Energy Conservation in Buildings Using Passive House Certification.
Passive house is an advanced energy performance and ultimate comfort standard for both non-residential and residential building. A passive house is a structure that is considered to be the ultimately low energy or passive solar building. It is designed to particular limits regarding solar use for heating and insulation. The passive houses do not differ from other constructions. However, they differ on an account of energy standards that is clearly defined. They exhibit extremely low consumption of energy and high level of ultimate comfort (Feist et al., 2007). The requirement is met by ensuring proper planning as well as carefully executing details that are essential in the building of passive house constructions in order to avoid unnecessary complications. This ensures that high requirement for the building wrap and technology is met. These results to planners, designers and specialists’ need for more expertise which can be acquired and sustained with the passive house certification. This paper discusses passive houses sustainability and certification as a way of energy conservation.
Passive House Institute.
Green Passive Solar House Plans.
Sustainability. A passive house needs only 10 percent of the energy that is used in building thus saving a total of 90 percent. In oil heating, 1.5 liters per square meter are employed by passive houses. Taking an example of Bernhardt Passive Home, one of the Canadian Passive House Institute projects, it has a well-collaborated design, which enables the building and its environment to be affordable, comfortable and sustainable (CanPHI west, n.d). In warm climate rapid savings have been demonstrated where typical buildings need active cooling throughout the summer period. Passive house is a real alternative to conventional construction as energy savings equals to emission reduction. The passive houses do not require the cooling system on a standard scale. These means that instead of spending money on larger cooling and heating, the system can be dedicated to insulation, better windows, ventilation system and thicker insulation. According to the measurements taken from the first house built in Darmstadt, German 1991, it shows that indoor temperature consistently remained above 20 °C even when daily high temperatures have fallen to -14 °C, without the aid of conventional heating system. There was the slow heating demand that two light bulbs of 75W were enough to heat a room of 20m² (Feist, Pfluger, Kaufmann, Schnieders, and Kah, 2007). This evidently shows that passive house brings long-term energy saving in the planet’s dwindling non-renewable resources of energy in particular. This then concludes that passive houses are climatically and economically efficient.
Bernhardt Passive Home Victoria, BC
Certification of a passive house. Through the certification of the passive house, one is assured that the strength of quality requirement of the standard passive house is achieved. This Institute of Passive House certification is both for professionals and building components. Passive House certified designers, tradesperson and consultants have demonstrated their expertise by either working or by way of severe tests concerning the necessary knowledge for a passive house to ensure quality in their area of expertise throughout the execution of passive house and EnerPHit projects. Certified passive house components are facilitating the energetic and planning performance of buildings (Hernandez and Kenny, 2010). These certified passive houses and certified EnerPHit designations are attained only when an institute accredited building certifier has checked meticulously the design of a building which are the seals of the whole building’s quality.
Energy conservation in a passive house. The passive energy plan takes the advantage in the buildings’ site materials to minimize the use of energy. When a passive house is well-designed, it first reduces cooling and heating loads through energy efficiency strategies and this enables the house to meet those reduced part or full solar power charges. It is important to avoid oversized glasses facing south because of the heating small loads of modern houses. Energy cost-efficiency is the most efficient strategy for heating and cooling bills; this needs to be considered before one adds solar features to the new passive home design or already existing house. Experienced professionals in the energy, efficient home design and building are chosen. These professionals work together with an aim of optimizing home energy efficiency (Hernandez and Kenny, 2010). A home energy audit does the most cost-effective energy efficiency when modeling an already existing house.
Conclusion
In conclusion, construction of passive house building requires competent energy efficient experts; this enables low energy standards to be consciously developed further. The energy level is achieved through passive components such as insulation, thermal protection windows and heat recovery. The small ventilation that is in each passive house illustrates the contribution to climate protection and energy conservation despite the geographical or climate region. Passive Houses stay at a convenient temperature with low energy level inputs around the year. With these houses, there is an efficient use of the sun as they are heated passively (Hernandez and Kenny, 2010). Also there is internal heat recovery and heat sources making the conventional heat sources to be unnecessary even at the coolest winter periods. Passive houses take advantage of the cooling system techniques including strategic shading to maintain comfortably cool during the warmer months. Passive solar home design includes some essential elements that work together such as properly oriented windows, terminal mass, distribution mechanism and finally control procedures.
References
Hernandez, P., & Kenny, P. (2010). From net energy to zero energy buildings: Defining life cycle zero energy buildings (LC-ZEB). Energy and Buildings, 42(6), 815-821.
Feist, W., Pfluger, R., Kaufmann, B., Schnieders, J., &Kah, O. (2007). Passive house planning package 2007. Darmstadt: Passive House Institute.
CanPHI west, (n.d). Bernhardt Passive Home. Victoria, BC.Retrieved on 29th 3 2016from http://canphi.ca/projects/bernhardt_home/.