mike Kernagis co-founded the Ecological Construction Laboratory in 2004 to further explore the feasibility of the affordable passive design.
[35] In 2011, Heidelberg, Germany, initiated the Bahnstadt project, which was seen as the world's largest passive house building area.
National partners within the 'consortium for the Promotion of European Passive Houses' are thought to have some flexibility to adapt these limits locally.
[45] PHIUS disputed the claims by PHI and continued working to launch an independent building performance program.
Such information is determined using metrics that represent a space where significant carbon and energy reduction overlap with cost-effectiveness.
[48] The two standards (passive house and PHIUS+) are distinct and target different performance metrics and use different energy modeling software and protocols.
[49] On average, passive houses are reported to be more expensive upfront than conventional buildings: 5% to 8% in Germany,[50][51] 8% to 10% in UK[52] and 5% to 10% in USA.
[53][54][55][56] Evaluations have indicated that while it is technically possible, the costs of meeting the passive house standard increase significantly when building in Northern Europe above 60° latitude.
Achieving the major decrease in heating energy consumption required by the standard involves a shift in approach to building design and construction.
In climates and regions needing to reduce excessive summer passive solar heat gain, whether from direct or reflected sources, brise soleil, trees, attached pergolas with vines, vertical gardens, green roofs, and other techniques are implemented.
Exterior wall color, when the surface allows a choice for reflection or absorption insolation qualities, depends on the predominant year-round ambient outdoor temperature.
The windows normally combine triple or quadruple-pane insulated glazing (with an appropriate solar heat-gain coefficient,[2][60] low-emissivity coatings, sealed argon or krypton gas filled inter-pane voids, and 'warm edge' insulating glass spacers) with air-seals and specially developed thermal break window frames.
Building envelopes under the passive house standard are required to be extremely airtight compared to conventional construction.
In order to achieve these metrics, best practice is to test the building air barrier enclosure with a blower door at mid-construction if possible.
[2] Another reason is the passive house standard makes extensive use of insulation which usually requires a careful management of moisture and dew points.
They are buried in the soil to act as earth-to-air heat exchangers and pre-heat (or pre-cool) the intake air for the ventilation system.
This is due to the fact that people, on average, emit heat equivalent to 100 watts each of radiated thermal energy.
Together with the comprehensive energy conservation measures taken, this means that a conventional central heating system is not necessary, although they are sometimes installed due to client's skepticism.
[64] Instead, passive houses sometimes have a dual purpose 800 to 1,500 watt heating and/or cooling element integrated with the supply air duct of the ventilation system, for use during the coldest days.
In addition, the total energy to be used in the building operations including heating, cooling, lighting, equipment, hot water, plug loads, etc.
