Week 6: PHIUS Requirements
Hi Everyone!
Since Last Week I learned a bit of what LEEDS’ requirements are, this week I am going to share a bit of what I learned about PHIUS Requirements.
Just as a quick reminder of what I talked about in a previous blog, Phius stands for Passive House Institute US, and it is a framework to create passive buildings. In order to get Phius certified the building must meet certain requirements, and then go through a third party on site inspection
PHIUS CORE is categorized into the performance level and the prescriptive level, the difference is the way in which the passive and active measures are regulated.
If one were to take the performance level, PHIUS CORE Standards include: Passive Conservation (Which is controlling thermal bridging, adding high performance windows, optimizing solar gain, air tightness for building durability, and ventilation with heat recovery) Active Conservation (conserving energy in appliances, guided by the Source Energy Target), Moisture Control, Combustion and Fireplace Safety, Electrification Readiness, Window Comfort, and Electric Vehicle Charging.
In the prescriptive path the requirements are categorized in three categories: Universally, Climate Specific, and Building Specific. This Phius CORE Prescriptive Hybrid approach allows for performance tradeoffs based on the requirement categories listed above.
Similar to Phius CORE except, it goes further in energy conservation is Phius ZERO. Phius Zero sets the net energy source to zero, by prohibiting fossil fuel combustion on-site and providing alternatives. Phius ZERO leans more towards electrification, so for example implementing things like solar panels into the building.
After Looking at LEED for the human aspect of sustainability and PHIUS which is more about energy optimization, I was able to get a sense of what to put on my checklist for the walk through.
The plan is that as I do the Walkthrough more things will pop up for me to evaluate, but so far these are the things I will be looking at:
- Water Access
- Walkability
- Parking Spaces
- Greenhouse gasses
- Runoff Prevention/Runoff management
- Community Spaces
This Week I also was able to learn more about SketchUp, so here is a building I am making for fun.
I am going to keep giving updates on how this little building is going, as well as what shortcuts I am learning with SketchUp.
Thanks for reading! 🙂