Week 9 Blog Assignment 2 - Case Studies

This week, the students were assigned their second blog assignment, which is to provide a critical review of a passive house built anywhere in the world. We have a number of case studies from last years class including:

• An Estate in Hannover Kronsberg
• The Denby Dale Passive House
• The Smith House in Urbana, Illinois
• Eco Arch House in Kent
• Another link to the Estate in Hannover Kronsberg
• Glencullen, Co. Wicklow
• The Underhill Passive House in the Cotswolds
• Passive House in Bessancourt, France 
• Bla Jungfrun in Stockhold, Sweden
• The Go Passive House in Maine   

So this year, the students will produce another set of passive house case studies. The passive house database is a good starting point.

Site Visit to Passive House Project in Galway

Earlier this morning, Cyril Mannion of Passive House Builders hosted an excellent and very informative site visit for the students taking the Passive House Design and Construction module on the M.Sc. in Environmental Systems at Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. The site visit consisted of a tour of a passive house project currently under construction in Salthill in Galway.

Many thanks to Cyril and please note that there was no construction activity today on site; hence the lack of hard hats on heads!

Windows and Openings at Denby Dale Passive House

The next video in the excellent series by the Green Building Store on the Denby Dale Passive House looks at Windows and Openings.

Some of the innovative features was the use of the triple glazed, argon filled Ecopassive timber windows consisting of a thermally broken frame giving a whole window u-value of just under 0.8W/m² K and a glazing u-value of 0.6W/m² K. The use of the plywood box for easy and accurate positioning posed some challenging airtightness details especially at the plywood box / blockwork and plaster junction and the window / plywood box junction. The use of Pro Clima Contega and Tescon Profile tapes hepled to provide a novel solution in both cases. Thermal bypass was addressed with the use of the aluminium cavity closer and the door threshold required the construction of a moulded fibreglass box section filled with polyfoam insulation.