Flatrock Passive House: A Passive House in Newfoundland

We completed all the necessary site work on Sunday to commence back filling.  The electricians came and extended the electrical conduits above ground level (Photo 1-1, 1-2).  There are three in total.  The conduit to the left is labelled load.  This conduit will exit the utility meter and enter the house under the footing and will come up through the slab in the mechanical room.  The center conduit comes directly from the utility pole underground to the house.  The third conduit is put in place for future PV solar power.  Recently the local public utilities board approved net metering for the province.   Details at this point are scanty, to say the least, but it made sense to install the conduit, nonetheless.  With a power budget of 5MW province wide for electrical feed in to the grid, I expect that the applications will chew up the budget pretty quickly.  I have priced an 8kW system which will offset all of my yearly power usage.  At current electrical rates, the payback is fairly lo

After insulating the foundation we immediately started work on the underground service, well water line, and the drainage tile around the foundation.  Wade's Excavating dug a 3' deep trench from the utility pole.  Local regulations require 6" of sand at the bottom of the excavated trench.  The trench contains conduits for both electrical and data (cable, internet, phone, etc).  Photo 1-1, 1-2  shows Trevor Leonard (709 Electrical) fitting conduit for the data conduit.  Photo 2-1, 2-2 shows the length of the trench back to the pole.  Once the conduits are installed and expansion joints are added at the utility pole to account for the PVC expanding/contracting with temperature, the whole trench is backfilled with another 6" of sand.  Regulations require that there be 2x6 pressure create board placed over the trench (Photo 3).  This is really just a safety measure to ensure that if anybody is digging they will presumably dig into the plank before tearing up the electrica

In the previous post we had prepped the foundation for foam insulation.  The plan called for 2" of type 2 EPS inboard and outboard of the house portion of the foundation.  The foam on the exterior of the garage and porch were added to help with the thermal efficiency of the garage which will be a woodworking shop that I mainly use in the winter.  Each sheet is shiplapped and can be overlapped with the adjacent sheet.  The sheets are easily cut with a small fine toothed handsaw after snapping a chalk line on the surface as in Photo 1 below. There are fancy nail guns with plastic washers that would work well for attaching the foam.  Rental shops around here have never heard of them....so on to plan B!  We talked about using Lepages PL 300 for foam board.  I have used it before but it skins over quickly and it doesn't perform well at low temperatures.  Instead I opted for DOW EnerBond SF (Photo 2).  It attaches to a re-usable spray foam gun and can be cleaned up with acetone.  

Thermal bridging through foundation walls can lead to significant energy loss/gain in any building, whether super-insulated or not.  There are several options available to decrease thermal bridging through a concrete foundation.  An insulated concrete form (ICF) is one of the first products that comes to mind to mitigate energy loss/gain through concrete.  We decided agains ICF mainly because the footings have to be pretty level in order for the forms to be level.   In a poured concrete wall, if the footings aren't perfectly level, a reference level can be maintained inside the concrete form panels by attaching a 2x4 and levelling using a transit all the way around the form.  Once the concrete is poured into the form, it is levelled to the bottom of the 2x4 giving a perfectly level wall once the forms are stripped.   Since this is a common local practice, it seemed like a good place to start.  Adding EPS insulation on the exterior of the foundation for the whole structure (although

When building a house there are so many choices that it can be overwhelming to a home owner.  When we decided to build this house I really wanted to cut through some of the those choices and explore simple options available locally.  I think that obtaining products locally, that are managed for sustainability, can have a huge impact on CO2 emissions associated with the transport of such goods.   It is a good choice that is good for the planet and also supports the local economy directly, and provides income for local families.          Newfoundland is accessible, yet remote.  Most goods are shipped from mainland Canada.  There are no bathtub manufactuers, slate tile quarries,  or door knob producers.  However there is one thing we do have.....wood! And lot's of it.  The fact that we are surrounded by wood was the reason that I felt that a high efficiency wood stove ( www.walltherm.ca ) should be part of my energy mix in this house.  Traditionally it has been used as a primary hea