Working Group No. VI:
Passive House School Buildings

The building of schools as Passive Houses has received quite a stimulus over the past years. To such an extent that it was possible to set up a special working group at the 10th conference on Passive Houses for the numerous interesting and ongoing projects.

Oliver Kah is going to start with some fundamental results concerning the” Passive House Standard at School buildings”, general conditions, design and further planning aspects.
The project of Werner Haase, “Holistic refurbishment of primary school Baiersdorf with Passive House Components” is a school which is being modernised by using Passive House components and in the end can be heated mainly by solar energy.

Retrofit of a School Building in Baiersdorf / Germany - Presentation of Werner Haase

Thereafter, Stephan Heinrich is lecturing on „New Building of the Gebhard-Mόller-School within the District’s Centre of Vocational Schools”, thereby also taking into account monitoring as well as operating results. It has been proven that technical measurement analysis followed by optimising operations within the field of building services – and installation engineering is very much recommendable for the success of pilot projects.

Joachim Zander and Frank Schnell take a close look at “Building and Room Acoustics in a Passive House School Building” by means of measurement data of an already realised school and kindergarten building .In particular, questions of ‘conflict’ such as suspended ceilings regarding stable summer temperatures and sound insulation in connection with ventilation system and internal vents are being dealt with.

The Passive House school building in Waldshut has been among the first realisations in Germany. Volker Weiß is introducing “Operational Experiences and Sociological Survey Results”.

A school built as a Passive House provides tangible ideas for teaching physics. Already in the lower grade distinctions between temperature and heat (as energy forms) can be realised by means of comparing a Passive House with conventional buildings. Heat flow, heat transport mechanisms, heat radiation, heat storage, and heat recovery – all of these terms are most manifest elements of a Passive House. The concept of energy can be elaborated and energy conservation made tangible, providing a very direct access for intermediate grades. For higher grades, it is possible to illustrate the basics of thermodynamics and the laws of fluids and energy transformation in electrical systems. With direct reference to one’s own environment, it is possible to illustrate all these abstract terms in a Passive House school building.

Albert Einstein has been referred to in a number of various topics during 2005. But in this topic he had been really engaged in, as the following quotation illustrates: “Sometimes the school was seen as a sheer instrument, to get a certain quantum of knowledge across to the adolescent generation. But that‘s not the way it is. Knowledge is dead; the school though is a servant of life. …Characters are not shaped by what they hear and say but through work and action.” We would like to understand the introduction of the Passive Houses concept to school buildings in line with this spirit.

Time schedule of the 10^th International Conference on Passive Houses in Hannover

2006 February 1st:    Notification on acceptance of abstracts (done)
2006 March 15th:       Deadline for the written contributions of the preceedings (done)
2006 March 31st (elongated):   Registration period for reduced fee ends

2006 May 19th and 20th   10. Conference on Passive Houses HCC Hannover with Exhibition on Passive House Components and manufacturers session

May 21st field trip to the most interesting Passive House projects and construction sites incl. refurbishment in the region near Hannover.

(updated:2006-03-18   © Passivhouse Institute PHI; this page might be reprinted if unchanged)

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Passive House Institute, Dr. Wolfgang Feist. mail@passiv.de.

.2006-02-17
Programme of the 10th International Conference on Passive Houses
PDF 111 kB (Englisch)