Tom Gresford of London - based Gresford Architects had bought a site — previously owned by Thames Water, and which housed an old and ugly water tower — with a view to designing and
building a passive house as a commercial development to demonstrate the financial viability of building one - off homes to the passive house standard.
Building a passive house using direct - labour is a risky option, as it gives huge room for error given that there is no single person or contractor responsible for the overall performance of the project.
The cost of
building a passive house would typically be greater than that of a conventional house — you wouldn't expect it to be otherwise.
In the third instalment of Nessa Duggan's column on designing and
building a passive house for her young family, she describes the process of designing a house to suit the family's lifestyle.
«It shows what is possible — it shows the extreme of what can be achieved in terms of a housing association
building passive house certified houses with an architect who sticks to their vision for the development.»
Three years ago quantity surveyor Ross Cremin set out from scratch with the goal of self -
building a passive house on a site in rural County Longford.
What is really interesting though is that this new model shows that the basics of
building a passive house dwelling are more constant than we thought — 300 mm of insulation, triple - glazing, MVHR, built with a compact form, thermal bridge - free and airtight, of course.
Although it would doubtless have been out of the question on this site, Patrick Osborne agrees that a new
build passive house — fitted out to a similar standard — would not necessarily have cost more, and might even have cost less.
Our goal is to create a diverse team from companies who are already
building passive houses within the Greater Vancouver area.
In her second column documenting her family's self -
build passive house project, Nessa Duggan details the process of choosing a build system and finding an architect.
And even though he didn't set out to
build a passive house, he managed to meet the standard while doing almost all of the work in conjunction with his father, while exceeding the targets of Ireland's nearly zero energy building definition.
In the sixth report on her journey to self -
build a passive house, Nessa Duggan struggles to reconcile glazing functionality and thermal performance, takes conflicting advice on heating and ventilation, and reaches some decisions on joinery.
The latest issue of Passive House Plus includes several examples which appear to contradict this claim — including a block -
built passive house in Co Kildare estimated by builder Pat Doran Construction, a CIF member, to have cost $ 20,000 less to build than the department's own suggested specification from its regulatory impact analysis on the 2011 changes to Part L of building regulations.
The building scored an impressive airtightness test result of 0.5 air changes per hour at 50 Pascals — a score that not only blitzes the requirement for Enerphit (the passive house standard for retrofit), but comfortably beats the new
build passive house target of 0.6 ACH too.
He recently
built a passive house, a so - called «zero energy house».
Not exact matches
The group is popular among people who want to
build passive income through real estate investments, like
house flipping and rental properties.
Laura Poulette (Issues 3 & 5) Laura is an artist who works with hand stitched fabric and natural dyes, although lately a saw is more likely in her hands as she and her husband are
building a
passive solar
house.
Students investigate
passive solar heating design,
building model
houses, and testing them for...
As a property investor who owns a variety of rental
houses, condos, and a few larger apartment complexes, I used to deal with my own
building management, but now, I'm in a spot where I'm making a lucrative
passive income and leaving my property management operations to a full time employee.
Invest as much into your company 401k (if you have one) or an IRA to reduce your tax burden and
build wealth, invest in personal brokerages to increase your personal returns (Robinhood is great for individual stocks, Vanguard for more
passive ETF investing), invest in lending club for personal loan investment, or invest in HomeUnion for those looking for income streams from
housing.
The cabin of Nanuq is
built to the
passive house's principles, which by its design makes the use of a heating system almost needless.
By
building or retrofitting to achieve resilient design, we can create homes that will never drop below 45 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit even if the
house is totally cut off from power and heating fuel — they can do that with high levels of insulation, top - performing windows,
passive solar gain, and other features..
And in Germany,
passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to
build than conventional
houses.
Now we see that it is really quite easy to
build a small
passive house according to the functional definition, but rather harder to
build a large one.
Despite the challenges imposed not only by the old and slightly ropey fabric, but also the conservation status of the
buildings, the client wanted to carry as many of the benefits of
passive house design as possible through to the retrofit.
As another example, occupants of the
passive house Lancaster Co-housing development also reported high satisfaction with their homes in a
building user survey, including with the air quality: none said the ventilation was noisy, in fact some commented that you couldn't actually hear it to tell whether it was running.
One problem familiar to
passive house designers is the form factor of small
buildings.
Buildings: Three new four - bedroom terraced
passive houses & six low energy flats retrofitted into a Victorian terrace Standard: Certified
passive new
build & low energy fabric - first retrofit Location: Akerman Road, Lambeth, London Completed: December 2016 Total budget: # 2m Build method: Timber frame new build / deep retrofit with internal insulation to Victorian ter
build & low energy fabric - first retrofit Location: Akerman Road, Lambeth, London Completed: December 2016 Total budget: # 2m
Build method: Timber frame new build / deep retrofit with internal insulation to Victorian ter
Build method: Timber frame new
build / deep retrofit with internal insulation to Victorian ter
build / deep retrofit with internal insulation to Victorian terrace.
Retained as a consultant on the
build, one of his first jobs was to take the architect's design and adapt it to
passive house specifications.
This seems to be a function of the way quality is embedded in the whole
build process with
passive house; everyone is tied in to delivering quality, almost micromanaged.
Three of these are new four - bedroom terraced
houses,
built to the
passive house standard, and the first new social
housing built by Lambeth council for ten years.
O'Toole simplified things, putting the design through the
passive house design package PHPP in order to ensure that the
building fabric delivered, and to help make the
house more buildable.
Similar situations have arisen briefly in
passive house buildings by accident: in a brief period where the MVHR was switched off in one
passive house, CO2 averages rose to just below 2000 pm in the living room and over 2000 ppm in the bedroom.
A diagnostic initial blower door test, done when the external envelope was completed on one of the development's show
houses, took place on December 12 and delivered a worldbeating result of 0.16 air changes per hour (ACH), well inside the
passive house standard of 0.6 ACH and the best result this magazine has ever noted for a masonry
building.
The middle
house, the one
built in 1990, is around 12C and the
passive house is about 17C, and that's over a period of time when all the
houses were unoccupied and unheated.»
Achieving
passive house airtightness is a huge challenge for any retrofit, and even more so when, as in this case, the structure is shared with neighbouring
buildings.
Building the third scheme to the
passive house standard has only required a few tweaks to the design of phase two — including the selection of MVHR over DCV, an upgrade from double to triple glazing, and a 40 mm increase in external insulation to the walls, which are all
built from single leaf nine inch hollow blocks.
Once
built, 19 of the 20
passive houses had measured flow rates that matched the design rate (though two were border line).
In fact
passive house buildings do have heating demand, and it seems that the PHPP internal heat gains figure is a good approximation in most cases.
The rigor of this model is key to the success of
passive house in delivering
buildings with heating demand as low as promised.
«However there are challenges in delivering larger projects to the [
passive house] standard, including cost,
building form, and contractor experience, so we are taking a methodical approach to ensure appropriate solutions across our programme.
Although Peter Blood was familiar with the
passive house standard for new
build, Patrick Thomas introduced him to the Enerphit standard for refurbished properties.
«From a
passive house point of view I was initially surprised over the summer by the effect that
passive energy inputs have on the internal temperature in a low - loss
building, effects that were hardly apparent in our old
house, like sunshine, cooking, people.
All new
buildings in south - east Dublin must be
built to the
passive house standard or demonstrably equivalent levels, in a move that may lead to the construction of upwards of 20,000
passive houses by 2022.
Dún Laoghaire - Rathdown County Council adopted its county development plan for 2016 - 2022 on Wednesday 17 February, including a motion worded by
Passive House Plus editor Jeff Colley that all new buildings must be built to the passive house standard or equiva
House Plus editor Jeff Colley that all new
buildings must be
built to the
passive house standard or equiva
house standard or equivalent.
Hi Alison, With 100
passive houses, 200,000 HPwES
houses in ten years, vs around 700,000 residential HVAC units shipped last month, «
Building Science» looks like a hobby having failed in 35 years to even make it to insignificant in terms of scale.
Dublin City Council has voted to make the
passive house standard or demonstrably equivalent evidence - based approaches mandatory for all new
buildings in the city, after a
Passive House Plus is the world's first English language magazine focused on building and upgrading to the world's leading low energy standard - passive h
House Plus is the world's first English language magazine focused on
building and upgrading to the world's leading low energy standard -
passive househouse.
All new
buildings will be required to meet the
passive house standard or equivalent, where reasonably practicable.
Canadian
houses are generally
built without good
passive design characteristics — they often have inefficient shapes (i.e. high area to volume ratios), they're generally not oriented towards the sun or they experience significant winter shading.