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design­PH & PHPP

Why use design­PH with PHPP?

  • design­PH must be used in con­junc­tion with PHPP to fully design and val­id­ate a Pass­ive House pro­ject.

  • design­PH provides the 3D mod­el­ing and pre­lim­in­ary en­ergy ana­lys­is, while PHPP of­fers the de­tailed veri­fic­a­tion and com­pli­ance checks.

  • To­geth­er, they form a com­plete work­flow:
     1. Sketch­Up mod­el­ing with design­PH
     2. Pre­lim­in­ary ana­lys­is in­side design­PH
     3. Ex­port to PHPP for de­tailed val­id­a­tion

Com­pat­ib­il­ity

  • design­PH ver­sions are com­pat­ible with PHPP 8.5, PHPP 9 and PHP­P10 (de­pend­ing on li­cense pur­chased).

  • Ex­ports are saved as PPP files, which can be im­por­ted in­to PHPP for re­fine­ment.

  • Spread­sheet soft­ware is re­quired (Mi­crosoft Ex­cel 2007+ on Win­dows, or com­pat­ible ver­sions of Lib­re­Of­fice/Open­Of­fice on Mac/Linux).

  • Refer to your PHPP hand­book and sys­tem re­quire­ments for de­tails.

What PHPP Cal­cu­lates

  • An­nu­al heat­ing de­mand [kWh/(m²a)] and peak load [W/m²]

  • An­nu­al cool­ing de­mand [kWh/(m²a)] and max­im­um cool­ing load (if cool­ing sys­tems are used)

  • Sum­mer com­fort: fre­quency of over­heat­ing [%]

  • An­nu­al re­new­able primary en­ergy (PER) and total primary en­ergy de­mand (PE)

  • An­nu­al re­new­able en­ergy gains [kWh/(m²a)]

Key Ad­vant­ages of PHPP

  • En­ergy bal­ance cal­cu­la­tions in Ex­cel format

  • Easy, flex­ible data entry

  • Veri­fied, ac­cur­ate res­ults

  • Com­pre­hens­ive manu­al with ef­fi­ciency tips

  • In­ter­faces for data im­port/ex­port (in­clud­ing from design­PH)

  • Suit­able for new builds and ret­ro­fits

About PHPP (Pass­ive House Plan­ning Pack­age)

The Pass­ive House Plan­ning Pack­age (PHPP) is the trus­ted en­ergy bal­ance and plan­ning tool for design­ing highly ef­fi­cient build­ings and re­fur­bish­ments. Used by thou­sands of ar­chi­tects and plan­ners world­wide, PHPP com­bines:

  • Re­li­ab­il­ity — val­id­ated ac­cur­acy, proven in prac­tice

  • Flex­ib­il­ity — Ex­cel-based tool with dir­ect data in­put and easy edit­ing

  • Con­tinu­ous de­vel­op­ment — up­dated with new meth­ods and fea­tures

  • Cer­ti­fic­a­tion-ready — sup­ports Pass­ive House and En­erPHit ret­ro­fits

PHPP at a Glance

Since its in­tro­duc­tion in 1998, PHPP has been con­tinu­ally im­proved with mod­ules for:

  • Heat­ing & cool­ing bal­ances (an­nu­al and monthly meth­ods)

  • Heat dis­tri­bu­tion, sup­ply, and elec­tri­city de­mand

  • Win­dow & shad­ing design

  • Vent­il­a­tion (res­id­en­tial & large build­ings)

  • Cool­ing & de­hu­mid­i­fic­a­tion

  • Re­new­able en­ergy in­teg­ra­tion

  • En­erPHit ret­ro­fit veri­fic­a­tion

Sci­en­tif­ic mon­it­or­ing has con­sist­ently shown that PHPP res­ults align closely with meas­ured en­ergy use when pro­jects are care­fully planned — en­sur­ing no “per­form­ance gap.”