Passive House

Passive house designs enable us to build houses that save energy, improve air quality and reduce noise pollution. Read more about the many benefits of the passive house.

Father reading book for son

The world’s most energy efficient building standard offers not only a saving on energy but also a comfortable indoor environment for both homes, public buildings and commercial complexes. This is the Passive House standard.

How does a passive house work?

The standard is built on a set of five principles that ensure stable temperatures, comfortable indoor air, reduction of noise and a minimal energy use:

  1. No thermal bridging – this means making sure walls, floors and roofs are well insulated with no gaps. This reduces the need for heating or cooling to achieve a comfortable temperature.
  2. High-quality insulation – The quality of the insulation is key to the success of the building design.  The insulation serves to minimize the heat exchange with the outside environment Passive House buildings employ high-quality insulation like stone wool. 
  3. Superior windows –  to ensure that the entire building envelope is well insulated it is important to use quality windows that have a low thermal conductivity.
  4. Airtight construction – there should be no uncontrolled airflow between the internal and external environment. 
  5. Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery – all this effort to insulate the building is coupled with high quality ventilation that recovers heat from the used air and transfers it to the fresh air coming in. This ensures a minimal loss of energy and a good indoor air quality.

Does a Passive house need heating?

Passive houses are built to optimise thermal gain and minimise thermal losses. This means that the energy required to heat a passive house is 90% lower than that of other buildings. Passive homes therefore do not rely on traditional heating sources like furnaces or boilers. Instead they use renewable energy sources like solar panels, geothermal energy or heat pumps.

Passive House image diagram
Are Passive Houses expensive?

Passive buildings do not require the expensive heating or cooling systems of conventional buildings. This means that even though passive homes and buildings require high-quality building materials they are still surprisingly affordable.

In addition to this an increasing number of countries are offering financial support for building low energy buildings which increases the attractiveness of Passive House construction. The long-term savings on energy bills coupled with a feasible initial down-pay means that Passive Houses make for a great investment.

Rockzero, HusCompagniet, Reference Case, Glostrup, Højmarksvej

How is a Passive House built?

Passive Houses are built to ensure maximum thermal gain and minimizing losses. This mean employing the five principles in the construction process making sure that the building envelope is airtight and well insulated. This process involves picking the right materials for walls, windows and insulation. Stone wool is a preferred product when constructing Passive Houses and you can read more about ROCKWOOL stone wool here.

The easy way to low energy buildings

If you want an easier and faster solution to building low energy passive homes, we have introduced a pioneering new wall system named Rockzero. With Rockzero, you can build homes with superior energy efficiency, fire protection and indoor comfort. Rockzero integrates high-quality insulation with a simple to build wall system. You can read much more on Rockzero here.

Rockzero building site, Trekroner

Case Studies

Do you want to see the Passive House standard in action? We have gathered a collection of related case studies for you:

More Passive Buildings