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15 Dec 20

Airzone blog

Airzone, a key player in the first Passivhaus Plus homes in Valencia

Flexa and RadianT solutions reduce the consumption of buildings, allowing maximum energy savings in equipment with adjusted thermal power, and providing a great feeling of comfort thanks to the zoned heating and cooling systems.

Exterior of the R&Roll Houses. Adrian Mora Maroto.

Raquel Marcos, architect, and founder of Ra[ ]el Architecture studio does not limit herself to detailing the numerous possibilities and advantages of sustainable constructions. It goes deeper. She talks about "buildings to convince the skeptics".

She and fellow architect Rafael Ortega have designed the first Passivhaus Plus-certified homes in the Valencian Community, in which Airzone plays an essential role in meeting the energy-saving targets for the use of air conditioning equipment.

With the recognition of the Passivhaus Institute (The Passive House Institute), Marcos and Ortega achieve their goals. Since the beginning of their professional activity in 2003, they have worked "with the objective of achieving healthy architecture committed to sustainability and efficiency", without forgetting, of course, their "passion for architectural design, for attractive and functional spaces".

Project definition

The R&Roll Houses, located in the Rafelbunyol municipality of Valencia (Spain), are the result of several years of research, which responds to the environmental needs and "concerns" of its creators. A building, "that prioritizes not harming the environment and that contributes to produce clean energy during its use". Hence its 'Plus' category, which, unlike the standard, indicates that the building not only avoids unnecessary energy consumption, but also produces it responsibly. 

The project includes two single-family homes built on a reinforced concrete base with exterior insulation and a home-automated solar protection system.

Raquel Marcos, architect at Raquel Arquitectura. Agustin Bianchi.

According to the architects, it is a building with a solid appearance, which prioritizes sustainability, and whose extremely well-designed floor plan allows the entry of light and at the same time, protects from solar radiation.

It is an "efficient, sustainable and healthy" construction, which not only allows habitability, but also has the necessary monitoring systems "to convince the sceptics". In other words, it can demonstrate the scale of data on energy production and energy expenditure, and therefore its real efficiency.

Airzone's function

Airzone plays a vital role in these homes responding to the climate emergency.

Javier Montesinos, thermal director and installer at Buitec, was responsible for installing Airzone's Flexa and RadianT365 solutions in the R&Roll Houses. Both solutions are based on zoned air conditioning, something that Montesinos defends after more than 20 years of experience and training.

Unlike non-zoned HVAC systems that maintain the same temperature in all rooms of a house, zoned systems allow you to control the temperature by rooms, just as you control the lights of a building room by room. In this way, the feeling of comfort is considerably increased, while at the same time there is a significant saving in energy, by turning off the equipment in uninhabited rooms. 

Interior of the R&Roll Houses. Adrián Mora Maroto.

Moreover, according to Montesinos, zoned air conditioning systems allow installers to anticipate the demands of users and turn "the result of the application into a success".

From the first moment the project was proposed, Montesinos had no doubt that zoning the air conditioning was the right thing to do to achieve the high objectives of energy efficiency and comfort. Users wanted to ensure an environment with a pleasant temperature, but the requirements of the Passivhaus certification meant that the use of practically any equipment was ruled out due to the high energy waste it produced. "I saw the need to install an air conditioning system by zones, such as Airzone's Flexa solution, since these are homes with a really low energy demand, and the existing equipment on the market is over-dimensioned for this type of home," explains Montesinos. Thus, according to the installer, "with conventional air conditioning equipment that covers the needs of a 90 sq meters home, the needs of 200 sq meters homes, consisting of eight rooms, were covered".

This solution provides hot and cold water to the entire house, in addition to offering the ideal temperature in each room.

On the other hand, the R&Roll Houses include the RadianT solution as a radiant floor control system, an application that can be controlled using the thermostats of Flexa.

Interior of the R&Roll Houses. Adrián Mora Maroto.

The advantages of the Passivhaus certification

Passivhaus certification can be granted to any building in the world, regardless of its location. Nevertheless, obtaining it is not an easy task. The Passivhaus consortium takes into account the calculation of the real energy cost of a building, which has to be minimal. Thus, the Passivhaus buildings comply with very strict consumption rates. These indexes are quite far from the rest of the buildings that seem to be built under the consumption indexes required by the Technical Building Code (CTE), but that do not always comply with the standards. "The CTE does not require strict control of the execution of the work and in the end, probably buildings that do not meet the theoretical values are developed. However, with the Passivhaus method, as everything is proven and tested, they do comply with these data," explains Marcos.

The requirements, for architects who have a serious commitment to the environment, are worthwhile. With regard to air conditioning, it has been proven that a Passivhaus building "means a saving in heating energy demand of up to 90% compared to other existing buildings, and 75% of the buildings constructed after the last update of the CTE". "With respect to the demand for cooling, this reduction is 25%", according to Marcos.

With R&Roll housing, the architects of Raquel Architecture say they want to transmit "what can be done in terms of sustainability and efficiency, without giving up on comfort and health conditions". Something that is of extreme importance today when we consider the current situation, not only of climatic emergency, but also of global pandemic.

Terrace of the R&Roll Houses. Adrián Mora Maroto.