The Passive House concept is winning admirers in Ireland and the UK, who argue that its simple approach to low-energy building is far more practical than the Code for Sustainable Homes or BER approach. Expensive renewable technologies do not figure in a Passive house because energy use is cut to a minimum by simply building a super-insulated, airtight envelope. This, coupled with a degree of solar gain, reduces the need for a heating system to the absolute minimum.

Passive houses are designed to maximize free heat gains, with comfort levels maintained year round at a steady 20 degrees, a small heating system, often no bigger than a toaster element delivers heat through the ventilation system, using no more than 15kWh/m2/yr for space heating. Viking house can tailor solutions for you site and budget, delivering options from near-passive to energy plus. For many budgets great performance can be achieved using the passive concept to deliver a house that runs on 20-25 kwh/m2/yr (the equivalent of 2 liters of oil per meter square) for heat with less than 2 liters for hot water. Through our innovations in foundation and wall design and our network of suppliers, we can help you build a high comfort, low running cost home at pretty much conventional build costs.

We take the guesswork out of specificying components by verifying your design through the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), which allows us to analyze various combinations of wall build up, window frame U-value, cold bridge factors and heating systems to take the guesswork out of low energy building and maximize the bang for your buck. Viking House provides a full contract for turnkey delivery of low energy buildings or the Passive House Selfbuilder kit, with finishes by your own local tradesmen. This is proving to be an extremely cost effective solution for today's market.

"Spend €1 on insulation to save a Kilowatt or spend €10 on solar panels to generate a Kilowatt"

The passive approach to building differs considerably from the 'BER' or A rated approach, Passive Houses are verified during construction and on completion to ensure that the completed building performs to a specific standard. BER is simply an asset rating based on plans provided. The difference between both standards is huge when it comes to build quality and performance. You can get away with gaps in insulation, and holes in the fabric in standard building reg houses, but not in a Passive House. The DEAP software is currently being updated in the UK using the PHPP as a template.

Viking House has a consultancy team comprised of an Architect, Engineer and Project Manager, presently working on Passive residential, commercial and schools. We can analyze your project from the macro issues such as siteing and solar orientation of your building to the micro detailing to condensation risk, and heat loss analysis of fabric build-up. We are currently engaged with designers and builders including Morgan Sindall in the UK and the Quinn Group in the North to upgrade their standard details to provide cold bridge free, condensation free construction details using standard trades and materials.