A mid-cycle tweak of PHIUS+ 2018

Space conditioning targets have been adjusted to reflect a statistical ‘Inclusive Fit’ rather than ‘Best Fit.’

PHIUS officially launched the PHIUS+ 2018 Passive Building Standard just over a year ago at the 13th Annual North American Passive House Conference in Boston. The passive building market seems to approve: not only have we gotten a lot of positive feedback from CPHCs and other design professionals, but PHIUS+ Certifications continue to increase. The most notable upgrades from the PHIUS+ 2015 standard add nuance to the space conditioning targets, adjusting them for building size and occupant density – passive building professionals do seem to appreciate this.  Another notable upgrade provides tiered source-energy targets and methods to hit those targets, depending on project goals.

Through the end of September 2019, PHIUS certification staff had the discretion to grant an exception for one of the four main space conditioning target criteria, as outlined in PHIUS+ 2018 Passive Building Standard-Setting Documentation, page 6. This allowance gave teams with projects already in planning some assurance that their efforts would not be wasted if their designs could not be revised to meet the new targets.  If a project was severely constrained on meeting a target, a “mulligan” could be granted based on majority vote from the certification staff. This also allowed flexibility in case the targets didn’t pan out in the real world even for clean-sheet designs.

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This “3 out of 4 ain’t bad” provision has now come to an end, and we have learned a lot from the many projects that have gone through the process. These case studies have allowed us to complete a mid-cycle evaluation of the standard. Determining optimum performance targets is an iterative process, and gathering feedback for future improvements is part of it. Thank you to all the teams that have certified to PHIUS+ 2018 helping us to dial in these improvements.

Moving forward, space conditioning targets have been adjusted to reflect a slightly different statistical fit from the original space conditioning target-setting process — an ‘Inclusive Fit’ rather than ‘Best Fit’ line. These updates will not disqualify any previously submitted projects in the PHIUS+ 2018 Certification process, as they are more inclusive than before. One sample graph of this is shown for the Peak Heating Load.

The Space Conditioning Criteria Calculator has been updated.

The resulting updated targets will be:

Cooling Demand = Original Target + 2.81 kBTU/ft2yr 

Heating Load = Original Target + 0.77 BTU/ft2hr

Cooling Load = Original Target + 0.45 BTU/ft2hr

The PHIUS+ 2018 Space Conditioning Criteria Calculator v2 has been updated to reflect the updates. Note the ‘v2’ at the end of the naming convention. 

Note: 

• Projects with a contract date before October 1, 2019 may utilize only one path, (1) Use the updated calculator ‘v2’ or (2) Meet 3 of 4 space conditioning targets as described above.
• Projects with a contract date after October 1, 2019 may only use the updated v2 calculator.

More details on this, as well as the graphs supporting the statistical analysis can be found in this Tech Corner Article.