Posted By: fclausonAll PHI approved

Then I suggest taking up your concerns with them. Unless the leprechauns are doing some really special mischief in that part of Ireland, I'd happily lay money that the passivhaus standard will prove to be as practicably applicable there as everywhere else it's been used.

Posted By: fclausonThat is just not going to work - with the weather data I have shown some one living just 3 miles will have a completly different insulation build spec - that will be unenforcable

taking the tack of "sufficient" will have a massive cost overhead for those who do not need it.

That reads like a contradiction. A standard requiring a variable amount of insulation is no good because it is unenforceable. A standard requiring a constant amount of insulation is no good because of excess cost. You have to pick one or the other if you want a standard! Personally, I'm with Damon; I don't see a problem with everybody paying for the same amount of insulation and some will be lucky enough to have slightly lower heating bills.

Wain Moorehead has written impressively about the unique variability of our Irish climate and the resultant impact of PHPP calculations. https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.wma.ie/wmaweb/references/publications/2010_selight_climateJM.pdf&pli=1.

And it so happens his website profers

"Without the correct climate data energy load prediction for low energy buildings can regularly be out by 30% in Ireland alone. WMA consider this level of inaccuracy unacceptable. Having carried out extensive research on the matter WMA developed a methodology to produce dedicated climate data for client individual sites for energy and condensation risk simulations. This service is also being offered to other consultants in the field. We have already been contracted to generated site specific data on four continents including Europe, Americas, Asia and Australasia."

Now I can't rebuff these impressive writings with any comparable research of my own but I am skeptical.

End user behavior is a much bigger threat to low energy building performance I believe.

http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/occupant-behavior-makes-difference?utm_source=email&utm_medium=eletter&utm_term=energy-efficiency&utm_content=20120314-careless-passivhaus-homeowners&utm_campaign=green-building-advisor-eletter