At the Girona Association of Surveyors, technicians from the city and its surroundings learned about the Passivhaus standard first-hand through PassivPalau, a certified passive house built by PAPIK Group.
On 13 October, the Girona Association of Surveyors hosted the outreach talk NZEB-Passivhaus: Current Projects in Catalonia. The event brought together technicians from the city and its surroundings with a clear goal: to explain, with a real case on the table, what it means to build to the Passivhaus standard and what results it delivers once the home is in use.
The session featured Papik Fisas, head of PAPIK Group, technical architect Joan Vilanova, and the owners of the PassivPalau passive house. This combination of builder, technician, and end users made it possible to approach the project from three complementary perspectives, rarely available together in a technical talk.
The thread running through the day was PassivPalau, a certified Passivhaus passive house built by PAPIK Group with the collaboration of technical architect Joan Vilanova. Working from this specific project, attendees were able to trace the full path, from the principles that underpin the standard to the detail of the construction system executed on site.
The first part of the talk explained what the Passivhaus standard consists of and the five basic principles on which it is based. The construction system used was then detailed, with sustainable materials, so that the technicians present could see how theory translates into concrete decisions on site. The project was presented as an example of a Biopassive house, with notable results in terms of energy savings, indoor comfort, and environmental benefit.
The presence of the PassivPalau owners added the dimension that is often left out of the manuals: how the home behaves day to day. They described how theory becomes reality in everyday use, with high indoor comfort and virtually no energy consumption.
As an example, they pointed to the heatwave of the previous July. While outdoor temperatures reached 40 degrees, inside the house, with no cooling appliances at all, the temperature stayed below 25 degrees at all times, with a noticeably lower perceived temperature. It is the kind of figure that sums up, better than any sales argument, what it means to live in a passive house.
The interest of those attending was reflected in a question-and-answer session that ran long, with specific queries about the Passivhaus certificate and about construction aspects of PassivPalau. The conversation confirmed that, among Girona's technicians, there is a growing demand for rigorous information on how to put this standard into practice.
With this talk, Papik Fisas, a member of the PEP, contributes to the technical dissemination of the Passivhaus standard in our country. It is one small contribution that, added to the efforts of other members with similar initiatives, helps raise the sector's awareness of the benefits that Passivhaus brings.
At PAPIK Group we see outreach as an inseparable part of our Passivhaus construction work. Every project delivered is also an argument shared with the technical community, and homes like PassivPalau show that the standard already works in Catalonia.
A well-built passive house is explained better by its indoor temperature on a 40-degree day than by any technical datasheet.