What is High Performance?
High performance homes are a blending of modern science and traditional building techniques. The way homes were built remained unchanged for decades. The evolution of building science and modern materials have made increases in performance possible. High performance homes offer exceptional comfort, healthy indoor air quality, increased durability, and remarkable efficiency.
Certified Passive Houses
A Certified Passive House is arguably the world’s strictest building standard. Requiring extensive planning and energy modeling coupled with flawless execution in the field, the projects that succeed are in a class of their own. The Passive House Institute (PHIUS) has set forth climate specific energy budgets for houses to meet. The standards are customized to exact location and number of occupants. Energy models and project specifications go through multiple rounds of review with PHIUS before receiving pre-certification approval. PHIUS conducts site inspections during construction to ensure compliance with criteria. Simple Integrity has a number of Certified Passive House Consultants and Builders on staff as well as multiple complete Certified Passive Houses.
Certified Passive Houses are peace of mind for the client and an investment in the future.
Principles of High Performance Homes
High performance construction rely on specific principles to achieve the levels of comfort and performance that theses homes offer.
- Air-sealing – Leaky building envelopes are inefficient and lead to mold and other sources of significant degradation over time. A successful building will have an airtight building enclosure.
- High performance windows and doors – All glazing should be triple pane and be designed for its location. The windows need to seal tightly and the frames should offer significant thermal properties. Tilt and turn windows from European manufactures are most common in high performance homes.
- Ventilation – A key to healthy indoor air quality is an Energy Recovery Ventilation system. A constant supply of fresh air and stale air exhaust helps maintain a healthy environment for the occupants. The energy recovery is capable of recovering 90% of the energy in the exhaust vs supply streams of air.
- Thermal envelope – High performance homes have higher levels of continuous insulation along with thermal bridge free construction.
- Manage Solar radiation – High performance homes typically only use mechanical heating for <25% of their heat load. The sun via solar radiation provides the rest. Placing windows and shading devices to allow sunlight in the winter and limit it is the summer is key to a comfortable home.
Energy Star Homes, HERS, EPA Indoor Air Plus
In addition to Certified Passive Houses, Simple Integrity offers Energy Star Homes, homes with low HERS scores, and the EPA Indoor Air Plus certified projects.
Energy Star homes offer an increased level of performance over code built homes with 3rd party inspections to ensure quality and specifications are met.
HERS scores require the same type of planning and inspections as energy star homes but provide a numerical rating system.
EPA indoor air plus program monitors materials used in a project for VOCs and other harmful chemicals that might off-gas and affect the indoor air quality.
