Thermal Bridge Handbooks

17 February 2022 by Jason Quinn

NZ Handbooks

PHINZ High-Performance Construction Details Handbook

Outright Outsulation Guide for High Performance Walls

Concrete NZ CP01 

NZ supplier’s data

Quickset

Thermal Modeling report with Quickset edges and QPod and polystyrene waffle pods. Also, see here

MAXRaft

Thermal Modeling report 2022 – lots of edge designs and both waffle and solid pods for higher performance. These are in ECCHO as drop-downs.

Resene Construction Systems 

DuraTherm Gold – Insulated Foundation System (see Documents)

Insulform

Has report available but not online

Firth

RibRaft HotEdge Extra® and HotEdge Base® plus with Xpod / Waffle PolyPod Has extensive report available but not online

ClevaPod

Has report available but not online

Insulfound

Has R-values only online but has PSI/fRSI reports as well

International Resources

PHI Thermal Bridge Catalogue
Free short version
Longer version for iPHA members on Passipedia

PHI Timber Thermal Bridge Catalog

Commercial construction (be careful of internal or external reference areas)

Building Envelope Thermal Bridging Guide (BETBG) 

Building Envelope Thermal Bridging Database

Purchase

BR 497 “Conventions for calculating linear thermal transmittance and temperature factors”– caution uses internal dimensions

ISO 14683 Thermal bridges in building construction – Linear thermal transmittance  -Simplified Methods and default values

IBO book “Details for Passive Houses: A Catalogue of Ecologically Rated Constructions” – not really NZ or AU style constructions.

Lots of German language resources
Free: Timber Construction Handbook [Kaufmann 2002] it’s in German language.

 

Software to calculate thermal bridges

Flixo – recommend Flixo Energy Plus

THERM – much harder to use and learn but free

These are only for calculation of two-dimensional thermal bridges. All the three-dimensional software packages are much more complicated to use and we’d recommend leaving that to a specialist (we can do those for you).

 

Online course on how to calculate thermal bridges by Sustainable Engineering Ltd.

Link to course sales page

This in depth course covers how to model thermal bridges for Passive House and other high-performance buildings using any thermal bridge calculation software. The examples are done in Flixo and we’d recommend learning thermal bridge calculations using Flixo and their free trial even if you end up using THERM or some other software later. Flixo directly shows the equations being used to calculate the PSI values and the combination of the ‘how to draw’ videos online for Flixo and the ‘what to draw’ lessons in this course will save countless hours of trial and error learning thermal bridge calculations. Over 14 Flixo example thermal bridge calculations provided as well as 44 short videos for reference and learning.