| Passive House Renovation |
We started renovating this 1960's Wicklow bungalow in 2009 to Passive House standards and should be completed by mid July.
Appropriate insulationIn the renovation process we will pump the wall cavities and externally insulate the house with 200mm of External Insulation. We put 400mm of Polysterene under the floor and 300mm of Cellulose in the ceiling.
Efficient windowsWe fitted triple glazed German windows with a 0.85 U-value, these will protrude outside the walls and the frames will be covered on 2 sides by the External Insulation to eliminate Cold Bridging.
Efficient Equipment!We will install a Paul HRV system which is certified by the PassivHaus Institute and a 14m2 Solar panel array facing towards the Winter Sun with a 1500L buffer tank for space and hot water heating. The Buffer-tank will also be periodically heated by a small 4kW wood burning stove!
Finishing and optimization are very importantThe External Insulation will drop down 500mm below the internal Finished Floor Level to reduce the Cold Bridge between the wall and the floor to an acceptable level and to prevent the base of the wall getting too cold and causing Condensation. The dpc is luckily 300mm below FFL which luckily allows us to pump EPS bead down to this level helping to reduce the wall/floor CB to 0.062 and reducing the heatlossto 0.9kW/(m².a) at this point. The client will be moving away from an Oil heating system which required 2 fills per year anda Cold house to a completly sustainable lifestyle. They resisted the urge to put in a gas boiler back up heating system. The 3 graphs below show the effect of the study we undertook to eliminate this Cold Bridge.
We stopped the External Insulation at Finished Floor Level in this simulation.
We dropped the External Insulation 500mm below the Finished Floor Level in this Simulation.
We dropped the External Insulation 500mm below the FFL and Pumped EPS bead into the cavity in this Simulation.
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