At the meeting, Landsea Passive House Experience Center Project in Yanqing North China which was designed by Frey Group has received high attention.  This Project is  a retrofitting to an existing building, thanks to its remarkable design, and also the highly supports from First-party and construction planning team, the experience center dramatically meets the standard for “Passive Haus Plus” and becomes the first and so far the only certificated “Passivhaus Plus” Project in China.

What is “Passivhaus Plus” :

Passive house was classified by German Passive House Institute into three levels: Classic, Plus and Premium, with standards gradually raised. For classic passive house, renewable primary energy consumption per year should be less than 60 kWh/m², but has no requirement for energy production. For passive house plus, the criteria is dynamic, usually it requires annual renewable primary energy consumption should be less than 45 kWh/m², meanwhile with at least 60 kWh/m² annual energy production (the area here is building site area, not the gross floor area).  If building primary energy consumption higher than 45 kWh/m², then the energy production criteria will be somehow raised at the same time. However, as long as its energy consumption over than 60 kWh/m², it can’t be recognized as passive house plus, no matter how high its energy production capacity is. Similarly, when building’s energy consumption is lower than 45 kWh/m², then requirement capacity of the energy production for passive house plus will be decreased. As a conclusion, to meet passive house plus standards, the energy consumption by heating, cooling, lighting, hot water, electric equipment and so on need to be considered and optimized, and eventually decreased to a certain level.  Afterwards, requiring energy from nature to the utmost by applying solar photovoltaic panel or solar thermal collector etc. making it possible to reach passive house plus standard. It is not easy to achieve this for a two-story small building only with 500 square meters.

Since the project is located in cold region, the obtaining and losing of heat during heating season become key factors that affect energy consumption of building. This project is retrofitting existing building, limited by the planning of the area where it located, so there is very little potential space for the changes of its shape or structure. Gladly, the existing building is in nice cubic shape, with satisfying system coefficients, and it faces the south. Overall, it takes great advantages in terms of energy conservation.

As passive house experience center, the first floor of the building is passive house exhibition hall to present passive house principle, materials of related equipment and so on. Two living experience units were set on the second floor, including one single apartment and a double-bedrooms commercial house.

Building functions were firstly optimized by designer, with main functions on the south side and auxiliary functions on the north side. 

In addition, increasing windows size on south façade to the utmost to obtain more solar thermal. In contrast, reducing windows size on north façade to the utmost to minimize heat lost under precondition of meeting all functions.

The division of windows is also key point for the project. Since proportion of glass is an essential effect factor for windows heat obtaining. Designer has discussed with window factory several times before deciding the ideal window division.

Other key points: retrofitting of solar panel base on the roof, electric box on east façade, building soleplate insolation, arrangement of warm water pipes and etc. Above mentioned key points all got optimal solutions after PHPP calculation with designer’s innovation and professional project experience in passive house field.

The project successfully passed air tightness test at once with an ultra-low result of 0.2 times/h, and was certificated by German Passive House Institute (PHI) with PHPP calculation results: annual heating demand 5 kWh/m²a, heating load 6 W/m², cooling and dehumidification demand 13 13W/m²a, cooling load 6 W/m², primary energy consumption 49 kWh/m²a, unit base area electricity production 111 W/m²a.

It was awarded “Passivhaus Plus” certificate by Mr. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Fest, Director of German Passive House Institute and the co-originator of the passive house concept, in person. He also presented congratulation to Mr. Xun Xu (General Manager of Landsea Group, representative of First-Party), Mr. Wolfgang Frey (Chairman of Frey Group, representative of project design and passive house consultation) and Ms. Yulin Liu (Chief Engineer of Beijing Institute of Residential Building Design & Research, representative of construction planning) for the success certification of the China first “Passivhaus Plus”.

The theme of this passive house conference is “It’s worth having a passive house”. Speakers gathered together to discuss passive house principles and practice cases from multi-perspectives with multi-disciplines backgrounds. Various advanced material and products were presented by materials and appliance factory from all over the world. There is no doubt that passive house industry is expanding at global level. Landsea Passive House Experience Center witnessed of the rapidly developing of passive house in China. As a passive house experience center, it is going to show passive house to the public, convincing the world that “It’s worth having a passive house”.