Here’s an excerpt from an article and podcast from GreenBuildingAdvisor.com which provides a really nice explanation of how heat moves through buildings.  If you haven’t read my earlier post on Passivhaus design, you can have a gander at that too.

The Basics of Heat Flow
As construction methods and materials change, and energy gets more expensive, how and why we insulate our homes become more important.

Why insulate? Read more…

In “Food Rules,” Michael Polan describes how he found that the more he researched about food, the simpler everything became.  It came down to, “eat food.”  (Food your great-grandmother would recognize as food.)  To me, the green building concept seems to get simpler the more I learn:  you think of the building envelope, or the six sides of your home, as a balloon.   A house-shaped balloon.  It is far more efficient to fill a balloon with air when it doesn’t have leaks, yes?  Now imagine that [house-shaped] balloon having really thick insulated balloon-walls/ceilings/floors on all six sides, but holes at the corners.   Won’t it still leak?

I’m sharing an excerpt below of “Passivhaus for Beginners,” an article posted by “Musings of an Energy Nerd” on GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.  It may seem a little complicated, but just think of that balloon.

More and more designers of high-performance homes are buzzing about a superinsulation standard developed in Germany, the Passivhaus standard. The standard has been promoted for over a decade by the Passivhaus Institut, a private research and consulting center in Darmstadt, Germany.  Click here to read the complete article at GreenbuildingAdvisor.com.