The Flatrock Passive House Gets a Firm Foundation.

After every day that goes by I realize more and more that this is actually happening. From grubbing, to excavation, to filling the hole, it has finally set in: this house is happening! Because of the way the foundation will be filled, it made sense to first fill the house footprint with blast rock. There are 12 loads so far! Each layer will be compacted with a roller and inspected by an engineer. Over the next two days we are expecting that this will be completed. By Thursday morning we'll have a firm base for the 4' frost wall. The stepped portion of the wall will have to be dug out again in order to have the 6' and 8' frost walls at the same height. Having this pad in place will provide access to the west of the lot where the septic system will be located and we'll begin rough work on the system before we start doing any foundation work. While this is happening I am hoping to bore the well. With the structural pad in place, the drillers will be able to get down on the pad and back into a small corner between the trees to start drilling.

You may notice a little girl dancing around...Yes she went right for the dirt! Not sure why they like dirt so much...I guess they just do.

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Building the Air Tight Barrier: Door Flashing Details.

It took us a while to wrap our heads around the door details on my plans. The main exterior wall is composed of 2x8s. The rough stud opening was substantially larger than the door. Because the walls are much deeper than a standard door frame for a 2x6 wall, the interior of the 2x8 opening was studded with double 2x4s. Outside of these 2x4s, there is 1.5" of foam and another 2x4 on face which brings the door frame opening flush to the exterior 3" of EPS foam. The brick mould of the door will sit against the exterior of the wall. The ganged 2x4s which define the opening will allow the door to open a little further than that of a 2x8 wall. With the door details finalized, I had to flash the opening as per the plan. I specified the size/shape for aluminum sill pans and CBS Eavestroughing made them for me. The sill pans have a kind of end dam to prevent water from entering under the under the stud opening should the door ever...

Choosing an HRV...My Thoughts....

So, which HRV do you want for your home? This is a question not often asked by the homeowner. When the house is built, somebody installed an HRV and that was it. The home owner is rarely involved in anything other than turning a knob on the HRV wall control if they dare fool with it at all. An HRV is probably one of the most important appliances in your house; it expels moisture, eliminates odours, evacuates stale air from bathrooms, provides clean air to keep you healthy and it recovers a lot of heat that would have otherwise been blown out through the vent on the house. It serves three main functions: 1. Supplies the home with fresh dry air. 2. Removes stale air and removes excess moisture. 3. Recovers heat or heat/moisture For a low energy home we need an HRV that is as efficient as possible. With the ventilation unit taking care of exchanging most of the air in the building, having an efficient one will pay for itself...

The Attic: A hatchway, A Landing and a Catwalk.

Attics are one of the neglected spaces in the our homes....an afterthought really. Many trusses are designed the same way they were years ago. There is no thought put into the lack of insulation above the top plate on exterior walls. Heeled trusses were developed as a solution to this problem (https://www.apawood.org/raised-heel-trusses). Adding a small heel enables deeper insulation over the top plate of exterior walls and helps prevent thermal short circuiting to and from the attic space. It seems that heel trusses may become a mainstay for the future since new code changes now required attics to be a minimum of R50. Large heels mean more blocking and higher baffles to combat the effects of wind washing on the thermal effectiveness of the attic insulation. The key here is to direct any wind (entering the attic through the soffit) far above the layer of insulation. The air contained in the insulation remains stagnant which ...

Flatrock Passive House: A Passive House in Newfoundland

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