Passive Solar Building Design - Comparison To The Passive House Standard in Europe

Comparison To The Passive House Standard in Europe

There is growing momentum in Europe for the approach espoused by the Passive House (Passivhaus in German) Institute in Germany. Rather than relying solely on traditional passive solar design techniques, this approach seeks to make use of all passive sources of heat, minimises energy usage, and emphasises the need for high levels of insulation reinforced by meticulous attention to detail in order to address thermal bridging and cold air infiltration. Most of the buildings built to the Passive House standard also incorporate an active heat recovery ventilation unit with or without a small (typically 1 kW) incorporated heating component.

The energy design of Passive House buildings is developed using a spreadsheet-based modeling tool called the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) which is updated periodically. The current version is PHPP2007, where 2007 is the year of issue. A building may be certified as a 'Passive House' when it can be shown that it meets certain criteria, the most important being that the annual specific heat demand for the house should not exceed 15kWh/m2a.

Read more about this topic:  Passive Solar Building Design

Famous quotes containing the words comparison to the, comparison, passive, house, standard and/or europe:

    “In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful—realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime—while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”
    —Irving Kristol (b. 1920)

    “Intolerance respecting other people’s religion is toleration itself in comparison with intolerance respecting other people’s art.”
    —Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    “...if you are to gain any great amount of good from the world, you must attain a passive condition of mind. ...it is never to be forgotten that it is the rest of the world and not you that holds the great share of the world’s wealth, and that you must allow yourself to be acted upon by the world, if you would become a sharer in the gain of all the ages to your own infinite advantage.”
    —Anna C. Brackett (1836–1911)

    “Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute or a subscription of stock; for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry; for a new house or a larger business; for a political party, or the division of an estate;Mwill you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles not marketable or perishable?”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind’s faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which seemeth to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity—namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.”
    —Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910)

    “The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)