From Beligium is a project that caught my attention recently. Passive House denotes a specific construction standard for residential buildings with good comfort conditions during winter and summer, without traditional heating systems and without active cooling.
Typically this includes very good insulation levels, very good airtightness of the building, while a good indoor air quality is guaranteed by a mechanical ventilation system with highly efficient heat recovery.
The website is aimed at the technically-minded, but the rest of us can grab the gist of concept all the same. Passive House is an approved concept of very low-energy buildings, and already successfully applied on large scale in Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland. It also includes a very nicely presented Powerpoint-style presentation that is well worth listening to. And here it is.
Who funds these projects? I would love to have a passive home, but I am guessing that you would really need to have someone that knows what they are doing, and hence, the expensive part of the project.
Hi Greg, I’ sure the people behind the project would be happy to answer any email queries.