28 September 2013

The Passivhaus

A passive house (passivhaus) is a super-insulated energy-efficient home that has  tiny to no heating bills,is build with  natural light using the passive solar  concept  and enjoys superior levels of comfort to normal homes.
The whole construction process is a funny mix of rocket science and common scence, although the tehnology used costs more than in a typical home, the benefits are huge:the investment tends to recover up to 1/3 of the additional cost in time by heating and energy bill savings;in order to build from ground-up or meet the retrofit standard some expensive  materials are required that ensure a long lasting period of exploitation; also, a careful design ensures that both the beneficiary and the builders understand concepts like air-tightness and thermal bridging.





For beginners you can check out the solar passive design series lessons that you can find here, for advanced you can study the Solar Passive Design Tool  ,and for medium any posts found on this site will do that you can find in the bottom left side of the blog in the Archive Posts Category...