Not all energy-efficient homes are truly Passive Houses. A genuine certification requires the Passive House Planning Package, an independent certifier, and detailed documentation of materials and construction submitted to the International Passive House Institute, which takes six to eight weeks to verify. Certified homes maintain 18-24°C year-round with significant energy savings.
How to be sure your house is properly passive and not pretend passive. Not all energy-efficient homes are truly passive. How to know for certain you're getting what you're paying for. Putting a Rolls-Royce badge on a Toyota. There is nothing inherently wrong with replica products like furniture and grocery items. Some no-brand products are as good as the original they're modeled after. But when you are paying top dollar for a premium original, you want to be sure that It's what you're getting. This is especially true when you are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for what you think is a certified Passive House. As energy-efficient building is becoming more popular, builders, real estate agents, and even product suppliers are using terms like Passive House quite loosely and dishonestly. As a result, homeowners are too often paying for a Rolls-Royce and getting a Toyota. What makes a house truly Passive. All Passive Houses are energy efficient, but not all energy efficient homes are Passive. A certified Passive House provides the highest levels of all-year comfort and energy efficiency possible. A house cannot simply be labeled by anyone as a Passive House after it is built. It must have passed through rigorous standards of energy efficiency at every stage of the design and building process. These standards are monitored and certified by the International Passive House Institute. Only then will house receive a genuine plaque of certification. 2 tests for a Passive House. Number 1, the certification process for a Passive House involves using the Passive House Planning Package, or PHPP. This requires a Passive House consultant to guide the process and a Passive House certifier to verify the result. If you're not paying fees for these extra services, you're not getting a certified Passive House. Number 2, Building a Passive House requires extreme attention to detail in both the choice of building materials and the workmanship that goes into installing them. In order to monitor this, the Passive House Institute requires builders to document these things through a series of photos, including wall junctions, window installation, roof assembly, insulation, and all product labels and stickers. So including insulation and glass and everything that comes to site. If your builder is not sending these photos to the Passive House Institute for verification, you're not getting a certified Passive House. Even when your home is fully built, it is still not certified until everything, including your as-built plans, are sent to the Passive House Institute. It usually takes 6 to 8 weeks for everything to be checked and verified before you receive your plaque of certification. Is certified Passive House worth it? That's obviously a personal choice. But once you've experienced the benefits of a truly Passive House, the energy savings and stable 18 to 24-degree internal temperature when the outside temperature dips below zero and soars towards 40, it's hard to go back to living in a normal house. When people who own Passive Houses visit friends, they say it's like going from a Rolls-Royce to a Toyota. Still gets you there, but instead of arriving refreshed after a perfectly smooth, whisper-quiet ride, you're exhausted from every bump, and the constant wind and road noise. But if your budget won't quite stretch to Passive House certification, we offer a range of high-efficiency and improved custom houses that allow the exact same standards to be built. Although they may not quite reach the same comfort and energy efficiency levels of a certified Passive House, they far exceed standard homes. While not quite a Rolls-Royce, they certainly reach— A Rolls-Royce. Mercedes standard at a Toyota price. For more information about building a certified Passive House or energy-efficient building, we invite you to book a free consultation where we will answer your questions and show you the most efficient and affordable way to get an energy-efficient custom home you'll love forever. Thank you.
