Flatrock Passive House: A Passive House in Newfoundland

My plans called for fiberglass batt insulation in the stud cavities outside the air tight barrier (ie OSB) and inside the exterior EPS foam sheathing.  The problem I ran into is that the walls are 2x8.  From my investigation of materials available through local suppliers, there are very few fiberglass options for a 2x8 wall (7 1/4" thick).  Several companies make batt insulation with depths of 8.5 (R28) and 7.5 (R22).   Another option was to gang up batts of different thicknesses and R-values but this seemed complicated and installation could take twice as long. In either case the insulation will have to be compressed into the wall cavity with the interior OSB.  Yet another option is dense packed blown in fiberglass.  At about R29.8 it is the best option for conformity inside the wall cavity and provides the highest R-Value.  This would be my best option if budget allowed for it. Before making a final choice about which products to use, I decided to further investigate the docum

  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 maintains the thermal effectiveness. Adding ins

The doors that I ordered were pretty much the best that Kohler could offer.  The door frame is made of cellular PVC so there will never be any real maintenance issues like for vinyl clad with wood jambs where there is some risk for the wood rotting over time.  The door slabs are fiberglass.  In the front of the house we opted for a half glazed door since there were no windows in the main entry.  In the porch, a half glazed door allows some natural light to spill from the side porch on the house.  The south side of the house has a door with full glazing. The house doors are all triple glazed energlas plus (high solar gain on the south side, low solar gain on the north) corresponding to total door R-values of about 5 ( See Kohler energy efficiency  ratings  ).  They don't really provide any information about how this is measured but I assume its measured at the center of the door since they list different U-values depending on glazing coverage.  For example a door with no glazing ha

Attic ventilation is important.  The attic is hot in the summer,  and cold in the winter.  When humidity is high, the materials in the attic absorb moisture.  When the air is dry, it looses moisture.  Moisture from within the house can also enter the attic if there are bad air sealing details.  In the winter, good ventilation also decreases the occurence of ice damming.  These are just some of the reasons that attics should be ventilated. Ventilation can be achieved in many ways.  Most attics ventilate in a passive manner.  Nature takes care of the ventilation as long as you provide a pathway for air to exchange.  Typically this involves the installation of some kind of soffit venting under the eave, a pathway to the attic space, and vents on the roof. My plans specified Accuvent baffles for the attic of the house and garage.  I had never seen these offered by any of the building suppliers.  In fact, I had only ever seen the two types of baffles:  Truevent (TrueFoam Newfoundland S

Newfoundland is known for it's unpredictable weather.  I have seen 4 seasons in one day:  a snow storm followed by torrential rain, followed by sun and 10 Celsius...in February! It is overcast almost 50% of the year and we have fog an average of about 126 days/year in the St. John's area.   We typically have about 212 days/year with some form of precipitation. The weather is heavily influences by our proximity to the Atlantic ocean's gulf stream.  It leads to much milder conditions compared to the interior of Canada with temperatures around the Avalon peninsula rarely being lower than -15 C in the winter.  Did I mention that its windy?!?!?  By the way, ITS WINDY!!!  St. John's is the third windiest city in the world!  From what I have experienced Flatrock is windier! (although I have no proof!) In outport communities people built saltbox houses with steep pitched roofs.  Often times they had shakes to shed water off the roofs:  Shingles or metal roofing with ice and

We ran a little behind on the framing stage so my windows and doors have been stored at "The Window Shop" for about a month now.   They were finally delived (Photo 1-1 to 1-4) and we started with the installation right away. All windows for the house are triple glazed Energlas Plus HSG (high solar gain) on the south side and LSG (low solar gain) on the north. The window R-value is about 5.5. This is not your ultimate european passive house window but its not too shabby for the price.  The LSG windows provided a slightly better result for the calculated yearly energy demand in the PHPP software.  This is not surprising since the R-value is marginally higher than HSG windows and solar heat gain is about 50% that of the HSG windows.  The house is sitting about 15 degrees off geographical south and in the summer the sun rises slightly behind the home which will cast some sun light into the north facing windows in the mornings.   The LSG windows will definitely help with limitin