Passive House vs. Passive Solar: A Continuing Discussion

Reader Contribution by Richard Schmidt
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In our April/May 2014 issue, we ran Passive House: Beyond Passive Solar in Ask Our Experts, which discussed the differences between passive solar design and Passive House standards. In response, we received a letter from architect Richard Schmidt of San Luis Obispo, Calif., questioning a number of points in the article. We’ve posted his letter below, and we’d like to hear your thoughts as well.

“Your article ‘Passive House: Beyond Passive Solar,’ intended to clear up confusion between ‘Passive House’ and ‘passive solar,’ merely adds to the muddle. The only connection between the two is the word ‘passive.’ The building philosophies behind the two could hardly be more opposite, nor is there, as the title of the article implies, the slightest evolutionary relationship between the two. To state that Passive House is superior to passive solar is just plain nuts. That’s like saying apples are superior to tomatoes — a proposition few MOTHER EARTH NEWS readers would buy.

“One of the problems with current building codes and conventional thinking about what makes an energy-efficient building is the codes’ obsession with energy conservation at the cost of energy generation/collection/conversion. Passive House is code-type energy conservation on steroids — a super-airtight, super-insulated building envelope of industrial materials dominates the process. A Passive House, it is sometimes said, can be heated with a light bulb, which sounds fine until you think about how you get there: petrochemical insulation far beyond what’s probably needed; layer upon layer of petrochemical housewraps, vapor barriers and the like; a house that’s so tight you have to run mechanical ventilation 24/7 to control mold and condensation and keep it pollution-free; and paranoia about energy loss through windows so much that windows are often minimized, creating cave-like interior spaces more suited for spiders than human comfort.

“In fact, contrary to your article’s implication that Passive House is merely a souped-up version of passive solar, many Passive House designs exclude winter sun because the building would overheat if sun were allowed to pour into the interior. To top it off, there are the politics of Passive House: One has to follow a set of one-size-fits-all rules to get ‘certified,’ and the competing Passive House certifying groups can’t even agree on just what that entails. This is a very expensive and highly questionable way to build.

“Your writer dismisses passive solar as ‘popularized in the 1970s’ (1970s? Boo! Hiss! Orange bathroom tile! Old technology!). Actually, passive solar embodies timeless energy principles largely ignored by most building codes and not embodied in Passive House. Until the era of cheap fossil fuel, this was the common way of building in much of the world. Then we forgot it, and now, we’re told by MOTHER EARTH NEWS to do something called ‘Passive House’ instead. That is a mistake in clear thinking.

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