Myself and Stefan Pallantzas, we are members of the “Passivistas design team” (the team of CPHD that have voluntarily worked on this project) and we are glad to be here to present to you “Passivistas: The House Project”;
I will guide you through the design & construction section of the presentation and Stefan later on will tell you why this “small in sq.m.” but “big in the heart” project is so important for Greece.
This project is an energy upgrade and retrofit of a typical 142 m2 single-family house of the ‘60s in Greece according to the Passive House standard.
The building is located in Athens, which is in the middle of Greece and has a mild climate; so the goal was to eliminate the need for conventional heating & minimize the need for air conditioning.
It is located in the Papagou Municipality, on the western slope of mount Ymittos.
The building was built back in 1964 on a 520 m2 corner plot
the two street façades are looking south-east
and north-east.
It consists of two units:
on the 1st floor there is a 98.80 m2 typical private residence with 2 bedrooms, a bathroom, a separate kitchen and a living room entrance area. Its layout was not altered much, apart from this wall that separated the kitchen from the living room which was demolished to increase the flow of southern light towards the living room
and there is a separate 43.60 m2 storage/boiler room on the ground floor; this one was converted into an office, the HPHI’s headquarters.
The existing building is of massive construction (reinforced concrete slabs, columns and beams –marked in black- and perforated brick walls – marked in grey. It was completely uninsulated, as you can probably guess seeing the heating & cooling demand values and it’s estimated airtightness –we didn’t perform a blower test before the upgrade- was 8 times more the goal value of 0,6.
An Exterior Insulation Finishing System was applied … and you can see the thermal envelope boundary marked in orange.
15 cm of EPS were applied resulting in a U value of…
On the ground floor, the exterior walls that were adjacent to the ground had to be insulated on the inside.
New layout…WC, kitchenette, and an open plan office and conference & seminars room
5 cm of EPS were applied resulting in a U value of…
Surprise: this is a 50 cm thick wall which we thought was a stone wall, when we took off the plaster from the window’s lintel we realized it was not a stone wall after all, but later on the electrician tried to make a hole at the base of the wall …. It turned out it had stone at the base and brick on top after all. Bottom line is, you can never be sure what there is behind the plaster of an old building.
The roof was also uninsulated
30 cm of EPS were applied resulting in a U value of…
A light weight system was chosen so as not to put a lot of weight on the old concrete slab
5 cm of EPS were applied on top of the old mosaic floor resulting in a U value of…
5 cm of EPS were also applied on top of the wooden floor on the 1st floor and then a new laminate finish–in some parts like the kitchen and the bathroom there were tiles instead of wood- resulting in a U value of…
The building had major thermal bridges all around its perimeter due to balconies and protruding structural elements.
All existing thermal bridges were resolved and their new ψ-values were calculated accordingly in Flixo.
These are photos of the insulated parapet.
There were thermal bridges on the parapet …. In total we calculated 14 thermal bridges –not counting the windows’ installation thermal bridges
Balconies were insulated on top off their old mosaic finish and all around with 5 cm of EPS
The new ψ value is half the old one
And of course we also calculated the window installation thermal bridges, 15 in number, as we installed 3 different types of window frames from 3 different manufacturers installed in 2 different ways.
The building originally had double sash, wooden frame windows with single glazing.
The new windows have either pvc frame or aluminum frame and triple glazing; all windows were converted to single sash in order to increase the glazing area.
This is the case where the window was installed on the lintel; it was positioned on a wooden frame.
Pvc frame windows with roller shutters were installed on the 1st floor
This is the case where the window was installed on the insulation layer; it was positioned on a wooden beam which was screwed to the wall at the base of the opening.
Pvc frame windows were installed on the ground floor and 2 aluminum frame windows were installed this way on the 1st floor’s living room
The dimensions of the south-facing windows in the kitchen and the bathroom were increased,
All south-east-, south-west- and north-west-facing windows have automatically controlled roller blinds for temporary shading in summer. All windows – except from the big one in the kitchen – can be opened or tilted for natural night cross-ventilation in summer and have mosquito nets on the outside. On the south-west and north-west side of the building – in the area of the two balconies – horizontal tents will be placed to shade the windows and the balcony’s sitting area during midday and afternoon hours in summer.
PH Doors also positioned on a wooden frame
2 different types of PH doors were installed, one is PVC
and one is aluminum
Airtight and windproof membranes were installed on all windows and doors.
This is the case where the window was installed on the insulation layer;
the tape used for windtightness
Tapes glued with silicone
Tapes Plastered on top
Lintel plastered and finished
This is the case where the window was installed on the lintel, you can see the airtightness tape
the …….. used for windtightness
The positioning of the window
Tapes glued with silicone
Plastered and finished
The airtightness layer on the walls and ceiling is plaster.
On the floor we placed an airtight membrane on top of the insulation layer, sealed with tapes to it’s connection with the walls.
All the details were taken care of –
The existing building was heated with oil and radiators and a traditional fireplace, and had two 2.5 kW split units for cooling. All of these were removed.
New heat recovery ventilation (HRV) systems were installed, one for each unit (house and office). The residence unit is also coupled with a 30 m long, 2.00 m deep ground heat exchanger.
Outdoor air inlet
Exhaust air outlet
The ground heat exchanger decreases the incoming air temperature down to 25–27 °C during summer.
For the residence unit, the normal air-flow is 110 m3/h.
Bathroom extract air inlet
Bedroom supply air outlet
The unit has a 1,3 kW supply air heater, which will cover the remaining heating demand.
A 2.0 kW inverter split unit was installed in the living room, actively covers the cooling demand and will serve as a backup for heating.
For the office, a bigger unit has been installed with 250 m3/h capacity to cover the presence of 10 people, for example, during courses
Outdoor and exhaust air inlet/outlet
That’s all from me, Stefan is taking over now
These are the results of the PHPP. We reached the passive house criteria, which are the same for enerphit in our climate region, according to the new criteria, but we prefered to certify the building as enerPHit. With the installation of the PV on the roof next month, the building will be an EnerPHit Plus.
Passive House needs teamwork! 11 Architects and Engineers , 8 of them CPH Designers , more than 60 Craftsmen joined the project. We started together in May 2015 planning the house and we went up to October finishing the project. Every engineer, every architect, every craftsman knew exactly what to do every day. From the planning to the implementations, the logistics and the tests, everything was programmed in detail and realized on schedule.
This was the only way to realize this project in 150 days, between 2 general elections, one referendum and with capital controls in our banks.
The experience with the 9th version of PHPP was great. We have used the variants tool to create several alternative scenarios for the envelope. The new user-friendly interface helped us to increase the productivity and make fewer mistakes. Especially the new windows section allowed us to check every single window and to optimise their gains and losses.
Our calculations showed that we could reach the target of 15 kWh/(m2a) with nearly less than 10 cm of external insulation and double-glazed windows. But we decided to go further and increase the thickness in order to approach the 10 W/m2 criterion and eliminate the need for conventional heating. This was achieved with 20 cm of insulation and double-glazed windows with a high g-value. Then we found out that there was no option in the Greek market to find windows with a g-value above 0.54. So we decided, in order to keep the positive balance of the windows, to use triple-glazing with a Ug-value of 0.5 W/(m2K) and a g-value of 0.54. This reduced the wall insulation thickness to 15 cm.
The blower door test was performed after finishing the airtightness layer (plastering) and was unexpectedly good! Two separate double (press and depress) tests were done, one for the residence unit (n50 = 0.48 /h) and one for the office (n50 = 0.85 /h). The average n50-value of the entire building was 0.56 /h at 50 Pa.
We were excited with the blower door test result. Although it was an old house and we were afraid of not achieving the specification easily, the result was extraordinary. We believe that this was due to the good internal plastering of the house, which is a big advantage of the way houses are built in Greece.
In Greece, there is little knowledge about planning and installing ventilation systems. The whole procedure was developed and implemented by the team of engineers, all of whom are Passive House designers. After planning the duct system and calculating the airflows and the pressure drops, the unit and the ducts as well as the preheater were installed, the system was made airtight and the noise was reduced, the flows were measured and the system was calibrated. In this respect, the suppliers should educate their staff on installing ventilation units. Our coming Tradesperson courses this year will help in this direction.
This project is a stepping stone on the road to the Greek Nearly Zero-Energy Building (NZEB) of 2020. We want to show the people, the engineers, the market and the government that energy efficiency is achievable and cost-effective. Furthermore, by using renewable sources, it is easy to achieve a house which has a positive energy balance, i.e. a truly sustainable house.
The design process, the implementation and the subsequent monitoring project promote collaborative processes among executives of the Hellenic Passive House Institute (HPHI), certified Passive House building designers, engineers and technicians from all sectors and commercial and technical departments of companies that are manufacturing and marketing Passive House components. It offers all the information required on how to drastically save domestic energy to everybody through an open public database, while improving quality of life and contributing substantially to the fight against global warming.
After completion of the project, the house works as a media and collaborative process hub aimed to prove in practice the ability to upgrade the energy consumption of residential buildings in Greece and the Mediterranean area so that they do not need conventional heating or air conditioning, while drastically reducing energy costs and improve the indoor quality. And all this at an acceptable cost to the community.
Specifically, the project will implement the following functions:
• The ground floor acts already as an open residence for the next seven years. We have guided visits, lectures and public presentations nearly everyday. During the Passive House days in November there were more than 300 people visiting the house.
The basement serves as headquarters of HPHI and hosts seminars and training materials. Participants enjoy the course than in the past, cause now they not just hear about the principles, they really enjoy to see it in praxis. We are expecting to double the CPH Designers by the end of the year.
HPHI created the project website and covers all the steps and aspects of the project via an interactive blog. On the website, everybody can learn about the design process, stages of implementation, the specifications of materials and controls, and take a look at online measurements and the actual operation and consumption of the building. On the other hand, all companies that participated in the project will have access to all data available, concerning the behavior of the building, of all materials and equipment and will cooperate with HPHI and the project management to further improve the quality of their products.
The team developed info materials available to everyone, in the form of videos, posters, brochures, a technical handbook etc.
These are the measurements for last winter, so DEC 2015 to MAR 2016 and as you can see the results are following the PHPP calculations. Results were better, mainly because weather in January 2nd part and February was warmer than average.
Total costs for running the house these 4 months was nearly 300 euros, nearly half of it to heat the house. 1,38 euros /day of heating period.
At the bottom you sea the mean power neaded for running the building , The average number for the same period was 0,5 KW.
The total cost of this retrofit/enerPHit was nearly 50.000 euros, so more than 420 euros/TFA m2, which is a normal cost for general renovation in our country. The energy saved for heating was more than 90% and this result brings to a conclusion that says : even if you don’t have this money and want to get financed from a bank, it will costs you less from the first year, to pay for the loan than to heat the old 60’s house.
But passive house for me is not about energy and money. These are numbers for those who calculate and evaluate results. Passive house is about quality of life . As a passive house designer I always focus on this, but now as a user I really enjoy it.
I wish you all will have the chance to enjoy it. Passive House it’s the best way, if not the only to show to everyone that we change things on the planet.
Thank You.