“Passivhaus1” is really not complicated, and it doesn’t have to cost more than conventional construction,” says Emma Osmundsen2:
“It’s a bit like baking a cake: most of the ingredients are the same as a regular house, but you just have to follow the recipe in the right order. Perhaps it’s because the building industry is so male-dominated, but there is a general reluctance to follow the recipe.”
We assume this remark was delivered with a certain amount of tongue in cheek . . . Or, maybe not.
In any case, Exeter, UK and Osmundsen are well placed to make that kind of judgement. They’ve been leading the Passivhaus pack in the UK for years. And that has put Exeter in the position of being a world leader in ‘green’ affordable housing. Currently, the city’s housing company is currently working with the 7th generation of Passivhaus housing design.
Based on Exeter’s success with affordable housing, they decided to apply these Passivehaus construction methods to, of all things, new city swimming pools. The first has been open for a year and is proving its green credentials.
Social housing and public buildings like recreation centres have a lot in common. Both cost a lot of public money to build and to operate. Both can be built to use a fraction of the energy. So much so that the savings quickly pay for any increase in up-front cost. That’s what Emma Osmundsen confirmed in her presentation to the 2023 Passivhaus Conference in Weisbaden Germany earlier this year.
Over a decade ago, the UK’s Exeter City Council set up Exeter City Living as a profit-for-purpose limited company to develop housing and public buildings for the City. The company has been building increasingly large social housing developments to the Passivhaus standard. Osmundsen decided to apply the Passivhaus lessons Exeter City Living had learned to a community swimming pool project.
Osmundsen said that one of the key steps to gain and maintain stakeholder support throughout the project was to establish a business plan at the outset. The business plan focused on total lifecycle cost.
This led the project team to build two financial models of construction and operating costs:
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- A pool constructed according to 2010 UK Building Regulations.
- A pool built according to the Passivhaus standard.
The model showed that in the first 10 years, building and operating the Passivhaus pool would save £280,000/CDN $469,513 in cumulative costs (building and operating) compared to a pool built to UK Building Regulations. Those savings would pay back any added cost of Passivhaus construction.
Exeter’s Passivhaus pool opened just prior to Putin’s attack on Ukraine. Putin’s war caused UK energy costs to shoot up. Unlike pools in other towns, Exeter’s Passivhaus pool is still operating on regular hours. It has avoided raising user fees and continues to operate at a profit. Osmundsen says public response has been extremely positive and “user numbers well exceed even the most optimistic expectations.”
The St Sidwell’s Point Leisure Centre project in an advanced stage of construction. There is a time lapse photography record, which you can watch at DevonLive here.
High on Exeter’s Passivhaus success, The Guardian wrote an extensive article last year that detailed how the Exeter has prospered in a new, green housing industry. Read more at The Guardian: Eco-homes become hot property in UK’s zero-carbon ‘paradigm shift
Footnotes
- Passivhaus and Passive House refer to a standard for setting levels of energy use in new buildings. EnerPHit does the same for buildings that are being renovated. We’re using passivhaus in this post to be consistent with language used in the articles that are attached. Read more about Passivhaus and EnerPHit at Passive House Canada: About Passive House
- Osmundsen is currently with Sixty Bricks, and previously worked at Exeter City Living
