Wednesday 11 March 2015

... passivhaus

Greetings to your all ...

In my last post I noted the extraordinary benefits of having a passive solar home. Admittedly the weather is much warmer here in Eastern Ontario than it has been but I have had no heat on in my house at all since Sunday night. As I type this I am wearing a tank top as I find the house, even at 6:30 in the early evening, to be very warm. The sun is now pounding in my living room window which has a completely west exposure, which is where I am sitting, and it is still 71 degrees in here. Completely amazing.

Now, on to another topic relating to passive solar.

Have you ever heard of "passivhaus"? We were introduced to it when we were designing the house.

The basic theory of passivhaus is to have the "envelope" of you house made as well as you possibly can. It should be insulated to the max, have the best possible windows and be virtually air tight.

We kept all this in mind when we were building. I do not believe that our home would qualify under the very strict passivhaus guidelines but we have incorporated their principles where ever possible.

For instance. Our home is built of straw bales. When we were sourcing out the bales we found someone who would bale them to our requirements. That being, very very tight and very very dry. What that means is that there is a whole lot of straw in these bales, thus providing a very good R-value.

When it came to the windows, we bit the bullet and bought triple-glazed windows. Our doors are virtually all glass and they are triple glazed as well. The company who made then, quite frankly, is better at windows than they are doors and we have had a few issues with the doors. On a whole though, we are very pleased. On a sunny day, the windows are actually hot to the touch.

Now let's talk about insulation in the attic. We had decided right at the start that we would go big on this area. And we did. We have R80 up there. Two feet thick of blown cellulose insulation. The fellow who put it in said he had never put that much insulation in a home before, actually not even a barn. It was worth every cent.

The last thing that we did was Frank did a very thorough caulking job all around all the doors and windows. He sealed where the window meets the jamb extension and then he also caulked there the bale wall meets the jamb extension. You need to seal up all those teeny weeny little cracks that can weaken your building envelope.

It may not be the most glamorous part of the construction process but all these things make the most difference in your home. Our house is now so tight that Frank has installed a "Saskatoon Loop" to being in fresh air. This is basically a piece of flexible duct work that is folded up into a sort of "J" shape that allows fresh air to travel down into the house. This little tip was given to us by our building official. He said that would be all we needed rather than a mechanical system, and he was right. 

Get the envelope right and then you can have fun on the inside later.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Have a great evening. Cheers.




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