PHVP02 - Preliminary PHPP - English Version

[Zana Dean]

I've discovered a 'preliminary' PHPP worksheet on the Passivhaus Institute's website, a sort of PHPP 'lite'

http://www.passiv.de/07_eng/index_e.html

I've been using PHPP2007 English version on several projects, and this 'lite' version looks like a possibly fantastic tool to introduce other colleagues in our practice to using PHPP, without them being intimidated by the full number of sheets and entries to worry about.
Myself and a friend were attempting to rustle up a 'simplified' linked excel sheet where the bare facts could be entered for an initial project, but PHVP seems to do the job far better.

My question to the forum is has anyone used PHVP02 before and found it advantageous? are there any pitfalls to using it? And finally does anyone know of an english translation?! My GCSE german and google-translate have certain limitations!

Many thanks,

Jennie Swain, Anne Thorne Architects Partnership

[Mark Siddall]

Hi Jennie,
As far as I know it is only available in German. The simplified method is preliminary for only designing the building fabric itself and does not consider the building services and influence of the environment. It is intended to provide a rough picture of the architectural requirements for the basic evaluation, preliminary planning and the associated calculations.

1) I presume that the weather data will be "average German climate" so could over egg the envelope a little, but
2) As a subset of the weather data the solar data will also be subject to assumptions - generally we are in a more overcast environment so this will have a major impact - so you could significantly under design the envelope.
3) By making assumptions about the MVHR system you may over specify the envelope (but this is not a major problem).

I'd be tempted to conclude that in the UK it may be useful as an educcational tool but not a design tool.

Hope this helps.
Mark

[Nick Grant]

Hi Jennie

I looked at this and like you gave up due to insufficient German.

I think your linked file or just an additional sheet at the front is a good way to go and still allows you to get into detail when you need to.

Most of the sheets can be ignored or set up then hidden.

I am working on a version now to look at options for a school at initial design stage.

Obviously the simpler the design the easier to model and the less chance of nasty surprises later when you put in the real windows with lots of heat loss from complex mullions etc.

One beauty of PHPP being in Excel is that you can do graphs showing the gains and losses which is a good way to help get a feel for things and also to show the client.

Always worth being pessimistic about shading, U values etc and try and get to around 12kWh/(m2/a) as you can expect losses to creep in as you get to details.

Cheers

Nick

[Zana Dean]

Many thanks for your responses Mark and Nick, very useful.

A german friend has done a quick translation for us, and both your comments of PVHP's simplicity bear out, but I agree that it will be a good educational tool for colleagues to get them into the basics - attached our translated sheet for interest....(removed sheets that related to converting results to EnEv energy standards for simplification, so boiled down to only 6 sheets...)

Interested in the idea of pulling out graphs for heat loss, etc from PHPP, Nick - do you create a separate sheet with the data to create your charts? I'm currently not that well versed in creating graphs in excel, will have to give it a go.....

Many thanks, Jennie

[Nick Grant]

Hi Jennie

Good of you to put that up.

Re graphs I tend to do this in the anual heat demand sheet. First turn off protection then create a table to contain the values you want to plot. The screenshot shows a table and graph with losses and gains expressed in kWh/m2.a.

Each value can be found on the sheet and the screen shot shows the formula '=O10/O6' where O10 is the cell with the wall anual heat loss and O6 is the cell with treated floor area (omit if you want to plot kWh/year).

The only complicated one is solar and internal gains which need to be multiplied by the utilisation factor. IHG becomes '=O63*O56/O6' and solar becomes '=O63*O52/O6' as cell O63 contains the utilisation factor.

Boiler is the heat demand value.

The totals are just to check that gains = losses and when selecting the data range to plot you leave that out.

Once you have a graph it can be copied to another sheet or just pasted into reports.

I tend to add a sheet at the front of PHPP with this graph and a summary of values for say glazing area, U values etc. Simply enter a formula '=[cell reference]'.

There will be some PHPP demo sessions on the AECB stand at EcoBuild but I expect you want to get stuck in before that.

Cheers

Nick