Flatrock Passive House: A Passive House in Newfoundland

After the subterranean heating and cooling system was installed, back filled and lightly tamped it was time to place the various services.  Services!?!?!?!  What kind of "Services!?!?!?" could a greenhouse possibly need?!?!  Keep in mind that this is not just a greenhouse.  It is a four season greenhouse.   It has potential to grow for three seasons of the year and maintain living plants in dormancy through December and January or has potential to provide a growing environment year around with a heat source.   Before starting this building I had to think a bit about what a greenhouse needed to function.  These are some basic necessities for a greenhouse (This is by no means an exhaustive list): 1.   Ventilation.   A source or several sources of ventilation are necessary.  A greenhouse is a high humidity environment with potential for large temperature swings.  Watering plants will lead to moisture in the air through evaporation from the soil and transpiration through the

The proposed location for our greenhouse is absolutely perfect.  It is a south facing hillside.  This will allow us to put a foundation into the hill and use the natural shape to berm the north wall to about 4-5'.  The east wall will be mostly bermed but the west and south walls will only partially be buried.  This works out great since I can build a knee wall on the south side with anywhere from 2-4' of vertical glazing and also have glazing on the roof.  Vertical glazing works well in the winter since the sun is low in the sky (about 20 deg above the horizon.  A variety of glazing angles could work but ideally one would try to set the glazing angle to be perpendicular to the incident sunlight in the winter.  Of course this is also a matter of design, aesthetics, and whether or not it can be easily constructed.  Some designs will just not work that well here.  For example a walipini seen in Picture 1 would need some major modifications in order to work in our climate. Pi

It is now May.  The weather is shaping up and after a long cold winter the ground has thawed...not entirely but it's workable down to about 12"!  Based on the temperature of the water coming from my 4' deep water line I'd say that winter planted roots and had no plans on giving up early.  Old man winter did give me one thing this year; a lot of time to think.   I have mainly been thinking about food security again and accessing more locally grown food.  We had a successful harvest last year and a cellar to store all of our garden goodies to eat during the winter.    It's hard to believe that we are still eating crisp and sweet Newfoundland carrots that were pulled from the earth last November!  The wonders of a root cellar has really amazed me.  Did you know that you can store a cabbage (with roots attached) in a underground root cellar for a really long time?!?!?!  I didn't!  The last cabbage that I pulled out of our underground lair was 3.5 months old (Pictur