Working Group XI: Research and Development of Construction Components

The Passive House standard triggers off innovations within the building industry. An indispensable need for energy efficiency requires new details for the building envelope. On the other hand it is getting easier to build Passive Houses and to develop new areas of application with every new and accessible construction component.

Passive Houses should not be strained windowless boxes of energy conservation. As long as the U-value of windows averages about 5 times worse than opaque walls there is a latent danger to optimise thermal comfort on expenses of daylight in a Passive House. Contrariwise, insufficiently shaded daylight openings may lead to overheating during summer. In two certified Passive Houses the total daylight opening area has been optimised by means of daylight simulations and model analyses. Reto P. Miloni is presenting the results in his lecture on “Optimisation of Daylight and Sun Protection in a Passive House”.

Passive House "Schmölzer" in Pratteln/Ch (Presentation of R. Miloni)

Ursula Schneider reports on findings of the Austrian project ”green light”: A modern standard for the exposition of living spaces has been defined. In addition to that, optimisations in the use of daylight in new and refurbished buildings could be made for window- and fitting types, as well as different kinds of reveals.

Johannes May gives a lecture on “Wood-Concrete-Composite Elements ‘Passive House within 6 weeks`”. In many areas of the building trade it is important nowadays to offer short construction periods. This has been made possible by combining the established light-weight concrete construction with the advantages of timber construction. An easy to erect wall system has been created by positively tying a 7,5 cm wide light-weight concrete wall with a timber frame. In contrast to other construction types, this wall system is easy to erect and the inner wall can be prefabricated and ready-made delivered to the building site.

In bigger Passive Houses, it is often desired to have an inner access to the cold and unheated basement. Heat losses through inner staircases are much higher if compared to an access outside of the thermal shell. Søren Peper discusses such questions in his lecture on “Staircase in a Multi-Storied Passive House”. With the analysis of a realised Passive House in Hamburg it was made possible to state the heat loss caused by an open staircase and simplified calculation instructions for further projects were specified on these grounds.

Passive House Pinnasberg in Hamburg (Architect Reinig; Foto: Ebel)
Contributions from Sören Peper in wg XI and from Kerstin Walberg in wg XIV

Time schedule of the 10^th International Conference on Passive Houses in Hannover
The conference proceedings are in print now. All contributions (but one) were received in time.
Special thanks go to all authors!

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:2006-04-28 WF  © 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)