Page 28 - ZEB Final Report 2009-2017

28 | ZEB Zero Emission Buildings | Final Report 2017

What is it Like

Living in a Zero

Emission House?

Evaluations of the ZEB pilot buildings and the

experiment in ZEB Living Lab show positive

signs regarding the occupants' experiences.

Ruth Woods Thomas Berker Judith Thomsen
Senior Researcher, Professor, NTNU, Research Manager,
SINTEF Work Package Leader, ZEB SINTEF

All buildings have a distinctive capacity for memory or that participated in the experiment in Living Lab shows that
anticipation; they are physical responses to real time outside occupants simultaneously adapted to the house while also
pressures. For example, winters in Norway require efficient retaining existing routines and preferences. With all but one
windows and extra insulation, and summer heat requires group, this mutual adaptation went smoothly so that occupants
shading and ventilation. felt that this zero emission building could become their zero
Buildings are also a response to particular internal needs, emission home. Each group performed the mutual adaptation
and a house deals with a broad set of such needs. A house in their own unique way.
provides structure in space and time for the regularity of Group number one, for example, accepted a higher
a home's activities. Use and understanding of a home is a internal temperature, stopped sleeping with open windows,
negotiation between what the physical space provides (the but continued wearing slippers and woollen socks. The couple
house) and the requirements of the social space imposed by said the floor was warm rather than cold, and they liked the
family life or other relational activities. feel of it (Living Lab has underfloor heating), but that socks and
The changes in the physical and technical structure implicit slippers were about being “cosy”. This shows that the building
in a zero emission house suggest changes in how people use and as such is often understood as being part of an external system,
understand houses. Feedback from the six residential groups something that cannot be changed. What an occupant chooses