When using the PHPP in the Southern Hemisphere, all climate data must first be manipulated in order to deal with a few Northern Hemisphere biases in the PHPP.

1. The PHPP assumes that the warmest period of the year falls from June to August.

• Therefore, the data for the first half of the year, January through June (months 1 to 6), must be placed in the July through December fields (months 7 through 12) and vice versa for the data from the second half of the year.

2. The PHPP assumes that solar radiation is coming from the South.

• Therefore, the radiation data must also be entered backwards so that radiation coming from the north is placed in the field for southern radiation and vice versa.

• Due to this change, the wall and window areas must also be adjusted so that areas facing north are entered as if they were facing south and vice versa. Note: this is relatively easy with areas facing either directly north or directly south, but becomes difficult when, for example, a wall is positioned 30° to the north – in this case, a 150° must be used for PHPP (to minimise errors, PHI suggests fliping the plans along the x axis with the use of CAD or a similar program)

In order to spare users the complex task of entering these changes manually, the Passive House Institute has developed a climate data tool for the adaptation of the relevant data to the Southern Hemisphere. The tool can be used for PHPP up to version 9.

Download the tool here.

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