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We are building our first Externally Insulated Quinnlite Block Passive Houses using Irish building materials. Using 150mm Quinnlite Blocks with 200mm of EPS External Insulation the wall build-up delivers an Excellent 0.139 U-value, well within the Passive House scope. This warm to touch wall is worth a few degrees to you over a concrete block wall when it comes to feeling comfortable in your house, you can turn down the heat a few degrees and still feel comfortable! The wall has an 11 hour Decrement Delay slowing down heatloss and protecting against Summer overheating. Quinnlite has a medium hygroscopic ability similar to Poroton which means it's quite good at buffering moisture levels and naturally regulating the humidity levels in the home.
The blocks are laid using Thin Joint mortar to reduce Cold Bridges at the mortar joints and the blocks are easily plastered by first dampening them well to stop the plaster drying out too quick. Using our Patented "G Element" foundation system we can totally eliminate the floor-wall cold bridge.
Here are some photos of a Passive Extension we built using the system. You can see the 250mm Pumped Cellulose in the Roof with 80mm of Wood fibreboard over the rafters delivering an excellent U-value of 0.088. This gives a windtight, airtight breathable roof which will last a lifetime.
Here is an Externally Insulated Quinnlite Passive House being built in Cavan using Viking G element foundation system.
We developed this simple build system to reduce the cost of building Passive Houses and to bring Passive Houses closer to everybody. Our passion can be your passion!
Compare this with the traditional build method!
LaCompte's 1990 paper shows that a 3mm gap between the insulation and the inner block reduces the U-Value from 0.34 to 0.54. A 10mm gap like the one above reduces the U-Value to 0.65, a 198% decrease. Irish blocks are manufactured to a 2mm tolerance so any 2 blocks can have a 4mm width difference. I have not mentioned anything here about snots of mortar holding the insulation away from the wall and about bad workmanship. When you build using the traditional systems like this you never get the U-values you expect!
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