Sips Eco members of Passivhaus Trust

We are delighted to announce that Sips Eco are now a certified member of Passivhaus Trust.

What is Passivhaus Trust?

Passivhaus Trust are an independent organisation that provide information within the UK on how to use the Passive House (Passivhaus) methods and standards within a building.  The aim of the Passivhaus Trust is to promote the benefits of building a Passive House and why businesses, developers and self-builders should use this method when building.  They are a professional regulatory body that provide information on Passive House living and have standardised tests that they carry out to determine if a Passive House has been created.

What is a Passivhaus?

A Passive House (Passivhaus) is a building that is extremely airtight and energy efficient, meaning that the need for energy to heat or cool the house is very low.  The whole aim of a Passive house is to make the need for heating or cooling to be as limited as physically possible.  In creating a Passive House, it makes the building feel very comfortable and controlled whilst drastically reducing energy bills, there is hardly any demand for energy in a Passive House.

A Passive House almost never needs to be heated as the house can be heated by everyday things such as, human occupancy, home appliances and the sun.  Passive Houses are usually built in such a way that it maximises most of the heat from a low winter sun whilst restricting excessive heat from a high summer sun.  A Passive House achieves a 75% reduction in heating requirements compared to the standard UK building practices.

Achieving the “Passivhaus Standard” typically involves:

• Designing the house in line with the “passive house planning package”
• High levels of insulation
• Extremely high performing windows with insulated frames
• Airtight building fabrics
• Thermal bridge free structure
• Mechanical ventilation with high heat recovery

Passivhaus & SIPs Eco Panels

SIPs Eco Panels are now a certified member of the Passivhaus Trust group.  We are really excited to be a part of the Passivhaus group.  The Passivhaus mission is similar to our own; to create high quality homes that are highly insulated and require little to no energy to heat or cool the building.  Passivhaus want to create homes that are airtight and keep the majority of heat in the building, to do this the structure must be very highly insulated. SIPs EPS (expanded polystyrene) insulation is one of the highest quality insulations you can use, this is then incorporated into our panels that have little to no thermal bridges.

This means SIPs can create highly insulated, airtight buildings.  The Passivhaus standard is more easily achievable when using SIPs due to the nature of our energy efficient panels and high-quality insulation.  In the past we have created many certified Passive Houses and we plan to create more in the future.

A Passive House that is created using SIPs is going to be one of the most energy efficient and comfortable homes that you can have.  Together Sips Eco Panels and Passivhaus Trust will work together to share knowledge and build more Passive Houses.

We really believe in the Passivhaus standard and think it should be more widely used; this is why we are excited to be a part of the Passivhaus Trust!

Why use SIPs to build a Passive House?

• Quicker to build than timber frame & masonry
• Highly insulated
• 7X stronger than timber frame
• Minimal cold bridging
• Total design customizability
• Creates an airtight structure

We are very experienced in passive house design so please do get in touch if you’d like our help to meet the passive house standards.  We’re happy to help.