How much does it cost to run a passive house? What maintenance cost is involved?
The short answer is barely anything!
As most of you that have looked into passive house and what all the hype is about should know by now that you barely need any additional heating or cooling, if at all. As long as you design and build your highly energy efficient and healthy home according to the voluntary but rigorous passive house standard.
However, I have been asked a lot lately if it is expensive to maintain a passive house. So I thought I better give a bit of an explanation on how it all works.
The actual HRV (Heat Recovery Ventilation) unit does not require any maintenance.
Although, approximately every 6 months you will have to replace the filters. You can easily do this yourself, no assistance required.
Most HRV’s have 2 filters. One for the coarser particles, typically a G4 filter. And the other for the finer particles, either a F5 or F7.
In January the Gruen Eco Design team was fortunate enough to get a training session about all things HRV, heat pumps and heating and cooling in general from our friends at Stiebel Eltron.
A pack of five G4 filters from Stiebel is about $55. Keeping in mind, this filter can also be cleaned, so you can use them for longer than 6 months
The F7 filters from Stiebel come in packs of 2 and are about $70.
So, in short, about $100 a year and no service or anything required. How good is that?
If you want to know more about the passive house standard and how it can give you a guaranteed performance, please check out all the amazing information on The Passive House Australia Association’s website.
https://passivehouseaustralia.org/