Emu’s Passive Pod CPHT Workshop to be presented in China.

With a desire to share lessons learned from the process we've been going through over the past couple years in offering advanced builder training in North America, we submitted a paper for the International Passive House Conference, scheduled for September…

Thermal paints: just a joke?

With a short investigation, we add our contribution to what has been recently published by some Italian consumers and professionals associations.

Although the example described in this article is purely Italian (and deeply so), we believe that the same situation with thermal paints is happening in other countries too. Here we try and evaluate how solid this products are, and whether or not they can be helpful, with an example of a thermal bridge.

Thermal Transmittance U vs Th. Resistance R

To achieve thermal comfort and energy efficiency in buildings, a primary role is played by the thermal envelope: this is required to thermally decouple the indoor environment from the ever-changing external conditions, both in summer and in winter.

The structures of the thermal envelope need to be able to control the amount of heat migrating through them: the thermal resistance and the thermal transmittance are two ways to describe this phenomenon.

Insulation materials: discovering the lambda value

The lambda value of a material indicates its ability to transfer heat: this property is therefore very important in the design of highly performing buildings and passive houses.

The information commonly available is unfortunately quite confusing: with this article, we'll try and shed some light on the topic.

Mold and condensation: if the solution is worse than the problem

We cover here two real examples of mold and condensation problems, with thermal insulation installed on the inside of existing masonry walls.

In both cases, the solutions were chosen on an empirical basis, and turned out to be worse than the problems they were trying to mitigate.

What’s an insulation material?

With more and more people talking about building energy efficiency and passive houses, it has become more and more common to hear about insulation. In this article, we explain what an insulation material is, to try and shed some light…

thermal bridges illustration

Thermal bridges: the temperature factor fRsi

We continue our series of articles on the topic of thermal bridges: this time, we illustrate the fRsi value, which describes the thermal ”strenght” of a node under the point of view of internal surface temperatures.

As we have explained in a previous article, the PSI value describes a higher or lower heat flow caused by a discontinuity in the thermal envelope - a thermal bridge - the fRsi factor is of primary importance for health and comfort considerations.

Passive House Days in Cavriago: a great success

On Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th, our construction site in Cavriago was open to the public for the International Passive House Days. On Friday 13th, the local Scuola Edile visited us for a class on energy efficiency. The event was…

PSI values

Thermal bridges: the PSI value

For new builds as well as energy retrofits, worldwide the construction industry is shifting more and more towards zero energy buildings and Passive Houses.

With the thermal envelope becoming more and more advanced, the correct evaluation of thermal bridges becomes critical: with this article, we explain the PSI value.

International Passive House Days in Cavriago, Italy

The International Passive House Days are an event organized by the Passivhaus Institut, to publicize what a passive house is, and to let people “touch” the state of the art of construction in terms of comfort and energy efficiency.

This year, we take part to the event with our Cavriago project, where we are currently building two single-family passive houses: our construction site is going to be open to the public on Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th.