Welcome to the Zero Carbon and Passivehouse

(PassivHaus) Web Site

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This site is no longer being updated

Due to the owner's retirement this site is maintained for archival purposes only.


The original web page continues below:

This site has two purposes:

  • providing information about issues, including technical issues, with relevance to mainly UK-based buyers and builders of passive houses aspiring to 'zero carbon' status
  • detailing services and products available from Zero-Carbon Solutions Ltd

Please use the menu to the left to start drilling down into the knowledge base.

This is what a good house should be like:

  • it is of course a passivehouse
  • it is not connected to any utilities except perhaps fresh and waste water facilities
  • it is fully solar powered: solar collectors for hot water, photovoltaics for electricity
  • it is capable of storing enough energy for seasonal variations using water and hydrogen
  • it is ultra-comfortable to live in
  • it produces enough excess energy to cover the family’s transport needs (as hydrogen)

Zero-Carbon Solutions Ltd specialises in the following areas:

  • planning, design and engineering of ultra-insulated buildings including passivehouses (or 'passive houses', oddly sometimes spelt 'Passivhaus', using German spelling for a Swedish concept) and zero carbon houses
  • building renovation to low-energy standards, including if possible, to passivehouse (passive house, PassivHaus) standard
  • design of ventilation and heating systems for ultra-low energy buildings, including district power/heating systems, solar heating systems, photovoltaic systems, etc
  • ecological town planning and other architectural services
  • turn-key solutions
  • project management
  • PHPP, SBEM and SAP calculations
  • airtightness/blower-door tests
  • site surveys, including long-term climatological measurements like wind speeds (including high-turbulence areas using LIDAR and SODAR), solar intensity, Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) measurements for Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) applications, and suitability for passivehouse construction, wind power generation and solar power generation. Zero-Carbon Solutions offer these services world wide
  • calculation and supply of climatological data for use with engineering methods such as PHPP and DYNBIL
  • supply of climatological data and programs for general use, e.g. in calculating solar radiation. Zero-Carbon Solutions are UK representatives for the Swiss climatological system Meteonorm
  • Domestic and Commercial Energy Assessments and Energy Performance Certificates


We welcome enquiries from construction companies, housing associations, estate agents, public sector agencies and private individuals wishing to build ultra-low energy high standard buildings or undertake state-of-the-art renovations and who require expert help.


The passivehouse standard represents a quantum leap in build quality compared to normal UK methods and standards and there is only a handful of experts in this field in the country.


Passivhouses are designed scientifically and individually verified using objective quality control methods - there is no such thing as a passivehouse 'lemon'.


IMPORTANT: How to use the site

Just four points to help you benefit the most from the site:

  • Use the four-tier menu to the left to navigate. All menu entries lead to content, not only the rightmost ones, e.g. if you click 'New Buildings' --> 'Scandinavian Homes' you will get general information about Scandinavian Homes. The fly-out menu items will give you more specific information
  • When a menu item is written in white italic text this indicates the page you are currently looking at, e.g. you will see that 'Welcome' at the top of the menu is currently displayed in a white italic font
  • You can get high resolution copies of most of the illustrations on the site by clicking them, or right-clicking and saving them for later use, e.g. when deciding which house to buy
  • The site requires JavaScript to be enabled in your browser. This is because Internet Explorer is normally behind the newest standards from the World Wide Web Consortium and for this reason doesn't display all web pages correctly. We use JavaScript to compensate for the faults and errors in the IE browsers