Passive House Buildings

There is an evolution taking place in building developments called Passive housing or known by its native name passivhaus. What is so revolutionary about this type of development is that it cleverly enables residential and non residential buildings to be designed and constructed with an incredibly low energy input and output.

Since 2010, it has been recorded that there has been over 20,000 passive houses passed by the Passive House Institute. Due to the stringent requirements of designing and planning a passive house build, it must be coherent to specific energy demands for heating, cooling, hot water, ventilation, auxiliary electricity, lighting and any other electrical output.

In order for a non residential building to pass for Passive House certification, there are 25 documents necessary to comply with.

The Passivhaus criteria is designed around research and study of current commercial building performance. For more details and resources on passive housing builds in the UK, information is available at Passipedia and Passivhaus Institute.

Traits of a passive house build

• Based on the passive house certification a passive house will have:
• Fresh, clean air by tested parameters where by HEPA quality air is provided and maintained.
• With the high resistance to heat flow (high R-value insulation), there are no “outside walls” which are colder than other walls.
• Constant and consistent interior room temperature: All rooms are at the same room temperature as the rest of the passive house module.
• Slow temperature changes: with ventilation and heating systems switched off, a passive house typically loses less than 0.5 °C (1 °F) per day (in winter), stabilizing at around 15 °C (59 °F), however depending on climate.
• Quick return to normal temperature: opening windows or doors for a short time has only a limited effect; after apertures are closed, the air very quickly returns to the “normal” temperature.

About Cotaplan Passive Housing

Cotaplan are a passive house certifier. Cotaplans mission is to help projects, places and organisations find a low energy building design by being more actively aware of climate changes  and to move forward to reducing carbon footprints and other environmental challenges. For prices and quote on a non residential passive house, call Cotaplan 0800 7999049 .