Passive houses Taveliden
Region: City of Umeå
Implemented on: Local level
Target group: Building stakeholders
Summary:
The City of Umeå, Dragon School’s building programme and consult company Sweco are partner in the “Network for Sustainable Building in Cold Climate”. This was the starting point for a successful collaboration. Existing plans to let students of Dragon School’s building programme to build low-energy-houses on existing grounds changed after consultations with Sweco’s passive house architect to building certified passive houses. Now, the first environmentally certified 3 single families in passive house standard in Northern Sweden are realised, and 6 more are planned in a phase 2.
Objectives:
- Implementing an adapted passive-house concept for single-family for Northern Sweden with a focus on healthy and renewable building components;
- Realize model buildings: 3 passive houses in phase 1, 6 more in phase 2;
- Teaching students on forward-looking building concepts;
- Environmental certification and passive house certification of buildings.
Funding/Costs:
- Costs: about 10-12% higher building costs than for a standard single-family house, certificate costs about 3-5% of total costs;
- Estimated selling price: about 400.000 Euro.
Results:
- 3 passive houses incl. use of renewable primary products as building components for a healthy and comfortable interior climate;
- Successful passive-house and environmental certification for buildings;
- Teaching and training for future house builder with Show-and-tell model project;
- Improved knowledge for Dragon School’s project leader/teacher
Lessons learnt:
- There is still a need to increase the understanding of the principles of passive-houses concepts to make it possible to consequently adapt technical solution to Northern Sweden’s climate;
- As students are building the houses, the demand for controlling and for adjustment was relatively high.
- There is a need to further develop the market for high-quality building components to reasonable prices. Otherwise, the European passive houses certification standards cannot be full-filled without high costs, which only few people can afford. This is true for some regions with really harsh climate, e.g. in the mountain regions in Northern Sweden or generally north of the Polar Circle.
- Commitment of Umeå municipality, Dragon school’s building programme and Sweco were decisive for success.