Passive House FAQs

No! The approach can be successfully applied to any type of building, including schools, churches, office buildings and skyscrapers.

The oft-used term passive house is something of a misnomer. Although plenty of single-family homes have been built to the passive house standard, the approach is increasingly being applied to multifamily apartment buildings and large scale commercial buildings as well. As a result, the term passive building is gradually coming into more common usage, as it's a more accurate term than passive house.

Passive house and its established set of principles represent the underlying theory, while passive building is the act of implementing that theory.

Currently, a passive building typically costs about 3-5% more than a conventional home. Larger projects benefit from the economy of scale: a multifamily passive building typically only costs 0-3% more than a building built to an energy star baseline. In general, the larger the building the smaller the cost difference. Also, as more large-scale window and door manufacturers bring high-performance products to market, economies of scale are expected to drive down costs even further.

Passive buildings provide luxurious comfort in all seasons and climate zones. That is because there are no drafts, temperature variance is extremely narrow (even near doors and windows), and active, balanced ventilation makes for superb indoor air quality. And yes, passive house owners open their doors and windows just as they would in a conventional home.

Passive buildings do require an extremely airtight building envelope. Combined with super-insulation, this approach dramatically reduces temperature variation, which also prevents condensation and mold issues. The constant, low-level ventilation also helps prevent moisture problems in addition to maintaining excellent air quality.

That being said, potential moisture issues must be carefully addressed during the design stage. That's why it's important to work with a Phius Certified Consultant (CPHC®). CPHCs are trained to accurately model building performance and to identify and address potential moisture issues with a variety of techniques.

Phius puts passive building principles into practice in a way that is both cost-optimized and climate appropriate. This means you will pay less to build it than for other passive certifications and your home/building is quality assured, so you can count on an extremely comfortable, healthy, and resilient building. That is The Phius Difference.

Carbon neutrality is one of our prime directives at Phius, and with our climate-appropriate energy targets and electrification requirements constructing a building to our standards goes a long way in reducing a person or organization’s carbon footprint.

Phius ZERO certification pushes further than the flagship Phius CORE, by achieving all of the same requirements and also netting out energy use on an annual basis with renewable energy. These projects have operational carbon neutrality and are set up for energy independence. And the strict air-tightness and efficiency standards make for a smaller renewable load when getting to zero.

There are five basic principles of passive building that apply to all passive structures:

• Employs continuous insulation throughout its entire envelope without any thermal bridging.
• Creates an extremely airtight building envelope, preventing infiltration of outside air and loss of conditioned air.
• Employs high-performance windows (double or triple-paned) and doors - solar gain is managed to exploit the sun's energy for heating purposes in the heating season and to minimize overheating during the cooling season.
• Uses some form of balanced heat- and moisture-recovery ventilation.
• Uses a minimal space conditioning system.

Nope! Although many early passive homes used an austere European style, passive design does not dictate aesthetics. Phius has certified projects in dozens of styles ranging from Cape Cods to traditional Four Squares, contemporary multifamily projects, and more.