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                             What is Passive House

 

The Passive House  Standard is arguably the world’s most rigorous quality assurance standard for energy efficient buildings.Developed in Germany in 1988 by Dr. Wolfgang Feist .Passivhaus is based on simple building physics

 

The Passive House is the  standard in energy-efficient construction design that achieves thermal comfort with minimal heating and cooling by using insulation, airtightness, appropriate window and door design, ventilation systems with heat recovery, and elimination of thermal bridges. Buildings designed as per Passive House standard deliver healthy, comfortable and efficient structures

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Passive House benefits can be divided into three areas: health, economy and energy efficiency. One of the key strengths is that, to date, it is the only standard where the built performance matches the design predictions quite closely and everything is measurable.

Passive Houses require less than 15 kWh/(m²yr) for heating or cooling demand . The heating/cooling load is limited to a maximum of 10 W/m2.Passive Houses must be airtight with air change rates being limited to n50 = 0.6/h.

                                                                                      Passive House vs Code House

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We have  started recently implementation of new H1 requirements (NZBC) announced as a “revolutionary act”, with the most significant energy efficiency changes to the Building Code in more than ten years. Clause H1 Fifth Edition AS1 is the current standard that dwellings must meet to satisfy building code requirements.There are some improvements but the question mark is what is the revolution if the Improved Code House still uses few times more energy for heating than Passive House.We have done so far design for  houses ( built & consented) across New Zealand and with some recent  researches we done we have results that " revolutionary" designed Code House needs more non times more energy for heating than Passive House.The Building Code sets out the minimum levels of performance that new building work must meet or exceed.It seems to be the norm in New Zealand to accept low building quality with poor performances and an obvious complacency when homes are designed only to reach the minimum of Building Code performance, no matter how weak the Building Code is. 

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                              What is Your Code ?

                                     minimum                                                                              or 

                                 maximum

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        IF YOUR ANSWER IS MAXIMUM WE ARE HAPPY TO OFFER YOU A RANGE OF SERVICES  IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE BEST ENERGY EFFICIENT  DESIGN PERFORMANCES

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PASSIVE HOUSE DESIGN & HIGH PERFORMING HOUSES DESIGN + ENERGY MODELLING

Every house  design we deliver( No matter Passive House or High performing)  is based on major  elements of passive house design:

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  • Building location and orientation on the site

  • Building layout

  • Window design

  • Super insulation

  • Airtightness

  • Ventilation

  • Shading

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Every our project have been under permanent performances control by using PHPP with Design PH tool in order to get preliminary feedback on the proposed design performances .You can get a quick and pretty accurate image of the building’s energy performance which will help you to make immediate improvements in your design. Ideally using Design PH with Sketchup will provide a clear picture about design performances

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PASSIVE HOUSE DESIGN

Every house  design we deliver( No matter Passive House or High performing)  is based on major  elements of passive house design:

​

  • Building location and orientation on the site

  • Building layout

  • Window design

  • Super insulation

  • Airtightness

  • Ventilation

  • Shading

​​

Every our project have been under permanent performances control by using PHPP with Design PH tool in order to get preliminary feedback on the proposed design performances .You can get a quick and pretty accurate image of the building’s energy performance which will help you to make immediate improvements in your design. Ideally using Design PH with Sketchup will provide a clear picture about design performances

PASSIVE HOUSE PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Construction project management in Passive  House diverges from a typical PM role by demanding and incorporating extensive knowledge of Passive House principles 

 

Due to lack of experience and underestimated level of skills projects could run into a number of serious challenges: 

 

  • Costing significantly more money than anticipated

  • Running into delays and taken more time to complete than was anticipated

  • Failing to achieve the performance standards specified in the contract documents 

There are two major components in the implementation of PH procedure

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PRECONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

 

Preliminary planning

Planning of the building structure

Planning of the ventilation system

Planning of remaining building services

 

CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT

 

Execution, construction management for building structure

Execution, construction management for ventilation system

Execution, construction management for remaining building services

Certification process

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