A passive house (“passivhaus” in German) is a design standard that delivers healthy, comfortable, and efficient homes using a holistic approach. Essentially, these homes heat and cool themselves, cutting energy bills by about 90 percent. Homeowners often report that they don’t even have to turn on their heat during the winter because of the way their passive house is designed.
This passive technique is not about relying on solar or wind power; instead, these homes achieve near-zero energy consumption by being incredibly airtight and insulated. Builders do this by insulating and sealing the entire home envelope, installing efficient windows and doors, choosing ventilation systems with heat recovery (i.e., tapping into residual heat from clothes dryers, etc.), and eliminating thermal bridges (a localized area of the building envelope where the heat flow is different than adjacent areas).1
Resources
- Passive House Design: What All Energy-Conscious Homeowners Should Know
- Passive House Massachusetts
- CO Adaptive: Evolving our existing building stock to create energy efficient, beautifully articulated, and future resilient environments.