jeffwTIL about “passive houses,” building that are airtight and require barely any energy to heat or cool
TDCNTo people who says “they aren’t airtight” are not correct. Living in a country where building houses like this is the norm I can say that they are build to be as airtight as possible to keep in humidity and thereby heat inside. What makes them livable and not a humid moldy plastic bag is a well tuned mechanical ventilation system with a heat regeneration system (air cross flow system, really simple actually) that recovers most of the heat. The ventilation system runs 24/7 and keep the air fresh, more fresh than most conventional houses in fact if it’s tuned correctly that is. But yes the house is as airtight as posible and they pressure test them to ensure they meet the standards.
The biggest issue with it is actually cooling them. We have issues here in summer because no method of removing heat is properly implemented yet. But in winter it’s awesome. My heating bill is practically 0.
InktvipAt least In NL, what you can do for cooling is to have cold water run through your in-floor heating. Brings things down to about 2-3C under ambient, so not perfect by any means, but a lot more pleasant than without it.
Unfortunately it’s considered an optional upgrade that you can only really get when buying a newly built home and most people skip it in favour of things like a fancier kitchen.