How are passive houses made?

Find out more about the passive house standard of building.

Passivhaus buildings don’t have to be made from any particular building material or system, which is the beauty of the standard. It can be applied to any building but not all buildings will achieve the standard. The main criteria is that you have enough insulation, you reduce your thermal bridges to a minimum, if not zero, and you make the building airtight. The building design also has to go through a tool called the passive house planning package or PHPP which is essentially a very large spreadsheet which will tell you if your design is likely to achieve the energy targets that are set out.

Once the design works you need to use building systems that will work too. We find that the simplest way to achieve Passivhaus standard is by using a timber frame structure with taped OSB on the inside, acting as your vapour control layer/airtightness membrane/sheathing board,UdiFLEX wood fibre wool between the studs and either UdiTOP wood fibre sarking boards or the UdiFRONT wood fibre external insulation system on the outside, depending on the required finish. This is a very fast, simple and cost effective way to achieve this very demanding standard. Contact us if you’d like to know more.