Active House (Denmark)

Friday, 18 September 2009 00:00

In June 2009, Denmark’s first single-family house which produces more energy than it consumes was completed. The house, produced by VKR Holding, is a demonstration of how we, with the latest knowledge of building materials, architecture, and the art of civil engineering, will be able to live within a few years.

The vision for Active House is to expand traditional energy reducing principles and construct energy neutral buildings with a healthy indoor climate, sufficient day light and fresh air. Active House units have a low energy requirement and generate their own energy by combining solar heating systems, heat pumps and low-energy windows. The dark roof of the house is made of slate, as it is much more energy efficient to extract slate than to make tiles which is the classical and widespread facing. Contrary to traditional energy houses, this house has a lot of surfaces with large windows because of a new type of low energy windows and active utilization of solar energy. The house is made of wood and is isolated in way so that no heating is needed.

A test family moved into the house in June and is to live there for a year. The hope is that their experiences with the house will benefit both the construction sector and the environment in the future.

VKR Holding will build eight demonstration houses in five different European countries in order to test and develop the Active House vision. The aim of the experiments is to contribute with new knowledge about sustainable buildings of the future.(http://www.vkr-holding.com/?sc_lang=en)

Read more about this innovation here:

http://www.activehouse.info/?sc_lang=en