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Passivhaus

The International Passivhaus Standard is widely recognised as best practice to achieving low energy buildings.

Whilst new buildings can be designed using the principles, existing buildings are often constrained with thermal bridges, orientation, and difficult junctions to make airtight. For this reason, there is a second Passivhaus standard known as EnerPHit, which sets a heating demand value of 25kWh/m2 as opposed to 15kWh/m2 for Passivhaus. It also allows for a reduced airtightness target of 1 ACH @50Pa, compared to 0.6 for Passivhaus. This is still much lower than the limiting factor or notional building values in Part L, so represents a significant saving in energy costs. The benefits include healthier environments; better air quality; more comfortable temperature and acoustics; lower maintenance costs; no performance gap; and lower energy costs which leads to lower carbon emissions.

More information can be found at the Passivhaus Institute’s website: passivehouse.com

We can assist in achieving net zero carbon targets through our following services:

ECE has recently submitted planning for a new Passivhaus project in Worthing, you can read more about it here.

Patrick Osborne is our Head of Sustainability, responsible for the development, implementation and ownership of sustainable strategies at ECE, enhancing the environmental performance of our projects.

Being a Chartered Architect, Certified Passivhaus Designer and Retrofit Coordinator, Patrick brings unique technical knowledge to the practice and our clients.

He leads the building performance team at ECE, including Passivhaus heat loss evaluations, PSI value calculations, and reports on the optimisation of building fabric.

If you have any questions about our Passivhaus Designer services, please contact:

Patrick Osborne

E: posborne@ecearchitecture.com

T: 01903 248 777