Efficiency is performance.

Passive Building Consulting & Project Certification

On average, passive buildings result in 45-90% less energy consumption for heating and cooling, superior thermal comfort and indoor air quality, and increased durability and resiliency.

Certified Passive Building Consultant, Velum will guide you through the process of designing your project to meet the Phius Standard for passive building, perform the required energy modeling through WUFI or METr to inform decision making and demonstrate compliance, and coordinate and submit the required documentation to Phius for Certification.

While there are numerous benefits to project certification, for those not looking project certification but want to employ passive building principles to take your project to the next level, our team can utilize the same design and modeling process to ensure your project is durable, healthy, and high-performing.

Phius Passive Certification

Passive Certification through the PHIUS can be obtained through various pathways and project types. As a Phius Certified Passive Building Consultant, Velum will engage with your architect and project team early on to help assess, guide, and design your project for correct passive standard certification.

  • New Construction Homes

  • Multifamily Developments

  • Existing Remodel and Deep Energy Retrofits

  • Townhomes and Single-Family Build-to-Rent

  • Historic Preservation

  • Net Zero

Passive Building Principles

Passive Building elevates the importance of the control layers in building performance and emphasizes five core principles:

  • Minimize or eliminate thermal bridging throughout a building envelope by utilizing continuous insulation.

  • Building a well-detailed and extremely airtight building envelope, preventing infiltration of outside air and loss of conditioned air while increasing envelope durability and longevity

  • Employ high-performance windows (double or triple-paned) and doors - solar gain is managed to exploit the sun's energy for heating purposes in the heating season and to minimize overheating during the cooling season

  • Minimizing the space conditioning system because of lower space conditioning loads

  • Balanced, fresh air ventilation strategy utilizing heat- and moisture-recovery to significantly enhance indoor air quality

Energy Modeling & Sensitivity Analysis

Every Passive Building Certification requires the use of specialized computer software (WUFI or METr) to perform a Hygrothermal Model evaluating the long-term effects of heat and moisture within and through parts of the building and construction assemblies. A Thermal Bridging model may also be required to evaluate the effect of thermal bridging on certain aspects of the building. Velum performs these as part of our Passive Certification services while also offering them as a stand alone service.

Whether you’re an architect trying to understand the energy performance of various wall assemblies or a builder looking to compare the cost/benefit of assemblies, materials, and their performance, Velum can help perform whole building or single wall simulations to understand the energy performance of your project.