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Username
Vladimir Pezel
Proposer First Name
Vladimir
Proposer Email
vp@emodstudio.com
Proposer Last Name
Pezel
Proposer Company/Organization
eMod Studio
Proposer Job Title
Principal, Energy Modeler, CPHD
Proposer Additional Info
eMod Studio is a Certified Passive House Design (CPHD) consultancy with a mission to guide your design/project so it would meet Passive House certification criteria. We model the energy balance of your project in PHPP (or WUFI, accommodating your preference of the Passive House certification), and perform thermal bridge analyses of critical structure assemblies. With site shading analysis, we ensure that key comfort and energy balance criteria are satisfied. Early and continuous collaboration with your architect and the construction team ensures realized design would reach the Passive House performance level and/or certification.
Proposed Session Description
This session is about my personal journey, from a Passive House project client to a Passive House professional. It is path froth with obstacles, personal growth and enormous satisfaction about accomplishments. Eight years after moving into our new house, a new journey began, one of personal education as a Passive House Designer, and starting a process of certifying our home as a Passive House. The journey ended well, with a certification of our home as Passive House Plus, obtaining my CPHD in the process, and starting a new career to boot. Throughout the story, I will share a whole set of "gotchas" and "ahas" collected along the way to help all of those sitting on the sidelines and wondering whether to jump in. I say - jump! It is well worth it.
Diversity and Inclusiveness
The speaker is an emerging professional
Learning Objectives
Building homes as we used to in the last half a century, to the building code, is not appropriate anymore. Audience will understand that these code-built buildings do not provide enough comfort, sufficiently healthy indoor environment and resilience against the changing energy and climate situation. Conclusion is that most of us are paying too much for an unattainable comfort. There is a better way. We need to build better, we need to build Passivhaus!
Passivhaus is a proven standard that delivers comfort, sufficiently healthy indoor environment and resilience. It offers a very low operational expense to heat and cool. There are experienced and qualified designers and builders to help you. But you as a client and the team need to be committed from the beginning about building and certifying a Passivhaus. This is the only way to make sure that you will achieve that targeted level of comfort and performance in your project. That ensures a common goal that will deliver quality, and get you what you paid for. But what happens if you don't?
As clients, me and my wife set the goal of building a Passivhaus, and were committed from the beginning, but in the end we decided not to actually certify it. In hindsight that was a mistake. Quality towards the end may have started to slip, corners may have been cut. And I was left wondering 'did we actually get a Passivhaus in the end?'
Education as a Passivhaus Designer is crucial in trying to answer that question yourself. Training is enlightening and gives you tools necessary to start. Certifying is a challenging process, and is a steep learning curve of creating and collecting all the necessary documentation for the certification. It adds an expense at the end and risk of 'what happens if the project does not certify'. But it is doable and well worth it, and is the only way to find out if your project is actually a Passivhaus.
Has this session been presented before?
Yes
When and Where?
25th International Passive House Conference in Wuppertal, Germany. Sep 10-15, 2021
Additional Comments
Submitted also to 2022 PHN Passive House Conference: Passive House For All Boston, June 15-17, 2022
Session Format
Presentation followed by facilitated discussion or breakout groups
Session Format Details
One 20 minute presentation followed by a Q&A
Reviewer 1
Rauls, Shari
Proposal #
116
Committee Decision
Rejected
Full Description
Building highly comfortable, healthy and energy efficient homes, that use small amount of energy and emit very little operational carbon is critical in addressing the climate crisis we currently face. Passivhaus is a proven standard that leads us into the approaches to achieve these comfortable, healthy and low operational energy buildings. It is available, accessible and feasible to build this way. Individual clients, like us, can do it with help from experienced professionals. Even as a homeowner, you can educate yourself to understand the principles and dive into your own Passivhaus project. Building to a Passivhaus standard is important, but certifying it to the standard is even more important as a quality control process. That ensures that quality and targets are achieved throughout the project and that in the end, you as a customer, get what you paid for.