Passive Housing

Graeme · 2009-01-06T06:53:11+00:00

A friend in the US has sent me details of passive housing, reproduced below. Comments, anyone?Published: December 26, 2008DARMSTADT, Germany - From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.The Energy ChallengeArticles in this series are examining the ways in which the world is, and is not, moving toward a more energy efficient, environmentally benign future.In Berthold Kaufmann's home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room - but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann's new "passive house" and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer."You don't think about temperature - the house just adjusts," said Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents' home of roughly the same size, he said.Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any...

Passive Housing

Jan 06, 2009 22 Replies

Rate this thread:

Martin Bonner 17 years ago

I can't provide a counter example for /heat/ exchangers, but your lungs are a non-counter current gas exchanger. (Birds on the other hand use a more efficient and more complex counter current system.)

Vote

Alan Braggins 17 years ago

I can:

formatting link

the "why" is "because the crossflow is cheaper than counterflow".)

Vote

Doctor Drivel 17 years ago

The most common is the plate heat exchanger inside combis. Plate heat exchangers on some combis are designed not to be so efficient as to drop the return water so much the boiler cannot raise the temperature on the primary flow side enough. This also may affect the delta T of the main heat exchanger and have adverse effects, such as cracking. Long thin high kW plate heat exchangers extract an amazing amount of heat from incoming water and are used on heat banks.

Vote

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required