Passive House
Passive House
Passive House is an international high-performance building standard designed to drastically reduce heating and cooling energy consumption.
Achieving Passive House Standards:
Passive House Design and Construction adhere to key principles:
- Insulation: Ensure continuous high-level insulation across the building envelope.
- Thermal Bridge Free Construction: Carefully plan junctions and connections to prevent heat and cold transfer.
- Glazing: Use high-performance insulated glazing units with airtight seals and proper orientation and shading to optimize solar gain.
- Airtightness: Maintain effective airtightness to minimize heat loss and drafts.
- Heat Recovery Ventilation: Employ energy-efficient fan-based heat exchanger ventilation systems for fresh, filtered healthy indoor air and minimal energy waste.
Certified Passive House Criteria:
- To achieve Passive House certification, a building must meet specific criteria:
- Space Heating: Keep heating and cooling energy consumption below 15 kWh per squaremeter annually.
- Peak Heating Loads: Limit peak heating loads to under 10 W per square meter.
- Cooling and Dehumidification: Ensure cooling and dehumidification energy use is less than 15 kWh per square meter annually.
- Airtightness: Conduct tests to show less than 0.64 air changes per hour at 50 pascals of pressure.
- Primary Energy: Total energy consumption for heating, cooling, hot water, and appliances must meet specified limits based on the building’s size.
Passive House Categories:
Classic: Classic Passive House projects are the easiest to achieve once airtightness, total energy use, and heating and cooling demands are met.
Plus: Passive House Plus projects are essentially energy neutral, minimizing consumption and generating as much renewable energy annually as the building uses. This calculation considers losses through storage, generation, and transmission of energy.
Premium: Premium projects surpass Plus and aim to further reduce consumption and generate enough renewable energy annually to balance the building and occupants’ needs.
Low Energy Buildings: This is a standard for energy efficiency and airtightness, and all our projects should naturally achieve this standard.
Enerphit: Enerphit is a standard for retrofitting existing buildings and is not typically relevant to our projects.
Health: Fresh, clean, filtered air is provided to all rooms year-round, minimizing allergens, dust, and mould, promoting health and well-being.
Comfort: Consistent comfortable temperatures are maintained in each room throughout the year, eliminating hot or cold spots and creating a relaxed, pleasant ambiance.
Resilience: Passive Houses are well-built and stable, suitable for off-grid solutions. They retain comfortable temperatures longer during extreme conditions or power outages.
Affordability: Running costs can be up to 90% lower than conventional buildings, essential in times of rising energy and financing expenses.
Simplicity: Careful design and quality construction ensure that Passive Houses stay cool in summer and warm in winter with minimal operation or control systems. Orientation, insulation, airtightness, glazing, and shading are optimized for efficiency.
Peace and Quiet: Exceptional insulation, airtightness, and quality glazing minimize external noise, creating a calm, peaceful environment.
Quality: Passive House projects demand detailed planning and lend themselves to prefabrication and simplicity, resulting in higher construction quality and durability compared to conventional buildings.
Value: Investing in a Passive House is an investment in quality, with growing market awareness leading to more financing options and potential long-term property value increases due to lower running costs.
Engineered Timber
Timber Preference:
- Timber, a versatile and renewable material, offers strength, lightness, and timeless beauty.
- Thoughtful detailing ensures timber structures last for centuries, providing joy, comfort, and shelter.
- Timber structures can adapt to changing needs over time, locking away carbon from its growth until return to the earth.
- Timber’s biophilic qualities may contribute to occupants&’ calmness and health.
- Its tactile and colourful nature brings joy to building occupants.
Energy Efficiency:
- Timber excels in thermal bridging performance due to its natural insulating properties, reducing heat/cold transfer compared to concrete or metals.
- Low production energy requirements make timber an eco-friendly choice.
- Timber stores approximately 50% of its dry weight as carbon throughout its life.
- We specify timber from managed and certified FSC or PEFC plantation sources, ensuring sustainability.
Benefits of Prefabrication:
- Engineered timber is ideal for offsite prefabrication, enabling rapid assembly and reduced construction time.
- Precise 3D modelling upfront leads to better construction detailing with minimal thermal bridging and air leakage, crucial for passive houses.
- Combining insulation and structural qualities makes timber cost-effective, reducing the need for multiple construction layers.
- Timber often serves as the finished surface, saving costs and minimizing the use of other materials.
- Timber’s lightweight nature reduces footing requirements and material usage.
- Timber can be worked using simple hand and machine tools.
- Woodworking processes are low or non-toxic to workers and occupants.
- Timber reduces the need for specialist trades, heavy machinery, and onsite fire and safety risks, creating safer, quieter workplaces.
- Over a building’s lifecycle, timber structures have lower long-term maintenance and running costs.
Fire Performance:
- While combustible, timber’s insulating qualities lead to slow, predictable, and measurable combustion.
- In larger buildings, we design oversized elements with the understanding that fire forms a sacrificial charred layer on the surface, insulating the core timber from the fire’s heat.
- Special grades and species are used in bushfire-prone areas, incorporating additional cladding, insulation, and ember protection details.
- Strength and stability: Engineered timber can handle heavy loads.
- Efficient and lightweight: Mass timber is strong yet lightweight, enabling spacious buildings with fewer structural elements.
- Environmentally friendly: Made from fast-growing trees, it reduces reliance on non-renewable materials.
- Flexible design: It can be customized into various shapes and sizes, facilitating unique architectural creations.
- Fire-resistant: Some types have good inherent fire-resistant properties, forming a protective char layer in larger members.
- Energy-efficient: Provides natural insulation, reducing heating and cooling needs.
- Sustainable choice: Made from renewable wood resources, it helps sequester carbon dioxide.
- Quick construction: Prefabricated mass timber speeds up the construction process.
- Improved acoustics: Reduces sound transmission, creating more comfortable indoor spaces.
- Natural and appealing: Adds a beautiful, warm, and natural aesthetic to architectural designs.
- Health: Embracing biophilic design with natural tactile materials benefits occupants’ well-being.
