Calling all Scandinavian Homes' Owners

Bricriu

I live in one of Scandinavian Homes' houses. They are supposed to be Passive Houses, and the company and enthusiasts make a lot of claims about them, as follows:

They can be heated with a few sticks in a wood-burner; not my experience. In cold weather, they need continuous heating once it gets dark.

Enthusiasts claim you can throw away your wooly jumpers and get Mediteranean- style clothes when you live in one of these houses. Not true.

The Ventilation System doesn't circulate the heat throughout the house well.

I don't think I am imagining this, but I think that the capacity of the house to retain heart and keep of the cold out is diminishing as the house gets older; mine is 10 years old.

These houses are much better than the usual Irish houses, but on cold winter evenings they need to be heated continuously - at least in the evenings

Would welcome other owners' thoughts.

Not here to bash the company, but have a fair and reasoned discussion!

the_amazing_raisin

I'll follow this one as it's interesting

So I don't have any experience of that company, my only knowledge is of the brother of a former colleague, and I don't know who built his house.

Pretty tenuous connection so please take everything I say with a pinch of salt

The story I heard was that this guy built a passive house and it was certified to meet the passive house standard. He didn't install a central heating system because he was told he didn't need one

However he found the house to be cold and retrospectively installed some electric radiators

I was also looking into them around 5 years ago and a lot of the articles said you still needed a central heating system but it wouldn't need to be specced to the same level as a house built to the building regs

I'm pretty sure it said that on the scan home website. Maybe they changed their marketing speil over the years? 🤷‍♂️

Personally I really like the idea of passive houses. And factory built houses seem like a great idea, houses built by machines that don't get cheap and just glue two pieces of plasterboard together to make a wall (saw that recently)

I guess an IKEA house has the same problems as IKEA furniture. If can be built perfectly to spec in the factory but if the assembly is botched then you end up with a wonky house

I hope your issues get sorted, might be worth getting a surveyor who's certified to assess passive houses to check it's still up to standard?

graememk

Interesting, time to start measuring.

If you can't measure you can't actually make any changes..

simpsimp

No direct experience of this - but I've learned a lot from reading Passive House Plus magazine - which is free to read as PDF

https://passivehouseplus.ie/

I've seen examples of houses in the magazine which have no traditional heating system, just mechanical heat recovery ventilation; and there are detailed case studies. it might be useful to look here and compare the specifications? Also it might be a first step to look at what you might need to add to mitigate any problems?

the_amazing_raisin

I suppose there's a bit of debate over the statement that you don't need a heating system

I mean it's possible if you put on a couple an extra layer that you'd be quite warm without the heating in a passive house

But you wouldn't feel warm because the house around you is still cold

So I guess it's kind of down to where you draw the line of warmth for comfort and warmth for survival