Passive House Institute has released a climate morphing tool for use in examining future climates and building resilience. I’m particularly fond of this approach which simply takes an increased summer temperature and increases the dry bulb temperatures throughout the year. After working with more detailed analysis from Meteonorm (which we use for detailed analysis including hygrothermal modeling) and other future …
PHPP Version 9.6 has now been tested pursuant to ASHRAE 140
“PHPP Version 9.6 has now been tested pursuant to ASHRAE 140, which qualifies it as an acceptable energy modelling software under a variety of regulatory systems” This means that PHPP could now be used for H1 verification via the modeling method for buildings with interesting glazing ratio’s or other non-standard features. The issue will be that Section G1.6.3 in …
2018 December 01 Build Magazine’s Manfred Plagmann: Mould, occupants and house condition
Air control layers are critical to warm healthy homes. Paying for a second brand new roof on a building should not be common to homes or commercial buildings. More ventilation can help with controlling moisture under the roof cladding but if there is no air control layer at all in the ceiling ventilation is not always enough. “We have recently …
Prevention of fabric and interior furnishings fading from the sun
If you could block 100% of UV light than the fading would be reduced to approximately 1/3rd the amount. As the entire spectrum of light contributes to fading and it is very dependant on the material the best you can do is select a glass which has low damage-weighted transmittance has the symbol T-dw. This isn’t perfect as T-dw was developed …
24 July 2001 The National Human Activity Pattern Survey (NHAPS): a resource for assessing exposure to environmental pollutants
Many speakers talk about how much time we spend indoors when they talk about how important indoor air quality is and they seldom take the time and reference source of references. So I thought I’d point out this very technical reference to the amount of time spent indoors was a survey done in the United States. It’s been done quite …
Documentation required for a Certified Passive House
A fairly common question during the certification process is ‘What sort of construction documentation is required for a certified passive house?’ Required documentation for a Certified Passive House (Passivhaus) or PHI Low Energy Building is that sufficient to fully check the energy model and design quality and assure that the building was built as per the design. That sort of …
26 October 2018 Passive House Plus Jeff Colley: Study: extreme overheating not reflected in building simulations
Dangerous overheating in buildings may not be showing up in desktop studies, new research suggests.” “Monitored operative temperatures of up to 47.5C recorded in a highly glazed apartment building in London were not reflected in software modelling of the same building, with temperature peaks in simulated scenarios between 18C and 30C cooler, depending on which weather files were used.” …
26 October 2018 Passive House Plus’ Kate de Selincourt: Performance gap much smaller for passive homes, research finds
This report reviewed detailed test measurements for air tightness and heating loads for passive houses and non-passive houses designed to meet an energy target. From this data the Passive Houses (Passivhaus in the UK) predicted performance matched quite closely to the measurements compared to other non-passive house designed buildings. “Most of the homes were fitted with mechanical ventilation with heat …
9 October 2017 AIRAH: Improving the energy efficiency of residential climate control systems
Newly released standard AS/NZS 5141:2018 Residential heating and cooling systems – Minimum applications and requirements for energy efficiency, performance and comfort criteria Specifies requirements for the design, selection, installation, commissioning and maintenance of residential heating and cooling systems to maximize operating energy efficiency within residential buildings. It also sets requirements to achieve prescribed performance and comfort criteria. This standard includes …