Sunday, January 04, 2009

Passive house construction

Recently I wrote here that earthship housing is the only innovation in house building since Bucky Fuller. But I was wrong about that. There is also the far more conventional standard called passive house construction. 

Listen to this guy talk about the apartment building he had built by a group of owner-residents. First of all, it is communally owned. That alone is something I have been advocating on this blog for years... Next, the construction is all done according to the passive house standard. Not only that, the architect actually thought about the whole problem of building, not just shelter but managing energy and waste. In my opinion, unless an architect addresses all the things this fellow talks about, he or she should be bumped back to work with the general laborers. 



There are several videos out there about passive 
standards for freehold dwellings, but they are not
up to professional production values. The only one
that is well done is this one. Unfortunately,
it is in French. Which goes to show how much
interest there is in sustainability in English
speaking countries...



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Passive housing is absolutely the way to go forward if you have the energy spendings on your mind. But would I really want to live in one? What about the air quality: is it possible to change the air properly without it loosing its energy (temperature)?

Take care,
Julie

badijet@gmail.com said...

The answer is yes, the ability to recirculate heat is what defines passive house construction. See the articles on Wikipedia for more about the exchangers the german pasivhous standard uses.

Forsikringsskader said...

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