Passive House Foundations Systems
Passive house is a German building standard which has been successfully used in the UK for many years. You can construct a passive house from virtually any building system as long as it meets certain criteria laid down by the Passive House Institute in Germany. At Sirch we have been involved with the construction of passive houses since 2012 when we supplied the first social housing project built to the passive house standard which was in Wimbish for Hastoe housing association.
We have come to understand that whatever the building method it is imperative to have a foundation system which can achieve the extremely low u-values required of this exacting standard. However, many system used within passive house are expensive and complicated for this reason we have designed our own system which is easy to use and won't use up your budget before you get out of the ground.
Just send through your plans, ground survey and desired u-value, we will then provide you with structural calculations for our Passive Slab along with a quote for our XC 30 ground bearing insulation.
XC 30 is an extruded polystyrene with an extremely high density, properties as follows
| XC 30 Ground Bearing Insulation | |||
| Surface finish | Smooth with skin | ||
| Thermal conductivity | 80mm - 300mm | 0.036W/mK | |
| Compressive Strength at 10% deformation | 300 | kPa | |
| Water Absorption after 28 days immersion | WL(T) 0.7 | Vol % | |
| Water Absorption by diffusion | WD(V) 3 | Vol % | |
| Freeze-thaw resistance | FTCD 1 | Vol % |