The Passivhaus Planning Package (or PHPP) is an Excel workbook designed to balance energy. It discovers the losses and gains and weighs them against each other. The tool is only as conservative as the Passivhaus Standard and the tool user and it can be used as a good indicator to demonstrate where heat is retained and lost.

A few of our projects use the PHPP to demonstrate compliance and non-compliance with the Passivhaus Standard. These are the points that are consistent in projects which comply and do not comply with this high standard.

• 1. Parts of the building envelope gain heat more than others.
  2. Parts of the building envelope lose heat more than others.
  3. Walls perform better than windows.
  4. Large glazing areas lose a lot of heat.
  5. Shading on the West helps a lot, shading on the East can help if there is a lot of glass on the East.
  6. Insulating the Roof has a massive effect on performance.
  7. Insulating the Floor can help, though has the least impact.
  8. External walls have the biggest impact on the efficiency of the surface area to volume ratio of a building.

Within the PHPP there is an Energy Balance graph showing where most of the losses and gains come from. This graph can be used to interpret the best and worst parts of the design. Even if the building does not comply with Heating Demand, Heat Load, Cooling Demand, Cooling Load Airtightness or Primary Energy Demand, it can still be used as a tool to measure a building’s performance.

You can find more information on how we implement Passivhaus into ‘The Green Dot’ service here.