The Benefits of Passive House (Passivhaus)
Embrace the future of living with a Passive House (Passivhaus); a concept rooted in German innovation for air-tight, supremely insulated, high-performance homes. The passive house concept ensures your home is not just a place to live, but a sustainable building offering unmatched home comfort, energy efficiency, and environmental stewardship. Discover how the Passive House standards can transform your living experience into harmony with nature and significant energy savings.
Passive Design & Energy Efficiency
The concept of passive design focuses on optimising natural resources to maintain a comfortable indoor climate, which reduces reliance on artificial heating and cooling. While there are similarities to a passive solar design, passive house design requires meticulous planning to ensure effectiveness and maximum thermal comfort.
A crucial element is avoiding direct sunlight entering the home during summer. This involves strategic window placement, utilizing natural shade from trees, and installing awnings to reduce the impact of direct sunlight. Attention to design details like these is essential for achieving energy efficiency.
Depending on the house size and the number of sun-facing windows, it’s recommended to have a closed-system air-conditioning unit for additional heating or cooling on extreme days. However, the necessity of this system varies based on your design choices, including thermal insulation, window placement, and external shading.
Passive House Standard
A passive house takes the principles of passive design further, focusing on creating airtight, well-insulated buildings that maintain a stable indoor climate. The key features of the Passive House Standard include:
1. Airtightness: Achieved by using an airtight membrane around the entire building envelope, which prevents unwanted air leakage.
2. Insulation: High-quality insulation materials are used to minimise thermal bridges, which could otherwise transfer heat or cold from the outside.
3. High-Performance Windows and Doors: Specially designed to avoid thermal bridging and maintain indoor temperature.
4. Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (HRV): This system extracts stale air from rooms like the kitchen and bathrooms and replaces it with fresh air, transferring heat from the outgoing air to the incoming air and filtering it for pollutants like pollen and dust.
By utilising an HRV system, passive houses ensure a stable temperature and high indoor air quality. The design and construction of a passive house also have implications for window and door choices to maintain the building’s airtightness and insulation.
Choosing between a passive house and a passive solar design, or a more conventional energy-efficient build, depends on the size and orientation of your block, as well as your personal preferences, values, and budget.
Assistance from MK Building Solutions
MK Building Solutions is experienced in constructing both passive solar houses and passive houses. They can help you navigate the choices and decisions involved in building a sustainable home. Additionally, they can assist with any questions regarding passive house certification, which is awarded when the highest standards of design and construction are met, including achieving minimum air changes per hour through natural ventilation.
Why MK Building Solutions?
MK Building Solutions is a specialist in energy-efficient, custom-designed homes. We love building Passive Solar Designed houses.
We are driven by our commitment to energy-efficient homes, beautiful design, high-quality materials, and craftsmanship.
This results in long-term financial and well-being benefits for your family. Love The Home You're In ® is our motto, and we live by it.
For every house that we build, we’ll plant 1500 trees with the Eden Reforrestation Project.
Contact us today to discuss your project.
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Passive Solar Homes are well-known in Australia, and for good reasons. These houses are designed and built in such a way that they take maximum advantage of the sun and the orientation and location of the landscape. Learn more...
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Learn more about designing and building a sustainable house.
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Custom Energy-Efficient Homes offer a balance between energy efficiency and cost-effectiveness. These are ideal for lots and blocks that aren’t suitable for passive solar-designed homes.
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Frequently Asked Questions and Articles about Passive House
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A house is considered passive when it meets certain energy efficiency standards, requiring very little active heating or cooling to maintain comfortable living conditions. This is achieved through superior insulation, airtight construction, high-performance windows, thermal bridge-free design, and controlled (mechanical) ventilation. The goal is to minimise energy demand for heating and cooling, significantly reducing the home's carbon footprint.
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The concept of a Passive House, or Passivhaus, revolves around achieving ultra-low energy buildings that provide exceptional comfort and indoor air quality while using very little energy for heating and cooling. Originating from the Passive House Institute, this rigorous standard focuses on energy efficiency, sustainability, and creating a healthier living environment.
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One of the main disadvantages can be the higher initial cost due to the specialised materials and construction methods required. Additionally, the strict airtightness standards necessitate a mechanical ventilation system, which run as a ducted system throughout the house to supply filtered, fresh air. However, these initial investments often pay off in the long term through significantly reduced energy costs and a healthier indoor environment.
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The five principles of Passive House include:
Superinsulation to minimise heat and cooling loss,
Airtight building envelope to prevent drafts,
High-performance windows for optimal insulation,
Thermal bridge-free construction to eliminate points where heat or coldness is transferred,
Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) to ensure fresh air without energy loss.
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Yes, the Passive House standard is highly adaptable and works effectively in Perth’s climate. Australian Passive House Association actively promotes the standard, showcasing how these energy-efficient and comfortable homes can be achieved even in Australia's unique environmental conditions.
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Yes, you can open windows in a Passive House. While the homes are designed to be airtight for energy efficiency, occupants can open windows for natural ventilation as desired. The MVHR system ensures a continuous supply of fresh, filtered air, but the option to open windows allows for additional natural ventilation and personal comfort preferences.
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While both focus on energy efficiency, their approaches differ. A passive house uses a combination of airtight construction, superinsulation, and MVHR to minimise energy use for heating and cooling. Passive solar design, on the other hand, primarily uses the sun's energy for heating during winter, relying on the building's orientation, window placement, and thermal mass. Passive houses incorporate these solar design principles but apply them within the broader, stringent energy efficiency framework of the Passive House standard.