Passive House in Cross Laminated Timber: Sotogrande
This villa has a 321 sq m built area on a plot of 1124 sq m in near Sotogrande, San Roque, Cadiz.
We are currently waiting for the Building Licence Approval.
The building will be to passive House standards. The German Institute of Passive Houses is the leading authority on energy efficient houses. The key principals of a passive house are super insulation, air tightness and a mechanical ventilation system and heat exchanger.
Such buildings, more common in Northern Europe, require almost no heating. This is because no heat escapes from the building so the inhabitants own body heat is enough to heat the building. The ventilation system introduces fresh air (into bedrooms and living spaces) from the outside continuously. As the stale dirty wet air (from kitchen and bathrooms) is expelled it exchanges heat with the clean fresh air that is entering the building.
The same principals apply whether you are trying to keep a building cool in the summer or when you are trying to keep it warm in the winter: the heat exchanger is reversible. If your main problem is a cooling one in a hot climate such as Spain, rather than a heating one in Norway for example, you have to understand that the people inside the building are still giving out heat, about as much as a small electric fire. The question is can we cool the building passively. We think we can.
Standards to achieve the Passive House Certificate are exacting with a PHPP study (Passive House Planning Package), and blow tests being required. For a blow test you close the windows and doors and a huge machine blows air into the house through the front door and gives you a number that tells you whether the villa is sufficiently air tight or not.
We are using cross laminated timber which will be exposed partly because our clients have a passion for wood (there are so many advantages to a cross laminated timber structure) and partly because it makes it much easier to design without thermal bridges and to high standards of air tightness.
It´s CLT with TLC (surely I am not the first person to make that joke!)