There are many reasons to build a passive house. The most important are related to the cost advantages you enjoy by building a passive house. The architecture of a passive house is designed so that the basic needs of the home owner, with respect to energy supply, are autonomously controlled. As the term "passive" implies, regulating the energy balance requires no action on your part. This capability stems from the architecture of the house. Roughly 8,000 people in Germany have meanwhile taken advantage of this architecture to build a passive house. But how does a passive house function and what is the respective architecture basically made of? The architecture is typically designed so that the outer shell of the passive house is insulated to keep the heat from escaping outside.
When building a passive house, a ventilation system acts to additional recover 80 percent of the heat. The roof of a passive house is designed to capture additional heat and store it until the room temperature sinks enough so that it must be released. Related studies have shown that a passive house constantly maintains an indoor temperature of more than 20°C at an outside temperature of -14°C. A passive house provides the freedom to individualize the architecture. The owner can decide whether to build the house out of concrete/brick, wood or a combination. The architecture always depends on the architect and the individual plan. However, there are several factors to consider when building a passive house.
Passive houses exhibit specific characteristics that are tied to the architecture. The external building components must be extremely well insulated in addition to carefully constructing the corners, edges, joints and other cross sections. This would otherwise lead to excessive heat loss and failure of the architecture to fulfill the desired requirements. By taking these factors into account and using the right approach to building a passive house, one can expect a minimal heat loss of only .15 watts per square meter of external surface area. If you are building a house, the architecture should be designed to maximize the energy gain through the solar cells. For this reason, the solar cells on the roof of the passive house must have a southerly orientation.
To build a passive house, it should be designed such that the respective solar collectors and heat pumps supply power to the hot water system. When building a passive house and using the appropriate architecture, you can expect to significantly lower your operating costs.
The architecture is what makes it possible for you to build a passive house and to have a complete energy system that runs on its own. While more and more people are dreaming of building a house, it always involves high costs. With the right architecture, you can build a passive house assuming that you will benefit from significantly lower monthly operating costs. This approach allows you to build to a house that runs completely on its own thanks to the corresponding high-quality architecture . Because the architecture is so well thought-out, you can build this house under the assumption that the heating balance will regulate itself. For this reason, you can assume that building a house is a worthwhile effort.
Here you can discover new and innovative developments from the world of building design and construction.
innovations-report offers reports and articles on a variety of topics such as building optimization, modern construction materials, energy-efficient construction, natural insulation materials and passive buildings.
Civil engineering academic is developing new vibration-control devices based on Formula 1 technology for skyscrapers
City, University London draws on Formula 1 technology for the construction of "needle-like" skyscrapers.
10.12.2019 |Dense, humid broadleaf forests, monsoon-swollen rivers and deep ravines – in the Indian state of Meghalaya wooden bridges easily decay or are washed away in floodwaters. Bridges made from steel and concrete are pushed to their limits here as well. But bridges made of living tree roots can survive here for centuries. Prof. Ferdinand Ludwig of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has investigated these special structures and proposes integrating this extraordinary building technique in modern architecture.
Inaccessible valleys and ravines lead from the North East Indian Meghalaya plateau to the wide plains of Bangladesh. In the monsoon months the mountain streams...
18.11.2019 |"Corrosion" comes from Latin "corrodere": to gnaw something to pieces. This refers to the gradual destruction of a sub- stance due to the influence of other substances in the environment. Specialists at Empa take a close look at such processes and can find timely ways to prevent material failure due to corrosion – long before disasters such as those in Genoa occur.
The owner of a new Swiss industrial facility for the production of high-tech machinery was faced with a mystery: Kilometres of brand new stainless steel and...
22.10.2019 |Smart Glass Solutions – such as electrochromic (EC) and thermochromic (TC) windows and glass façades –control the radiation energy transfer with the "touch of a button" and thus can drastically reduce the energy demands for heating and air conditioning of large buildings. On 1st October 2019, the EU-funded initiative "Switch2save" was launched to improve the availability and affordability of EC and TC smart glass technologies. The consortium of ten partners from research and industry will demonstrate the energy saving potential of smart glass solutions in two fully-operational buildings.
Climate change is a topic now on everyone's lips and climate targets are being discussed at all levels. Solutions such as the use of natural resources for...
15.10.2019 |On October 1, 2019, the EU-funded initiative “Switch2Save” was launched to improve the availability and affordability of electrochromic and thermochromic smart glass technologies. The consortium of ten partners from research and industry will demonstrate the energy saving potential of smart glass solutions in two fully-operational buildings.
Climate change is a topic now on everyone's lips and climate targets are being discussed at all levels. Solutions such as the use of natural resources for...
04.10.2019 |Report in Science Advances: Sophisticated modelling technology opens up new avenues in timber construction and digital design.
Researchers from the University of Stuttgart, ETH Zurich and the Swiss Empa have presented a method with which wood panels themselves bend into a previously...
16.09.2019 |Air pollution is increasing in many cities. It is also getting warmer and warmer and flooding occurs during heavy rain because the surfaces are sealed. Therefore, new concepts are needed to ensure that cities remain livable for their inhabitants, including more green spaces that ensure a pleasant climate and keep the air clean. The greening of façades is also important. A start-up of Technische Universität Kaiserslautern has developed a system for green façades that is maintenance-free and, thanks to moss, self-greening. The founders market this system through their company "Artificial Ecosystems". For their idea, they were awarded 1st place in the Rhineland-Palatinate Ideas Prize 2019.
Around 400 million years ago, mosses formed on Earth. Unlike other plants, they do not have roots. "They filter their nutrients out of the air," says botanist...
25.06.2019 |The new 5G radio standard is intended to make our communication and data transmission considerably faster and more efficient. For this to be possible, a sufficient number of transmission masts are needed. In a seminar held in the Department of Architecture at Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, participants discussed the possible design of these masts. For their models, the students have opted for the environmentally friendly material wood. The best designs are currently being constructed. Over the next few weeks, it is planned to install them as part of a pilot project in Kaiserslautern.
5G transmission masts have to be distributed throughout the entire area in order to ensure reliable data transmission. In order not to adversely affect the...
20.05.2019 |Industrial manufacture of solar building components and their integration into the building planning process
The majority of photovoltaic (PV) systems in Germany are roof-mounted using a mounting system to fix the modules. On the other hand, solar PV modules that are...
13.03.2019 |Bamberg heritage conservationists develop new imaging process
The cathedrals of Cologne, Pisa, Ghent, Vitoria-Gasteiz und Vienna are up to one thousand years old, and they are all victims of the ravages of time. Even the...
07.03.2019 |In a joint experimental and theoretical work performed at the Heidelberg Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, an international team of physicists detected for the first time an orbital crossing in the highly charged ion Pr⁹⁺. Optical spectra were recorded employing an electron beam ion trap and analysed with the aid of atomic structure calculations. A proposed nHz-wide transition has been identified and its energy was determined with high precision. Theory predicts a very high sensitivity to new physics and extremely low susceptibility to external perturbations for this “clock line” making it a unique candidate for proposed precision studies.
Laser spectroscopy of neutral atoms and singly charged ions has reached astonishing precision by merit of a chain of technological advances during the past...
The ability to investigate the dynamics of single particle at the nano-scale and femtosecond level remained an unfathomed dream for years. It was not until the dawn of the 21st century that nanotechnology and femtoscience gradually merged together and the first ultrafast microscopy of individual quantum dots (QDs) and molecules was accomplished.
Ultrafast microscopy studies entirely rely on detecting nanoparticles or single molecules with luminescence techniques, which require efficient emitters to...
Graphene, a two-dimensional structure made of carbon, is a material with excellent mechanical, electronic and optical properties. However, it did not seem suitable for magnetic applications. Together with international partners, Empa researchers have now succeeded in synthesizing a unique nanographene predicted in the 1970s, which conclusively demonstrates that carbon in very specific forms has magnetic properties that could permit future spintronic applications. The results have just been published in the renowned journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Depending on the shape and orientation of their edges, graphene nanostructures (also known as nanographenes) can have very different properties – for example,...
Using a clever technique that causes unruly crystals of iron selenide to snap into alignment, Rice University physicists have drawn a detailed map that reveals...
University of Texas and MIT researchers create virtual UAVs that can predict vehicle health, enable autonomous decision-making
In the not too distant future, we can expect to see our skies filled with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) delivering packages, maybe even people, from location...
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First International Conference on Agrophotovoltaics in August 2020
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Laser Symposium on Electromobility in Aachen: trends for the mobility revolution
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