Passive House Design

This course is self-paced, so you don’t need to be logged in at any specific time. Expect to dedicate an average of 5 hours per week, but you can work ahead or catch up if you fall behind. Keep in mind that the instructor will be there to answer your questions and help you learn for the duration of the course. The instructor will only be available to answer questions during the posted session dates, so ask all your questions while we're in session. You will have access to all of the online materials for a full year. Contact Tom McCormack, your Student Advocate, if you have questions before or after the posted session dates. Please review the orientation materials and introduce yourself on the discussion board.

This will be an informative week of videos, reading, and homework assignments to lay the groundwork for more in-depth topics. Plan to spend about five hours over the course of the week on this background material. We'll cover: History of Passive House, Introduce the Standard and certification strategies, Social & Environmental Context, Introduction to Energy Modeling and the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), and some real-world examples building designed and constructed to the Passive House standard from New England, Germany, and Austria.

We'll go into detail about Thermal Bridging, Foundations & Slabs, Above-grade walls, Windows and doors, Roofs, Mechanical Systems, Solar Thermal, and others.

More details: Mechanical Systems, including schematic design and details. Also, Building Science issues encountered in Passive House design and construction that you may not run into in conventional design and construction.

Mike has learned a few lessons working his own Passive House projects as well as observing others. This week he'll share all of these lessons to get you up the learning curve quickly. Moving beyond theory and completely into the realm of practical reality, this week's video lessons and discussion are about how to make Passive House happen in the real world. We'll build on this to discuss the limitations of Passive House, asking the question: "Is the Passive House Standard too Rigorous for the US?"

The full PHPP is a 40-tab spreadsheet with literally hundreds of inputs. PHPP Lite is a ‘wrapper’ around the PHPP which presents a much more limited interface, intended for ease of learning and understanding. We will go through a set of simple exercises to become familiar with how it is used, how user feedback is presented and the sensitivity of Space Heat Demand and Primary Energy to different inputs. Homework will reinforce and expand the use of this tool. We will describe the goals of the capstone project: to design a home that will meet the Passive House Space Heat Demand and Primary Energy goals and get everyone started.

This week is entirely devoted to your capstone project. We will discuss the challenges that you discovered, the solutions that worked and didn’t work and why, general questions, and next steps.

Here we have created a list of resources for you, books, websites, conferences, advanced training, industry Contacts and more. All students will have the tools to be a contributing member in the growing, global Passive House community. We'll continue this conversation at the Building Energy Conference!