What is Passive House (PassivHaus)?
For those of you who don't know Adam, let me sketch a personality for you. He's either fully-in or fully-out. Some may call in an addictive personality, something he would strongly disagree with. He is someone who will follow his interest down the blackhole of the internet until he has fully explored that particular concept; watching videos, reading articles, books, white papers until he knows everything about it. I'm constantly suffering from whiplash after being dragged from one interest to another. After a while you can imagine that when he throws out terms like "14 Patterns of Biophilic Design", "Permaculture", "Cryptocurrency", "Day Trading" that I just nod and smile and hope that it doesn't involve some large piece of equipment. One phrase that kept popping up was "PassivHaus".
Passive House (PassiveHaus) is a German standard for building houses. It is regarded as the strictest building standard in the world when it comes to heating and cooling efficiency. Passive House, put simply, is designing and building a house in such a way that it uses minimal energy for heating and cooling. It does this through window placement, blinds, insulation, and being completely airtight. Being airtight stops the house from losing hot or cool air through air exchange from the outside. In order to maintain the inside room temperature and still have fresh circulating air you install something called a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV), which allows filtered fresh air supply from outside but doesn't allow temperature exchange. All pretty straight forward, however, as you go onto design a house things like doggy doors, fireplaces, range hoods and gas stoves all become tricky because they effect how airtight you can make your house. You can find the requirements to become "Passive house certified" here: https://passiv.de/en/02_
It's a concept that is relativity normal in European houses but fairly novel in Australia. Somehow Adam managed to track down a guy from an article he read in his research and called him because he sounded like a DIY friendly guy (Harley Truong, Logikhaus in Canberra) purely to have a chat about Passive House design. Then of course he got put onto a Passive house designer (Luc Plowman) in Beechworth, Victoria who would be able to incorporate Passive House into our current designs and get us certified.
This is the point that I knew it was serious. After many previous times that Adam has gone ahead with a costly venture without consulting me he came good on his promise to involve me when it was time to make a decision (what a stereotypical male you might think, but believe me, if I was involved in every little project and hobby that Adam had simmering in his head I would go crazy).
My main concern was that I didn't want to be cold. And if I was to be cold, I didn't want to have to wait 10 years before the house warmed up. Also, I like my fresh air, and I want to be able to open windows and doors in order to get fresh air. This is where Adam got into his sales pitch.
"Josie, being in a Passive House is like sitting outside on a perfect day, every day!" At which point I had to laugh because our ideas of what a "perfect day" is are very different.
He managed to convince me without too much of a fight. We both knew it would be more costly than a standard build but hope to save in the long run on heating and cooling bills. Due to Adam working heavily with the architect on what he believed was a compliant Passive House design (his research), our Passive House consultant didn't have to change much. He was able to suggest some minor changes to the current design of the house, but overall was pleasantly surprised that with it's solar orientation, layout and size, how well it performed. Wall design, windows, blinds, insulation and a Heat Recovery Ventilator were the major items. When it turned out we would have a basement underneath (you can read about that here) that only added to the Passive House design. Traditional houses lose most of their heat through the slab and by lifting the house off the ground, we've decoupled the house from the ground.
Currently the windows are being shipped over from Poland (they are triple glazed) and orders take six months to get here, and the doggy door is coming from America. We can only hope and pray that all measurements are correct!
Passive House (PassiveHaus) is a German standard for building houses. It is regarded as the strictest building standard in the world when it comes to heating and cooling efficiency. Passive House, put simply, is designing and building a house in such a way that it uses minimal energy for heating and cooling. It does this through window placement, blinds, insulation, and being completely airtight. Being airtight stops the house from losing hot or cool air through air exchange from the outside. In order to maintain the inside room temperature and still have fresh circulating air you install something called a Heat Recovery Ventilator (HRV), which allows filtered fresh air supply from outside but doesn't allow temperature exchange. All pretty straight forward, however, as you go onto design a house things like doggy doors, fireplaces, range hoods and gas stoves all become tricky because they effect how airtight you can make your house. You can find the requirements to become "Passive house certified" here: https://passiv.de/en/02_
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| By Passivhaus_section_en.jpg: Passivhaus Institutderivative work: Michka B (talk) - Passivhaus_section_en.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9586761 |
It's a concept that is relativity normal in European houses but fairly novel in Australia. Somehow Adam managed to track down a guy from an article he read in his research and called him because he sounded like a DIY friendly guy (Harley Truong, Logikhaus in Canberra) purely to have a chat about Passive House design. Then of course he got put onto a Passive house designer (Luc Plowman) in Beechworth, Victoria who would be able to incorporate Passive House into our current designs and get us certified.
This is the point that I knew it was serious. After many previous times that Adam has gone ahead with a costly venture without consulting me he came good on his promise to involve me when it was time to make a decision (what a stereotypical male you might think, but believe me, if I was involved in every little project and hobby that Adam had simmering in his head I would go crazy).
My main concern was that I didn't want to be cold. And if I was to be cold, I didn't want to have to wait 10 years before the house warmed up. Also, I like my fresh air, and I want to be able to open windows and doors in order to get fresh air. This is where Adam got into his sales pitch.
"Josie, being in a Passive House is like sitting outside on a perfect day, every day!" At which point I had to laugh because our ideas of what a "perfect day" is are very different.
He managed to convince me without too much of a fight. We both knew it would be more costly than a standard build but hope to save in the long run on heating and cooling bills. Due to Adam working heavily with the architect on what he believed was a compliant Passive House design (his research), our Passive House consultant didn't have to change much. He was able to suggest some minor changes to the current design of the house, but overall was pleasantly surprised that with it's solar orientation, layout and size, how well it performed. Wall design, windows, blinds, insulation and a Heat Recovery Ventilator were the major items. When it turned out we would have a basement underneath (you can read about that here) that only added to the Passive House design. Traditional houses lose most of their heat through the slab and by lifting the house off the ground, we've decoupled the house from the ground.
Currently the windows are being shipped over from Poland (they are triple glazed) and orders take six months to get here, and the doggy door is coming from America. We can only hope and pray that all measurements are correct!
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| August 2018. Our windows in Poland about to be shipped over. |
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