Event Description

Over the past decade, awareness and understanding of passive building design methods and performance standards has grown dramatically. Passive building activity in North America has increased exponentially over the past three years - including single family residential projects, large-scale multifamily and now, more and more commercial structures. (Click to enlarge graph)

Two passive building standards are being used in North America:

The PHIUS+2015 Passive Building Standard for North America, based on research completed by the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) in cooperation with Building Science Corporation under a DOE grant

The European Passivhaus Standard pioneered by the German Passivhaus Institut in the 90s.

The two standards differ substantially. That difference is not broadly understood, and is the source of significant market confusion. The pathways lead to very different design goals, decisions, and results. This webinar will discuss the history and evolution of the standards, the commonalities of the PHIUS and PHI standards, and the significant changes that were made under the PHIUS+ 2015 protocol to address best practices and climate-specific challenges.

Thanks to those changes PHIUS+2015 now is used to design and certify the vast majority of passive projects in North America (PHIUS certified 98% of all passive building projects in 2017).

Learning objectives. Attendees will:
-Learn about the history of passive building standards and their evolution
-Learn about commonalities and differences between PHIUS+ and PHI standards
-Learn about reasons for changes made under PHIUS+ protocols and why those changes were critical to accelerate uptake
-Learn about how accurately PHIUS's and PHI's design and verification tools predict actual measured performance as compared in multifamily projects results of completed passive multifamily projects.