19 - Wolfgang Feist - Passive House Institute
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[00:00:00]

James: Hello and welcome to Marketing Passive House, the podcast where we hear from architects, designers, builders, suppliers, owners, and other experts in the passive house and high performance building space. We'll be talking about what's working and what's needed when it comes to marketing buildings that meet or aspire to the passive house standard. I'm your host, James Turner, and today I'm joined by Dr. Wolfgang Feist, professor of building physics at Innsbruck University, and founder of the Passive House Institute. Dr. Feist, welcome to the show.

Wolfgang: Thank you for having me,

James: My pleasure. So before we get into it, and for people who may be just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit more about who you are, what you do, and what led you to begin this passive house journey?

Wolfgang: Well, from my education, I am a mathematical physicist, so I have worked in, quantum mechanics [00:01:00] for the first part of, of my life and also in astronomy. And then later on we have seen that the civilization on this planet is a little bit in a trouble. We have a lot of people on the planet and, and we are used to use a lot of not renewable resources.

Wolfgang: And so we have seen especially the physicists have seen very early that there needs something to be done about that. And so came the decision in the late seventies to say no. I have to do something which could help solving these kinds of problems. So I, I changed to engineering, especially energy efficiency.

Wolfgang: You might have known about Amory Lovins the guy who wrote the first book about [00:02:00] what can be achieved by improving energy efficiency. That was called Soft Energy Paths. Very famous book where, and we concentrated on, on, on these issues whether it's possible to reduce the energy demand by factors, not just by a few percent, but by factors.

Wolfgang: And it, it turned out that the biggest part of that energy demand was actually where energy needed to keep our homes comfortable. For heating and cooling. And so I looked a little bit deeper into these fields and I've seen that them, especially in Sweden, they have accumulated a lot of experience of what we can improve in our building.

Wolfgang: So I made some visits to Sweden also met some of the pioneers which were working in this field in the United States of America, in [00:03:00] France, in Denmark. And so started to do my own research and what, what can we do with construction of buildings, new buildings, but also in improvement of the existing buildings. And that is how well, we've seen very, there was a already existing signs on these topics. Some call it building science, others call it building physics. And they have done a lot of work, but it wasn't spread very much. And it wasn't really used to the extent it, it could be.

Wolfgang: So, so that was when the field, we started to go into a little bit deeper. Yeah. That is what started in, in the early eighties.

James: Right.

Wolfgang: So, but that's, maybe it's just the, the story around the beginning of, of that engagement,

James: yeah. Well, I'd love to [00:04:00] know how you landed on the name passive house at that time. What, you know, I feel like there maybe, yeah, there were disparate, people doing research on it, but you, you sort of brought it all into one place and,

James: and

Wolfgang: It actually wasn't me. It was my colleague and friend, Bo Adamson,

James: mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: Swedish building scientist who, who was a university teacher at Lund University. And he was somehow the ambassador of Swedish Science all around the world.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: And, when I contacted the Swedish Council for Building Research, that was the name of of it they straightforwardly said, you'll have to connect to to Adamson.

Wolfgang: And, and it was what I did. And he invited me to his university group in England. And the first time I came there and visited there, he just came back from China.[00:05:00]

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: So he has done research in southern China on behalf of the regional government there, how to improve the indoor climate in existing buildings in southern China. And the delicate point here is that heating was not allowed there.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: They are not allowed to heat. So from a physical point of view, this is what we call a passive system, a system which just works with the energy coming from the person's, the energy coming from the sun, and that the temperature development in the building will just develop in a way passively from what happens.

Wolfgang: But that, of course, haven't been very [00:06:00] comfortable buildings. Temperatures dropped to 10 degrees, eight degrees, something like that during winter time and raise up to 36 or more during the summertime.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: now the government wanted Bo Adamson to help improve these buildings. What can we do? Without introducing active systems because there was a lack of fuel in China.

Wolfgang: They just didn't have it. Yeah. But they wanted to provide better comfort to the people.

James: Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: And this is what Bo Adamson called passive houses. And this is where the name comes from, that this is what stuck when the whole development for the whole time. So it's a technical term to describe the dynamical structure and behavior of these types of buildings.

James: Wonderful and interesting that it [00:07:00] was initiated by a government wanting to improve their building stock and now people have to work backwards to try and convince governments.

Wolfgang: And this is what connected all these people on the research side from the very beginning. We well understood that this was at the edge between environmental and social improvements. So, both with the same importance. Yeah. It was always to see whether we can improve the living conditions for the majority of the people.

Wolfgang: Yeah. Not to sell any component or whatever, right. What not was was not the task, but to look for things we can do to improve the life of people. Yeah. That was background. And the interesting thing is that a lot of researchers, we, we all, we sometimes also had political discussions and it turned out we came from very different roots.

Wolfgang: Yeah. So some of them [00:08:00] actually very conservative ones. Bo Adamson himself was a very conservative guy. Yeah. And me more what, nowadays, what would say progressive. Yeah.

James: Yeah.

Wolfgang: And we didn't share much of our political, but, but one thing we agreed on that was that the main thing is to improve people's life.

Wolfgang: That's what engineering should work for. That is what our conviction was. And this is what was behind the whole development all the time.

James: Hmm. A human centered initiative.

Wolfgang: Well, of course. What else is what we should do? Yeah. A little bit strange if you look on the state of the development on the planet nowadays. Yeah, yeah. Somehow surprising. Yeah. What happened here? Adamson, I would say we would still agree nowadays on this [00:09:00] view. Yeah. Of what the very strange development on the planet nowadays. Yeah. Even from this very, very different perspective, we came from.

James: Hmm. I think that that's something that drew me to passive house. The first time I heard of it as a concept,, as a standard was just that universality of it being a, a set of parameters that, if achieved, will provide comfort and health.

Wolfgang: It will provide comfort. This is the background. Yeah. How can we provide comfort without destroying the planet?

James: Perfect. Yeah. And so now our mission is to spread the word that, that there is actually a solution and it, it's not so hard, even though it might sound strange and maybe not marketable in other ways.

Wolfgang: To be honest, it's not hard at all, but it might be [00:10:00] hard on the background of a lot of misunderstandings and misconceptions and bias, which is widely spread nowadays. Huh?

Wolfgang: That's the only reason this is people think always things you haven't done all the time and things you have learned a, a lot of different ways to look at.

Wolfgang: That sometimes seems very hard to change.

James: Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: But, if you look it a onto it a little bit deeper and if you just start to think about it you'll always realize, no, it's not the case. It's in fact, relatively easy. To do this. And it's also not new. This is what something we learned later on that there have been in history, very early attempts, successful attempts to do the same thing.

James: Oh really?

Wolfgang: So it was somehow "invented" at least three or four times.

James: Interesting. Hmm. The [00:11:00] human condition, I suppose to, to not learn from our mistakes. And keep repeating, you know, at intervals.

Wolfgang: Well, it, it, it's mainly the past, say 60, 80 years where the development was forced by a cheap fossil fuel, t hat a lot of people began to think as if more energy is always the better solution.

James: Right.

Wolfgang: And that idea was the driving part on driving all that, making everything more expensive and more complicated and so on, than it's actually necessary. This is what of what we somehow prove.

James: Yeah. So knowing that, that it's not harder and that it's primary benefit is [00:12:00] people's comfort I'd be really curious to know your experiences telling people about passive house and what things they reject or can't get their heads around and, on the other hand, what things get to them right away, you know, land them in this place where they say, oh, oh, that makes a lot of sense.

Wolfgang: The experience was that there are certain misconceptions which block understanding.

James: Hmm

Wolfgang: One of that is for example people think that insulation is the same as just making everything tight. So that warm air cannot escape through the envelope. Yeah. And the thinking behind this is that where people think that heat is transported by warm air somehow leaking through the wall.

Wolfgang: Yeah. [00:13:00] But that's completely wrong. It's, it's not the case. It's, it comes from a lack of physical education.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: Yeah. That was one of the first thing my physics teacher in school told us about that heat is energy, and energy is transferred in a lot of different ways. And one of the most important ways in the building that's heat conduction.

Wolfgang: It's very well known. A lot of physicists have been working on that since the early, 19th century. We know that since that time. Yeah. But it's still not understood from, I would say, most people. So there is that background that they think you have to make everything tight. Yeah. So, so they run around and, and, and tightened up every crack, everything.

Wolfgang: First thing is that doesn't help. Yeah. And second thing is it even makes your conditions in the [00:14:00] building worse than before because now you exactly miss the fresh air you really need.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: So this is one of these misconceptions and now it's very difficult to overcome such a misconception from teaching people with theoretical background of physics. It can be done successfully, but when you need people to be ready to listen carefully and wanting to understand it, what's going on there, and you know, this is not something nowadays that people like to do. Yeah. So there needs to be another, another approach. Yeah.

Wolfgang: And the other approach, what we have seen is you have to show the results. You have to be able to come to a passive house. Yeah. To perceive, yeah, [00:15:00] that there is fresh air, that it is really comfortable. And that exactly the heating system isn't running. Yeah. Just not, and, and, and sometimes for people surprising, how, how can that work?

Wolfgang: Yeah. And then after they realize that surprise then you can explain. Yeah. Listen, this is because, yeah. Heat is a form of energy and as long as the heat stays where it is, it'll be kept warm and comfortable. And only if you allow the heat to escape. And that is not through warm air, but through conduction of it.

Wolfgang: That is the vibration of the molecules. They are. One molecule hitting on the other molecule, and in this way, transporting the energy through the wall to the outside. The wall being completely tight doesn't matter. [00:16:00] Still, the conduction is there. This is how insulation then works. We use a material where this heat conduction is reduced and good insulation materials reduce the heat conduction by factors of 20 of a hundred or even more. So, the surprising thing, is that these kinds of misunderstandings, they are perpetrated, all the time by friend and foe. By Hollywood movies and so on. Everybody talking, mixing up heat and temperature and this is all blocking the real understanding what's going on here.

Wolfgang: And if you understand what's going on, you will first of all understand where the mistakes are. And second of all, you will see that there are paths to do all these things in a different way. In a different way that it'll be comfortable at the same time and not losing a lot [00:17:00] of energy also at the same time.

Wolfgang: So this is possible to combine both if you understand the physics behind it.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: I have learned the path for most people. The path to come to that is just to be able to have a personal experience. We walk into one of the built passive houses and they will be surprised. First reaction. I have seen from the very beginning. Yeah. A construction material provider. First time he visited us, that was a little bit a special situation, but interesting. Yeah. That was in late August. 19 93. It was a staggering 35 degrees outside, and when we invited him to [00:18:00] our passivhaus and he came in and we had inside 23 degrees. And he was so surprised.

Wolfgang: He said, you can't tell me that. You have an HVAC running here. Yeah. And he said, no, there's no, no HVAC running. We don't need that in this conditions. External conditions like this one won't be staying in central Europe for longer than two or three days. And so if a building was comfortable three days ago, the condition in the building will be conserved by the good insulation for these two or three days. Yeah. So the building just doesn't mind, can be temperatures changing outside. We have a too hot or too cold door. Doesn't matter the building stays in these conditions. Yeah.

Wolfgang: It was so surprising for him. Yeah. That, that he, that that [00:19:00] was the moment where he realized, okay, this is something which seemed to be working. He still didn't understand how, but he perceived it with his own experience.

James: Hmm. And that seems to be the best way that I, I saw a post of yours today on LinkedIn, where you're pointing out that there's now, I think, 37 buildings around the world that are hotels or guest houses.

Wolfgang: There may be even more because we, we, we don't know every built passive house. Yeah. There are lots of them built we don't know about, but it's at least 47 hotels. Yeah. All around the world. Yeah. You can go to a very nice small hotel at Lago di Garda. Yeah. Very nice place to be, or in Alpine resorts or very nice other places, and you can experience everything by yourself.

Wolfgang: That was surprising thing then [00:20:00] normally is that at, at the first glance, we don't see any difference to the highly technological improved HVAC-run first class buildings we have nowadays but run on a lot of fossil fuel with a lot of energy losses.

James: Right, you'd need to experience the feeling and then also see your energy bill for the two sides of that to really hit home, I suppose. I've thought that it would be interesting if there was some kind of a passive Airbnb. I haven't thought of the good name for it, but a network of people who own passive houses who could rent a room out to prospective clients.

Wolfgang: Maybe one idea, somebody might come off it. Yeah.

James: Yeah.

Wolfgang: What we actually organized now for also some decades is the day of the open Passivhaus.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: So this is twice a year one in the middle of [00:21:00] the summer and the other in wintertime. So and, and a lot of owners of passive houses, they are open their buildings for the general public so that people can come and experience how that feels.

Wolfgang: What is also important to know is that passive house is not a brand is not a product of just one producers. Yeah. Helicoptered in and sold. yeah. So it's a little bit more than a concept. It's a lot of tools made available so that every designer, every engineer who deals with these things in principle, could plan, could design his own passive house.

Wolfgang: It's just a question of knowhow. Yeah. It's not a question of whether you sell a specific kind of insulation or specific kind of window or specific kind of ventilation, [00:22:00] whatever. Yeah. You need all of these. You normally need everything also in a normal building, and you need them in a little bit better quality than what is normally used.

Wolfgang: And that quality might also differ in different places on the planet. Yeah. Whether you are in, in a tropical climate or in an arctic climate, that changes the specifics, say the thickness of the insulation or the number of panes you use. But the principle design based on the tools, that's the same.

Wolfgang: Yeah. Because the physics is, is the same. Yeah. And this is why on every side, on every place, every passive house is adapted to the specific conditions on that side. Always. Automatically. Because that's the way it's done.

James: It makes me think of tailoring [00:23:00] but not in the sense of it being exclusive and elite, which I think at least nowadays, if you have a tailor that is that, but it's, it's how do we apply the principles of how long a sleeve should be to your body.

Wolfgang: Not every, not everywhere on, on the globe, there are still places where the, the tailor is also there for providing clothes to people who are not that super rich.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: Yeah. We, we are in a little bit, in a bubble of a yeah. We are also part of that very rich part of, of the world.

Wolfgang: Yeah. All of us. So we, we think of that in that way. But the interesting thing is that passive house, in fact, might also open and it does market branches for traditional people. You, you can build a passive house with traditional materials in say, Bangladesh. You can do it. You, you can even do it as a self build.

Wolfgang: Yeah. It's available to do it in that way. [00:24:00] Yeah.

James: Yeah. I, I think the analogy I was trying to draw from the tailor side was that it's the principles of how you decide, for example, on a jacket, how much material there needs to be for your arm to comfortably move up and down and Right. Like it's this principle of how that works, that that passive house does.

Wolfgang: Exactly. And on the other side, we have to keep it simple. Yeah. Keep it simple is one of the most important things here because if it's becoming too difficult to realize there won't be many people starting to do it. So that was always part of the concept, to have it open for a lot of different approaches because, of course they can be totally prefabricated, passive houses. It's also these are available. Yeah. And it could be a good approach for some people or for some places on the planet as well. Yeah. It can be built from bricks. It can be built from concrete. It can be built from wooden [00:25:00] structures.

Wolfgang: It can be built as, even as a steel structure. It has all been done. It's open for everybody.

Wolfgang: Just, you have to learn a little bit about the building physics behind it , how to do that in a proper way. And you can make a passive house in any kind of construction or for any purpose for a building, whether it's a swimming pool, a hospital, a, barber shop. Yeah. Whatever you think. It can all be done. And it's also simplified in a way that the tools are being made available to do so. And we, another very interesting fact is that nowadays these tools, say the passive house planning package, for example,

James: Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: The heart, the core of the package is of course an energy balance.

Wolfgang: It's the same kind of energy balance, which is now almost [00:26:00] everywhere in the world just made mandatory by the governments. But that's only done in a very bureaucratic way, not educating people. But it's just a formalized way of saying, I have done this. I have done this. Okay. Okay. Now it's approved.

Wolfgang: So and in, in the PHPP and the  passive house planning package , this is used in a completely different way. It's used in a way that you are somehow guided through the process. You see what happens if you change, say, the thickness of the insulation in the roof so you can experience what will be the consequence of that.

Wolfgang: Yeah. And, and so you are able to adapt everything to the specific conditions you have in a concrete building process.

James: mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: This is what is and, and made easy. Yeah. So, it guides you [00:27:00] to first of all, do all that, what's normally done in a bureaucratic way on the other side to understand what's really going on there, To be able to play around with all the parameters and to see what happens if I change this, what happens if I change that.

Wolfgang: And at the end, to have a successful solution, you are guided to get this successful solution, which will, that's the other thing. Some people are surprised about that, and it always works.

James: Right.

Wolfgang: That's the most surprising thing, this is because it's concentrating on the really important parameters.

Wolfgang: Yeah.

James: Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: Which is not always the case with the governmental, programs because you have a lot of lobbyists standing behind the governments trying to push their things into these calculations. So if somebody wants to sell specific control issues or to [00:28:00] sell thermal mass or to sell specific kinds of windows or whatsoever, they push the government to bring that they, they are part of the lobby in the background and this is all implemented, which makes these parts more and more complicated.

James: Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: This is what we see everywhere. Yeah. It becomes more and more complicated to build a new building. It's one of the reason why it always gets more expensive and even more expensive. Yeah.

James: Yeah,

Wolfgang: Because all these things are brought into the process. Yeah. And this is what's completely changed if you go the passive house path. Because there you really understand what are the parameters, how do they influence what's going on?

Wolfgang: How can I choose the parameters In a way there are often a lot of combinations, a lot of very different combinations. So this is [00:29:00] something most people will soon realize after they have looked into all the passive houses now existing on the planet. Yeah. It's such a huge variety. Yeah. You, you have these buildings with very small windows.

Wolfgang: Yes. This is what a lot of people think. But we have also fully glassed ones. Which some engineers would say , this can't work during summer. Well, it can, because you see there is the example. Yeah. We can do this. Yeah. Almost everything is possible. But it has to go through this rigorous process to look or to these influences.

Wolfgang: So if you have a fully glassed façade, of course we have to take care about shading, about reducing the solar gains during the summer, because otherwise it will be unacceptably hot during summer.

James: Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: That is clear. But we also know how to deal with [00:30:00] that.

James: Right,

Wolfgang: Yeah. And not bringing the excess solar energy during summer out with a say 20 kilowatt HVAC cooling system.

Wolfgang: This is the nonsense happening almost everywhere. Yeah. You build a facade with glass round and bring in 20 or a hundred kilowatts of solar energy in a totally glass building. And then it's the task of the engineer to construct a cooling system, which drives all that energy out of a building again.

Wolfgang: Yeah. Which is such a nonsense. Yeah. Now, the critics, the critics say I've also I have a lot of discussions with critics like that they, say, well, it's a very bad idea to have fully glazed buildings. And then I say, no, this is not the point. The point is, if you built a fully glassed building, you have to look. You have to use the PHPP passive house planning package and to look, what, [00:31:00] what can I do now, on the passive side, to produce these abundant solar gains?

James: Yeah.

Wolfgang: this is possible. It's not, it's not, it's not a huge problem. Not at all.

James: It's interesting to think of. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I, I think probably a, an objection is that it's too limiting. But what you're saying, it's actually less limiting it,

Wolfgang: It's less, it's much less limiting. In Germany we have these, the part of the facade on the southern facade of a building is reduced in order to meet with summer conditions.

James: Hmm

Wolfgang: Yeah. It's nonsense.

James: hmm,

Wolfgang: Yeah, it's, it's possible to build buildings — and we have examples — with fully glassed office building in Vienna built to passivhaus standard.

James: Right.

Wolfgang: Yeah, you can, you can do that. And it's not, that's the other thing. It's not more [00:32:00] expensive than a standard building office. On the contrary, it was less expensive than the standard building of this kind. Well, something has to be clear. If you build a completely glassed building in climates like Austria or the US or Australia or wherever you are, this won't be a very inexpensive building.

James: Right. No matter what you do.

Wolfgang: No. No matter what you do, it, it, it's not an inexpensive building. It's something for the really wealthy and we can't change that. Yeah.

James: Yeah.

Wolfgang: That's okay. Yeah. So that, that we have to know. But if you build it as a passive house, this kind of building built as a passive house will be not more expensive than this kind of building built to normal construction.

Wolfgang: Yeah. Nowadays. Yeah.

James: Someone I talked to, Trey Farmer, he said that, that his take was that if you can afford to work with an architect to build a house, [00:33:00] then you can afford to work with an architect and build a passive house. Like, maybe you can't afford to build a house, and in that case, you also can't afford to build a passive house.

Wolfgang: I would even go further. If you have a really competent and well educated architect , I don't see any reason why a specific home you are looking for is more expensive if you build it as a passive house than when you build it in the traditional way. I would go that far. It may not be true for the very first building this architects designs. Yeah. It may be not be true in all places of the planet where passive houses have just been introduced for two years or, or something like that. Yeah. But it's definitely true in Germany, Austria in Philadelphia, US, and now , in Boston, Massachusetts.

James: Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: Definitely. Why am I sure? Because they are [00:34:00] doing it. They're building affordable homes as passive houses. And that was also the source of the development. We talked about the Southern Chinese passive house. Yeah. That was where it came from. And that haven't been expensive buildings.

Wolfgang: Not at all. And improving them for better comfort also wasn't expensive.

James: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: Yeah. It was a condition Adamson had in working with the government. They had to use regional resources. So there was no other choice when using regional resources. And this is what they did.

Wolfgang: So they found materials for better insulation of these buildings. They found ways that most of these buildings at, at that time were self-built.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: Yeah.

James: Yeah. Yeah. It, I, I really love that aspect of it too, that it's, it's the best thing for low income people and it's the best thing for high income people. It's just [00:35:00] like, it all roads lead to this decision, it seems.

Wolfgang: Exactly. Exactly.

James: Yeah. Yeah. Now, I mean, obviously since those early days, things have changed. Have you noticed an, an uptick of late in, in sort of interest in passive house or do you find that more and more, I mean, you're well known in the circle, so maybe it's hard for you to have the experience, but do you find that people kind of know about it more than, I dunno, say 10 years ago?

Wolfgang: Right. Of course. I think nowadays in most places of the world, almost everybody in the building sector has heard about passive house.

James: Nice.

Wolfgang: Yeah. They, they have heard about it,

James: Yep.

Wolfgang: In most of that places, this is also something coming from the human conditions, people hear about this, and then they make up their own ideas, what they [00:36:00] think it is.

Wolfgang: Yeah. And that might not in all cases be the correct picture.

James: Right.

Wolfgang: So this is what I see nowadays. That a lot of people know about that, something like that. But we also have still , some misconceptions about what it really is. The most widespread misconceptions nowadays is that it has to be expensive.

James: Hmm.

Wolfgang: And that it is expensive and that misconception is on both sides of the aisle, interestingly, yeah. There are of course always people who don't like the development. And this is something I have also seen in the past decades. Not only for passivhaus, but almost everywhere. People always look through their own glasses in a way to see do I like it or do I not like it?

Wolfgang: Yeah. So, and if you are a provider of national gas or oil or any [00:37:00] other kind of energy you want to sell to people, your first reaction is you don't like that.

James: Right.

Wolfgang: Yeah. And then you make up your own picture of what it is, because passive house, well sounds like there is not enough heating or not enough cooling, so people suffer from too hot, too cold and so on.

Wolfgang: Yeah. And so this is what is the first narrative. Now what I see in, in the development is this is becoming very difficult in the, in the past 10 years because now we have so many built examples that you cannot uphold this, "it's not comfortable" narrative. Yeah. With what I see, it's not longer possible because what is very easy to realize is by visiting any of these buildings, that the comfort is much better.

James: Yeah.

Wolfgang: Yeah. Than in conventional buildings, so. Interesting. Yeah. So my next thing what's coming up then is it's expensive. It's [00:38:00] only for the very wealthy, and that is why it's not a solution. Yeah.

Wolfgang: They just don't look far enough into it. Yeah. They just think if this is so good, it's not possible to make that happen without it being very expensive.

Wolfgang: So this is what I see the state of the discussion nowadays. Yeah. It's a fight between those who want to stabilize the situation we have been traveling into in the past decades and who want to keep it the way it has been. It's not the traditional way. This is also a mistake.

Wolfgang: Yeah. The traditional way was more like that situation in southern China.

James: Mm-hmm.

Wolfgang: When I grew up in a central part of Germany, in a typical winter day when we, awake and got [00:39:00] out of our beds, it was staggeringly cold in the house. It was five degrees. It could even be near to zero degrees happened in our living room.

Wolfgang: And a century ago, it, what was the normal thing? When we had to walk into the basement to get some coal and to make fire in the oven, and when it took half an hour or, or one hour, and the room where the oven was, was heated up to a somewhat comfortable condition. That that was the situation, that is the traditional situation.

Wolfgang: Yeah. Not the central heating with thermostats and everywhere, everything, in a well temperated temperature, so on. This is just a few decades old. It's not the traditional way of life. Even not in our industrialized countries. This is interesting, how fast [00:40:00] things like that becomes somehow something which is thought to be traditional.

James: Yes, yes. I noticed that. I mean, just that the internet. People who just can't, even though we know there was a time before the internet, they just can't even imagine how, and honestly, I mean, I grew up, I was still a teenager before, you know, cell phones were widespread and I can't remember how I used to make plans with people. I don't remember how I used to know where to meet. Like what? I just, I just don't remember. I don't remember what it was like, and I lived it. And not even that long ago: 20 years...15? 35? ...

Wolfgang: There are a lot of examples like that. Yeah. And but on the other side, we have also to be cautious in, in these things because it has been changing the human condition and, and we haven't reflecting very much about it. And we [00:41:00] can't be sure what the implications are.

Wolfgang: In the seventies, there were some people in Germany who came up with maybe the, the pace of change we have nowadays is too fast for most people, s o they can't get around everything which has changed in this or the other way.

Wolfgang: Yeah. I wouldn't have that perception myself nowadays. But what I certainly know is that most of the things we are using nowadays, most people don't understand the background: why it's working, how it's working. And that's also something background of a passive house. It will take you one hour or two or maybe even some days to fully [00:42:00] understand what's going on there. This is not difficult. This is not rocket science.

Wolfgang: This is quite simple.

James: Do you think that people who are not involved in the building process, but No, you know, they're, they're convinced enough and they, they buy and live in a passive house. Do you think that for those people too, the, the way it works is more self-evident than in a traditional

Wolfgang: If they are interested to understand the background, yes. It is very easy. If I'm feeling uncomfortable cold, I take a vest, a kind of insulation, something very elementary. Yeah. Everybody knows. Yeah.

James: Yep.

Wolfgang: It's very easy to put some insulation on your body to improve the thermal condition you are in. It's not so easy if you are too hot to be honest.

James: True. There's a point. There comes a point.

Wolfgang: That's a point. Yeah. So, coming from these experiences, [00:43:00] it's also not difficult to explain all these things, and what is in the way of understanding is that there are a lot of misconceptions being told.

Wolfgang: So if you say you put on a warm pullover, that's already wrong because the pullover isn't warm, you produce the heat and the pullover is only an insulation which makes it more difficult for the heat to escape. And you are heating yourself warmer with the pullover.

Wolfgang: Yeah. That's how it works.

James: Well this has been absolutely great and fascinating and a wonderful discussion. Just before we wrap up if people wanted to find out more about you or contact you or, or how, however you would like people to interact with you online, where would be the best place for them to [00:44:00] go?

Wolfgang: Well first of all there, there is a place on the internet, which is called Passipedia, like Wikipedia, but with "Passi". Yeah. So, and there is a lot of information there. Yeah, on all the things we talked about deeper. Yeah, deeper into the field. Also, at some points, a little bit more technical which is important.

Wolfgang: If you look in all the different kinds of things we are doing. We don't just have dwellings nowadays. We have hospitals, we have supermarkets whatever. And, and of course for all these different tasks there needs to be additional information. Not because the passive house is complicated here, but because all these different tasks have, their specific issues, independently from passivhaus but, but we have, and, and we, and we have to take care of that.

Wolfgang: So this is Passipedia. Connected to the passipedia, you will find a lot of built examples. This is something which most [00:45:00] people can easily connect to. Yeah. On the passive house projects homepage you can look through, I think it's some 6,000 examples being documented there from hospitals to supermarkets to schools. I would guess almost every second school in Germany nowadays is built to passive house standard, the new ones, yeah.

Wolfgang: Then of course, there are a lot of places in the internet where you can meet, very well educated experts on that matter.

Wolfgang: And they are also all open to any kinds of information given there. There are the passive house conferences at nowadays, we have national passive house conferences almost everywhere on the planet each year. I just came from the Spanish conference and a month ago there was a conference in UK Ireland.[00:46:00]

James: Right.

Wolfgang: Also interesting, these two together. In the passive house, they are working together. Yeah. There's no, there's no tension, they are working together. Or, even more beautiful, I just connected to my friend Stefan Pallantzas from the Greek passive house association, and he came from a passive house conference in Türkiye, so the Greek and the Turkish working together on similar climatic issues in the passive house field, and they love it. Yeah.

James: Fantastic.

Wolfgang: Yeah. So this is possible. Yeah.

James: Yep.

Wolfgang: And of course you can also, it's not difficult to connect to me. You can find me just by searching for the name, but I think this is not so important.

Wolfgang: Yeah. There are so many people engaged in this field nowadays that you always can find somebody who is competent and open for everything you might want to know.[00:47:00]

James: Hmm. I've certainly found it a, a very welcoming community. I've had great success and wonderful conversations with basically anyone I've reached out to. Been up for it.

Wolfgang: Isn't that interesting that something like that can happen in a world with the issues we have nowadays?

James: Yes, it is interesting. Hmm.

Wolfgang: Okay. So thank you.

James: Thank you.

James: You've been listening to Marketing Passive House. I'm James Turner and I hope you'll join me again next time.

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