Appraising the Adoption of Passive House Concept for a Sustainable Building Construction in Nigeria

Abstract

The prevailing global environmental condition is a consequence of the increasing consumption of natural resources whose depletion exceeds what is sustainable. The construction sector is a considerable contributor in this regard and for sustainability in resource utilization and a balanced ecosystem, it is expected to adopt efficient and effective mode and standard form of construction processes, operation and maintenance activities. Passive House is a building, which is designed and constructed using the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP). It is a building standard that is truly energy efficient, comfortable and ecological at the same time. The objectives of the paper being to determine the level of awareness by stakeholders in the building construction industry of passive house concept, the extent by which basic passive principles regarding cooling and humidity control in buildings is been considered and the challenges confronting the implementation of passive house components. Professionals and property owners were identified as sources of data information. The Statistical Package for Social Scientist (SPSS) package was used in analyzing the data collected at 5% level of confidence. The results indicate that only 28% and 22% of the professionals and owners that responded claims to be knowledgeable and aware of PHPP, respectively. On the other hand, the consideration of basic passive principles for cooling and humidity control in design and construction is encouraging. The research indicates that adequate knowledge of passive house concept is important for capacity building of stakeholders in the industry, which will be able to mitigate environmental, economic and socio-cultural impacts on communities.

Keywords: Construction, Environmental, Passive-House, Sustainability, Awareness of PHPP