What is a passive house

The Passivhaus, or Passive House standard was developed in Germany and

has spread around the world. It is based on the principle that you should use
enough insulation (and careful design, detailing, and use of high quality windows) so
that the house or building uses less than 15 kilowatt-hours of energy per square
meter of floor area per year. We think that the 15kWh/m2 standard is arbitrary and
silly in colder climates.
A passive house is an extremely energy-efficient building with year-round
comfortable interior conditions. The concept is based on reducing a buildings heat
losses to aminimum, removing the need for traditional heating systems and active
cooling. The energy requirement for heating is lower than 10 to 20 kWh / (m2a),
depending on climate. That means an 80% saving compared to conventional
building methods. The cost of building a passive house may be higher compared to
a typical house, but its running costs are substantially lower. This makes the house
more affordable over the long term. The indoor environment in a passive house is
easy to control and maintain. Due to the very low demand for heating power,
traditional central.
A passive house has a high level of insulation with minimal thermal bridges
(places where heat can be transferred from the inside to the outside) and utilizes
passive solar energy (sunlight entering the building through the windows) and heat
recovery from ventilation air. Renewable energy sources (e.g. wind, solar, subsoil
heat exchange) can be used to meet the remaining energy demand.
By pegging an energy budget on the standard he required cold climate
builders to invest an extraordinary amount of money in insulation that will never
foreseeably be recovered in any possible energy savings. When true believers in the
US started copying the Germans using the Central European standard in our
climates they were ending up with 14 inches of rigid foam under their concrete
slabs, they were ending up with R100 insulation in their attics and they were
sometimes paying $6,000 or $10,000 for reducing tiny amounts of annual energy
use that could easily have been supplied by a $400 solar panel producing electricity.
A passive house provides three major benefits for its users:
A comfortable temperature (warm in winter, cool in summer) and excellent indoor
airquality, independent of outdoor conditions(climate, air pollution, noise)
Lower and more stable energy bills
A robust, durable home that requires little maintenance

A passive house can look just like a conventional house from the outside.
Furthermore, living in a passive house does not require a special lifestyle passive
houses are for everyone!