Founder of RDA Architects, Richard Dudzicki, explains why you should consider Passivhaus for your low-energy home

Is Passivhaus design really worth it?

Passivhaus is a system developed by the Passive House Institute in Darmstadt, Germany by physicist Professor Wolfgang Feist. The general idea is that you can use physics to model a building to use less energy and be comfortable to live in. The average property in the British housing stock probably uses around 160 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy per m2 per annum –a Passivhaus tries to reduce that tenfold down to 15kWh/m2 . By inputting various bits of data into different spreadsheets and formulas and so forth, we can calculate how much energy a building will use – before any construction begins.

You can apply the principles of this mathematical model to any building and determine how efficient it will be and whether it’s economical or not to create a certified Passivhaus.