Living in a passive house – how comfortable is that? A comparison of tenants living in passive houses and tenants living in district heated houses

• This paper will present a case study of semi-detached apartment houses in Linköping, Sweden. Nine apartments have been constructed according to the Swedish passive house standard. Another 30 standard apartments have also been built in the area. The passive and the standard houses are of the same size and design. This paper focuses on the experience from the householders living in these apartments. We have interviewed households in the passive houses and in the conventional houses two-three times. The first interviews were done in February 2009 and the last in Mars 2010. The aim with this paper is to analyze the tenants’ experiences of living in the passive houses compared with living in the regular houses and what problems and opportunities they experienced during a year. From the households experiences of the summer we can notice that the passive houses and the conventional houses shared similar experiences. Tenants from both groups complained over the hot summer which led to high indoor temperature. Then, the winter became unusual cold and both groups had experienced remarkable many problems with the ventilation and heating systems. All households had to learn how the indoor temperature varied between different rooms, from where there was draught and how to decrease or increase the indoor temperature. The cold winter was a bigger problem for the households in the passive houses because it was more difficult for them to quickly warm up the apartment. The passive houses are however connected to the district heating system for additional heating cold winter days and the one household that thought they had had a pleasant indoor temperature had used the district heating system constantly. To live in passive houses requires the householders to learn and be familiar with the special feature of the house. But as seen here, the same holds for all kind of houses and the focus on all the special skills that households in passive houses need to have might only lead to that the diffusion of the concept is delayed.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

passive house

low energy building

households

tenants

comfort

Technology and social change

Teknik och social förändring

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)