A single-family wood-frame house in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia built to the German Passivhaus (Passive House) standard was monitored to investigate its thermal performance and durability in this mild climate. Two double-stud walls, south- and north-facing, were instrumented during construction to measure moisture and thermal performance. A limited amount of thermal modelling was conducted to compare with the field measurements.
Monitoring over the past 20 months showed that:
The double-stud walls, south- and north-facing, were both performing well in terms of durability. The moisture content (MC) measured at the bottom of the studs was in general below 15% after the construction was completed. The MC of the south-facing wall dropped from an initial 20%, measured during construction, to about 11% after construction was completed. During the same period of time, the MC of the north-facing wall fell from about 19% to 15%; the slightly higher MC in this wall compared to that in the south-facing wall was a result of lower amounts of solar gain in this orientation.
The relative humidity (RH) measured on the interior side of the medium-density fibreboard (MDF) exterior sheathing in the south-facing wall ranged from 70% to 80%, and occasionally up to 90% during the winter. Being typical of exterior sheathing conditions without exterior insulation in this mild climate, the corresponding RH ranged from 80% up to 100% in the north-facing wall in the winter, indicating potential vapour condensation at this critical location.
Based on vapour pressure analysis, no steep vapour pressure gradients between any specific layers were found in these two walls, indicating the overall vapour permeable nature and good drying performance of the wall design. This could be partially attributed to the use of plywood as structural sheathing located between the double-stud walls as the air barrier and vapour retarding layer, and using MDF as the exterior sheathing.
In the south-facing wall, the vapour pressure analysis showed a vapour drive in the summer from the exterior layers towards the interior layer, primarily due to high temperature outside. The exterior sheathing should have good drying potential if wetting occurred. On the other hand, the partial vapour pressures were largely consistent across the north-facing wall in the winter, not showing a strong vapour drive from interior to exterior in this mild climate. The exterior sheathing would have poor drying performance if wetting occurred in this location.
The simulated temperature distributions based on THERM 6.3 simulations were generally in good agreement with the measured temperatures across the walls, indicating that the thermal simulation was reasonably accurate. The effective R-value of the double-stud walls of this passive house was calculated to be approximately R-50 (hržft2žF/Btu) or RSI-8.8 (m2K)/W) (i.e. with a thermal transmission coefficient of 0.114 W/m2žK).
The use of heat flux sensors was not successful in this work, probably due to improper sensor calibration or in-situ installation. Its use needs further exploration to measure heat flow in building envelopes in order to validate calculated effective thermal insulation.