Passive House: A Builder’s Perspective - Why Passive House?
Guest post written by CGBG Sponsors, Hammerwell, Inc.
As a well-established Boulder builder, Hammerwell has had many opportunities to build well-appointed, intricately designed homes. We have always striven for excellence in construction and in the past 20 plus years building in Colorado we’ve had great success doing so. But, recently, after taking some time to assess our position in providing exceptional quality, we realized that we could make some improvements to our approach and raise the bar in providing the best in client comfort and building durability.
But why was it necessary to readdress our approach? Certainly, we could continue to build to code minimums knowing that Boulder and Boulder County codes are more stringent than most. Despite that, we still felt our client’s Homes could be left vulnerable to potential moisture, mold, and rot issues down the road due to the often inadequate and non- project specific requirements dictated by code and local building departments. We felt we had both the opportunity and responsibility to not simply try to avoid these situations, but to insure they would not occur. Not to mention, code does not address issues of comfort in a quantifiable manner. In fact, the only building standard that directly addresses these durability and comfort issues in a proven and reliable manner is Passive House. Through our research and training we found that more than an energy standard, Passive House was truly a quality and comfort criteria, created to assist designers and builders to implement comfort and durability into all projects, regardless of design and purpose. Most importantly, comfort and durability could be measured, assessed, and specifically planned for through PHPP (Passive House Planning Package). PHPP is a computer modeling system that allows one to plug in all specifics of the homes location, elevation, exposure, building assemblies and mechanical systems to understand and verify precisely how the building will perform prior to construction. It was clear to us that addressing thermal comfort, and the health considerations of our clients in a verifiable manner would help ensure the houses we delivered would be enjoyable homes for decades and generations to come.
As builders we are responsible to provide our clients with a building that is functional as well as beautiful. By using the PPHP and implementing Passive House methodology into all our projects, we can provide our clients with verifiable operational data for their homes prior to breaking ground. This allows us to not only program high performing homes, but also allows us to precisely service the home in the future if a condition isn’t meeting our modeling expectations. Prior to construction, modeling thermal bridging, air tightness, solar gain, ventilation, as well as heating and cooling loads, allows us to maximize the comfort and durability of the homes we build. This provides our clients the maximum value for their dollar spent and achieves the level of quality in their projects and investments that they deserve.
“As builders we are responsible to provide our clients with a building that is functional as well as beautiful. By using the PPHP and implementing Passive House methodology into all our projects, we can provide our clients with verifiable operational data for their homes prior to breaking ground.”
Utilizing Passive House principles allows us to address each performance component in a detailed manner to verify how a home will perform as a system before it is even built. It also allows us to work closely with our clients and their Architects, providing them with vital information during the design process. Empowered by this knowledge and collaboration we can detail budgets and methodologies as a team, while reducing costly in field changes or being stuck with an assembly that doesn’t perform as expected. Finally, it helps us to connect all critical elements of a home into a wholistic organism to fine tune how each component affects the other to achieve optimal building performance and occupant comfort. This critical planning is not a costly expense, but a worthwhile investment. Clearly this thoughtful design and coordination is only as good as the execution in the field, but that’s a topic for another day.
Let’s be honest, building is hard. As a custom home builder, it is made even more difficult by the unknowns we face with each project. We never build the same building twice, so there is no room for improvement on the second go around. The more we can eliminate unknowns and dedicate our efforts to utilizing proven building assembly details and coordinated building and mechanical systems relationships through verified modeling, the more confident we can be in the end results as we plan the project. This allows us to deliver our clients a truly exceptional quality product that is both comfortable and long lasting. For Hammerwell, Passive House as well as utilizing passive house principles wherever possible is the best way forward towards meeting our comfort and durability requirements. To help understand better what Passive House is all about, we will continue our discussion over the next few months by breaking down each of the 5 Passive House principles. Colorado let’s build better together. Stay tuned!