Flatrock Passive House: A Passive House in Newfoundland

Things have been slooooowwww.... For reasons that I may decide to document at a later date, my siding contractor is not on site anymore and will not be...ever.  Lets just leave it at that for now. The company that I hired for framing my house (Keocan General Contracting, Inc.) will be taking over the cladding installation.   In fact, the last photo of the house did show the guys from Keocan onsite and the progress they had made in only two days (Photo 1-1). They did get started but ran into some things with another job that required putting mine on hold.  This being said, I am grateful to Patrick (Keogh) and his guys for taking on the job on such short notice.  My experience is that he is trustworthy and will get the job done to my specifications. To keep the build moving along we have been picking away at various things so they would be done once they get on site to finalize this stage of the build.  They will complete the cladding installation and then the interior framing.  To ge

Dealing with penetrations in the air barrier has definitely been a source of stress during this project.  Although my plans contain the penetration details, implementation of those details is pretty much left to me; unless I decide that I need help and in which case I would call Passive Design Solutions.  Some penetrations through the air barrier needed careful thought and planning before jumping in otherwise you could risk the integrity of the air barrier and fool up the insulation in the wall cavity all in one shot.  There are 5 wiring penetrations to the outside:  3 receptacles and 2 lights (well there is actually 3 light circuits but two which were more worrisome than others.) Mounting the light/receptacle blocks to the exterior of the building could have been a mess if there was no foresight.  It is hard to attach a trim block to a foam wall.  The only solution was blocking attached to the studs directly behind the foam in the wall before the cavities were insulated.  I used 2x6