[Mromson]

It saddens me that construction quality is almost irrelevant when building a new building nowadays. The profit difference between a well-isolated passive building and one that merely meets the minimal standards, is often very small, so why bother building a passive building?

My personal interest in passive buildings generally revolve around maintenance. Passive houses seem to require far less maintenance.

[Cthulhu_]

> It saddens me that construction quality is almost irrelevant when building a new building nowadays.

Depends on where you live; houses in the Netherlands are built to high standards when it comes to things like insulation, build quality, electrification, etc.

Are houses in the US still built with 2x4's and drywall? You'd think they would move to what we have here in the Netherlands, mostly sturdy concrete blocks, insulation layer, and a pretty brickwork or brickwork-looking facade.

I mean the amount of clips I see on the youtubes of people breaking walls make me cringe. A wall should break you, not the other way around, :D

[vinay427]

> Are houses in the US still built with 2x4's and drywall? You'd think they would move to what we have here in the Netherlands, mostly sturdy concrete blocks

Do you mind explaining why you feel this way? There are definitely benefits to reinforced concrete such as durability and resistance to certain natural elements, but as far as I can tell modern fire-treated wood construction tends to be nearly as safe in fires or superior in earthquakes, has better insulation, and is more ecological during the construction process. Overall, I would prefer reinforced concrete, but it’s more for the “qualitative advantages” as it feels more reassuring to the touch.

Speaking of electrification, one complaint I have of most construction in at least continental Europe is the consistent dearth of electrical outlets in residential settings. Living in Switzerland for years and visiting other countries, it seemed like an extension cord across the bedroom or living room was nearly always needed due to awkward and very limited outlet placement. The fire code in a state like California seems to have much stricter mandates to prevent this sort of thing.

[GuB-42]

> the consistent dearth of electrical outlets

In France, it was the case in old houses.

On new constructions, a minimum number of outlets is required (3 per bedroom, 5 to 7 in the living room, 4 in the kitchen, 1 in every other room). This is in addition to dedicated circuits (washing machine, oven, dishwasher, heating, lighting...) which may have their own outlets. RJ-45 networking is also required (1 per room) but unfortunately, it is often designed poorly and barely usable except for a phone landline.

These are minimums. And it is typically what you get in standard apartment buildings. But you can have more. I have about double. A friend of mine has an outlet every 50cm!

[pierot]

> Speaking of electrification, ..

Probably because the housing stock in continental Europe is older and therefor much more often retrofitted with modern electricity. Newly build houses won't have that problem. Although I'm not aware of fire regulations having an effect on the number of outlets in a room, in my region (Belgium).

[adev_]

> I mean the amount of clips I see on the youtubes of people breaking walls make me cringe. A wall should break you, not the other way around

The external wall un old French house can easily reach 55/60cm of pure concrete mixed with stones in cold places.

Trust me, it will break you and specially break your will to make any hole in them ^^

[lotsofpulp]

> I mean the amount of clips I see on the youtubes of people breaking walls make me cringe. A wall should break you, not the other way around, :D

Why? I think calculating heat loss, noise levels, wireless signals, fire resistance, ecological cost, etc would be decent metrics to judge the merits of a wall.

But if you are living in civilization, I do not see why the wall withstanding the impact of a body is something I should care about. Also, there is almost always an external envelope of exterior siding plus plywood sheathing that I have never seen penetrated by an individual without tools.

[Mromson]

Some countries have comparatively high building standards, but none (that I'm aware of) come close to a Passive House standard.

My gripe isn't as much what the minimum requirement is, and more the incentive to never go above it, because property prices are generally only going up with little regard to building standards.

[sb057]

>The profit difference between a well-isolated passive building and one that merely meets the minimal standards, is often very small, so why bother building a passive building?

People making decisions about which contractor to use (both for public and private projects) are often mandated to choose the absolute cheapest bidder, sometimes with the ability of choosing a different one if they file mountains of paperwork explaining why.

[pjerem]

That's what norms are for.

If minimal thermal requirements are written in the law, even the cheapest builder must build a highly insulated home. In my country, it's mandatory to have well insulated home, to prove (with tests) that you respect the norms, and it's also mandatory to have renewable heat source (mainly heat pumps). Sure, it costs a little more, but with the rise of real estate prices, it's still way cheaper to build well insulated houses.

The building cost since those new norms increased about maybe dozens of thousands euros. It's not even a lot given the exceptional thermal comfort you get from your money.

[lostlogin]

The houses in the article have a lot of wood and decking.

New Zealand is savage on exposed timber. I have tried multiple products from expensive to cheap and have the same result on all.

A deck which gets rain and faces north west needs re-coating every 6 months to 1 year. The combination of heat, UV and water is just savage.

[goldcd]

Have you looked at modified woods like Accoya? (50 year guarantee above ground, 25 in water)

[lostlogin]

Thanks - I hadn’t.

I haven’t had any degrade to the stage where it needs replacement, I just have to keep maintaining.

I’ll look into it further, the product looks impressive.

[Mandatum]

The reason the stuff lasts so long is it's chemically gone from cellulose/wood fiber to acetate.

There's a lot of issues with using it aside from expense; anything touching it will be impacted by the acidity of the wood, so you'll want to use things like stainless steel.

It's a great wood, but it's not all roses. The other thing to keep in mind, the process behind it doesn't HAVE to be applied to New Zealand or Chilean radiata pine, they only use that wood as it's more marketable and people are more likely to stomach the costs.

Something to also keep in mind the wood is only treated on the outside. If you cut into it, for example the endgrain on every plank you buy - it'll need to be sealed just as regular radiata pina. When "perennial wood" was originally sold decades ago, people installed it expecting zero maintenance and then found their decking started to rot less than a decade later. Keeping that in mind, similar issues can arise if you sand the wood.

[goldcd]

It's good stuff - but not cheap.

For decking where you're going to have to clean it yearly anyway, I wouldn't bother (no real effort to just add on some maintenance) - and probably works out cheaper even with a few replacements over decades.

Where it shines is where it's a pain to replace and a nice bit of weathering is what you're after (say the eaves on a roof) - not too expensive to run a plank around the perimeter and no ladders/scaffolding/treatment required for the rest of your life.

[dx034]

I doubt the maintenance part. I lived in one and experienced more maintenance. You have the heat exchanger as an additional moving part which needs cleaning, new filters, etc.

Also, you need a perfect seal between inside and outside. So any cables going outside (blinds, air conditioning which you'll still want if it's 40C outside, etc) needs to be sealed and is thus much harder to replace or repair.

[LunaSea]

> Passive houses seem to require far less maintenance.

Interesting! Could you explain a bit more on how you came to this conclusion?

[Mromson]

In general, this conclusion comes from the notion that a passive house has fewer moving parts and requires less attention. A poorly insulated house demands that you take more active measures to ensure that it keeps a positive temperature (so water pipes don't freeze), this is extra pertinent should the power go out. A well-insulated house is also likely to have fewer points of failure (water getting into cracks and whatnot).

A proper passive house generally only has one maintenance point, which is the ventilation / air filtration system, and temperature control is easy. You don't have to worry much about the insides being too hot or too cold, as it should keep whatever temperature you set regardless of the weather outside.

With all that said, you should generally take everything I said with a grain of doubt, as I'm not an expert, and someone could well shoot down all my points in the comments. ;-)

My prime goal with any house I buy is to make sure that I have to do as little as possible; never worry about water being in the wrong place, and never worry about the power bill, or temperature in general.

[LunaSea]

Ah I see, that makes sense.

I've always found Passive Haus design interesting although the (expensive) single point of failure that lies in the air pumps scares me a bit.

[poseva]

First of all, if you build a PassivHaus in normal climate (not cold) you will be amazed to see that you do not need a heat pump, you can just use normal electric boiler for hot water and use electric underfloor heating mats for heating, or infrared panels mounted on the roof. On the other side, air-to-air heat pumps have gotten cheaper by the year, you can buy a decent heat pump (NIBE) with about 4500-5000 euros.

[Mromson]

Electric boilers are extremely energy inefficient compared with heat pumps. If you built a Passive House, not going the extra mile for a heat pump seems silly to me. Not to mention that heat pumps can easily protect you against heatwaves (should any happen).

[coryrc]

True Passivhaus needs less than 1000W of heating ever; at that point the expense of heat pump is unnecessary for something rarely used.

[poseva]

Exactly what coryrc said in his comment, for a PassivHaus you recover very slowly the cost of the heatpump and if it brakes once in 10-15 years while it takes to recover the investition... you will never recover it.

[Mromson]

Personally I've addressed that concern with a CO2 alarm in every room (which you should have regardless, so I don't count that against passive houses). I suspect that there exist ventilation fallback solutions that can address a power failure scenario, but I've yet to find any viable ones.

It should be possible to have a system that generates automatic airflow should power fail.

Best ones I've found are solar panels, or geothermal power generator (geothermal is generally really amazing for everything), but that still leaves mechanical failure.

That said, it takes quite a bit of time before ventilation failure leads to a dangerous CO2 buildup. And the addition of having a single entry point for air means that it's easy to filter my air through a HEPA filter, ensuring top quality air all year round.