Passive House Design Principles

A passive house is a building standard that reduces heating and cooling energy demand by 80-90 percent compared to conventional construction. Developed in Germany in 1991 by the Passivhaus Institut, the standard has been applied to over 65,000 buildings worldwide. The five principles are: superinsulation (R-40 to R-60 walls), high-performance windows (triple-pane, R-7+), airtight construction (less than 0.6 air changes per hour at 50 pascals), thermal bridge-free design (no uninsulated paths through the envelope), and heat recovery ventilation (recovering 80-90 percent of outgoing heat). Together, these reduce space heating demand to 15 kWh per square meter per year or less.