PHPP10 launched But only in German for now

13 October 2021 by Jason Quinn

Update [June 2022] PHPP10 is now available in English.

In case you hadn’t heard, PHPP10 was released at the 25th International Passive House conference in Wuppertal last month. That’s the good news. The catch is, only the German-language version is out yet, so technically it’s PHPP10.0DE. The English version isn’t expected until around Easter next year.

Now I don’t read German, but I know this spreadsheet rather well, so I was able to put PHPP10 through its paces. There are lots of new improvements and subtle bug fixes. PHI is talking up the stress test for summer comfort, as well as making the entry of heat pumps and split units easier. They’re both good—but not having to mirror the building and flip the climate six months is way better from my perspective.

There are a few features that are still in progress such as an Excel macro to export PHPP9 and import to PHPP10, plus designPH updates. The certification criteria will update at the same time. We don’t know what will change, but nothing major is expected. Exciting times (if you’re a building science geek).

Our team played with the beta version and now the first release and we love some of the new features.

  1. Best is that the errors now appear right on the verification worksheet, nice and up front.
  2. The world is a globe finally! The entries can now handle the southern hemisphere, so no need to mirror about the equator. This means we can show monthly results to clients without having to explain that it is shifted six months because Germans have summer in the middle of the year. 
  3. DesignPH needs to be updated (to undo the hack that allowed us to flip entries in the southern hemisphere) and this will be out soon.
  4. fRSI criteria is right on the verification worksheet and is calculated for the specific building, ventilation system and climate file.
  5. The summer stress test is calculated automatically in a standard PHPP file. This is very similar to the summer stress test we taught at the Wellington Passive House Conference (and learned the year before from the UK Passivhaus folks, Alan Clarke and Nick Grant). However, now instead of having to be expert in using the variants sheet, it’s all built into the standard file.

It is now easy to set up the sort of stress test you prefer and even to enter in local heat island effects of cities or expected ‘hot summer’ climate shifts.

 

In this summer comfort test, we turned off all natural ventilation, movable shading was left open and a 2 degree rise in summer monthly temperature is assumed. This produces (brace yourself): 34% overheating for an example certified Passive House built in Auckland. (Note that this example is not mirrored so the house’s windows face south; for the sake of the model this is the sunny side.)

The manual is now online only. I’m not sure if that is a bug or a feature, but it is what it is.

The official PHI blurb: “The Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) is an MS Excel-based energy balance and efficiency design tool for highly energy efficient buildings and retrofits, which provides all relevant calculations and verifications in a clear and simple way. With PHPP version 10, several new functions are released in addition to feature extensions.

Scope of delivery: PHPP + online manual.”

If you have any questions, ask them on this post on the SEL Facebook page where other people can join in also.

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