Description

Single-family home in Sant Pere de Ribes, south of Barcelona, designed by Sergi Gargallo from the SgARQ Passivhaus Architecture and certified by Oliver Style from Praxis Resilient Buildings as a PHI Low Energy Building.

The home, over a ground floor and first, has a treated floor area of 135 m2. Outer walls are insulation 100mm of mineral wool insulation, with 150mm of XPS insulation on the roof and 100mm on the floor slab.

The windows consist of WERU Afino One PVC frames, with triple-glazed low-emissivity windows filled with argon gas.

The Blower Door test result was n50 = 0.6 air changes per hour (ach), well below the PHI Low Energy Building limit of n50 = 1 ach.

Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery is taken care of with a JAGA Orcon HRC-350-MaxComfort unit.

A Samsung air-to-water heat pump with indoor ducted fan coil units provides heating and cooling. The same heat pump generates domestic hot water.

12 roof mounted 350 Wp photovoltaic panels produce around 60% of the energy that the home consumes.

Praxis did the Passivhaus certification, which included a detailed revision of the architectural and HVAC design documentation, the PHPP and thermal bridge calculations, the Blower Door test report, the ventilation system commissioning, and construction photographs, to ensure that the Passivhaus Low Energy Building criteria were met, both on paper and in real life.

Links:

PEP (Spanish Passivhaus Platform)
iPHa (International Passivhaus Projects Database)

Photos: Joan Giribet