The Passive House shade revolution has arrived and it’s the future of all residential and commercial design. However, many of the underlying concepts would be very familiar to our ancestors who lived in a world without access to abundant energy. Houses had window awnings, large wrap around covered porches, high ceilings with fans, and tall double hung windows with bulky floor to ceiling drapes. The list goes on but all of these ideas were an answer to a need to create comfort without lots of energy.
The idea was simple when it came to windows. Get the light without the glare and heat in the summer while capturing the warm winter sun when it was low in the sky. It worked and was purely passive in design. Interior window coverings were needed to cover over the windows at night when it got too cold or to block out the intense sun during the summer. The solution often resulted in an all or nothing designs where the underlying window was completely hidden by the coverings. Fancy drapery designs were developed to compensate for this short coming.
Today we can build on these simple solutions to provide even greater levels of comfort with almost no additional use of energy. Passive house designs embrace the concept that windows and window covering must work as a matched unit to achieve optimal results. When engineered shading solutions are paired with carefully selected windows a purely passive design is possible. Windows no longer need to be covered with unattractive coverings and a whole new level of comfort, simplicity and aesthetics is possible.
Occupant comfort is enhanced by glare reduction at all times of the year. The outside views are preserved and interior spaces feel larger and more connected to the world beyond the window. The sun becomes a vital element in the concept and works with the building rather than against it.
InSync Solar has engineered a Passive House window covering solution that embodies all of these concepts. The window – window covering unit utilizes an interior and exterior shading component. In a counter intuitive manner we use dark shade cloth on both shading elements. By motorizing the shades we create a dynamic system that can respond to the changing seasons and daily variations in weather. So how does this all fit together?
First, darker shade cloth is easier to see through – as an added bonus it is the preferred by most architects as the building “reads” better from the street. It also reduces glare and interior reflections on computer displays and TV’s. On exterior shades it blocks more of the sun’s energy in the summer to reduce cooling requirements. During the winter a dark interior mesh absorbs the sun’s energy and converts it into heat. Together the mesh shades provide a higher degree of privacy at night.
Motorization and sun sensors orchestrate the balancing act all year long. During the summer the exterior shade is fully deployed to reject heat and control glare. The interior shade is lower only enough to control any high window glare. The outside view is preserved by the darker mesh. During the winter the interior shade is fully deployed to capture the sun’s heat and the exterior shade is lowered to control the amount of energy that is captured. Simple, passive, yet effective!
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