Passive House Standards

What is the Passive House standard?

Passive House is a construction standard for residential, commercial, or industrial projects, based on performance metrics – much like a building code. Emu’s ‘5 Pillars of Passive Design/Build’ are guidelines to help explain the criteria in the performance standard:

entire envelope insulation
airtight construction detailing
renewed fresh filtered air
thermal bridge mitigation
high-performance fenestration

Certification is granted based on verified modeling and as-built documentation. The result of a certified Passive House building is the assurance of a durable, comfortable, and healthy indoor environment.

Passive House is the gold standard in building science.

Unlike many other green certification programs, it “plays well with others” and can be used to achieve the energy efficiency and indoor air quality goals of Net Zero, LEED, Living Future, Phius, and others by providing a pathway to conserving energy before compensating for it.

“Passive Design/Build™️” is what Emu calls this movement of Design and Construction professionals who are moving towards the integrated communication and project management style required by the advanced building science of the Passive House standards.

The international Passive House standard is the most stringent building standard available. It is based on cutting-edge scientific research, and it acts as the Gold Standard in building science. Emu uses the international Passive House standard as our benchmark, but there is also a US standard with more lenient performance criteria (still a great deal more advanced than most current building codes). Passive House building science represents the direction that all building codes are headed.