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Non-residential Passive House buildings

The Passive House Standard allows for extremely high levels of comfort as well as enormous energy savings - not only for residential buildings. The Passive House Standard has been successfully realised in many different types of buildings including offices, hostels, factories, administrative buildings, sports halls, schools and kindergartens.

Passive House schools

The Passive House Standard is a sensible alternative, not only for residential buildings. The Passive House Standard has been successfully realised in many different types of buildings including offices, hostels, factories, administrative buildings, sports halls and kindergartens.

Passive House school buildings are particularly interesting. Several school buildings have been realised using this standard and experiences gained from their use are now available: The Passive House Standards allows for energy savings of around 75% in comparison with average new school buildings - and of course there is no need for an additional heating or cooling system. The additional investment costs are within reasonable limits.

Passive House Schools - Boundary Conditions

Passive House schools – How to go about it

Air Quality in Schools

Best Practice Example - Riedberg Passive House School
The Passive House primary school and day nursery in Riedberg Frankfurt a.M. was opened in November 2004 after a construction period of only 14 months. The extra costs for achieving the Passive House Standard were a moderate 5.3 % in comparison with the currently valid EnEV (German energy saving regulations) standard. Read more
Secondary school in Baesweiler - modernised and energy-optimised to the Passive House Standard – a unique exemplary model!
Besides great environmental benefits like saving 90 % in heating costs and saving 530 tons of CO2 per year, the decision-makers of the City of Baesweiler made it their objective to contribute to the elimination of a misconception which also many architects subscribe to, that “Passive Houses are thickly insulated, disproportionate, impersonal blocks that are impossible to realise in a good quality architectural style”. Read more

Passive House office buildings

Certification of Passive House office buildings - Passive House office buildings are certified by the Passive House Institute (PHI) based on a standard occupancy level and corresponding internal gains of 3.5 W/m² (the reference area being the “treated floor area” of the PHPP, not the office area). From the PHI’s experience this value represents a typical average, taking into account an improved efficiency of the equipment used. The reasons why the PHI uses standard values for certification are partly to be able to ensure consistency and also because the use of a building is often not permanent and not always prior known. Read more


Passive House swimming pools

Passive House indoor swimming pool in Lünen
The indoor swimming pool in Lünen was built based on the Passive House approach established for this type of building in fundamental research by the Passive House Institute. In order to verify the effectiveness of the concept and approaches in the afore mentioned baseline study and to identify further potentials for optimisation, comprehensive monitoring of the pool was carried out during the first 1.5 years of operation.
Read more

Energy efficiency in public indoor swimming pools

The Passive house concept can be applied as a guiding principle for swimming pool buildings as well; the objective is to achieve optimal thermal comfort with significantly reduced energy consumption. The following article is a combination of different publications that deal with the basic principles of applying the Passive House concept for public indoor swimming pools.
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Passive House Hospitals

Klinikum Frankfurt Höchst Rohbau Februar 2018 © Klinikum Frankfurt Höchst

Conventional hospitals are among the buildings with very high energy consumption values and incur special demands for the comfort of patients which must be met in a reliable way. The application of the Passive House concept appears extremely interesting in this context. A common misunderstanding is the assumption that energy efficiency efforts are only concerned with the minimisation of the heating demand. The basic idea however is to achieve a significant reduction in the demand for all energy-relevant applications in a building while maintaining the same level of comfort.

Read more about Passive House Hospitals


Energy efficiency in cafeterias and commercial kitchens

 Commercial kitchens are one of the most energy-intensive areas of buildings. In addition to cooking, dishes are washed and food is kept cool, all of which require a lot of energy; in addition, each of these processes creates a lot of internal heat and moisture, which has to be drawn out of the kitchen with sufficiently dimensioned ventilation systems due to which a large part of the energy used in commercial kitchens is devoted to ventilation.

Commercial kitchens and cafeterias


Passive House retail

REWE in Hanover/Wettbergen, ©PHI

These and more articles can be found in Protocol Volume No. 40 about “Passive House Retail Stores” of the “Research Group for Cost-effective Passive Houses” (only available in German).

Introduction: Retail stores as Passive Houses

Nr.40 Passive House retail establishments

Retrofitting non-residential buildings to the Passive House / EnerPHit-standard

Factors that influence the energy balance and affordability of non-residential EnerPHit-projects

Does it make sense to retrofit non-residential buildings with Passive House components if the buildings have a lot of internal heat sources?
Read more

Nr.48 Using Passive House technology for retrofitting non-residential buildings

See also

planning/non-residential_passive_house_buildings.1643299353.txt.gz · Last modified: 2022/01/27 17:02 by yaling.hsiao@passiv.de