Summary

2nd documentation period of the joint project of IG Passivhaus Österreich under the programme line "House of the Future“, an initiative of the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) to set up a detailed network documentation on a representative cross-section of all passive houses in Austria.

 

Motivation

The ecological passive house meets the need for living quality, comfort and cosiness to an extent hardly yet reached, both in single-family and multi-family homes and public and commercial buildings. It is the most consistent concept of sustainable building. In order to further promote this positive development tendency it was imperative to establish a comprehensive network of passive houses from all over Austria.

 

Objectives

This unique network has covered 83% of all passive houses built until 2003, 61% built until 2004, 40% built until 2005, and 28% of all passive houses built until 2006 in Austria as successful examples of sustainable building. In total, 503 passive-house building projects, primarily from Austria, and 40 international projects have been documented. This platform for expert planners, property developers, trades and opinion-leaders serves to expand their knowledge about the passive house, different building types and uses, construction methods, services and technical equipment concepts and architectural solutions demonstrated in already built projects. Experiences, developments and trends towards implementing the passive house standard are opened to the general public in all Austrian provinces.

 

Processing method

The central online database was used as the management tool focussing exclusively on the passive house for entering and managing data gathered from all over Austria in a uniform data entry mask. The user can select permanently updated buildings by using targeted search criteria and obtains various evaluations also in the form of charts and diagrams. The purpose is to provide maximum market diffusion in order to more rapidly disseminate information about the passive house.

 

Data

The criteria for including passive houses in the IG Passivhaus joint project are solely those set up by the Passivhaus Institut Darmstadt! This secures the high scientific quality and offers a major contribution to raise the general awareness of the high quality standard.

 

The buildings are subdivided in five categories:

Category "Passive-house residential buildings with a heating load < 10 W/m²"

Category "Passive-house residential buildings with an energy requirement < 15 kWh/m²a"

Category "Residential buildings close to passive houses with an energy requirement of 15 to 20 kWh/m²a"

Category "Passive-house special-purpose buildings"

Category „Refurbishment of existing buildings with passive-house components“

 

Results

 

Due to the broad basis of cooperation in capturing planned and already built passive houses in Austria, as of July 31, 2006, the essential data of a total of 503 passive houses, 463 of them in Austria covering around 2000 residential units, were gathered, documented and made available on the Internet.

 

·       67 multi-family and row houses                     with a total useful floor space of 160,501m²

·     334 single-family and semi-detached houses  with a total useful floor space of 57,862m²

·       19 schools, nursery schools, special-purpose buildings
                                                                        with a total useful floor space of   47,918m²

·      43 office, commercial, administrative buildings with a total useful floor space of 48,785m²

    463 buildings in Austria                                total useful floor space         315,066m²

 

      40 international buildings from 11 countries   with a total useful floor space of  24,201m²

 

    503 buildings included in the database    with a total useful floor space of 339,267m²

 

Evaluation of the documented 463 Austrian passive house buildings:

Saved energy and emissions vs conventionally built structures	Status at 07/2006 463 documented passive houses from Austria	Forecast 12/2006 1660 built passive houses in Austria	Forecast 2010 around 11,800 passive houses in Austria
New buildings Refurbishment of existing buildings Total  number of buildings	448 buildings   15 buildings 463 buildings	1,630 buildings   30 buildings 1,660 buildings	11,450 buildings   350 buildings 11,800 buildings
New buildings  floor space Refurbishment floor space Total                 floor space	291,696 m²   23,370 m² 315,066 m²	896,500 m²   49,800 m² 946,300 m²	6.300,000 m²    580,000 m² 6,880.000 m²
New buildings            HER Refurbishment           HER Total heating energy requirement (HER)/year	16,043,280 kWh   4,323,450 kWh   20,366,730 kWh	49,308,000 kWh   9,213,000 kWh   58,521,000 kWh	346,000,000 kWh 108,000,000 kWh   454,000,000 kWh
Heating energy requ./ year	20,367 MWh	58,521 MWh	454,000 MWh
Domestic fuel oil / year	2,037,000 l of oil	5,852,000 l of oil	45,400,000 l of oil
New buildings CO2 savings Refurbishment CO2 sav. CO2 savings / year	4,667 tons CO2 1,402 tons CO2 6,069 tons CO2	14,300 t CO2   3,000 t CO2 17,300 t CO2	100,800 t CO2   35,000 t CO2 135,800 t CO2

 

 

• The passive house market has rapidly increased since 1996
• 4% of all new buildings as per end of 2006, 24% as per 2010 and 62% share of passive houses (PH) as per 2020
• Forecast for end of 2006 – around 4000 residential units (RE) with 10,000 passive house residents
• In Austria 2.5 times more PH buildings per 1 million inhabitants than in Germany
• 373 documented buildings from Austria with a total useful floor space of 204,763m²
  
  
  
• Vorarlberg has the highest density of passive houses in Austria - 0.16 buildings per 1000 inhabitants
• As for the number of buildings, Lower Austria leads against Upper Austria and Vorarlberg
• Vienna has best documented multi-family passive houses with 715 RE and 60,300 m² of useful floor space
• Upper Austria has more office, commercial and special-purpose buildings than residential buildings, the useful floor space totalling 47,180 m²
• Lower Austria has the highest number of single-family passive houses with a floor space of 17,900 m²

 

• Mean pressure test values n50 of 0.43 1/h significantly below limit value for passive houses of 0.6 1/h
• Mean annual heating energy requirement (HER) according to PHPP of 14.30 kWh/m²a
• Mean HER value according to OIB calculation 2.69 kWh/m²a lower than according to PHPP
• Heating load acc. to PHPP below 10 W/m² in 79 buildings, 40% of which by 2 project teams
• Mean heating load acc. to PHPP 12.64 W/m²
• Heating load of all 11 multi-family homes in Vienna below 10 W/m²K
  
  
  
• 52% of all buildings in timber construction
• 66% of all buildings with basement floor; most of them outside the thermal envelope
• 61% of all passive-house buildings < 15 kWh/m²a have not installed stand-by chimney
• 44% of all buildings close to passive-house standard of 15 – 20 kWh/m²a have no stand-by chimney
• 66% of all buildings equipped with compact units
• 50% of multi-family homes have decentralised, 50% central ventilation systems
  
  

 

• 2006: already as many as 30 refurbishments of old buildings to passive-house standard, 15 of them documented
• Importance of refurbishment of old buildings to passive-house standard growing strongly and, according to forecasts, will contribute as much as 72% of in total 3.02 million tons of CO₂ savings – this corresponds to an annual fuel consumption/emissions of 950,000 passenger cars 

 

• Government housing subsidy programmes (GHSP) have direct impact on the number of PH residential buildings
• Last amendment to Upper Austrian GHSP had severely negative influence
• In Vorarlberg housing subsidies are granted only if buildings meet passive-house standard
• GHSP Impulse Programme Passive House could create an additional 17,000 jobs until 2010, and in the refurbishment sector another 83,000 jobs until 2016
  
  
• Excellent architecture of passive houses against conventional building standard
• Almost every type of architecture suited for passive-house standard, offering genuine harmony between architecture and living comfort
• Passive houses available for all buyer strata
• 50% of building owners agree to have their houses visited
  
  

 

The passive-house building database is currently visited by up to 1400 users daily on the three websites: www.hausderzukunft.at

www.igpassivhaus.at, and www.passivehouse.at