What is Passive House

A passive house is an energy-efficient building that has year-round comfort and a good indoor climate without the use of active space heating or cooling systems. The space heating requirement is reduced by means of passive measures to the point that there is no longer any need for a conventional heating system.

A passive house provides very high levels of thermal comfort and an even temperature throughout the building. Passive houses are usually light and bright due to large, glazed areas designed to optimise solar gains, and are healthy to live and work in due to fresh air supplied by the ventilation system.

The appearance of a passive house does not need to differ from a conventional house.

Since the first Passive House dwelling was built in 1991, this standard has been successfully implemented in tens of thousands of residential and commercial buildings across Europe. Lots of research and monitoring has been conducted over the last 20 years which has been fed back into the PHPP, the widely accepted energy efficiency design tool for Passive Houses. European funded projects, such as CEPHEUS and PEP examined many projects out of every angle and in various climatic conditions.