Flatrock Passive House: A Passive House in Newfoundland

A solid foundation will lead to a solid building that will last for years.  Originally I was thinking about going with a Permanent Wood Foundation (PWF).  Although sub grade lumber is accessible here, it is quite expensive.  Water proofing and insulating a below ground wooden structure would also be quite challenging so I decided against it.  Instead I decided that a concrete foundation on top of concrete footings would be a better idea and although I am not able to do the work myself, the money spent will lead to a foundation that will last for years.  Interestingly enough, if you factor in the cost of lumber and labor, they probably cost about the same according to my estimates.  Besides, my previous estimates showed that there would be enough thermal mass in the concrete to mitigate temperature swings without the use of larger water barrels taking up floor space. I contacted John Randell (Matchless Foundations) and he gladly took on the job.  Jo...

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 e...

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 or...

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 undergrou...

A Great Growing Season After a productive summer filled with deck building, a shade structure, landscaping, and a building a cellar, fall arrived!  I really can't recall a summer that went by so quickly.  To reiterate, in the previous post I talked a little about food security.  I tried to focus some of the landscape in our yard on producing food...and it was a huge success!  We had a steady supply of baby root vegetables and greens up until the end of September (Picture 1).  It was quite a bit of work but it was amazingly enjoyable watching the garden flourish and picking throughout the summer.  I battled with nature and learned a lot from my planting mistakes.  I will put those lessons to work next year as I work to add new crops and add resiliency to the garden. Getting ready for the fall harvest was no easy task.  I had never owned a cellar before now, nor had I harvested or stored vegetables.  A lot of effort went into researching th...

Summer was off to a bad start.  June was cold with an average temperature of around 7C accompanied by a lot of cloud cover and drizzle.  I have realized over the past 10 years that outdoor living spaces in Newfoundland are really limited.  Our summers are short and you really don't have a whole lot of time to use it.  For this reason, I planned on using the outdoor space quite differently than my previous property.  I also wanted to make sure that my time in the garden had some payback.  Given the state of our food security issues I decided that a good place to invest my time and effor would be creating a landscape that has some food security.  As well, I wanted a low maintenance landscape that grows well in our environment, and is resilient to drought and pests. My plan for landscaping was quite simple really:  Go back 50 years and do what most Newfoundland families did. They grew root vegetables. Good cold climate varieties that are tuned to ...

May can be a beautiful month.  This year it was cold but the weather has been sunny and somewhat dry.  The windchill typically makes it pretty cold so dressing for exterior work means putting some effort into layering!  Most of the work that I had to do was on the south side of the house so as long as the sun was shining and I was wearing dark clothing, I actually felt warm. I have many projects scheduled for the summer so getting a head start was a necessity.  My first project was adding the shade structure to several windows on the main level.  The WUFI model showed some overheating in the middle of summer without the structure in place.  Before we installed the clapboard siding, I attached vertical ledgers (I call it a vertical ledger board) so I could secure braces that would be used to attach the shade structure.  I deviated from the designers plans a little.  The planned structure would have involved scaffolding and several sets of hands t...