On roses, cake, and Passive House
Kara Rosemeier
Director at Passive House Academy New Zealand - Kaiako Pūtaiao Hanganga. He pōkeke uenuku i tū ai.
The principles of a rose are petals, colour and scent – right? For reasons I cannot comprehend, some people came up with the idea of Passive House principles. Likely in an attempt to simplify the complex, but there is a stage where simplification leads to the garden path.
What’s a principle? According to the Oxford Dictionary, either a basic idea or rule that explains or controls how something happens or works or a moral rule or standard of good behaviour. None of this makes any sense applied to insulation, airtightness, triple-glazing, thermal- bridge-free design or heat recovery ventilation. I believe we can all agree that “triple-glazing” is no explanation for how something works, and that airtightness is not a moral rule.
Merriam Webster offers a third definition: an ingredient (such as a chemical) that exhibits or imparts a characteristic quality. It’s still a stretch, but maybe airtightness could be understood as an ingredient, but I am struggling to qualify i.a. thermal-bridge-free design as such.
But even if we could classify the so-called Passive House principles as ingredients: flour, sugar and fat do not make a cake, and if you wanted cheesecake, you won’t be consoled by knowing that the banana muffin you were served was cooked using cheesecake principles.
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And maybe we could claim that thermal-bridge-free design is a standard of good behaviour, but that still does not justify calling the other parts “principles”.
The beauty of the Passive House standard is in its clarity. You meet the criteria, or you don’t. Using some of the ingredients needed to meet the criteria has no bearing on this. Yes, you typically find a toilet in a Passive House but deducting from this that all houses with a toilet perform as Passive Houses would be quite egregious. And by the way: my certified Passive House does not even have triple glazing – it’s not always needed. And you will find some sort of insulation in just about every house – the use of insulation does not preclude anything at all.
If you mean well: please stop marrying Passive House with principles – it’s dishonouring the integrity of the Passive House standard!