We work with motivated clients focused on reducing the carbon emissions associated with their construction projects. In general, I’d characterise their (our) main reason for doing this as the belief that it’s the right thing to do. Also that it’s essential that design professionals (and builders) develop their understanding of how to minimise operational carbon emissions. It’s a slightly odd …
Four very good reasons to sign up for designPH Skills right now
You’ll hear me talking a lot about designPH over the next couple of months. That’s because it’s a seriously useful tool that, once mastered, delivers staggering efficiencies and improvements in energy modelling for high-performance and Passive House buildings. Applications are open for a live, online course led by me, Jason Quinn, that starts on 4 June 2024—soon! Detailed course info …
Thermal bypass a basic step to improving building performance
I get asked periodically how to increase building performance without spending extra money. Well, better-than-Code performance is going to cost something so I focus on low-hanging fruit: what’s the greatest benefit for the least cost? Let’s assume continuous mechanical ventilation is already included, because that’s the single most important thing. After that, I recommend preventing thermal bypass via a dedicated …
Keep heat pump and ventilation systems separate for best results
Buildings need fresh air, every single one of them. Even the very best-performing ones will also need some (possibly very little) heating or cooling at peak times of year. Ducting costs money and some people are tempted to combine heating/cooling systems with ventilation. Don’t do this, is my advice. Best practice is a fully decoupled system design for ventilation (dedicated …
SketchUp’s new release does not work with designPH 2.1
SketchUp 2024 is now available but if you are using designPH, please hold off on updating SketchUp until designPH2.2 is released! Otherwise you won’t be able to use designPH. PHI has been working on this but SketchUp didn’t tell them it was releasing 2024 until it had already happened. PHI’s testing of designPH v2.1.15a found that the change to Ruby …
Is Passive House actually worth it?
I’m often asked (usually politely): Is building to the Passive House standard actually worth it? Yes it is, is the unequivocal answer. There’s a brilliant summary paper written by Dr Ürge-Vorsatz and others that is my go-to evidence when I am persuading sceptics. The bottom line is that with current technology, we can build nearly zero-energy buildings almost anywhere at …
Alternative balcony design for low carbon buildings
Global design practice Perkins & Wills has released a beautiful white paper on balconies for buildings concerned with lowering carbon emissions. It considers thermal bridges and overall design considerations. Balconies are a major heat loss junction in multi-storey buildings, second only to window installation details. (Concrete slab edges, where left uninsulated, are also major thermal bridges.) The white paper, according …
Build better houses to solve dry year energy problem
Newsflash: using less energy is better than generating more of it. I know that seems obvious given the cost of new electricity generation schemes but it’s even more significantly beneficial to reduce peak heating demand because of New Zealand’s big dry winter problem. The University of Otago’s energy programme is producing valuable work, and its latest paper by Michael Jack …
Revised ASHRAE standard gets serious on building decarbonisation
ASHRAE in the USA is really focusing on building decarbonisation, finally. ASHRAE Journal March 2024 contains a really readable summary of the changes to ASHRAE Standard 100-2024, Energy and Emissions Building Performance Standard for Existing Buildings. This amounts to a deep retrofit of the standard, which now will address both energy emissions (via Energy Use Intensity, EUI) and carbon emissions …