03.6 / Work ExamplePassive House/High Performance Building

Overview

FRESCo supports projects pursuing Passive House or other high performance building standards. This can achieve high levels of efficiency, durability, and occupant comfort.

Here is an overview on Passive house:

Passive House is certainly the world’s most ambitious and verified energy-efficient building standard, it is the premiere global carbon reduction standard for building construction and is rapidly gaining popularity in BC.

The term “Passive House” is somewhat of a misnomer. This modern building standard isn’t just for single-family residences however; it is actually more feasible with larger buildings. The Passive House building standard is frequently applied to a variety of facility types across municipal, educational, commercial and multi-family residential markets.

The definition of Passive House is driven by air quality and comfort:

A Passive House is a building in which thermal comfort can be achieved solely by post-heating or post-cooling the fresh air flow required for good indoor air quality, without the need for additional recirculation of air.

Benefits

The many benefits of Passive House construction over regular Building Code construction include:

• Better indoor air quality
• Increased thermal comfort
• Resilient and durable building exteriors
• Superior sound insulation
• Fantastic energy efficiency
• Almost no maintenance
• Versatility in building materials and climate zones
• Environmentally and economically sustainable

EnerPHit

Existing buildings account for the greatest share of energy used in buildings. A great number of these buildings will require overall or partial refurbishment or modernisation in the near future. Such occasions are perfect opportunities to reduce the energy consumption of these buildings quite significantly by applying appropriate methods. Using components developed for new Passive Houses also allows for significant energy savings in existing buildings

EnerPHit is the established Standard for refurbishment of existing buildings using Passive House components. Despite the slightly higher energy demand, it offers virtually all the advantages of the Passive House Standard.

FRESCo is actively seeking projects that could become EnerPHit projects.

Brixton Flats

GMC Projects developed the Brixton Flats project under the City of Vancouver’s Rental 100 program. This 6-story building includes ground-floor commercial with 5-stories of purpose-build rental apartments above.

FRESCo supported the development of the energy efficiency strategy, helped secure rebates, and negotiated rezoning and permitting requirements with the City. This resulted in a project that was cost effective and alleviated the requirement for the building to be “district energy ready”, saving substantial mechanical costs and increasing building performance. The building features a elegantly simple ultra-high performance envelope, heat recovery ventilation, and other energy efficiency strategies.