First Passivhaus home in the Community of Madrid: a success story

A passive home or building designed under the Passivhaus standards is a type of construction with energy efficiency far above average. For this, it is essential to have resources from bioclimatic architecture and, of course, appropriate controlled mechanical ventilation systems. To better understand how it works, we will present a practical example of the first certified Passivhaus home in Madrid.

First Passivhaus Home: A Success Story

The success story we will focus on is that of the first Passivhaus home in the Community of Madrid. This is a single-family home with a heating and air conditioning demand of less than 15 kWh/m2. It is located in Guadalix de la Sierra and completed its construction at the end of 2014, although it did not obtain this certification until August 2015.

Technical Characteristics

Throughout the construction process, the developer in charge of the project focused on the use of natural, efficient, and environmentally friendly materials. The design is free of thermal bridges and ensures complete airtightness. For this, among many other elements, triple-glazed windows and closures have been used.

In total, the home has 135 square meters and, inside, it includes three bedrooms, one bathroom, a living-dining room, and a porch. Additionally, this home is built from Nordic pine wood sourced from sustainable forests.

To give you an idea, the combination of all these elements allows for savings of up to 90% in energy consumption compared to a conventional home.

Ventilation System

Siber participated in this project by designing and installing the ventilation system. More specifically, a controlled mechanical ventilation system with dual flow. The energy recovery system (hot air from heating in winter and cold air from the cooling system) allows savings of up to 95%.

The use of thermoplastic ducts and fittings, as well as batteries that temper the incoming air from outside, are key factors explaining this figure. The system has been designed to ensure a sweeping effect that maintains a stable temperature throughout the house.

But what other advantages, beyond energy savings, does our ventilation system offer in this Passivhaus home?:

• Prevents the appearance of moisture.
• With a filtering system, it is impossible for harmful particles from outside to enter.
• It has a network of airtight ducts for perfect acoustic insulation.

Additionally, the functionality of the system can be managed by the user very easily. For this, we include a specific control remote that offers the possibility, for example, to select different ventilation powers depending on the time of day or to know alerts for failures and the need to clean the filters.

Home Monitoring

This control of the ventilation system is possible thanks to our home monitoring technology. It reads both the humidity percentage and the temperature of the outside and inside of each room.

This task is performed by a sensor that operates 24 hours a day. In this way, it is possible to accurately control the characteristics of the air that penetrates from outside to inside the house and to optimize the operation of the equipment to the maximum.

At this point, we hope to have clearly explained what the Passivhaus standard is along with the characteristics of a home built under it. Without a doubt, a house where the controlled mechanical ventilation system plays a fundamental role, just as it does in all the others that have managed to obtain this certification. There are already more than 14,000 worldwide.