Timber Frame & Passive House
At Setanta we have for years been building homes with the best insulation that we could provide.
Every house built buy Setanta is either built to the Passive house standard or built to a standard very close to the Passive House standard depending on the clients needs and wants.
What is a Passive House or Passivhaus?
The Passivhaus institute of Germany has laid out some criteria for energy efficient construction by which a building should be built, in order to qualify as a Passive house. This is administered through the Passive House academy of Ireland and the Certified Pasive house Designers.
These criteria are as follow:
- Space heat demand of ≤ 15kw/m2 per annum
- Building heating load of ≤ 10w/m2
- Useful cooling demand of ≤ 15kwh/m2 per annum
- Primary energy demand of ≤ 120kwh/m2 per annum
- Building air tightness of ≤ 0.6 /h
- Excess temperature frequency ≤ 10%
- Windows U value of 0.85w/m2k “fitted”
- Window g value of 50 – 55 %
- Ventilation system efficiency ≥ 75%
- Thermal bridge free design details
Some basic principals are applied in order to aid the achieving of the criteria
- Living quarters and larger windows to the south
- Service rooms and smaller windows to the north
- Keep the design compact
- Centralize the services
In short a 2000 sq ft house will cost less than £190 per year for space heating using a standard oil boiler and maintaining at a constant temperature of 20 degrees internally day and night all year round with excellent air quality and indoor comfort.
This may sound difficult to believe, but it does work and this is what can be achieved when the correct building principals are applied
There are now 2383 certified Passive house designers spread across the world and Mark Gribbin of Setanta is one of the few Certified Passive House designersin Northern Ireland.