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Database ID: 6552 | © Marc Mevissen

Pass­ive House: Com­fort­able, en­ergy-ef­fi­cient, healthy

Example buildings

The Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te has de­ve­loped the build­ing stand­ar­ds Pass­ive House and En­erPHit on the basis of sci­en­tif­ic­ally sound phys­ic­al prin­ciples and ap­plic­a­tion-ori­en­ted re­search res­ults and has for­mu­lated spe­cif­ic build­ing cri­ter­ia to en­sure re­li­able qual­ity. The two build­ing stand­ar­ds are based on five core prin­ciples: A very good thermal in­su­la­tion, highly en­ergy-ef­fi­cient win­dows, con­trolled mech­an­ic­al vent­il­a­tion with heat re­cov­ery, no thermal bridges, and air­tight­ness.

Every­one is al­lowed to build a Pass­ive House or ret­ro­fit an ex­ist­ing build­ing to the En­erPHit stand­ard.

You are not yet fa­mil­i­ar with the two build­ing stand­ar­ds and would like to ex­pand your know­ledge in this re­gard? On Pas­si­pe­dia - the Pass­ive House Re­source - you can find everything you need to know and much more.

You are in­ter­es­ted in the de­tails? Please feel free to jump dir­ec­tly to the certification criteria.

Cer­ti­fi­able build­ing stand­ar­ds

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Pass­ive Houses provide a very high level of com­fort coupled with an ex­tremely low en­ergy con­sump­tion. The Pass­ive House stand­ard of­fers ex­cel­lent cost-ef­fect­ive­ness, es­pe­cially for new build­ings. The slightly high­er ini­tial in­vest­ment is quickly re­couped thanks to the sig­ni­fic­ant en­ergy sav­ings dur­ing the life cycle of the build­ing.

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En­er­PHit (say "En­er­fit") is the es­tab­lished stand­ard for the en­ergy-ef­fi­cient ret­ro­fit of ex­ist­ing build­ings with Pass­ive House com­pon­ents. Tak­ing in­to ac­count that struc­tur­al con­di­tions of­ten make it dif­fi­cult to achieve the Pass­ive House stand­ard in ex­ist­ing build­ings, this stand­ard al­lows a slightly high­er en­ergy con­sump­tion as long as all com­fort cri­ter­ia are still met. The stand­ard can be proven either based on the "en­ergy de­mand meth­od" or on the "build­ing com­pon­ent meth­od". Step-by-step ret­ro­fits with an En­erPHit ret­ro­fit plan are also pos­sible. This plan can be pre-cer­ti­fied.

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The PHI Low En­ergy Build­ing stand­ard was de­ve­loped for build­ings that aimed at but then barely missed the Pass­ive House stand­ard (for ex­ample be­cause they fail to meet the air­tight­ness re­quire­ment).

Pi­lot pro­jects wel­come! - The fol­low­ing stand­ar­ds are cur­rently be­ing de­ve­loped:

 

Ener­PHit Unit

En­erPHit Unit is a spe­cial ap­plic­a­tion of the En­erPHit build­ing com­pon­ent meth­od. Single ret­ro­fit­ted res­id­en­tial and com­mer­cial units in build­ings with more than one unit can be cer­ti­fied with this op­tion. For this, the unit un­der con­sid­er­a­tion must be com­pletely ret­ro­fit­ted us­ing Pass­ive House com­pon­ents. The rest of the build­ing is not taken in­to ac­count in the cer­ti­fic­a­tion.

The pre­lim­in­ary ver­sion of the de­ve­loped cri­ter­ia is avail­able upon re­quest and can already be used for pro­ject cer­ti­fic­a­tion with the writ­ten con­firm­a­tion of the cer­ti­fi­er and the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te. If you are in­ter­es­ted in get­ting En­erPHit unit cer­ti­fic­a­tion, please send us an email.

Co­re & Shell

This cer­ti­fic­a­tion track is be­ing de­ve­loped for non-res­id­en­tial build­ings de­signed to be gen­er­ally suit­able for of­fice use and which the own­er rents out in part or en­tirely un­der the meth­od known as core & shell. With this meth­od, in ad­di­tion to hav­ing the full thermal en­vel­ope com­pleted, build­ings must in­clude at least: units and ver­tic­al dis­tri­bu­tion for vent­il­a­tion, heat­ing, cool­ing and DHW; light­ing in com­mon areas; lifts; ex­tern­al shad­ing (if needed). All oth­er sys­tems and equip­ment are in­stalled by the ten­ant. A doc­u­ment with the tech­nic­al min­im­um re­quire­ments for the ten­ant fit-out (TM­RT) must be pro­duced for cer­ti­fic­a­tion and in­cluded as part of the lease agree­ment. Ten­ants in­stall the fit-out in the leased space ac­cord­ing to the TM­RT.

The pre­lim­in­ary ver­sion of the de­ve­loped cri­ter­ia is avail­able upon re­quest and can already be used for pro­ject cer­ti­fic­a­tion with the writ­ten con­firm­a­tion of the cer­ti­fi­er and the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te. If you are in­ter­es­ted in get­ting En­erPHit unit cer­ti­fic­a­tion, please send us an email.

Pass­ive House and En­erPHit go hand in hand with re­new­ables

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If pos­sible, it is highly re­com­men­ded to up­grade Pas­siv­e Houses and En­erPHit ret­ro­fits with the gen­er­a­tion of re­new­able en­ergy. Up­grades are then re­flec­ted in the cer­ti­fic­a­tion class:

  • Clas­sic: Pass­ive House or En­erPHit ret­ro­fit without re­new­able en­ergy gen­er­a­tion

  • Plus: On an an­nu­al av­er­age, en­ergy gen­er­a­tion equals en­ergy con­sump­tion

  • Pre­mi­um: On an an­nu­al av­er­age, sig­ni­fic­antly more en­ergy is gen­er­ated than con­sumed

For cat­egor­isa­tion in­to Clas­sic, Plus and Premi­um, the de­mand for re­new­able primary en­ergy of the en­tire build­ing (in­clud­ing heat­ing, hot wa­ter gen­er­a­tion, house­hold elec­tri­city) is com­pared with the gen­er­a­tion of re­new­able primary elec­tri­city.

All Pass­ive House and En­erPHit classes can be achieved in all cli­mate zones world­wide. The build­ing stand­ar­ds can be im­ple­men­ted in res­id­en­tial and most non-res­id­en­tial build­ings (e.g. ran­ging from of­fices to schools and swim­ming pools).

Con­sult­ing & build­ing cer­ti­fic­a­tion: why and how?

The team at the Passive House Institute and the cer­ti­fied Passive House planners/craftsmen/consultants world­wide are happy to sup­port and ad­vise the plan­ning team in­di­vidu­ally tailored to your con­struc­tion pro­ject (new build or ren­ov­a­tion).

The con­sul­ta­tion phase is used to im­prove the build­ing design with re­spect to en­ergy ef­fi­ciency and cost-ef­fect­ive­ness. The earli­er the Pass­ive House cer­ti­fi­er is in­volved in the pro­ject plan­ning, the smooth­er and more cost-ef­fect­ive the con­struc­tion pro­ject can be man­aged. In prin­ciple, however, cer­ti­fic­a­tion is also pos­sible after com­ple­tion of the build­ing, as long as it meets the cer­ti­fic­a­tion cri­ter­ia.

Dur­ing the build­ing cer­ti­fic­a­tion pro­cess, the im­ple­ment­a­tion plan is care­fully and com­pre­hens­ively re­viewed. After check­ing the en­ergy bal­ance cal­cu­la­tion, the cer­ti­fi­er will point out any ne­ces­sary cor­rec­tions. A fi­nal in­spec­tion and fur­ther evid­en­ce from the con­struc­tion work (air­tight­ness test, ad­just­ment pro­tocol for the vent­il­a­tion sys­tem, site man­ager's de­clar­a­tion) com­plete the qual­ity con­trol. Only if the pre­cisely defined cri­ter­ia are met without ex­cep­tion will a cer­ti­fic­ate be is­sued (in­clud­ing a house plaque upon re­quest).

Cer­ti­fic­a­tion en­sures that the build­ing ac­tu­ally achieves the de­sired en­ergy stand­ard and that it lives up to its prom­ise of ex­cel­lent air qual­ity, a com­fort­able in­door cli­mate and re­li­ably low en­ergy costs. This also in­creases the value of the prop­erty.

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Special features of a step-by-step retrofit with an EnerPHit Retrofit Plan (ERP)

Many build­ing own­ers prefer to re­place old build­ing com­pon­ents step by step rather than ret­ro­fit­ting their build­ing as a whole in one go. This ap­proach is in­deed re­com­men­ded as it is the eco­nom­ic­ally most vi­able way to ret­ro­fit a build­ing.

Be­fore start­ing the first meas­ure, however, an over­all plan should be drawn up for the cur­rent and all sub­se­quent ret­ro­fit steps - right through to the com­pletely ret­ro­fit­ted state of the build­ing. This is the only way to en­sure that all steps dove­tail well and that the build­ers can en­joy a cosy build­ing with low en­ergy costs after the fi­nal step.

The En­erPHit Ret­ro­fit Plan (in­cluded in the PHPP tool) of­fers such an over­view. As ad­di­tion­al qual­ity as­sur­ance, the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te of­fers pre-cer­ti­fic­a­tion as an En­erPHit (or even Pass­ive House) pro­ject. In ad­di­tion to hav­ing de­ve­loped a care­fully pre­pared En­erPHit Ret­ro­fit Plan, the pre­re­quis­ite for pre-cer­ti­fic­a­tion is that the first ret­ro­fit step has already been im­ple­men­ted and that en­ergy sav­ings of at least 20 % have been achieved. The pre-cer­ti­fic­ate gives cli­ents and de­sign­ers the cer­tainty that the tar­geted stand­ard will ac­tu­ally be achieved once all ret­ro­fit steps have been im­ple­men­ted as planned.

Find a certifier

The cer­ti­fi­er does not ne­ces­sar­ily have to vis­it the build­ing to be cer­ti­fied. There­fore, you are free to choose a cer­ti­fi­er ir­re­spect­ive of where they are based.

The Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te of­fers cer­ti­fic­a­tion to the Pass­ive House, En­erPHit and PHI Low En­ergy Build­ing stand­ar­ds world­wide. Please get in touch with us so we can send you an of­fer.

 

Pas­siv­e House In­sti­tu­te (Ger­man of­fice)           
Lan­guages: de | en | es | it | ro | pl | bg | zh     
Send us an email


Pas­siv­e House In­sti­tu­te (Aus­tri­an of­fice)             
Lan­guages: de | en | hu
Send us an email

 

Fur­ther­more, the fol­low­ing cer­ti­fi­ers have been ac­cred­ited by the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te to cer­ti­fy Pass­ive Houses, En­erPHit ret­ro­fits and PHI Low En­ergy Build­ings in its name world­wide:

Build­ing Cri­ter­ia: Pas­siv­e House, En­er­PHit, PHI Low En­ergy Build­ing

English
German
Spanish
More languages

Partners of the Passive House Institute have translated the certification criteria into various other languages. Check out the overview of all available translations.

Caution: Please be aware that the translations of third parties have not been verified. Therefore, building certifications must be based on the building criteria officially published by the Passive House Institute (English, German, Spanish).

Archive

For certification projects dating back to April 2023 or earlier the criteria for buildings in place at the start of the certification process apply.

 

Ques­tions or com­ments? The build­ing cer­ti­fic­a­tion team will be happy to as­sist you dir­ec­tly by email or by tele­phone at (+49) 6151 82699-0.