Comments on: Passive House (Passivhaus) Standard for Energy Efficient Design

By: Passive House Ventilation Design | 100K House Blog

Passive House Ventilation Design | 100K House Blog — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:20:45 +0000

[...] Passive House standard requires that you install a ventilation system with > 75% efficiency and a low electric [...]

By: Miri

Miri — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 06:46:46 +0000

Hi everyone,

I am in China right now and try to find out how the handling and the standards of producing passive house elements are. Concerning passive windows I was wondering if you could give me the names of some Chinese suppliers, so I can contact the manufacturer directly.
Thanks a lot in advance,

miriam (shanghai).

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 09:12:47 +0000

I really enjoy this blog and your projects.

I had two questions about your use of SIPs in your passive project. (1) What did you do to address the thermal bridges that remain with SIPs? (at the seams and where the walls and ceilings meet)
(2) How did you handle your electrical? Did you use a second interior 2×4 wall? Or did you come up with another way to avoid penetrations in the outer envelope?

Where I live we have over 7700 annual heat degree days and I’ve been told that to meet the passive standard I would need R-74 walls for a single family house, with roughly 1500 sq. ft. of livable space. If I used blown cellulose that works out to 23″ walls! I’m considering using Murus polyurethane SIPs. They have a 6.5″ panel (R-40) and a 5.5″ panel (R-33) that would get me close, but I’m not sure what I’d do with my electrical.

Have you guys ever considered using autoclaved aerated concrete instead of SIPs?

By: Avon Xzavia

Avon Xzavia — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:45:14 +0000

Hello Chad / Everyone,

I am planing to build a hybrid house: ZEH/+EH With pasiv & Massive aspects: thermal storage heavy concrete inner floors walls. & full energy creation and reclamation. With well water and rain water collection grey water re-cyc. as many positive aspects as possible. next year, (2010)

have any info thoughts on the following:

1/ Sipcrete construction method.

2/ Lots of focus on window efficiancy, but what about longevity durability ? No producer I have seen state figure for life of their product ? Fiber glass seems the most durable as far as I can make out ?? Timber lasts very well (if maintained) chemicals paint etc??

My aim is to construct a house that requires no maintenance and will last not many decades but perhaps many hundreds of years.

Avon (Germany).

By: Passive House- The New Standard of Energy Efficient Building « Casa Diseno Blog

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:09:00 +0000

[...] House is to reduce the energy usage of a home by 90% over traditional code built homes.” (100K House) In an interview with Dwell magazine, architect Milos Jovanovic points out [in theory], “you [...]

By: Building Gaskets and Air Sealing Tape | 100K House Blog

Building Gaskets and Air Sealing Tape | 100K House Blog — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:09:56 +0000

[...] obtain the very difficult building air tightness goal of 0.6 ACH @ 50Pa that is required by the Passive House standard. Let’s take a more detailed look at the technology and economics of these two construction [...]

By: Facade Update and Retrospective: The Passive Project | 100K House Blog

Facade Update and Retrospective: The Passive Project | 100K House Blog — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:35:11 +0000

[...] the expected construction delays and difficulties associated with a standard as ambitious as Passive House, the Passive Project is finally getting wrapped up. Drywall is up, finish work is underway, and we [...]

By: Lloyd

Lloyd — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 09:53:30 +0000

Bruce,
You missed my point completely. Moving the material so much to save on labor is not sustainable. I noticed that when oil reached over $150/barrel the shipping costs made the Chinese labor savings go away. I have nothing against China, I just have a real problem with shipping glass and wood all around the world. It is just plain stupid if you are trying to build a sustainable world. The other problem I had was that the windows are not rated, which means there is no assurance that they will perform as promised. One must remember that in China everything made ships, there is no reject pile, no tolerances to be maintained, and no quality control.
Never put an unrated window in, no matter where it comers from, there is a reason it is not rated. Companies are selling junk as top end all the time and it is hard to tell the junk from the good stuff without ratings.The leakage rate of unrated windows could make your project fail. BTW, Canadian windows tend to have much less leakage rates than US windows at the same price point, and fiberglass window frames tend to have and maintain the lowest leakage rates due to the stability of the frame.

By: Pascal

Pascal — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 08:39:52 +0000

I am a little annoyed for the visit of factories in Germany, Austria or Switzerland proves without a doubt that these products are manufactured in these countries. The profiles(wood, or wood+aluminium) used in certified passive house windows come from German (Gutman, Holz Schiller, etc), Swiss (schweizer-metallbau, etc) or Austrian (Internorm, etc) industry. As for the triple-glazed glass, Swiss and german companies are actually leading in tems of performance (I think about Glastroesch or Isolar Glas or even the giant Saint-Gobain with its Climatop plus).

Of course, you do not have to trust me. I can only say that, because I live in Europe (France, Germany and Switzerland) , I have seen en real these high quality products.

Probably top quality products exist in the US. For example, the M.I.T has developped the Heat Mirror solution.

By: Bruce Burnworth

Bruce Burnworth — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:20:55 +0000

Interesting comments about products from China. There are many more products in your life that are made in China than you think. Sometimes you really need to do some research to find that a product or many parts of a product are actually made in China. Negative reactions to products from China have driven many suppliers to not openly reveal that their products or product components are made in China.

The windows I mentioned are actually sold in Germany as high quality German windows even though they are made in China with wood from Canada and hardware from Germany (that likely came from steel made in China – from scrap steel shipped from USA – from GM cars made for the most part in Mexico).

For information on CO2 for various transportation modes see: http://about.maersk.com/en/CorporateCitizenship/Environment%20Documents/Energy_consumption1.pdf

On the California coast the CO2 footprint of products from China is likely less than trucking products made on US East Coast.

We are part of one family that spans the entire globe.

We each have our priorities . . . peace bro . . .