IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v8y2016i1p97-d62557.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Building Fabric Thermal Performance of Passivhaus Dwellings—Does It Do What It Says on the Tin?

Author

Listed:
  • David Johnston

    (Centre for the Built Environment (CeBE) Group, Leeds Sustainability Institute, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds LS2 9EN, UK)

  • Mark Siddall

    (LEAP: Lovingly Engineered Architecture Process, Durham DH1 4HU, UK)

Abstract

The Passivhaus (or Passive House) Standard is one of the world’s most widely known voluntary energy performance standards. For a dwelling to achieve the Standard and be granted Certification, the building fabric requires careful design and detailing, high levels of thermal insulation, building airtightness, close site supervision and careful workmanship. However, achieving Passivhaus Certification is not a guarantee that the thermal performance of the building fabric as designed will actually be achieved in situ . This paper presents the results obtained from measuring the in situ whole building heat loss coefficient (HLC) of a small number of Certified Passivhaus case study dwellings. They are located on different sites and constructed using different technologies in the UK. Despite the small and non-random nature of the dwelling sample, the results obtained from the in situ measurements revealed that the thermal performance of the building fabric, for all of the dwellings, performed very close to the design predictions. This suggests that in terms of the thermal performance of the building fabric, Passivhaus does exactly what it says on the tin.

Suggested Citation

  • David Johnston & Mark Siddall, 2016. "The Building Fabric Thermal Performance of Passivhaus Dwellings—Does It Do What It Says on the Tin?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-14, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:1:p:97-:d:62557
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/1/97/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/1/97/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Schnieders, Jurgen & Hermelink, Andreas, 2006. "CEPHEUS results: measurements and occupants' satisfaction provide evidence for Passive Houses being an option for sustainable building," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 151-171, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ma, Zhiwei & Bao, Huashan & Roskilly, Anthony Paul, 2019. "Seasonal solar thermal energy storage using thermochemical sorption in domestic dwellings in the UK," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 213-222.
    2. Víctor Echarri-Iribarren & Cristina Sotos-Solano & Almudena Espinosa-Fernández & Raúl Prado-Govea, 2019. "The Passivhaus Standard in the Spanish Mediterranean: Evaluation of a House’s Thermal Behaviour of Enclosures and Airtightness," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-25, July.
    3. Rajat Gupta & Matt Gregg, 2021. "Integrated Testing of Building Fabric Thermal Performance for Calibration of Energy Models of Three Low-Energy Dwellings in the UK," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-24, March.
    4. Adrian Pitts, 2017. "Passive House and Low Energy Buildings: Barriers and Opportunities for Future Development within UK Practice," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-26, February.
    5. Camilo Bravo-Orlandini & José M. Gómez-Soberón & Claudia Valderrama-Ulloa & Francisco Sanhueza-Durán, 2021. "Energy, Economic, and Environmental Performance of a Single-Family House in Chile Built to Passivhaus Standard," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-15, January.
    6. Jihoon Jang & Sukumar Natarajan & Joosang Lee & Seung-Bok Leigh, 2022. "Comparative Analysis of Overheating Risk for Typical Dwellings and Passivhaus in the UK," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(10), pages 1-22, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Molinari, Marco & Anund Vogel, Jonas & Rolando, Davide & Lundqvist, Per, 2023. "Using living labs to tackle innovation bottlenecks: the KTH Live-In Lab case study," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 338(C).
    2. Wang, Ran & Lu, Shilei & Feng, Wei, 2020. "A three-stage optimization methodology for envelope design of passive house considering energy demand, thermal comfort and cost," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    3. Krzysztof Wąs & Jan Radoń & Agnieszka Sadłowska-Sałęga, 2020. "Maintenance of Passive House Standard in the Light of Long-Term Study on Energy Use in a Prefabricated Lightweight Passive House in Central Europe," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-22, June.
    4. Allard, I. & Olofsson, T. & Hassan, O.A.B., 2013. "Methods for energy analysis of residential buildings in Nordic countries," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 22(C), pages 306-318.
    5. Piccardo, C. & Dodoo, A. & Gustavsson, L. & Tettey, U.Y.A., 2020. "Retrofitting with different building materials: Life-cycle primary energy implications," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    6. Forde, Joe & Hopfe, Christina J. & McLeod, Robert S. & Evins, Ralph, 2020. "Temporal optimization for affordable and resilient Passivhaus dwellings in the social housing sector," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 261(C).
    7. Aydin, Yusuf Cihat & Mirzaei, Parham A. & Akhavannasab, Sanam, 2019. "On the relationship between building energy efficiency, aesthetic features and marketability: Toward a novel policy for energy demand reduction," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 593-606.
    8. Kylili, Angeliki & Ilic, Milos & Fokaides, Paris A., 2017. "Whole-building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of a passive house of the sub-tropical climatic zone," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 169-177.
    9. Georges, L. & Massart, C. & Van Moeseke, G. & De Herde, A., 2012. "Environmental and economic performance of heating systems for energy-efficient dwellings: Case of passive and low-energy single-family houses," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 452-464.
    10. Soršak, Marko & Leskovar, Vesna Žegarac & Premrov, Miroslav & Goričanec, Darko & Pšunder, Igor, 2014. "Economical optimization of energy-efficient timber buildings: Case study for single family timber house in Slovenia," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 57-65.
    11. Alejandro Moreno-Rangel & Tim Sharpe & Gráinne McGill & Filbert Musau, 2020. "Indoor Air Quality in Passivhaus Dwellings: A Literature Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(13), pages 1-16, July.
    12. Dalbem, Renata & Grala da Cunha, Eduardo & Vicente, Romeu & Figueiredo, Antonio & Oliveira, Rui & Silva, Antonio César Silveira Baptista da, 2019. "Optimisation of a social housing for south of Brazil: From basic performance standard to passive house concept," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 1278-1296.
    13. Michaela Makešová & Michaela Valentová, 2021. "The Concept of Multiple Impacts of Renewable Energy Sources: A Critical Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-21, May.
    14. Audenaert, A. & De Cleyn, S.H. & Vankerckhove, B., 2008. "Economic analysis of passive houses and low-energy houses compared with standard houses," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 47-55, January.
    15. Mishra, Pulak & Behera, Bhagirath, 2016. "Socio-economic and environmental implications of solar electrification: Experience of rural Odisha," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 953-964.
    16. Li, Xuesong & Li, Hao & Wang, Xingwu, 2013. "Farmers' willingness to convert traditional houses to solar houses in rural areas: A survey of 465 households in Chongqing, China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 882-886.
    17. Timmons, David & Konstantinidis, Charalampos & Shapiro, Andrew M. & Wilson, Alex, 2016. "Decarbonizing residential building energy: A cost-effective approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 382-392.
    18. Yvan Dutil & Daniel Rousse & Guillermo Quesada, 2011. "Sustainable Buildings: An Ever Evolving Target," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 3(2), pages 1-22, February.
    19. Víctor Echarri-Iribarren & Cristina Sotos-Solano & Almudena Espinosa-Fernández & Raúl Prado-Govea, 2019. "The Passivhaus Standard in the Spanish Mediterranean: Evaluation of a House’s Thermal Behaviour of Enclosures and Airtightness," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(13), pages 1-25, July.
    20. Kyung-Yong Park & Deok-Oh Woo & Seung-Bok Leigh & Lars Junghans, 2022. "Impact of Hybrid Ventilation Strategies in Energy Savings of Buildings: In Regard to Mixed-Humid Climate Regions," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-20, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:8:y:2016:i:1:p:97-:d:62557. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.