Certified construction system for Passive Houses

The construction system certification is possibly the least known certification offered by the Passivhaus Institut, and yet it can help spreading passive buildings all over the world. We worked on the first system certification for passive houses in a warm…

PHPP 9: a misunderstanding?

At the 2015 International Passive House Conference in Leipzig, Germany, the Passivhaus Institut presented version 9 of PHPP, which includes many new features to design passive buildings. Many articles have been written about the new primary energy method and the…

The compactness ratio or Form Factor of a building

When addressing the energy efficiency of a building, one of the most important players in the game is the compactness of its thermal envelope. Is there a way to measure the compactness of a building? Yes: it’s the compactness ratio.

DesignPH: the SketchUp plug-in to design Passive Houses in 3D

We finally had the chance to test DesignPH, the SketchUp plug-in that allows you to carry out the preliminary design of passive buildings in 3D. Once the model is created, you can export the data to PHPP (the energy balance…