Noticias de la Cámara
The First Priego Passivhaus
15/02/2024
Liam Kellehar Arquitectos are currently building what we believe will be the first home in Priego de Córdoba that is designed and built to the Passivhaus Institute principles.
First posited more than 30 years ago, using available environmental data for human comfort, Dr. Feist and his colleagues proposed five essential principles for the Passivhaus system throughout the world.
- Good insulation – the better a house is insulated the less you have to heat it to keep it warm. Also, good insulation stops your house getting hot in the summer, meaning you do not need to cool it with air conditioning.
- No thermal bridges – no weak spots in your insulation that allow heat to escape. This is where you will notice condensation and even mould on your walls.
- Good quality windows – double glazing (sometimes triple in colder climates) and also insulated frames to prevent condensation and mould growth.
- Air tight – now that you have a well-insulated building, you have to make sure you do not loose heat through air leakage or air infiltration from outside.
- Ventilation – mechanical ventilation with 90% heat recuperation. You need fresh air to breath, but you cannot afford to lose all the heat, so you need a heat exchange unit to recover as much of the warmth from the air just before you expel it.
A new Passivhaus building has a heating / cooling requirement of just 15 kW/m² per year, whether it is a small family house or 100 bed hotel and whether it is built in the Artic or Timbuktu. That is just 10% of the energy requirements of most normal buildings and half that for the new buildings to latest building code. The extra building cost is repaid in the reduced heating costs in just 15 years.
Here in Andalusia any building must also cope with solar heat gain, so blinds and shading are the order of the day.
