The integral workshop: How to design a passive house in a specific climate

It would be a pitfall to just copy the European passive house design, especially the details used for insulation, windows and ventilation in a completely different situation:

• There is a specific building tradition in different countries and
• there are specific climatic boundary conditions.

Therefore, the specific solution for a passive house has to be adapted to the country and the climate under consideration.

   
Passive House in Illinois / US (left, Arch. Katrin Klingenberg) and insulated external wall from a Passive House in South Africa (Arch. Pankratz), both presented at the 9th Conference on Passive Houses 2005

The completed Passive House in South Africa (Arch. Pankratz)

On the other hand: Goals are the same in all climates and for all countries and physics is the same all around the world. Thus the solution method can well be applied independent of the circumstances. And this will be the first thing to do then starting a passive house development in a new region.

The leading principle has been derived from Amory Lovins' idea of reducing the investment by using a more energy efficient design: Going so far with efficiency, that there will be a certain breakthrough to radically simplified technology: If the heat demand is reduced by means of insulation, heat recovery, insulating windows, passive solar and other measures, the heating system can be simplified step by step. But there is a radical step at the value of

10 W/m²

for the peak heating load, independent of the climate. The reason is, that at peak heating loads lower than this value of 10 W/m², the ventilation system may easily be used for heating.

Looking at the heating load, is just an example. It may be, that in a different region other energy services are much more important than heating: That may be cooling or dehumification. Again the method to search for a passive house solution will be similar:

• Try to use passive technologies to reduce the peak load demand of the service in question.
• If a comfortable indoor climate (for definition look at Fanger´s work or ISO 7730) is very different from outdoor conditions during the time period in question, it is always a good idea to use a ventilation system with heat (ore vice versa cooling energy) recovery.
• There will be a certain condition on the cooling demand / dehumification demand so that with demands lower than that, there will be a appreciable simplification of the active technology needed for cooling / dehumification. This will be one part of the definition of a passive house in the specific climate!

Working group no. XII will deal with the methods – how to design a Passive House in different climates.

This working group will focus on concepts, parametric studies, demonstration projects and experiences from passive houses already built in different climates.

(Author: Dr. Wolfgang Feist)

Working group No. XII is part of the international sessions. Only papers in english are accepted for this working group.

You are working on an accepted paper? Find more Information here.

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

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

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:2006-01-31   © Passive House Institute PHI; this page might be reprinted if unchanged)

The PHI is not responsible for the content of linked web-pages. 
Passive House Institute, Dr. Wolfgang Feist. mail@passiv.de.