Hi, haven't seen the Video trough, but I would like to tel you and your audience, that this is my 4th winter in my passive house, and one thing is the energy consumption, but the best of al is the comfort of it, no cold rooms, no cold corners, in my living room I have big windows 5 windows h240xw160 cm, that gives a lot of light, but no cold corners or discomfort caused by different temperatures. I did install water based heated floors, but never used them as there is no need. To follow up, I do work as a technicall consultant, doing a lot of work for the municipality, when they construct schools and institutions, and it has now been the norm to construct passiv houses, and for the next project we are heading towards Plus house, the house itself produces enough energy to offset its own use AND the energy used for construction... And this is in Norway, a cold country just showing that this is absolutely possible...

@bluceree7312

3 жыл бұрын

Very good. Would the same or similar Plus house technology work in hot countries as well for cooling?

@edmirfin8498

3 жыл бұрын

@@bluceree7312 not OP, but in the US air conditioning is 10% of energy demand in buildings while heating is 50%. In addition to that, locations that are hotter will have longer days for increased solar.

@raiderrob672

3 жыл бұрын

Do you have any links to Plus house tech?

@oleeide9763

3 жыл бұрын

@@raiderrob672 Hi, I'll look in to it, just a quick Google search gave mostly Norwegian articles, but I'll give it a go later to find something in English..

@bluceree7312

3 жыл бұрын

@@edmirfin8498 I know I know, but It could be that the tech for heating is different than for cooling, that's all. The US climate is temperate compared to a lot of places tropics around the Equator. I'm just thinking about a global solution that works everywhere.

I love the injected humor, "If you were to seal the building hermetically and sit inside for a few days, you would find yourself eventually being dead."

@MS-hd8yq

3 жыл бұрын

Which would be unfortunate 😂

@grevberg

3 жыл бұрын

Not a bit of it! All you need is a ventilation system that uses a 90% effective heat exchanger.

@williamarmstrong7199

3 жыл бұрын

We have a Gread Dane with an iffy very niffy tum. As airtight as our house is, frequently the windows are wide open!

@kiae-nirodiaries1279

3 жыл бұрын

@@williamarmstrong7199 We used to have a beagle like that, she could clear a room in seconds.

@jeremyratcliff1875

3 жыл бұрын

No Bonnie my dear !! MVHR is the answer. Mechanical ventilation heat recovery system to the uninitiated. It makes living in one of these super insulated houses filled with fresh air

Folks like myself, who are planning on building our forever retirement home, are very well served by this video - but if I was 20 years younger (yeah, if ONLY!!) I'd be desperate to see a video on refitting passive-house technologies to an existing house. PLEASE DO cover this if at all possible!!!

@edmirfin8498

3 жыл бұрын

This is something I'm concerned with. It's not cost effective unfortunately. You can perform an energy audit, which is a blower door test to find out where you are loosing air, and taking a look at the insulation. A lot of old homes will have 6 inches of insulation where the standard now (in the US at least) is 12. Those steps are cost effective, but getting to a passive house requires thought at the building stage such as orienting your house facing south, and installing overhangs on the windows. In the winter light gets in but in the summer the sun is high and the overhangs block the light. South facing houses will get more light on their roof as well so solar production is increased.

@timvonr2802

3 жыл бұрын

Rather go for an aktive house. It’s more cost effective to tackle the main problem zones like (i hope the translation is right) between floor cover... retorfit in my expirance never works for passive house, because of airconditioning and you will face mould issue... Having it on a low energy standard with active photovoltaic and a heat pump system (best ground) should do a lot better.

@paperburn

3 жыл бұрын

Joseph W. Lstiburek read his book that is for your environment, each heat / humidity zone is different. Best 40 bucks I spent, but if you can not afford that his KZread videos will guide your way. my house is all electric and bills run 80 to a 100 dollars a month year around. eastern NC

@instanoodles

3 жыл бұрын

To get an idea of what you are dealing with (moisture and vapour control, risks of exterior insulation and moisture damage on your sheathing because of it) Look up Keeping The Heat In by Natural Resources Canada, it goes over everything you need to consider and how to retrofit insulation in older houses. You wont get net zero but you can get 80% or more of the way there.

@treescape7

3 жыл бұрын

Look up EnerPHit standard which is the retrofit version of PH. But why not build? I'm 62 and have recently completed our self build PH. No one over the age of 60 should have to live in anything other than a passivhaus!

Yes, please DO a full video on Passive House retrofit !

@cclambie

3 жыл бұрын

Second that

@MrMagnus

3 жыл бұрын

Yes please

@robe1937

3 жыл бұрын

I would love a video passive house retro fit. I’ve been looking at a partial install of a heat recovery ventilation system for ages, but finding good reliable evidence, or best practices is difficult and full of anecdotes. Also considered renting thermal imaging camera to identify cold spots in house some of ehich can probably be fixed easily and cheapily like the electricity meter box.

@Wookey.

3 жыл бұрын

@@robe1937 I started with a thermal survey to see where the obvious issues were. Sealed up holes and did IWI and EWI (EWI all round is better and what I would do if starting now, but it does cost more). Fitted MVHR part-way through when it seemed airtight enough that it would work. For MVHR spiral steel pipe is cheapest to buy and thus DIY but it's a PITA. I'd recommend the ubbink semi-rigid system with plenums. Much easier to fit and calculate pipe sizes, but costs a bit more. Excellent advice here: www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/

@nallebrean

3 жыл бұрын

My quick fix would be to: 1. Install an efficient heat recovery system in your ventilation system. 2. Change 1 glas windows to better. 3. Install a geothermal heating system or similar with 100% coverage 4. Add solar cell to your roof 5. Improve insulation if you are not satisfied. HVAC recovery give approx 25 % of total energy use, the geothermal system cut the remaining 75% to 20-25%. 😊

"Building a passive house used to be regarded as an expensive indulgence for very wealthy people but 30 years..." later building any house is regarded as an expensive indulgence for very wealthy people

@Wookey.

3 жыл бұрын

Your point is well-taken about the general problem of housing cost, but it's worth remembering that building a house is a great cheaper than buying a finished one, and people who build their own houses build _much_ better houses than housebuilders do. So things like self-build plots in developments provide a real opportunity for people to get better housing for less money if they are prepared to put in the work (it's a lot of work). We don't do anything lie enough of this in the UK: it's a rarity and should be absolutely normal as it is in many other countries.

@user-nf9xc7ww7m

3 жыл бұрын

I prefer active houses. The ones that go for a jog and I have to catch up, get in, and put in park 😋

@ukrytykrytyk8477

3 жыл бұрын

@@Wookey. I moved to UK from a country where self-build is much more widespread and accessible than in the UK. And you're right saying that generally houses built like that are far better than what there is available from the big house builders. Less options (less competition) to purchase anything means higher prices and lower quality which is exactly what UK housing is like. I remember reading the article few years back about the issue: google "How Does Self Build in the UK Compare to Germany?" and see for yourself.

@apacheattackhelicopter8185

3 жыл бұрын

This is actually the norm though. Owning a personal house has always been the privilege of the wealthy, just by virtue of how expensive it is to build and maintain and how much land it takes. The working class has always lived in apartment blocks. Just because in some countries like the USA there was a period when everybody could buy a house, doesn't mean it's the new norm now.

@laur-unstagenameactuallyca1587

3 жыл бұрын

Apache Attack Helicopter maybe the norm in the West since the 20th century... before that idk. And definitely not in other regions of the world. Ancient Kenyans self-built their houses with community support and even the poorest would have a house. I assume it was similar to that elsewhere in Africa and probably elsewhere in the rest of the world - even Europe too back in the days.

We're building a 4-unit sustainable development to "near-Passivhause" standards meaning we won't dot every "i" and we won't get certified, but we'll achieve roughly equivalent performance. The units will be 1000 to 1300 sf, and each unit will have a charging station for 1 or 2 EVs. Fossil fuel vehicles will not be able to park on-site. We will draw day-time solar energy from the grid, and are lobbying our rural electric cooperative to make stored solar and wind available for night-time power. All power will be electric meaning no natural gas or propane-powered accessories. We hope that our local building codes will be updated to incentivize this kind of building. We only have a decade to get very near net-zero, so we hope our project will kick-start this kind of development state-wide. We also very much want to see your comments on retro-fitting existing housing stock and appliances to passivhaus standards.

@adamolivertischner3329

3 жыл бұрын

Hi. I'm a fresh grad HVAC engineer from Hungary where retro-fitting plays a major role. So I try to do my best to give some general advice for retro-fitting. The important objective is to make the most change with the least amount of cost so it can be easily implemented. Better insulation sound like a great plan, but it's important to keep in mind that over insulated buildings with a poorly controlled heating system will not decrease but instead increase the consumption. Either the residents will open the windows and waste energy and/or the system will be turned on and off to compensate. The same if the system becomes oversized. When you change the system to heat-pump look for systems that would meet the EU-s strict regulation, cuz freon-like substances do more harm than the heat-pump do good. Ground-based are the best if it's not limited, important to note that the ground is more like a battery than an unlimited source, important to pump heat back from the building or from solar. Air-water heat pumps are also efficient and cheaper. The main problem that is needed to be kept in mind is the noise hazard. Here were a few legal cases because that noise bothered the neighbors. Also, heat pumps need a heat puffer tank if the system isn't large enough, for defrost. Considering the recent cold front in the US a puffer tank is a life changer. At last, water usage is also important, water-saving taps and toilets are really inexpensive nowadays which can save a large amount of water and heat energy. I doubt I need to mention the benefits of PVs and solar thermal units. P.S.: I love your plan and hope it will work out as planned.

I have built beyond Passivhaus standards for 22 years all over the world and you have included a house we built in France many years ago. We tend to build using screwpiles with a frame on top. Airtightness is key and every designer omits an 'airlock' .. i.e. a vestibule or porch. It can take several hours to recover the envelope with an open door. We build with SIPs and use aerogel as a gasket in the detail. We have developed transparent aerogel for use in the void in double glazing. Passive hrv is now very affordable. A house built with SIPs of 72m2 beyond Passivhaus should cost less than £60k with reasonable fittings such as kitchen, bathroom, etc. In northern countries we use a simple air pump and a barometer to test airtightness. Passivhaus is easy to achieve using our techniques.All free to 'Just have a think' community.

It certainly would be unfortunate to "find yourself becoming dead" after sitting inside a hermetically sealed building for a few days. I love the content. Thank you and keep up the great work.

A few points: 1) Cupboards and closets and other storage spaces can work as an extra layer if they are on the outside wall. 2) The "story and a half" style design has less surface area per unit volume than many others. 3) "Titanium white" walls reflect nearly 100% of light back into the room decreasing the need for power in the lighting. 4) Drapes and curtains on windows work to somewhat decrease the loss through them. Rolling shutters do a lot more. You crank them down at night and you have less loss via the window. 5) "sun tubes" work well to bring in light. 4) In a basement, "fake windows" can make the space look more like an above ground space and let you use it more as living space.

Thank you so much for covering a passive house overview. Do realize in the United States that home construction industry at Large has not embraced it to the point of making a difference or even being on the radar. Passive houses built here are done at a tremendous effort of the homeowner and very daring partners to move the needle. Videos like yours will help, enlarging the discussion. Thank you for making all the videos you do.

This makes total sense not many people can do their own "grand design" but governments must make developers build to passive house standards.

@peterjohnstaples

3 жыл бұрын

Like on the streets in Dem run California Tiny little houses, tents and bedrolls all on Government property. Why do Dem's wild good intensions always turn to shit.

@pauladams1829

3 жыл бұрын

@@peterjohnstaples Two different debates! There's arguments between different forms of government left/right etc And there's technical arguments about the most efficient way to power our homes and businesses. Many people even those with rightwing political views are seeing the inevitability of a renewable energy future.

Seriously you are the best on KZread. I cannot afford at present to be a patron, unfortunately. When I have the resources, I will. Please keep this up to help save our wildlife and our planet...

Talk about a timely topic for me. I have learned just recently that, hey, I'd really benefit right now from having a passive house. We recently took out our gas furnace and gas water heater and put in heat pump versions instead. Wow!!!!!! It takes gobs and gobs of energy to heat a 1950s built house in Cache Valley, Utah. Take my house, please, and retrofit it to the passive house standard right away. Yes, you're right and, when we were using gas to heat our home, we were already using gobs and gobs of energy, but it just didn't register to my mind. We were so used to taking gas heat as granted, I didn't think of it much. But now, when I check my data logger and see that we've used 50 kW-hr in one day just for heating, the reality seems more immediate to me. And I've realized that I need to change my plan a bit. I had been thinking step 1, electrify everything and step 2 put in more solar panels. But there's no way I'm going to get 50 kW-hr a day from solar panels during a Cache Valley winter. Right now, the plan is to look into retrofitting a 1950s home up to passive home standards. Yes, that would be expensive to do, but think of it. One expenditure of retrofitting a 1950s home to passive home standards would purchase up to 50 kW-hr of energy per day forever after. That's even a better deal than solar panels.

I wanna build my own passiv home in the future, two actually. Thats one of my life's goals. Thank you for making this video! Youre like a really knowledgeable friend ,I love listening to your videos.

At last, after a long time struggling to understand most of his videos, this one is my bag, being an architectural technologist. I have been all for passive houses ever since going to college in the late 80’s, but trying to convince other colleagues and friends to use these processes is like pulling teeth.

@notlessgrossman163

3 жыл бұрын

The client stakeholders and architect must be on the same page. The same with LEED rating it is only the rare client who will demand the extra cost they think is associated with the better design. If they understand that future longevity and operating costs are linked to good design choices, the the attitudes might change.

@Wookey.

3 жыл бұрын

Enraging isn't it? PH is so bloody obvious we should all have been doing it for at least a decade already, but housebuilders lobby against any improvement in building regs, and buyers have no idea they could have much nicer buildings that were incredibly cheap to run. I've enerphited mine, but it would be _so_ much easier to do this with a new building rather than try to retrofit.

@recklessroges

3 жыл бұрын

Almost every time I see a new slab being poured it makes me sad. (They are still pouring insufficiently insulted slabs, and avoiding foundation pillar designs to prioritise ease of breeze block construction over environmental concerns.) Also roofs need to be larger to collect more water and to reduce maintenance of walls.

@IDann1

3 жыл бұрын

@@recklessroges I know,my good friend and colleague is having is house extended,I managed to convince him to put in twice the insulation in is slab.. he's an excellent engineer but a bit of a dinosaur. It doesn't help that house insulation is over priced,I mean it's only foil backed foam.

@Wookey.

3 жыл бұрын

@@IDann1 Insulation itself is very cheap in comparison to building costs. Butting in 200mm rather than 100mm is a tiny cost increment (my extension cavity is 200mm with ancon basalt cavity ties and a foamglass (perinsul) thermal break at slab level, plus 200mm XPS under the slab. Those upgrades over standard came to a few hundred quid in a 40-grand extension cost. 100mm PUR sheets seem to have almost tripled in price in the 12 years I've been doing this, so lower-embodied carbon materials look much less expensive in comparion.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. In Australia the problem is reversed as the hot weather is more of a problem. It amazes me that every trip to Melbourne I see whole suburbs with black concrete tiled roofs brown bricks and no verandas. Put on a galvanised iron roof and a full veranda and reduce your air conditioning needs to near zero.

@lexiecrewther7038

3 жыл бұрын

Join us at CLIMATE RESISTANT HABITATS Facebook group

Another excellent summary, thanks Dave.

I built and lived in my passive solar home for seven years. Built with recycled materials the south facing windows were single pane so panels were used when temperatures went below freezing. The secret to comfort and efficient heating from the sun is mass ! The right amount in floors and walls.The fresh air was brought in by wood stove, less than one cord per year. Healthy and happy at 70 Happy New Year everyone.

Thanks for your interesting videos, I would be interested in a video about retro fitting an older house. .

Merry Christmas to all you Thinkers out there! 🎄❤

@jimbanda

3 жыл бұрын

+1 🎄🎄🎄👍🙏❤️

@JustHaveaThink

3 жыл бұрын

Merry Christmas :-)

I've been reading about passive building for a long time now. It really the way to go. It's been within our reach to build houses and workspaces that uses so much less energy. Thanks for the covering the topic. It's great to see it really starting to breach the commercial side. That is the tipping point. When I starting researching it, it was only a few "headcases" that were doing this kind of building. And it's wonderful to see how much it's spread in the last fifteen years.

Don't forget your southern hemisphere friends. We use north facing for sunlight.

@JustHaveaThink

3 жыл бұрын

Fair comment!

@jatomo

3 жыл бұрын

When I started researching passive house I watched a video where they pointed out a north exposure as a good one. I was perplexed for a good 5 minutes :-) Yep, video source was Australian.

@tzenophile

3 жыл бұрын

We should call it equator-facing...

@Bob_Lob_Law

3 жыл бұрын

Well. The southern hemisphere is of little importance. The only notable developed nation is Australia, and it is hot all the time. Most of the southern hemisphere is hot. Christmas and winter really is a North American/European thing. Thus, thermal efficiency in cold weather is from the viewpoint of the north.

@tzenophile

3 жыл бұрын

@@Bob_Lob_Law You need to go back to troll school. Your teachers there would not be impressed.

My mom just sent me this video, and I showed my husband (a carpenter who'll be building our house in the spring) and holy, we're almost right on par with a lot of these things.. we talked about triple pane glass windows with argon filling.... I think it's really cool to spread to word about this though, because we did a lot of research for it, where as here it's all in one location. Thanks so much! :)

This is the best channel on KZread... Thank you for another excellent video.

I discovered your channel some time ago. I'm impressed by the substance of your content, the topics you cover and the way you transfer your well-documented knowledge. Definitely considering becoming a patron. Thank you very much, I can't understand why you don't have more subscribers.

@JustHaveaThink

3 жыл бұрын

Cheers Gandalf. I really appreciate that. All the best. Dave

Our house here in Bergen, Norway is just about to be finished, after the latest regulations (TEK17) and what I can see is that it is a step down from a truly passive house. It's quite airtight, with thick isolation, 3 layer windows, ventilation system with heat exchanger, AC unit mostly for heating ... What it's missing though is a water based heating system with air to water heat pump. It wouldn't save me a lot on the heating itself (since I'll use air to air heat pump for heating) but it would make a significant difference on the tap water heating. However, the astronomical price and hidden cost (maintenance of air to water heat pump and life expectancy) was way more than I could gain from it

@oleeide9763

3 жыл бұрын

Hei, se kommentaren min over, det er en del forskjell på Tek17 og passivhus etter NS3700/3701. prinsippene er de samme, men det kreves bare enda mer isolasjon, enda tettere byggningskropp, enda høyere virkningsgrad på ventilasjonsaggtegat osv.. Men uansett er det glimrende at lovverket nærmer seg..

@lovrorb

3 жыл бұрын

@@oleeide9763 Ja, selvfølgelig, det er et steg fra passivt hus, det nærmer seg og neste TEK blir kanskje et steg i riktig retning. Isolasjon på yttervegger hos meg er 200 mm og selv om vi har 350 mm i selve taket er det ikke nok for å kale det et passivt hus. Tomannsbolig på 2 plan i mitt tilfelle. Mitt ventilasjonsanlegg (Save VTR 250) har termisk virkningsgrad på 81%, høres bra ut men ikke sikkert om det oppnår kravet til passivt hus? jeg leste din kommentar og du sier at du har vannbåren varme installert men du aldri brukte den??? Litt merkelig siden det koster 200 -300k kr! :) Bruker du luft til luft varmepumpe til oppvarming da og luft til vann til oppvarming av forbrukvann? Jeg synes at vannbåren varme er rett og slett ikke verdt investering!

@oleeide9763

3 жыл бұрын

@@lovrorb Hei igjen, Først vil jeg gratulere deg med nytt hus :-) Moderne Tek 17 hus gir glimrende bokomfort, så du har absolutt noe å se fram til. Når det gjelder min installasjonen av vannbåren varme så kostet det ikke meg så mye da jeg gjorde mesteparten av arbeidet selv. Som oppvarming bruker jeg en varmepumpe og noe solvarme som forvarmer tappevann og noe gulvvarme i underetg og dette gir varme nok i hele huset, men planen er på sikt å koble til resten av huset da særlig badene hvor det nå er varmekabler som holder lunk i disse gulvene. Og foresten din Save 250 har en gjenvinningsgrad over kravet for passivhus som er på 80% :-). Fin artikkel på Tekna om passivhus finner du her: www.tekna.no/fag-og-nettverk/bygg-og-anlegg/byggbloggen/krav-til-passivhus/

@lovrorb

3 жыл бұрын

@@oleeide9763 Med gulvvarme i underetasjen mener du varmekabler eller vann? :) Å ja, planen er å få vannbåren varme i hele huset? Da jeg ba utbyggeren om pris var de ikke særlig interesserte i å montere den, og de ville ikke at jeg legger rør under gulv selv. Den artikkelen har jeg egentlig lest tidligere i dag, den kom først da jeg googlet passivhus :) Plus hus? Det er noe jeg skal undersøke litt

Hi, we collectively built a passive house for 11 families in Berlin and moved in almost 5 years ago. We have a water-warer heat pump going 70m into the ground and solar panels on the roof, also a floor heating system we rarely use, we only turn on when the temperature approches 0 degrees outside. Most of the energy is used for warm water, so a heating support in the form of solar panels warming up water could be an enhancement, also a battery. The climate inside is very comfortable, due to the ventilation the air is always fresh and pre-warmed from the heat exchange. All in all a really great system.

@lexiecrewther7038

3 жыл бұрын

Please join us at CLIMATE RESISTANT HABITATS Facebook group

Sir, you are doing a great job. Thanks for creating this channel.

Clear and succinct. Thanks a lot!

Thanks for another informative video. I'd very much like to see one on retro-fitting.

I am building an energy-efficient house - close to PH standards in Canada, zone 6. Started planning with 100% PH standards and modified some due to various efficiencies. House is built on an EPS insulated slab with in-floor glycolic heating, walls include 6" studs with blown-in cellulose insulation, 3 ply PH windows and doors, Lifebreath HRV and Daiken ductless heat pump serves as AC. Since there is no city water and well water is bad due to high content of iron, a dug-in water cistern with dual rain gathering system (filtrated for drinking etc and infiltrated for WC plumbing) will be our water source. Interior components are planned to be reused from commercial demolitions since as an Interior Architect I have access to these unlimited precious 'debris': interior doors, wood panels, lighting, etc. One level house is fully inclusive, no high door thresholds or narrow spaces, accessible by wheelchair anywhere. I fully agree with another 'Canadian' comment, that in our country we build a way to oversized houses. Instead, spending these cost on better energy coherence and interior comfort will bring future benefits for everyone.

Excellent video - such a great subject to explore thank you!

Whoa…! You've given us lots of links to check out. I commented in Patreon. Thanks, Dave! Have a Happy New Year!

Great video. I am a certified passive haus tradesperson and a professional engineer. This is the future. Tho, the one thing we need to keep in mind is embodied carbon. By super insulating with more material that has to offset operational carbon that extra insulation will save. More research around LCA is needed to do a net present value of the carbon emissions the building with have from cradle to grave.

Thanks! Always great information!

Great video!! Thanks for including Australia in your links! I’m building in the next few months and will factor in these concepts

Thanks Dave for highlighting these essential solutions to our energy conundrum. Retrofits may be all important too, a great follow up video!

Very well explained

We live in Australia, which is WAY behind the rest of the OECD in terms of dealing with climate change, as you all probably already know. However, we built our house in 2002 with basic passive house design in mind, eg increased insulation in the walls and ceilings, thermal mass with concrete slab floors, putting the garage and utilities (laundry, bathrooms / toilets, courtyard with shade trees on the western side; ventilation through east / west louvred windows; awnings and patios around the house, to name just a few basic design features and I am still amazed to this day how temperate the house is compared to outdoor temperatures at all times of the year. We went the whole hog and put 6KW solar system on the roof and our quarterly electricity bill is about $150. This didnt cost us more than building the average home, relying as we did on design principles rather than things like double glazing, which should be industry standard. There is no political will in Australia to tackle climate change so it falls onto individuals like ourselves to follow the pathway to passive house building. It really works.

@apacheattackhelicopter8185

3 жыл бұрын

>We live in Australia, which is WAY behind the rest of the OECD in terms of dealing with climate change, as you all probably already know Is this a joke? Australia is one of the leaders in OECD in terms of renewable energy and energy storage per capita, if not the leader.

Ya do more on this, I’ve been interested in passive homes since the first one I saw in the 60’s.

@jatomo

3 жыл бұрын

You are talking about US experiments back in the 60s. They failed because no MHRV was available at that time. That was fixed in 1991 by Dr. Feist from german Passive House Institute.

retrofitting old Homes please?

I do love your videos, and they way you present information is amazing. XD

As a Passive House Architect and builder I’ve been saving this one to give it due concentration. Excellent presentation and a testament to the quality of this channel, couldn’t fault it. Although if I was being pedantic I’d say it was Northern Hemisphere centric in that we down under face our glazing North for solar gain 😁 love your work! Another way to say it is face your glass towards the equator for solar gain.

Mr. Borlace, started watching your videos a few months ago and would like to commend you on the consistently well researched and interesting content. As someone working in architecture I'm happy to see you discuss the building industry. Passivhaus is important to reduce the operating energy of buildings, and from many of the comments I've read is a huge boon to quality of life. But it's only part of the story, embodied carbon which I find is a relatively neglected topic accounts for about 11% of global carbon emissions. There's been a lot of interesting developments in this space recently to try to find low carbon alternatives to the concrete, steel and petroleum based insulation that makes up so much of our built environment. Cross laminated timber is one of the most exciting to me, as it is starting to be used in high rises as an alternative to steel/concrete, with (just like passivhaus) myriad co-benefits independent of its lower carbon footprint. While I'm sure you have a huge backlog of projects, I'd love to see an exploration of this topic!

Something else that would help lowering the CO2 emissions is building with wood instead of concrete and metal. That way lots of CO2 is stored in the wood instead of being emitted when producing the steel and the concrete. Fast growing tree varieties like Poulownia are well suited for this purpose.

@lexiecrewther7038

3 жыл бұрын

1. Poulownia is expensive 2. Wood burns 3. Fire exists (in the future growing forests of flammable material will be impossible, and then illegal) 4. Only concrete has the strength and comfort that will suit the climate conditions of the future

Great video as always 👍 Thanks for sharing your knowledge to all of us 👍😊 And happy holidays to you and your family 👍💖😀

@JustHaveaThink

3 жыл бұрын

Thank you too. Happy holidays!

Great to see Matt Risinger reference. I learnt everything I know about insulation from him

Thank you, very important subject. Well presented.

I'm in the industry, and your presentation is spot on

I guess it would be impossible to bring old houses up to passivhaus standards but having lived in ‘modern’ houses in the UK and now a very old stone house in France I know which comes closest. Most UK houses are built with a cavity wall between two layers of brick. The cavity in the 1960s house I grew up in was not filled, today they are mostly filled with foam blocks or retrofitted with foam blown in. Most roofs do not have sufficient insulation but this is an ‘easy win’ to reduce waste and hence Co2 emission. My experience of UK houses is that they get really hot and stuffy in the summer whereas our stone house here stays amazingly cool even in the 30c plus summers we get here. When we renovated the house here we doubled up on the French insulation regs and fitted the most efficient wood burners we could afford. There is no gas or oil heating but there is a lot of forest coppicing done every 20 years, followed by rapid re-growth. Wood is mostly sweet chestnut, hazel, hornbeam and acacia.

Yes, please a full video on Passive House retrofit

Awesome video! Thanks!

Thank you! keep up the great work!

Great video so much great information...thanks

This excites me so very much..

We have been doing this for the last 1000 years with the natural plants available here in Assam, India.

@SimonPilepich

3 жыл бұрын

*citation needed

@saurangadas

3 жыл бұрын

@@SimonPilepich Assam is used to frequent earthquakes and heavy rain causing flood almost every year. Nobody knows who is the first to use those materials to built houses, but the traditional houses of Assam are very effective against earthquakes, moisture and also the walls are very good insulators and fire resistant. Materials used are various types of locally available materials mainly different types of plants. Even the british were shocked when so many houses survived the great earthquakes of 1897 and also 1950 whereas the british built houses were broken. Am not sure if you find any research paper on it but to know about it, you should visit Assam and check for yourself.

@SimonPilepich

3 жыл бұрын

@@saurangadas I've had a quick look at it and I can't see any evidence that Assam has a history of well insulated buildings. From what I can see they use lightweight materials and are barely insulated if at all.

@saurangadas

3 жыл бұрын

@@SimonPilepich let me describe you how its made. The inner material is a bamboo like plant which is hollow inside. Diameter around 1.5-2cm I don't know its english name. The plant is dried and then used. Some people also use woven bamboo but the earlier is more effective for insulation. Above that clay mixed with organic fibers is used to cover the wall from both side. This acts as fiber reinforced composite to provide strength to the wall. The last step varies. Some use clay with cow dung and some organic extracts to repel pests and give it a clean finish. Later some people also started using lime powder with clay to give the finish. The walls and ceiling structures are from wood. It divides the wall and ceiling into smaller parts to form the main structure. All these smaller parts are then filled to form the house using the 3 steps I mentioned above.

@SimonPilepich

3 жыл бұрын

@@saurangadas I appreciate all of this and acknowledge the benefits of low impact ecological building technology. It is not what is being demonstrated in this video however. The two ideas can work together but are definitely distinct

I have been renovating and highly insulating my old houses for 10 years now transitioning them from natural gas heating to renewably powered electricity. The 1910 house and 1914 house both had to have their crawlspaces dug out for wiggle room so I could install R35 floor insulation. Big job but together with R100 attic insulation and thin film plastic on all the old windows this allowed me to remove the central natural gas heaters. I am now building thermal mass electric heated tiled floor slabs for silent, gentle and even heating. Focus on high insulation first though. Before I started the old 1910 house was cold and uninhabitable after 20 minutes if the natural gas heater was turned off in the fall when 0C outside. Now after installing insulation the internal temperature declines from 20C to 10C over 8 hours when all heat is turned off when 0C outside. High insulation works! I am also scaling up my 6x6 foot solar heater with 95C of heat output when sunny. So far it works really well for heating which is why I am scaling it up.

Always good to have a think

Excellent video, brilliant channel 😎

Could you make a video on how different package materials compare in terms of CO2 emissions and re-use and -cycleability? Seems to me thats one big point, where we could easily cut back, without sacrificing much. Thank you very much for your work, I appreciate your calm and fact based presentations.

I believe hemp concentrate is brilliant insulation and mostly natural product !

@guff9567

3 жыл бұрын

Typical ippi

@PupuTheMonkey

3 жыл бұрын

Very flammable, though. Most insulation is designed to slow heat exchange as well as slow the rate at which a fire will spread in the event one starts.

@christopherellis2663

3 жыл бұрын

Flax is even better

@Wookey.

3 жыл бұрын

There are lots of natural insulants: woodfibre, hempcrete, wool. They are all good, and generally much lower embodied carbon but higher purchase price than oil/plastic insulants. This is partly scale and partly lack of carbon pricing. Energy usage dominates here so it's OK to make your passivehouse with EPS because that's a lot cheaper and more forgiving to build and detail in wet countries. But it really is better to use the carbon-negative products is you have any budget flexibility.

@barbarasmith6005

3 жыл бұрын

Passive House builders in the U.S. are using a lot of Rockwool. The manufacture of it uses a lot of natural gas, though.

Great to see interest growing for Passiv Haus building , I am in Greece trying to build one , its difficult to find anyone who has even heard of it , let alone build one .

You dont need to go this crazy, passive homes are great but they consume a lot of materials to get there. 1' in foam on the outside, 2x6 walls, totally insulated basement (walls and slab), R60 attic, casement windows, heat pump clothes dryer and an air leakage value under 1.0 ACH50. Use high efficient cold weather heat pumps and you will be 85% the way to net zero at a more reasonable cost and it uses far less materials which many of are not that environmentally friendly (spray foams, XPS foam boards) I have done this to my 70s house in eastern Canada and 2 heat pumps provide the heat to my house but I have backup resistance heaters. When I bought it the previous owners used about 60Gj of natural gas to heat the place a year, I now use about 1500kWh to heat my house (~5Gj). In fact I use about 16,000kWh a year (~58Gj) to heat, cool, power my house as well as all the electricity for driving my EV. Once I get solar I expect to be able to produce about 11,000kWh so not quite net zero but pretty damn close. This whole process has shown me just how fucked we are, it has taken a lot of work, money and personal knowledge to get to this point. I just don't see how we could ever get enough of Canada's housing stock retro fitted enough to be able to run on renewables in the winter. If we cant do that then the electricity used to heat our inefficient homes has to be green but that wont be happening with wind, solar and storage. Those alone would make electricity unaffordable for people, you would be looking at 30 -40kWh's a day for resistive heating at 30c/kWh at least, people would freeze or go bankrupt. The more I have dug into what it takes to be "carbon neutral" the more I am resigned to the fact that it cant be done without nuclear, or at least it cant be done in northern climates where the sun sucks for half the year and you have to heat your house.

@Kevin_Street

3 жыл бұрын

Great comment, alex bob! I'm really interested in your point of view, since we share the same country and it sounds like you've put of lot of thought into this issue, and acquired a lot of experience along the way. I agree that for the vast majority of us who live in non-passive houses, retrofitting to get 85% of the way to net zero is a much better solution than building new homes, and I'm really interested in these heat pumps you mentioned. Would it really be so hard to retrofit if there was more of a social movement behind increasing our energy efficiency? Home solar panels used to be very difficult to get, but with increased awareness and demand new industries were created to make the installation process easier. (Aided by government grants, of course.) Maybe the same thing could be done with insulation and heat pumps to increase the energy efficiency of older housing stock.

@martyschrader

3 жыл бұрын

Sadly, the nuke bottles are the most obvious stopgap. Here in Illinois (the States) we have about 90% of our zotz generated from nuke supplies. [Caution: that number is a little old and may be stale. Lots of windmills have gone up over the last decade or so.] Your real carbon savings will come when old homes and other buildings are struck and replaced with new structures utilizing the materials and techniques you and Borlace have described. Once the demand goes down because the waste goes down then we can collectively dump phunky old fossil fuel and nuke bottle generation in favor of renewables that can keep up. And so it goes.

@lexiecrewther7038

3 жыл бұрын

We WILL be living semi-underground in the future. It will protect us from hurricanes, wildfires, smoke, giant hail, flooding, extreme temperatures and more. It's also cheaper to build and requires less energy. Join us at CLIMATE RESISTANT HABITATS Facebook group

@Wookey.

3 жыл бұрын

You don't have to use foam/XPS (except below grade, but you can use foamglass there). Perfectly normal to build a carbon-negative PH from timber and woodfibre or cellulose. But even with the embodied emissions of EPS/XPS a PH is still dramatically better than a standard house over 50 years. Retrofitting is slow and painful, but it's also a highly parallelisable activity and generates a lot of economic activity so probably can be done if taken seriously. Nothing wrong with nuclear power as a low-emissions supply, but it's no longer cheaper than renewables+storage (unless something dramatic happens to change the cost of finance) so I don't think I agree with your pricing theory. It does still make sense to have some in high-latitude countries like Canada, UK, Russia (where solar is a fat lot of use for 1/3rd of the year).

@ukrytykrytyk8477

3 жыл бұрын

Are you seriously trying saying that installing all that complex machinery (heat pumps, solar panels etc.) is cheaper than adding extra insulation, being careful about avoiding thermal bridging (cost nothing during design stage) and investing in better quality windows? You approach sounds like walking in cold day outside in T-shirt but with solar panels on head and heater strapped to chest, than putting warmer clothes and hat on!

Thank you

👍 I would definitely be interested in that follow up video on retro-fitting a passivhaus.

Thanks 🙏🏽😃 We built our passive house back in 1994.

In Germany, Energy Plus houses are the new trend. Passiv Houses are already standard

@ChipmunkRapidsMadMan1869

3 жыл бұрын

In Germany they can't restart their coal fired powerplants fast enough.

@TerraPosse

3 жыл бұрын

@@ChipmunkRapidsMadMan1869 Au contraire. The big energy generators shut down coal power generators as they can't compete with renewably generated power.

@peterverbogt3870

3 жыл бұрын

Don't forget a passive house is totally different from a plus house. You can make a standard house into a plus house by adding a big enough pv installation as a passive house has a low enough consumption by their concept. I think the only way to see how well a house is build is by its bruto energy consumption (w/o pv installation etc)

@apacheattackhelicopter8185

3 жыл бұрын

Is this why Germany is fighting so hard to build the new gas pipeline from Russia despite the US sanctions?

@Sanginius23

3 жыл бұрын

@@apacheattackhelicopter8185 how is this connected?

Excellent job 👍

A very cool illustration of a house's air-tightness is whether or not you can slam an exterior door shut. In the '70's we built a pre-cut log cabin and the (experienced) team that built it gave us such an effect. This is a common feature of houses built with legacy techniques here in northern New England. ... Just a note. ... The 24' x 32' cedar house is still tight 50 years later.

Thank you!

Greetings from a Passive House building verifier in Pittsburgh, PA!

Talk about a timely topic for me. I have learned just recently that, hey, I'd really benefit right now from having a passive house. We recently took out our gas furnace and gas water heater and put in heat pump versions instead. Wow!!!!!! It takes gobs and gobs of energy to heat a house. Get me a passive house right away. Yes, you're right and, when we were using gas to heat our home, we were already using gobs and gobs of energy, but it just didn't register to my mind. We were so used to taking gas heat as granted, I didn't think of it much. But now, when I check my data logger and see that we've used 50 kW-hr in one day just for heating, the reality seems more immediate to me. And I've realized that I need to change my plan a bit. I had been thinking step 1, electrify everything and step 2 put in more solar panels. But there's no way I'm going to get 50 kW-hr a day from solar panels during a Cache Valley winter. Right now, the plan is to look into retrofitting a 1950s home up to passive home standards. Yes, that would be expensive to do, but think of it. One expenditure of retrofitting a 1950s home to passive home standards would purchase up to 50 kW-hr of energy per day forever after. That's even a better deal than solar panels.

Thank you for another wonderful video! And during the holidays, too. Just the link section alone looks like a fun way to spend part of the day. Don't think of ever heard of "passive houses" as a distinct subject before, so this has been a great introduction to the idea. One thing I've inferred from your video is that passive houses and basements do not mix, or if they do the basement would probably require even more insulation than the rest of the house.

@barbarasmith6005

3 жыл бұрын

They can, but the basement has to be as insulated, waterproofed, and conditioned just like the above-grade rooms in the house.

@Kevin_Street

3 жыл бұрын

@@barbarasmith6005 Wouldn't the insulation have to be even thicker in the basement? Soil conducts heat better than air can.

Yes, please to the retrofitting video!

Thanks.

It isn’t the builder who decides how a house is built. It is the homeowner. We do what they want as they are paying us to do a job. If you want more passive houses you need to convince those having houses built.

Thanks

Spot on! Very informative 👍🏼

As always, thanks JHAT

Yes please, follow up programme on retrofitting existing houses (UK) would be much appreciated.

Thanks very much for your clear and concise summery of the principles to be followed in the construction of energy efficient low rise housing. Well before the inception of Passive House these principles where demonstrated in the Saskatchewan Energy Conservation house built in 1977 based on research carried out since the 1930's by the Division of Building Research of the National Research Council of Canada. I understand Dr Feist visited this project and became familiar with it's technologies before founding the Passive House Institute. Since the early 1980's thousands of homes were built in Canada utilizing the principles embodied in the Saskatchewan Energy Conservation House. In addition a series of net zero energy demonstration homes were built in Canada well before the Passive House Institute promoted these ideas. One additional guiding principle that should be added to you list is that of using low chemical off gasing interior finishes. These help to minimize the internal pollutant loads, enhancing indoor air quality and human health and allow reduced ventilation rates enhancing energy performance.

Great video, thanks. Yes please to a "retrofit existing house" video, I'd be v interested to see more about that. Warm wishes

this is really cool!

Oooh yes it's all true! Now in our 5th winter in our passivhaus self build. Total energy bills about £200 a year and the temperature hovers around 20 in winter, 23 in summer. We have never been more comfortable! We had a builder do the main PH envelope structure incl glazing and we did the rest. It came out about £1300/m2. If u are going to self build, to me it's a no brainer to go full passivhaus. It is not complicated or difficult but does require very close attention to detail in design and construction. In the UK look up www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/ for the main UK organisation. I can't tell you how angry I am that UK building regs remain so lax! Vested interests in the building industry lent on David Cameron to abandon his code for sustainable homes years ago so now we have another generation of dolls-houses GRRR!

@Wookey.

3 жыл бұрын

I quite agree about building regs. The consultation that finished this year was looking at having slightly laxer regs than the current ones, and maybe implementing them by 2025. The industry is hopelessly captured so far, and needs a good kicking from millions of angry young people until they get a clue.

You mentioned retrofitting older structures to the passive house standard. I think that's a great business plan I'd like to see.

I think we can now go beyond passive houses (that I remember already existed in the 1980s in Provence, although not under that official label) and toward positive energy houses, the next level, same principles, plus a few more. Limited space in towns and suburbs almost always require the use of expensive efficient thin materials, but if you happen to live in the country, you can use earth for thermal mass, cheap thick straw insulation, buried pipes for additional cooling/prewarming, etc. In some countries like France, houses are taxed based on the internal area of all rooms, so you can go crazy with extra thick insulated walls without impacting taxes. Or, as some would say: Just Have a Thick. I have been looking at earthships for a while, it's a really great concept, and it's often the opportunity to gather all family and friends and neighbors in a party to build it in stages. Just go without the recycled tires and colored glass bottles that seem to be prevalent in this kind of projects, and use less polluting and better looking materials. Tires should get properly recycled anyway, not buried underground and leaking petrochemical compounds all over the place. Lowering energy use or even producing more than consumed is a great goal, but really, getting rid of most other monthly bills is also more and more appealing for resiliency and for retirees on a low budget, so you need pay maybe only for the phone and Internet bill. No rent of course if you own the land, no natural gas bill either, since it's a highly polluting GHG and quite bad for the home atmosphere too, no electricity bill with photovoltaics and a small wind turbine, no water bill with your own well, and sometimes you can even skip the refuse and sewage bills. Earthship-type houses also reduce your food bill, as you can grow greens, herbs and some vegetables in the south-facing green house, and some more just outside. There's always something to harvest and eat in the garden, I could dig out sunchokes from mine all winter long... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship

@lexiecrewther7038

3 жыл бұрын

Build a house from pallet racking. Join us at CLIMATE RESISTANT HABITATS Facebook group

@Chimel31

3 жыл бұрын

@@lexiecrewther7038 Lots of great info in this group indeed.

"You'd find yourself becoming dead... which is unfortunate" LMAO

I'd love to do a project like this. One thing I would change is the envelope - I would put the loft outside the envelope, have an integral PV solar roof and put the cold side of a heat pump in the loft. This way heat could pass through the solar panel and via the heat pump into hot water storage, and the cool loft would keep the PV panels cool and running at higher efficiency.

Retrofit video would be great info, my house was built before 1900 and could probably use an upgrade .

Thak you for another interesting video. I've shared it on my LinkedIn to spread your findings. I agree fully and like to help anyone who is interested.

Retrofitting vid would be super cool! This is interesting. I mean, so is all of this tech, but this one seems as if it could have immediate AND economically viable implementations.

@phil2544

3 жыл бұрын

You can't retrofit UK houses, easier to knock down and rebuild.

@bobgriffin316

3 жыл бұрын

@@phil2544 You can retrofit UK houses. With a builder I have done it twice: once to a house and once to a flat. Both properties were late Victorian or Edwardian. Of course I have not been able to insulate up to passivhaus standard though. I have probably saved about 67% of the energy for the properties; maybe even more. I put 4kW of solar panels on the house. The panels face east and west and save all the electricity energy of the house. Half is not used in the house. It is sent down the street to be used by someone else. Even though they are east/west facing they work very well. I get the benefit of the electricty just when I need it the most (mornings and evenings before the sun goes down). I could save more if I buy a Tesla Powerwall battery to store the electricity and use it overnight. I probably will buy one when the battery technology lasts longer so that it becomes economically viable. I changed the old 80% efficient boilers to a new 92% efficient new Vaillant boilers when the boilers were not economic to fix anymore.That alone saves about 12% of the heating of the house and flat. I of course insulated the loft with fibreglass for the full thickness of the joists. I did not want to go deeper because I wanted to be able to walk around the loft to maintain it in the future. I have put boarding over the insulation so I can put more insulation on the boarding in the future and I can still walk around the loft without putting my foot through the ceiling. I insulated the walls with 50mm thick hard yellow insulation (polyisocyanurate) that is twice as good as fibreglass for the same thickness. It saves about 75% of the heat from going through the walls. It is like two 9 tog autumn duvets put together (18 tog in total). I also insulated under the timber ground floor with the yellow insulation between the joists fo the full depth of the joists (about 30 tog duvet equivalent- two thick 15 tog winter duvets together). More importantly I insulated the central heating pipework under the floor with the thickest pipe insulation to Bylaw 30 standard. (It is twice as thick as normal pipe insulation and worth every penny because so much heat is lost by the pipework under the floor - about 1kW for the whole house or flat when the central heating is on (about 10 or 20% of the heating of the whole property). There is also much less chance of a burst pipe because of freezing weather in winter. I also insulated the cold water pipes with the same Bylaw 30 pipe insulation). I filled in behind the skirtings with mortar. Now, I don't have mice in the flat anymore. It is too cold for the mice under the floor and it is too hard to get into the flat. This has not worked on the house. I will look at the house to find any holes that I have missed. I also removed all the old chimneys to remove any draugths and get more space. I of course double glazed the old windows after I put in the wall insulation. I then fitted the double glazing sills over the thick wall insulation. Some rooms were very small and had small bay windows and a radiator by the bay window so it was not practicle to insulate it with thick yellow insulation. I also thought about insulating the walls of this particular flat after I put in the double glazing in so it made it doubly difficult to install the thick yellow insulation. With these small bay windows I removed the old 32 mm thick plaster. I found a 26.5 mm insulation borad in Wicks Builders merchants (It had 17mm of polystyrene insulation and 9.5 mm of plasterboard: it stops about 50% of the heat from going through the solid 9" brick walls). I then skim coated the boarding with plaster so that the wall was the same thickness as before I took out the plaster. The wall is like an autumn 9.0 tog duvet now instead the old 4.5 tog summer duvet 9" brick walls. The room is still the same width as before which is important because the room was already too small. I also removed the old front and back doors and put in air tight double glazed doors. I also convinced the owner of the upstairs flat to insulate their walls with the polystyrene 27 mm insulation. They double glazed the windows as well.

I watch all your videos and this is one that I've enjoyed the most, really inspiring. The bad news is that any of these building strategies are very hard to actually make in Italy where I live. To give you perspective, I'm researching about thermal insulation on my existing house and because of all the landscape regulations here, it's basically impossible (or terribly expensive) to actually use anything thicker than 1cm to insulate a very old building... in a few words, I probably have to give up making my house more efficient because making it so will be cosmetically different than the building next to it....welcome 1921..

Need high efficiency safe renewable materials, very low manufacture cost, and simple installation to retrofit millions of buildings. An 'Amazon' for owners to get this all comprehensively done, including trained/skilled installations. Hello 2021.

Great vid. I was going to say see Matt Risinger YT channel but then half of your vid are snippets from his videos yet you don't add his name or channel in your credits. Best do that, he is one builder with a passion for passive home tech. He is currently building his own home and it's a flagship for passive design, well worth a look.

@JustHaveaThink

3 жыл бұрын

In fact it's only two clips and both have the video credit written clearly at the bottom of the screen, but you are quite right - I could have added his You Tube channel to the description box. I will do that now :-)

would love to self build my house and build it like this.

Great video. I do work for builders in New Hampshire and Maine, and I see these houses being built. There are now even insulated studs to slow heat conduction past the wall cavity insulation. The net zero one we finished last winter is now on the market for $5.1 million US (largely from the property, but that's who's having these homes built in my area). I don't know other countries well, but here in the US the lack of housing and the furthering economic divide make getting enough people into 'modern' structures very difficult. There will likely never be enough to make this happen on scale as long as a few hoard the planet's resources.

I LOST my house in 1987. Apart from INSULATION, heat may be recovered from ventilation air. by a HEAT EXCHANGER. My little firm produced a prototype *_turbulent counterflow air-to-air heat exchanger._* This ran for a whole year, showing that it worked nicely in reverse during the summer. It required 50 watts of power to drive it. *This was 83% efficient.* No major company was in the slightest bit interested. No minor company was in the slightest bit interested. I ran out of money and employment and moved to Tenerife, shouting F U at Britain. I don't need heat here. The heat exchanger was remarkably similar to a pile of egg-boxes, and would have cost perhaps TEN QUID. Britain has spent possibly TWO HUNDRED BILLION QUID heating up air which it threw away, in the interim. That's a very conservative estimate. Haha.

Excellent, I see you used video segment with "Matt Risinger" (KZread ch.) Installing rockwool bats in wall cavities. His channel meant for a builder but is a great informative source of information on passive home standards and materials.

The long term saving are basically double the house cost

There is a company called Adaptive Habitat that is doing some amazing work in this area. More than the house they cycle all the systems in the house.