Comfort in PassivHaus buildings

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join our newly established Centre for Doctoral Training in Decarbonisation of the Built Environment, based in our Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering.

We are seeking students to join the Centre in October 2014 to undertake a three-year doctoral programme in low-carbon technologies and have four fully-funded, project-specific studentships available for applicants with UK fee status only, across a choice of research projects.

Although the studentships are only open to Home students, we do welcome applications from self-funded students (Home and EU) interested in a specific project.

Project overview

Principle supervisor: Dr Sukumar Natarajan (Architecture & Civil Engineering)
Second supervisor: Dr Ian Walker (Psychology)
Industrial supervisor: Peter Warm (Warm)

PassivHaus buildings have been incredibly successful in achieving, on average, the stated target of 10 W/m2 peak (15 kWh/m2 p.a. in the UK).

One measure of this success is that the substantial energy performance gap (predicted energy consumption is -250% to +30% of actual consumption) observed in non-PassivHaus constructions, whether new build or retrofit, appears to have been minimised through a process of design safeguards and excellent construction quality.

For a standard driven primarily by comfort (not energy), however, there appears to be little data on actual (as opposed to predicted) occupant thermal comfort in these buildings.

Most studies on PassivHaus buildings concentrate on measurable metrics such as IAQ, temperature and humidity, but don’t combine these data with responses from occupants on their perception of the internal environment and the operation of the buildings.

Anecdotal evidence from the UK suggests that, at least initially, many new occupants struggle to understand how to operate PassivHaus buildings, due in part to previous experience of non-PassivHaus buildings and in part to the seemingly complex nature of instructions that come with PassivHaus buildings.

PassivHaus building appears set to become the benchmark standard for low-energy/low-carbon buildings all over the world. If we are to trust the standard, we must know if the buildings are indeed serving the comfort needs of their occupants.

To address this important gap, this project will collect objective (physical sensors) and subjective (social sensors) data on a sample of residential and non-residential PassivHaus buildings in the UK, over a one-year period, to determine the state of occupant thermal comfort in these buildings using standardised metrics from BS-EN ISO 7730 and BS-EN ISO 15251.

The results could have a transformative impact on future buildings by providing confidence in PassivHaus not merely in energy terms but also thermal comfort; a fundamental metric for operational success.