If you want to download the floor plan, please scroll to the bottom of the article.

This is a guest post by Mike Duclos. Mike is founder of The DEAP Energy Group, a firm providing a wide variety of deep energy retrofit, zero net energy, and Passive House related consulting services. Mike has real-world experience with the design, construction, certification, and delivered performance measurement of Passive House, and is a Certified Passive House Consultant. Mike will be teaching a 6-week course on Passive House Design as part of NESEA’s Building Energy Master Series that will teach builders, architects, and engineers the fundamentals of Passive House design. In the class you’ll design your own passive house and get it reviewed by Mike using “PHPP Lite.” The class is capped at 50 students with 30 discounted seats. Sign up for the Passive House Design training here. 

Passive House Design vs Normal Home Design

Passive House is a hot topic, and we get a lot of questions about how to design and model these homes. Most people are familiar with design principles for “normal” residential homes, so we wanted to provide a sample as-built for an actual Passive House with a number of comments on how its design is different from traditional construction.

A Real Passive House Design

Here are 10 Key Design Features That are Different From Normal Residential Home Design

1. The long elevation of the home faces close to due South, providing more wall area for windows.
2. Home is positioned on lot so views are to the South so that the larger South window area is used to advantage for both the view and solar gain.
3. Room layout centers around a ‘great room’ comprised of a living and kitchen/dining area for entertaining a modest number of people in 1152-square-foot home.
4. Master bedroom receives sun from the East and South; the other front bedroom receives sun from the South and West.
5. Point source heating efficacy is optimized by use of a central great room in which a single, 9 KBTU/hr  ductless mini-split is used for all space conditioning.
6. Bathroom door is located immediately below ductless mini-split, for best localized space conditioning.
7. Mechanicals are located between bathroom and kitchen sink, minimizing delay to hot water and stranding of hot water after a draw. Solar DHW tank can contribute 300-500 BTU/hr next to the bathroom door.
8. Glazing is maximized on the South elevation, minimized on East and especially West to help manage overheating , and is minimized on the North to minimize space heating losses.
9. South elevation has one entry door which is glazed to take advantage of the view and the sun.
10. Mudroom on the North is the entrance used on a daily basis by occupants.