Passive House training and certification

I will add on to Margaret’s question as I know some firms are using passive house on commercial projects. A few people in our firm were talking this week about passive design strategies and what that really means in the commercial design world beyond ‘proper orientation’.. We wondered if passive house provides a good passive design education/reminder and could be a way for our designers to ‘get back to the basics’. So same basic question, is PHIUS training worth it for commercial project teams? - ALLEN From: Mar

I found the PHIUS training to be very rigorous and worthwhile - primarily for multi-family residential, but also see value for commercial projects. I went through the training in 2009, when the quality was more variable, but there's been a lot of evolution in the format, tools, and content. I was favorably impressed by the training materials when I looked at them again last fall.  At the risk of picking old scabs: There was a period when some people felt the training offered by the Passive House Academy out of Ireland was better. After the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) and Passive House Institute (PHI) in Germany went through their very acrimonious "divorce" there has been lingering bitterness and resentment between the two camps, and strong opinions on which is more technically rigorous/ appropriate/ legitimate. I personally find the PHIUS program a better fit for US and non-residential projects since the specific performance metrics vary by climate zone, and the primary analysis tool is WUFI Passive, which is a version of WUFI that also performs hourly energy simulation. When I was trained and certifying an apartment project the analysis tool was the PHPP excel spreadsheet, which is amazingly detailed and powerful, but had some serious limitations. Passive House Institute (PHI) and the programs that train and certify in the US have continued to use PHPP, albeit with improved functionality and additional plug-ins such as designPH for quickly modeling building geometry. But my impression is that WUFI Passive would be more appropriate for larger and non-residential projects.       The training gets into building science and performance topics in *much* greater depth than most architects will ever see, so I think it's very useful for people doing any kind of projects. One risk can be the "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" mindset that I sometimes saw among PH users, where it was hard to parse out the design and analysis implications of the underlying differences between residential and commercial projects (skin dominated vs internal load dominated, and more). I think the PH community has come a long way in recognizing this bias and is lees prone to obsess about air tightness or the minutia of thermal bridging losses, for example, in situations where that may not matter as much.     

Passive House training definitely helps focus architects back on the basics of energy efficient buildings, specifically on the role of enclosures. I went through PHI training from the Passive House Academy in 2013 - at the time it focused on European residential examples. Now, many North American examples and various project types exist, so I presume training would be more widely applicable. Here is one resource we developed to address that very issue: (link). In NYC, PHI and PHIUS are both used. I still like PHI due to its longer track record. PHIUS's approach with WUFI Passive has only been around for a few years - it will be interesting to see how accurate its turns out to be once they get a larger set of built projects in operation for a longer period of time. Two trainers I know and recommend are: bldgtyp  http://www.bldgtyp.com/ph-academy & PeelPHC  http://www.peelpassivehouse.ca/

I know Ilanah Judah went through the training and found it valuable. I’m pretty sure she’s not on here currently. I suggest reaching out to her. For what it’s worth, we are offering PHIUS training through our Workforce development Program. I also know The Perkins & Will office here in Boston sometimes hosts the training as well. I believe Blake Jackson also just went through the process. ilanajudah@gmail.com -Meredith Sent from my iPhone

Yes PHIUS CPHC is worth it.   Yes it’s residentially focused.  And a big time / $ commitment.  But you will get a lot out of it that can apply to a commercial practice. The CPHC training drills in the fundamentals of building science and envelope detailing.  And teaches you some interesting specialized software (WUFI including WUFI Passive, and basic THERM). The biggest benefits for me are:  1. It solidified my understanding of the theory.  Now I have a much better intuition about where to start looking for energy efficiency in the envelope, tuned to climate zone. 2. The credential signals to owners that I know what I’m doing.  LEED has unfortunately lost that cache (and still nobody knows what an ILFI LFA is). 3. I participate in Passive House Massachusetts.  What a great community. Jacob Werner, CPHC, LFA, LEED, WELL, fitwel, etc :) HGA

Ilana is a CPHD via PHI and is very pro PH. She got FXC to fund PH training for a number of us. She and I co-authored the study in the link in my reply yesterday. Dan Piselli, AIA, LEED AP, CPHD Director of Sustainability, Senior Associate FXCollaborative Architects LLP D +1 646 292 8137 | T +1 212 627 1700

We have designed two recreation centers that are PHIUS+ and Source Zero - one is just starting it’s performance period for net zero and all of the paperwork for its certification has been turned it. The second one has just gone out to bid and is pre-certified. It too is seeking both PHIUS+ and Source Zero. To reach the underlying very aggressive EUI target, the project was able to use up to 30% of the solar overhead. To date, our team has not gone through the training but we were definitely helped through the process by PHIUS. We are now gearing up to send a few folks through the training. While we did our own WUFI modeling, we also ran a parallel IES model to check performance and size the overhead array. In order to know if we can trust the outputs, we have to get more training so we get can beyond the feeling that WUFI is a black box for energy predictions. We’ve been through both design for Net Zero Certification through ILFI and PHIUS and I have to say, I’m a real fan of PH. Both of our projects benefited from the fact they had very low window to wall ratios. We haven’t run simulations on a project with much higher w to w and I’m worried we’d never hit the targets - but we’re going to see. Lois Lois Vitt Sale, FAIA, LEED Fellow Senior Vice President Wight & Company 2500 North Frontage Road Darien, IL 60561630.969.7000 | d 630.739.7514 | m 630.450.1662 | f 630.969.7979 www.wightco.com On Jun 21, 201

I agree with the prior comments about the value of Passive House training and it's application to many commercial buildings.  Coming from an energy performance/modeling background I thought the whole philosophy behind PH in creating low energy buildings was brilliant (I took the PHI version, but I assume they are similar enough to both be worthwhile).  What would really be amazing is if we could persuade our friends in the mechanical engineering community to take the training, because they're buy in is critical to the success of a PH design, and it's a very different way of approaching ventilation and space conditioning.     

I agree! As a mechanical engineer i can attest that we need to be involved up front to strategize about heat recovery, demand control ventilation, and specifying the right size units! PH buildings are so efficient that it’s challenging to find such small units! On

Hi Margaret, I will chime in too that there is excellent value in the training and applicability to large commercial projects. I did a Passive House training 3 years ago and still refer to those class and on-line training documents in my work now. We just registered one of our K-12 school projects for Passive House certification.  I think there will come a time soon when a Passive House training is recommended for everyone, either in preparation for staying ahead of upcoming and future code compliance levels or if a firm is truly serious about meeting the upcoming min 80% reduction and then 90% reduction for the 2030 Challenge and creating zero net carbon buildings. For codes, the performance level goal for our future 2030 WA energy code is essentially equivalent to Passive House level buildings and homes, and we are poised to take a big step in that direction pending the final approval for our 2018 energy code by the state code council. The city of Vancouver energy code and the British Columbia step code have also aligned their future codes to get to Passive House performance levels. There are similar pushes in CA and NY. There is a PHIUS in-class training coming up soon in Portland, OR July 29 - August 2. PHIUS recommends doing the online session, 35-40 hours of learning material over a 4-6 week period, prior to the in-person training. This training will get you 63 AIA HSW learning unit credits and 32 GBCI credits. There are additional training opportunities at Rocky Mountain Institute (a Passive House office building) September 23-27 and in Philadelphia October 7-11. There is also training for the international standard in New York September 9-13 or November 4-8 and in Emeryville, CA Oct 28 - Nov 1. 35 AIA credits available. I think anyone who takes the training will find it beneficial in their work and impactful. Since taking the training I joined the board of Passive House Northwest (volunteer organization in Oregon and Washington), and now am the president of PHnw. I'm happy to help facilitate getting a Passive House training session(s) to be offered here in Seattle by Spring 2020 and also open it up to the development community of architects, engineers, contractors, developers, and invite local government officials too.

Hi Margaret, We just had two designers go through CPHC training and certification in January this year. We do large commercial and residential projects and we are experiencing passive house coming up more and more frequently. It is showing up on RFPs for higher ed residential projects, Mass EPA requests to provide modeling that shows what it would take to achieve passive house, and Boston building authority general questions asking projects to look at passive house. The concepts are easily scalable, but more likely adapted to projects that can reduce their window to wall ratio (such as student housing and some residential), but it is also showing up in office buildings…here in Boston, Winthrop Square. Is it valuable? We have approx. 170-80 arch staff, I think 2 people being CPHC at the moment is fine. We have a handful of others in the firm that are interested in the training and are in the process of finding the time/location to do it. The office is supportive of anyone taking the initiative. We do not have any Passive House projects on the boards, but once we get some projects going we will reassess. in putting together proposals for Passive House projects, we have worked w/ Thornton Tomasetti and Steven Winter Associates to discuss the value of having a CPHC on our staff, or whether we just hire someone like them. Our thought is that with the developer type work, and in general w/ how our project design teams work, we need to have the expertise as close to the design process as possible, but w/ some assistance, expertise and back-up from the special consultants. For all of our other designers/architects we are doing some passive house training in-house. We have had a couple of 1 hr lecture style presentations, a 2hr “Intro to Passive House” course taught by our local PHIUS chapter designed to give everyone enough info that they could talk about it w/ a client or consultant and understand the basic requirements and hurdles, and a 2hr “Technical Aspects of Passive House” that gets into more detail. Those classes have been the most useful to raise awareness of the standard and concepts. Hope that helps! Kristen Kristen Fritsch AIA LEED AP BD+C WELL AP Sustainability Coordinator ELKUS MANFREDI ARCHITECTS [tel] 617.695.7954 [email] kfritsch@elkus-manfredi.com From: Mar

Passive House training and focus has been the largest transformer of our practice in the last decade, more than any other "trend" we've seen. We are primarily multifamily, small educational, and single family focused, but the tools are universally applicable if you can go into it with the proper mid set. We haven't seen any other training that gives people the integrated ability to think through building enclosure design like it. The program's concentration on providing continuous fresh air ventilation in all buildings combined with a methodology for delivering verified building enclosure air tightness gives you the largest lever we've seen on transforming the behavior of all building types. There is also a deep focus on thermal bridge free design that was the first place I really had my head transformed about things that seemed like typical construction detaining before that (steel canopy framing, uninsulated foundation detailing, etc.). The Passive House crew has some peculiarities of course. You have to be able to separate the hidden German construction traditions from the overall program. PH also comes from a residential focus in a heating dominated, low humidity climate originally, so it transferred incredibly well to the PNW but less well to the mid-atlantic, and better to low internal gain buildings than high internal gain building types. Over the last decade there has been a lot of adaption to the US climate and other building types beyond residential for the better, so if you take the training now you will be much better off than the older waves were. It also gives designers a shot at starting to get the proper education to be able to talk coherently with mechanical engineers and really get at assessing load calcs and equipment sizing at the early stages of design. 1 Watt per SF heating load is pretty easy math to check... We’re regularly designing 3 - 5 story multifamily buildings in the modeled 14 - 18 EUI range before adding renewables in the Northeast by following the Passive House guidelines even if we’re not certifying, all with exterior enclosures that have IECC 2012 insulation levels. It’s all about the ventilation, air tightness & thermal bridge free design working together as a system, and we wouldn’t have gotten to that system without Passive House. Jesse Thompson PRINCIPAL, AIA, LEED AP, CPHC Maine Licensed Architect Kaplan Thompson Architects 102 Exchange Street, Portland, ME 04101 office: (207) 842-2888 x202 direct: (207) 536-4672 kaplanthompson.com

Agreed with Elizabeth RE: having engineers go through the PHIUS training as well so there's buy-in from multiple design perspectives on the design team.  I've gone through the CPHC training recently, as has one of my energy analysts at Vanderweil, and we found it to be similar to how others (Jacob, Chris, David, Kristien) describe the experience and value.  I did find the training, even recently, to be fairly focused on the single-family residential scale, but that is likely because it's easier to address all of the relevant topics in PH training at that scale; the principles still apply to larger multi-family and commercial projects, but I would have like to see more focus on those project types in the training since they're more relevant to our work.  The most positive thing we experienced in the training process was working collaboratively with architects to get back to the basics of building science as a primary focus of design, and sharing expertise in building envelope and engineering design.  I'd like to see more design teams seriously consider PH design starting in conceptual or early schematic design. (Sorry for the late post, just got a backlog of messages from GreenGurus.)   Cheers, Patrick Murphy Director of Sustainable Design | Vanderweil Engineers

I'm fortunate to sit next to a PHI Passive House Designer/Consultant Trainer here in the office, so while I haven't gone through the formal training (yet), it's pretty handy to have him right there to help me out. Similar to what others have said, I have found the standard (focusing mainly on PHI) to have more application than what I may had originally thought five+ years ago - though it isn't the cure to all our ills that I sometimes hear it presented as, particularly internally loaded buildings. I will say that I think some of our early energy models from several years ago may have underpredicted the value of the reduced infiltration associated with PH projects, and as we've dug into that more, I think it's as important to pay attention to when modeling overall performance as the R-values.

We're currently researching the PHI standard for an educational project in Climate Zone 6, and plan to put a white paper out on it based on what we find for that application. The goal is to compare what is a regularly used "high-performance" approach in the area (LEED-Gold is required, so typically they get a good envelope + energy efficient systems) to a Passive House approach that relies on a more robust envelope but far simpler (and smaller) mechanical systems. The ideal outcome would be a more energy efficient building, that's less complex, more durable, and yields a cost savings (or at least parity) to the more conventional (but still much better than code) product.