PHPP beginner

[Anonymous]

I've just bought PHPP, to explore ideas for a possible house I may build.

Inevitably, I have questions! So I'm wondering how best to answer them.

For example, my first question concerns climate data. PHPP comes with data for various locations or it allows you to enter your own. But there's no UK data. What do people recommend? Is one or more of the provided sets close enough to UK conditions that it's usable, at least for initial planning? Or does anybody know where to get compatible data for UK locations?

I also have a 'meta' question. Are there better places to ask PHPP questions like this? I expect I'll have more as time goes by. For one thing, I'm making life difficult for myself by running it in OpenOffice, for a second, I'm considering building with straw and using lots of active solar. I expect all those aspects will cause queries!

Thanks, Dave

[Nick Grant]

Dave

You will have to decide which forum is best for PH questions, do try the BRE one.

Nick

[David Olivier]

Not sure what seasonal storage solar heating has to do with Passivhaus!

Former is being applied in Denmark to district heating systems where the seasonal store might store heat 1000-100,000 buildings and has a good volume/surface ratio. Basic laws of physics dictate that a store for one house doesn't usually store heat for a season.

If in need of reading matter re. 30+ years' experience with solar heating and single detached houses, search internet for terms such as Zero Energy House, Lyngby, Denmark, 1975 or Saskatchewan Conservation House, Canada, 1976.

In short PH standard doesn't avoid need for a boiler. Incidentally, electric backup heat would need 1-2 kWe of power station capacity plus associated transmission and distribution reinforcement to be built, which is more expensive than a boiler.

David.

[Nick Grant]

Dave

expect you have found it by now but BRE PH forum is at:

http://www.passivhaus.org.uk/ click on forum and register.

You raise lots of wider issues that are, as you say, more philosophical or strategic and probably better discussed in another thread. Recurrent one is the 'how far is it sensible to go' at the individual household level.

Any other PHPP questions??

Nick

[Anonymous]

Dave/Nick,

Thanks for your discussions above.

I just bought PHPP (2007 version) and is a beginner to this software. I got a few questions regarding the UK weather data, and wonder if you can help.

I noticed that UK version PHPP doesn’t have the full data for London, and seems to me that the heating and cooling loads and dew point temperature data are missing. I wonder how to get this information? Does the missing data influence the calculation results?

Another question is how to get the weather data for a specific location, for example Bath?

Many thanks.

Yuan

[Nick Grant]

Hi Yuan

The missing data only influences the peak heat load and cooling calcs. There is discussion on this somewhere else on the forum.

Much discussion as to whether the software Meteonorm can be used to generate the missing data and the jury is split. BRE have used Meteonorm to generate data files for the SAP regions to paste into PHPP (It provides output in PHPP ready format as an option). Hopefully this will be available soon.

If it is non commercial use then I guess you can use the trial version of Meteonorm to produce output for your desired locations and then type it into PHPP manually – takes about 10 minutes. Otherwise they will provide the data for €50 per location, order form on the website.

That's the easy bit. Question is how many data sets do we need for UK? Some local adjustment is done (manually) in PHPP such as allowing for altitude (temp reduction) and shading. I'm for an agreed and limited number for certification (can always do a what if with different data for your own interest) but others argue that the exact data is crucial.

Hope that helps and welcome to the forum.

Nick

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