Resource: E-Retrofit-kit- a toolkit for passive house retrofitting

Description

The main resource of the project is a toolkit E-Retrofit-kit for passive house retrofitting, where examples of different best practices in different languages are avalilable.

The tool-kit has been developed for Austria, Denmark, Lithuania, Spain and The Netherlands and is translated into totally 10 languages covering 13 countries: Czech language, Danish, Dutch, English (Great Britain-Europe), French (France-Belgium), German (Germany-Austria-Luxembourg), Italian, Portuguese, Slovenian and Spanish.

The tool-kit contains information of Passive House Retrofitting. General information: Principles, economy (sources of information for developing the economy part of the toolkit), non-energetic aspects, best practice, building types of this country ("the entrance" into the tool-kit concerning more specific information related to specific building categories) and measures (with short description and main data of energy and economy).

These 5 EU-countries can be considered being quite typical by Austria representing Central Europe , Denmark representing Northern Europe, Lithuania representing Eastern Europe, Spain (Seville) representing Southern Europe and The Netherlands representing Western (Atlantic climate) Europe.

The overall methodology of the tool-kit is to use a typology of buildings (building categories) as the "entrance" into the "operative part" of the tool-kit. Passive House Retrofitting measures, energy and economy calculations and results are related specifically to the building category chosen. This means that for using the E-RETROFIT-KIT tool-kit the user shall identify, what building category of the E-RETROFIT-KIT tool-kit the social housing company's building, which shall be evaluated for Passive House Retrofitting feasibility, it is most similar to.

For each country there is a number of building types, and for each of these there is information about: Actual state (photo, general information about the building, U-values, building materials etc., heating system and energy need), energy savings, retrofitting measures, energy costs and energy consumption with incomplete Passive House Retrofitting.

Statistically the number of cases are limited, but the results can be seen as being typical results, also because the results are from chosen typical building types.

In addition to the toolkit and list of best practices, the project has popular report and publishable report (same website).

Implementation

Energieinstitut Vorarlberg, Austria, is the host of the E-RETROFIT-KIT toolkit.

The toolkit is only available on the website. There is possible only a link with the project website.

Reports of the project are useful but the content of the reports is connected with the toolkit. Best practice descriptions are useful, but they are short and often don’t have links to additional files or resources. So, for the PHE website, the reports and best practice descriptions are important resources only in case when the toolkit is available.

Information

There is no evaluation/information available about the impacts of the tool-kit in terms of specific projects initiated or similar.
The data was limited, so the tool-kit has not been developed for all EU-countries, the effect of using the results in “other countries” has not been evaluated.