Casa SG Costa: Passivhaus Plus in a warm climate
Casa SG Costa: Passivhaus Plus in a warm climate ¿Can you imagine living in a super comfortable home, with great indoor air quality, that generates all the energy it needs with solar panels on the roof? Can you imagine a home so efficient that it can be heated with just 2 hair dryers on the …
Casa SG Costa: Passivhaus Plus in a warm climate
¿Can you imagine living in a super comfortable home, with great indoor air quality, that generates all the energy it needs with solar panels on the roof? Can you imagine a home so efficient that it can be heated with just 2 hair dryers on the coldest winter day? Can you imagine a home that stays cool in summer thanks to external blinds, natural ventilation, and a little bit of active cooling from the air conditioning system?
This is Casa SG Costa in Sitges, a single-family home that’s just received the Passivhaus Plus certification. Designed by Sergi Gargallo from SGarq, the home has been certified by Oliver Style from Praxis Resilient Buildings, an expert in Passivhaus buildings for warm climates.
With a treated floor area of 230 m2, across a basement, ground, and first floor, the exernal walls are made of “Honeycomb brick” with 10cm of high-performance EPS external thermal insulation “ETICS”. To protect the home from the scorching summer sun, the roof has a generous 20 cm of XPS thermal insulation. The windows are made by WERU, with Afino One Passivhaus certified frames (Uf = 1.04 W/m2 K) and low-emissivity triple-glazed argon filled glazing (Ug = 0.72 W/m2 K, and solar factor g = 49%). All bedroom windows have external blinds to control solar gains in summer, with large roof overhangs over the ground floor sitting room windows. The colour of the outer wall is white, like most traditional buildings in the historic centre of Sitges: this helps reflect the sun in summer and reduce indoor temperatures. Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery is provided by a Passivhaus certified Zehnder ComfoAir Q600 ERV unit, that recovers both heat (η sensible = 80%) and moisture (η latent = 68%), thus helping to reduce air conditioning loads in the humid Sitges summer.
A Daikin direct expansion or “air-to-air” heat pump provides heating and cooling, and a separate compact Panasonic PAW-DHW270F “air-to-water” heat pump for domestic hot water.
Finally, 16 solar PV modules make up a 5.7 kWp roof-mounted array. According to the PHPP energy model used for the certification, in an average year, the photovoltaic installation will generate more energy than the home consumes…can you imagine that?
https://passivehouse-database.org/index.php#d_7161
