Flatrock Passive House: A Passive House in Newfoundland

We have had relatively good weather.  This week has been above 0 deg C and the temperatures are climbing.  For the most part all the snow is gone and the ground has thawed.  The switch in weather has made it easy to get some work done.  This was a fairly busy week.  The excavation company, Wade's Excavating, dug down to solid ground. There was an amazing amount of topsoil on the lot.  In places, there was almost 2'.  It has all been pushed out of the way for now waiting to be moved around and used for final grades after backfilling.    After the hole was dug we hired Aubrey Burt (land surveyor) to come and roughly make out for the foundation pad. Have a look at the pictures below.  The first picture is looking approximately west, as is the second.  With a minimal structural pad in place we will be above natural grade in the far north west corner of the lot (i.e. picture 2, the stake to the far right in the corner of the dug out.).  If you look at picture 3  below, you will se

Over the past few days we've made quite a bit of headway.  We now have a driveway!...leading to a cleared lot!  Grubbing has been completed at this point.  We have lots of topsoil in places. There is at least 20".  The plans is to push this out to the sides of the lot and use it after backfilling is complete. I was hoping that the footing was going to be sitting higher on the lot.  It is actually sitting down below the road much more than I had originally anticipated.  However, my excavation guy, Jason Wade, says it won't be an issue.  We have dug down to solid ground in a couple of places and it is very, very, solid.  Once the pad area is excavated, we'll lay a rock pad.  We'll track that in with his excavator and then rent a roller for a day to roll as we go.  We are expecting to make quite  a bit of headway in the coming week.  We hope to finish moving the soil and mark out the pad for the foundation tomorrow. On Tuesday we will bring in some loads of rock to

It has been a while since I last posted.  My excuse....It has been very busy! In this post I figured that it would be a good time to talk about one of the things about a passive house that I still haven't discussed:  Windows. There are so many window manufacturers, so many different types of windows, so many different types of glass inserts, and so many industry claims.  I was told by by designer, Mike Anderson, that we needed a triple glazed window with a high solar heat gain coefficient.  Where would I find this in Newfoundland?  There are several window manufacturers here but none of them have windows that have the data necessary to modelling in the PHPP software.  Mike suggested Peter Kohler Windows.  I said really?  He said, that a few years back, they did the necessary testing to provide parameters that can be used to properly model heat loss and gain through windows for the PHPP software!.    Such parameters are a measure of the heat transfer through the glass, heat transf

I felt that this was an appropriate title for this particular blog entry.  I had a question on one of my blog entries about building here and finding "qualified" trades.  This also links into a radio interview that I did during this past week on the VOCM Energy Show with hosts Gerry and Chris Skinner. ( http://vocm.com/shows/weekly-on-vocm/vocm-energy-show/ ).  During that show I had several of the same questions; about local trades, training, etc.  The show was pre-recorded and it is available to stream online if you wish to pass away an hour learning about passive homes and other topics. So lets begin.  I went into this venture knowing that I would be a guinea pig since this would be the first performance modelled home of its kind in Newfoundland and Labrador built to the PHIUS standard ( http://www.phius.org/phius-2015-new-passive-building-standard-summary ).  So this process alone needs some addressing.  Will the home be certified?  Certification is complicated and cost