Below is a slideshow of pictures of the house 
(on mobiles and smaller devices, scroll to see all the images).

ONE YEAR ON....
It was one year ago this month that we moved our furniture from the bungalow up into the house and began living and sleeping here. It had been a long slog to reach this point. So many delays, frustrations, cost overruns - and a great deal of hard work. A few things weren't quite finished, but we didn't want to delay any longer. It was a huge relief to be living here at last and enjoying all the benefits of a passivhaus once more.

On the day we moved in, the internal temperature was a chilly 11ºC. Our passivhaus has no installed heating system, so out came the trusty one-bar electric fire, extra layers of clothing and thick winter duvets. But after a couple of days, the temperature had reached a much more comfortable 18ºC. By the end of the second week - with the mechanical ventilation with heat recovery system (MVHR) now up and running - the average internal temperature had risen to 20ºC.

That temperature increase was almost entirely down to our presence in the house: our body heat and activities, such as cooking, using computers and other appliances, and the occasional sunny hour or two. In a passivhaus there are no cold spots or draughts - so the temperature is evenly spread throughout the house and any heat gains remain in the building and don't leak away as they do in conventionally built houses. The MVHR system extracts the stale air from the whole house and passes it through a heat exchanger before expelling it. So all of the heat in the outgoing air is used to warm the incoming fresh air. Before long, winter duvets were exchanged for summer duvets, and the extra layers of clothing and electric fire were put away.

We had some very hot sunny days during the summer which the house also dealt with very well. The heat exchanger in the MVHR goes into bypass in summer, so the fresh air being brought into the house is no longer warmed by the heat in the extracted air. The external framing around the south-facing windows shaded the interior well from the full force of the sun, so the house was never in danger of overheating. This is something that can be a problem for buildings with large unshaded areas of south-facing glazing. 

During winter 2021-2022 the house continued to perform very well, retaining an average minimum temperature of 20ºC, dropping by no more than a degree or two when we go away. Our winter duvets have stayed packed away and there's been little or no need for extra-thick layers of clothing. We've used the electric fire now and again, for about an hour at a time, in the evenings - mainly while sitting watching television - but in general it's not needed.

So, all the hard work of insulating and airtightness-taping, the checking for air leaks and thermal bridges, has paid off. We're very happy with how well the house is performing - and, of course, it's an amazing place to live! 

All that remains is to get the part-built garage finished, install the ground-mounted PV array (solar panels) to help with our energy consumption, and to look after the land around the house and our nine acres of croft. We've already planted trees to replace the one or two that were lost during the build and the recent storms. More tree-planting is planned over on the croft in time.