New database provides overview of Passive House components

The scope for cre­at­ive design in the plan­ning of a Pass­ive House build­ing is grow­ing. Over 600 highly en­ergy-ef­fi­cient products can be found in the newly launched on­line data­base. A suit­able solu­tion is thus pos­sible for vir­tu­ally every ar­chi­tec­tur­al chal­lenge. From the start site, an il­lus­tra­tion of a house fa­cil­it­ates the se­lec­tion of the de­sired cat­egory. The re­spect­ive com­pon­ents can then be sor­ted ac­cord­ing to dif­fer­ent cri­ter­ia. In­di­vidu­al de­pic­tions with graphs and key char­ac­ter­ist­ic val­ues provide in­form­a­tion at a glance. The full in­form­a­tion re­lat­ing to en­ergy-rel­ev­ant char­ac­ter­ist­ics can be found in the cor­res­pond­ing Pass­ive House cer­ti­fic­ates. Links to man­u­fac­tur­ers make it easy to con­tact them dir­ectly.
    
"When con­sid­er­ing the life cycle costs, Cer­ti­fied Pass­ive House Com­pon­ents are al­most al­ways the best choice, both for new builds and for ret­ro­fits,” says Dr. Wolfgang Feist, Dir­ect­or of the Pass­ive House In­sti­tute in Darm­stadt, Ger­many. "The qual­ity-proofed products provide re­li­ably high en­ergy sav­ings – and with the new data­base, plan­ners and build­ing own­ers can eas­ily gain an over­view of the ex­ist­ing pos­sib­il­it­ies".

As an in­de­pend­ent body, the in­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House In­sti­tute tests and cer­ti­fies products. All cer­ti­fied com­pon­ents have been ex­amined ac­cord­ing to uni­form cri­ter­ia and are com­par­able with ref­er­ence to their en­ergy-rel­ev­ant char­ac­ter­ist­ic val­ues. Con­sequently, the qual­ity seal of­fers plan­ning re­li­ab­il­ity to build­ing own­ers and ar­chi­tects. The use of cer­ti­fied products also con­trib­utes to the fault-free func­tion­ing of a Pass­ive House build­ing. At the In­ter­na­tion­al Pass­ive House Con­fer­ence in Darm­stadt, Ger­many, many ex­amples of Pass­ive House com­pon­ents will be presen­ted from 22 to 23 April at an ac­com­pa­ny­ing trade ex­hib­i­tion.