Flatrock Passive House: A Passive House in Newfoundland

We have been working to further refine the elevations to meet our likes/dislikes.  Since the last drawing set, we have added windows to the garage, a sliding barn door on the garage,  taken a window out of the mechanical room, changed the window configuration on the west elevation and added a trellis shade structure to the south elevation.  At the bottom of the page you'll see a different window configuration for the west elevation.  Having those windows on the west side is really necessary since the floor plan has the staircase going up on that end.  If those windows weren't there the staircase would be dark and uninviting.  In the last image, the trellis shade structure has been moved upwards to account for an outswing door.  Here it is:

Heating a home which has such a small heat load can be a little more complicated then you think.  Ultimately I think it depends on many factors including questions of the energy source, sustainability,  purpose, etc. You may think "use a heat pump and have it over with!".  But what about other options? Can it be done more efficiently?  Can you plan for less dependency on the grid?  Can you minimize energy to the point where solar voltaic panels become your route to net zero energy? The nice thing about a Passive House is that you can't build a passive house unless its modelled.  Passive House is a performance standard not a prescriptive one.  A prescriptive standard, like the National Building Code of Canada, tells you how to build a structure to maintain safety, longevity and the health of the inhabitants but it doesn't tell you anything about the performance of the building.  It tells you about the performance of the whole package, upfront, before the building is

In the previous post, I presented some numbers from the modelling of my passive house.  Although, the loads showed, a maximum of 3.8 kW, that didn't include the thermal gains or the solar gains so infact, the total load will be significantly less.   The PHPP software can only provide static numbers for a whole house and doesn't do any type of room-by-room analysis for heat loads.  The PHPP software showed that the total load would be 2.8 kW once internal gains are taken into account.  However, in order to ensure heating is distributed uniformly, a more conventional engineering heat load calculation program is used.  The table below shows the heat loads required to maintain 20 C inside when its -18 C outside: Look closely...the numbers are tiny!  The upstairs hallway requires 22 W!, The main bath requires 83 W!  Even running a 100 W light bulb in that room will be sufficient!   However a light bulb is not considered a heat source so we need to explore options for heat

The numbers are in!  And there are lots of them! and they're all good!  The first round of energy modelling has been completed.  Based on the model and the orientation of the house on the lot, the energy usage looks great.  There are too many numbers to talk about so I'll focus on the important numbers.  The PHPP software used to model the home is quite complex.  The data entry is exhaustive and it contains information from the transparency of windows to the air change rate related to the wind blowing on the building (based on the weather data)! First lets look at the total energy balances: The BLUE columns show the energy lost by the building and the RED columns show energy gained by the building based on our climate.  Windows typically drain energy from a building in the winter.  However, if oriented properly the winter solar gains can offset the loss through the windows.  In our model, the south windows gain slightly more energy than the total lost through all the wind

Our designer, Mike Anderson, has been busy!    The current refinements have been finalized enough that we are ready to submit them to the town for our building permit....well, we already have a building permit but it didn't have an attached garage.  The town of Flatrock will only allow you to build a garage once the house has started.  To avoid this, we have attached the house so both the house and garage can be built at the same time. I mentioned in a previous post about the lot layout shown below.  In it's current orientation, the long axis of the house is less than 15 deg from geographical south.  This will ensure that our solar coverage will be greater than 95% during the winter months.  There will be some energy penalty in the summer since the setting sun will lead to solar gains later in the day.  Some trellis shading over the main level windows should take care of this problem but only the energy modelling will tell the tale. There have been minor revisions to t

One of the principles of Passive House is the integration of passive elements.  Once such element is solar energy.  Passive solar design is simple yet complex.  Simply put, it's a set of design  principles that takes advantage of the energy from the sun.   The Pueblo peoples  (in Colorado) had free heating and cooling  at the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings.  They didn't have electricity, insulation, natural gas, air conditioning or modern building techniques.   The cliffs provided everything they needed and provides a basis for passive solar design. That's where the simplicity ends and complex home design begins.  Much like the cave dwellings above, this type of home takes advantage of the natural progression of the sun's altitude downwards in the sky as winter approaches.  In the northern hemisphere the sun is always on the south side of a building.  With such specific celestial behaviour rules can be defined to define solar design.   South facing windows are bene