Summertime review

Summer is a lovely slow time. People take vacations, books get enjoyed on docks around the country, kayak and canoe paddles are quietly dipped into warm waters, ice cold lemonade is slowly sipped, and things that seemed important in the Spring somehow find their way to the back burner during Summertime. The only thing not slow about Summer is how quickly it disappears on us. I know we still have a little over 4 weeks of Summer left but I prefer the beginning of Summer for that very reason...it's the beginning of Summer. And before my favourite season gets any further past us I will review where we are with all things house related.

One-of-a-kind beauty patiently awaits its next set of loving humans

First, still no offers on our house in the city. I think that's partly due to the "people take vacations" scenario from the first paragraph. This city is a little like a ghost town in the Summer. Everyone's enjoying something somewhere other than here. But they will all return soon and hopefully they will flock to this unique little beauty in the 2nd Best Canadian City in which to live. Just in case you are interested in living in the core of Burlington yourself, here is the link to the listing. Please pass it along to those you think might also be interested.

Second, I think we have finalized the floor plan for our Passive House. The design stage takes longer than we both thought. It's amazing how many locations you can place a bathroom within a 1,200 ft² space. Here's what the layout looks like to date. There may still be a tweak or two necessary but this is awfully close.

Casa Tortuga, Main Floor. Vert Design Inc., Chris Straka

Casa Tortuga, Lower Level. Vert Design Inc., Chris Straka

Note how thick the exterior walls of this house will be compared to the exterior walls of the garage. Insulation and air sealing of a Passive House are freakishly important. And what better time than now to share some PH fun facts? Ok...I think they're fun and you know I've already admitted to being a geek. Bear with me...you may just find this stuff interesting too! You be the judge.

Passive House Insulation Fun Facts:

                                                 
And just so all this fantastic insulation isn't rendered useless by a leaky building envelope, here is another interesting Passive House feature. To measure how tightly the envelope is sealed, a blower door test is performed to confirm air-sealing techniques have been executed properly. The fewer number of times per hour there is a complete exchange of all the air in the house (from air leakage through the building envelope) the more efficient it will be. So here is your other fun fact for today...

Passive House Air Sealing Fun Fact:

Just looking at these two features it is easy to see why a Passive House requires so little energy for space heating and cooling. A Passive House is at least 4 times better at keeping the warm air in (or out in the summer) than a new standard built Energy Star house. Some Passive Houses are showing blower door test results as low as one third of the required 0.6ACH@50PA rating, making those houses 10 times more leak-proof than the standard built. No more drafty winter nights. Sweet!

That's enough for now. I'll entertain you next posting with my adventures of wrangling a TV signal at Turtle Falls.

Ciao for now,
Mimi