Passive House, or Passivhaus as it is known in Europe, is a standard of construction that sets limits on energy consumption and air leakage. In reality Passive house isn’t really passive as they have active ventilation systems. It confuses everyone who has known about passive solar design since the seventies. Passive house is achieved through five key factors:
- An optimal level of thermal insulation
- High quality windows, usually triple glazed with insulated frames
- “thermal bridge” free construction (thermal bridges are weaknesses in the building envelopes that allow more heat to pass through than might be expected, e.g poorly insulated slab)
- An airtight building envelope, to reduce heat loss
- Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery
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