Passivhaus has some good ideas in it, but "passive" is a misnomer. Just try not being at home at the right time to close the drapes in the evening, or not being awake to open them in the morning ... or having a month or two of persistent heavy overcast and rain in winter! Active heating through hydronic or electric mesh floor heating powered by solar hot water or photovoltaics, still heats your house on energy you can extract from sunlight, but does it much more efficiently and reliably than a bunch of sun-facing windows. And of course, if you've got enough solar panels on your roof to run a winter floor heating system, then it's easily enough to run whatever cooling you need in summer. What we do need to see is much more emphasis on roof designs that are ready to support a lot of solar panels. No more of these mutliple decorative broken gables and zigzag roofs - the sun facing roof should be a nice big uninterrupted rectangular plane.
I have a very different perspective about Passive House than you describe. Our approach incorporates passive house concepts at the design phase to intelligently and thoughtfully engineer the building envelope so that the building, without the need of active systems like window drapes, needs the least amount of energy to maintain the comfort of the occupants throughout the year. And we definitely don't design for the sun to be a heating source for the building, we are more often than not designing overhangs and sun shading devices for our windows because the heating loads are so small that the sun will easily overheat rooms and make them uncomfortable. I completely agree with you about roof designs for solar. Our projects that fully meet the passive house standards are very easily 100% powered by very small solar systems because the heating and cooling loads are so minimal. (This project was not our design and is not the best example of this). We typically heat and cool with air source heat pumps because of the high efficiency of the units and also because, unlike radiant floor heat, they only require the installation of one system to provide all the heating, cooling and dehumidification. Radiant floor heat is wonderful, but in our market if you want cooling as well, which most people do, then you just doubled the cost of the hvac installation.
@@stephendemetrick636Fair - I wish you'd been hired to write my course materials, because that's not what I'm being taught in class. I still prefer floor heating, because with the way warm air rises, floor heating is the only way to have the actual floor warm, and when you've got little kids playing on the floor you want the floor to be warm enough for them to lie down on without getting chilled. Also, separate ventilation and cooling systems means that you can have active ventilation to all rooms, but only cool the rooms that need cooling, and even have those rooms cooled while there are other rooms that need heating. For a small house with only one or two people in it, it's an unnecessary expense, but for a bigger family home with people at different life stages and different activity levels and comfort needs it's justified.
We've done budget comparisons based on our own price points and we have found that for our company it adds about 3-5% to the cost of building a net zero ready home compared to building that same house to the basic building code. In regards to square footage costs, t is not possible to gain any useful information about the cost impact of building this way when looking at oversimplified square foot building costs because there are far more variables that have a greater impact on square footage pricing than air sealing and insulation and ventilation systems. Variables like building size, building shape, structural complexity, location, lot access, level of finishes, level of completion of the drawings and specifications before you start, etc. have a significantly greater impact on total building costs than the systems we put into our houses. If someone really wants to keep costs down, there are a lot of other areas I recommend searching for value first.
Passivhaus has some good ideas in it, but "passive" is a misnomer. Just try not being at home at the right time to close the drapes in the evening, or not being awake to open them in the morning ... or having a month or two of persistent heavy overcast and rain in winter! Active heating through hydronic or electric mesh floor heating powered by solar hot water or photovoltaics, still heats your house on energy you can extract from sunlight, but does it much more efficiently and reliably than a bunch of sun-facing windows. And of course, if you've got enough solar panels on your roof to run a winter floor heating system, then it's easily enough to run whatever cooling you need in summer.
What we do need to see is much more emphasis on roof designs that are ready to support a lot of solar panels. No more of these mutliple decorative broken gables and zigzag roofs - the sun facing roof should be a nice big uninterrupted rectangular plane.
I have a very different perspective about Passive House than you describe. Our approach incorporates passive house concepts at the design phase to intelligently and thoughtfully engineer the building envelope so that the building, without the need of active systems like window drapes, needs the least amount of energy to maintain the comfort of the occupants throughout the year. And we definitely don't design for the sun to be a heating source for the building, we are more often than not designing overhangs and sun shading devices for our windows because the heating loads are so small that the sun will easily overheat rooms and make them uncomfortable. I completely agree with you about roof designs for solar. Our projects that fully meet the passive house standards are very easily 100% powered by very small solar systems because the heating and cooling loads are so minimal. (This project was not our design and is not the best example of this). We typically heat and cool with air source heat pumps because of the high efficiency of the units and also because, unlike radiant floor heat, they only require the installation of one system to provide all the heating, cooling and dehumidification. Radiant floor heat is wonderful, but in our market if you want cooling as well, which most people do, then you just doubled the cost of the hvac installation.
@@stephendemetrick636Fair - I wish you'd been hired to write my course materials, because that's not what I'm being taught in class.
I still prefer floor heating, because with the way warm air rises, floor heating is the only way to have the actual floor warm, and when you've got little kids playing on the floor you want the floor to be warm enough for them to lie down on without getting chilled. Also, separate ventilation and cooling systems means that you can have active ventilation to all rooms, but only cool the rooms that need cooling, and even have those rooms cooled while there are other rooms that need heating. For a small house with only one or two people in it, it's an unnecessary expense, but for a bigger family home with people at different life stages and different activity levels and comfort needs it's justified.
Production quality of these videos is top notch. Great builder content. I'm surprised there's only 45 subscribers. +1 more!
We appreciate that!! It wouldn't be possible without our one-man production crew, Sam from SeaMountMedia!!
Thank you. This was great!
Wow… can’t wait for more episodes !!
We are as excited as you are Cam!
Learned a lot in a short period of time. Thanks
We're glad you enjoyed it! We hope you'll like episode 2 just as much!
how much per square foot does a house like that cost? $400? $500?
We've done budget comparisons based on our own price points and we have found that for our company it adds about 3-5% to the cost of building a net zero ready home compared to building that same house to the basic building code. In regards to square footage costs, t is not possible to gain any useful information about the cost impact of building this way when looking at oversimplified square foot building costs because there are far more variables that have a greater impact on square footage pricing than air sealing and insulation and ventilation systems. Variables like building size, building shape, structural complexity, location, lot access, level of finishes, level of completion of the drawings and specifications before you start, etc. have a significantly greater impact on total building costs than the systems we put into our houses. If someone really wants to keep costs down, there are a lot of other areas I recommend searching for value first.