Passive House Renovation in Glencullen
We renovated this 1960’s bungalow to Passive House standard in 2009 and will monitor it through the coming Winter. We fitted 15m2 of Solar Panels with a 2000L buffer tank to provide hot water and contribute to the heating requirement. The before and after PHPP’s we did on the project shows that we reduced the energy demand by 93% by improving the airtightness by a factor 20, by insulating to Passive House standards, by fitting a Passive House approved HRV system and by fitting Passive standard windows.
Appropriate insulation
In the renovation process we pumped the 100mm wall cavities and externally insulated the house with 200mm of External Insulation. We put 400mm of Polysterene under the floor and 300mm of Cellulose in the ceiling. The new extension was built from Externally Insulated QuinnLite blocks.
Efficient windows
We fitted triple glazed German windows with a 0.85 U-value, these will protrude outside the walls and the frames will be covered on 2 sides by the External Insulation to eliminate Cold Bridging.
Efficient Equipment!
We installed a Paul HRV system which is certified by the Passiv Haus Institute and a 15m2 Solar panel array tilted at 70 degrees facing towards the Winter Sun with a 2000L buffer tank for space and hot water heating. The Buffer-tank will also be periodically heated by a small 4kW wood burning stove!
These details are very important to avoid Cold Spots and Condensation
The External Insulation will drop down 500mm below the internal Finished Floor Level to reduce the Cold Bridge between the wall and the floor to an acceptable level and to prevent the base of the wall getting too cold and causing Condensation. The dpc is luckily 300mm below FFL which luckily allows us to pump EPS bead down to this level helping to reduce the wall/floor CB to 0.062 and reducing the heat loss to 0.9kW/(m².a) at this point. The client will be moving away from an Oil heating system which required 2 fills per year and Cold house to a completely sustainable lifestyle. They resisted the urge to put in a gas boiler back up heating system. The 3 graphs below show the effect of the study we undertook to eliminate this Cold Bridge.We stopped the External Insulation at Finished Floor Level in this simulation.
We dropped the External Insulation 500mm below the Finished Floor Level in this Simulation.
We dropped the External Insulation 500mm below the FFL and Pumped EPS bead into the cavity in this Simulation. We went with this system because of the improved temperature where the joist meets the wall in this model.
Glasnevin Renovation
