There are two primary tools used to provide performance feedback to a design team: Passive House Planning Package and Therm. As a architecture and engineering firm, we also use architectural design tools, such as Autodesk Revit Architecture, but this post is focused specifically on the Passive House-related tools:
Passive House Planning Package
This is the energy modeling tool that determines whether the home meets the performance requirements or not. The comprehensive inputs take into account all of the basics, such as
- Building geometries
- Wall construction
- Insulation levels and type
- Window locations
- Occupancy
- Usage assumptions
- Weather data
But PHPP also fine tunes performance of the home by incorporating the effects from:
- The difference between window glass and frame performance
- Heat loss through the connection between the glass and the frame
- Thermal bridging from corner framing
- The Impact from shading devices
- Ventilation energy requirements
- Thermal mass effects of concrete slabs, masonry walls, and other high-mass constructions
This powerful tool enables a designer to run numerous iterations using different configurations to arrive at an acceptable package of building components that meet all the Passive House performance criteria.
Therm
This is a program that calculates the amount of energy lost due to thermal bridging of wall, roof, and floor assemblies. This information
becomes particularly useful when evaluating roof to wall connections and wall to foundation connections. The additional framing and how the framing members are connected can impact the energy lost from the building. This level of precision and calculated data is never used to analyze the performance of conventional houses. This information becomes especially useful in comparing alternative framing approaches against one another.
Therm calculates how heat energy flows over connections of different materials
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 0 comments… add one now }