IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v17y2025i9p3799-d1640540.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Post-Occupancy Evaluation of a Passive Multi-Unit Residential Building and a Single-Family Passive House

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Mach

    (Department of Building Science, Algonquin College Center for Construction Excellence, Ottawa, ON K2G 1V8, Canada)

  • Maria Parra

    (Faculty of Aviation, Trades, and Technology, Canadore College of Applied Arts and Technology, North Bay, ON P1B 8K9, Canada)

  • Hebatallah Teamah

    (Department of Building Science, Algonquin College Center for Construction Excellence, Ottawa, ON K2G 1V8, Canada)

Abstract

Passive buildings are increasing in popularity in Canada. This paper examines two passive buildings initially constructed in the past decade: the Peterborough passive multi-unit residential building (MURB) and the Wolfe Island single-family dwelling. A post-occupancy evaluation was performed on the buildings. The buildings were modelled in HOT2000 and the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP) to ensure the validity of the results. The energy bills were collected from the building owners to acquire the real-time consumption of the buildings. The models have shown a good agreement with the collected data. Furthermore, data loggers were installed in both buildings for indoor temperature monitoring to ensure that they adhere to the passive house explicit criteria. Internal gains, shading, and orientation were analyzed to assess their effect on heating and cooling loads. Peterborough MURB has shown more energy-saving potential compared to the Wolfe Island passive house. Heating load reduction has been compared, more than five times, to the cooling load reduction potential. The reduction in GHG emissions can be up to 39% when passive house parameters are applied to the Wolfe Island house. This paper has shown the potential of the passive house in relation to sustainable buildings in Northern climates.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Mach & Maria Parra & Hebatallah Teamah, 2025. "Post-Occupancy Evaluation of a Passive Multi-Unit Residential Building and a Single-Family Passive House," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-25, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:9:p:3799-:d:1640540
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/3799/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/9/3799/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:9:p:3799-:d:1640540. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.