Pursuing Passive House certification

Canada's first certified residential Passive House, located in Ottawa, Ontario.
Designed and built by Chris Straka, Vert Design. This duplex silenced the
naysayers that thought a Passive House could not be built in Canada because
of the severe climate. Chris proved them all wrong with this house and he will
do it again. Chris is the architect designing Casa Tortuga at Turtle Falls.

We've been at the house design stage in this process of building a Passive House here at Turtle Falls for just about a month and a half now. From our initial thought of  building a completely off-the-grid, solar-powered home we have had a chance to research what is possible and available to us. Once we discovered passive solar design we incorporated that into what we wanted for this house. But the most exciting discovery we have made, and will strive to achieve, is Passive House certification.

Passive House is an approach to design and construction that relies on a super efficient airtight envelope, essentially minimizing heat losses to optimize gains from the sun as well as the smallest heat sources like body heat, cooking heat, and hair dryers. With a super efficient envelope, you get to keep all heat in, or out depending on the season. Construction of a Passive House employs meticulous attention to air sealing, reduction in thermal bridging (heat loss through framing lumber), optimizing site orientation (true south exposure), insulation levels (3-7 times more than standard), and installing high performance windows (triple glazed, insulated frame) and HVAC systems. There is also a component of Passive House that focuses on minimizing energy demands with highly efficient appliances and a mindset for conservation...eliminate those phantom loads! When all of this is done, the house will be 80-90% more efficient than a standard-built house and be substantially more comfortable, affordable and healthy.

Passive House can be thought of as the wiser, more experienced cousin of passive solar design, which has been in existence for about 5000 years. Passive solar design employs the use of solar gain through south-facing windows and large thermal mass, such as concrete floors or walls, to store and release heat. What was missing in the passive solar homes from the 1970's and 80's was, most importantly, the improved air sealing, thermal bridge elimination and high performance windows.

Germany's first Passivhaus

The first Passivehaus was built in Darmstadt, Germany in 1990 and the Passivhaus Institut was founded in 1996 in the same city. To date, Germany leads the way in Passive House construction with well over 20,000 buildings and growing every day. If you would like to know more about Passive House, visit the Canadian Passive House Institute website at http://www.passivehouse.ca/ or the Passive House Institute website of your own home country. There are almost as many websites about Passive House as there are Passive Houses in Germany so any search engine will find you plenty of info for those looking for more.

This is our destination to visit in Australia when we're
no longer wasting our money on heating fuel.
Thanks Lan & Treen for the beautiful photo.

It amazes me that we did not know about this brilliant Passive House way of building before beginning this journey. But then why would we? The building code standard in Canada is what most of us know because all we strive for is a satisfactory amount of energy efficiency for the lowest possible price per square foot. It is quite sad that the standard we aim for in this country is actually very sub-standard. Considering that Canada's home heating costs are one of the highest in the world you would think we would want to do a little better at keeping that heated air inside our homes. Part of the blame for not wanting to do better at this is the decades of low-cost fuels we have experienced. It probably won't take long for Passive House to become more mainstream now with the ever-increasing cost of the fossil fuels we use to heat our homes. It costs only 10% more to build a home to Passive House standards, and for the rest of the home's life it will use 80-90% less energy to heat. The extra cost to build will be recouped in 6-10 years from decreased need for heating and electricity. And a Passive House will last much longer than a standard-built home. Once we fully understood the Passive House concept, we went all in! Why wouldn't we? I'd rather spend the money we'd normally spend on heating our home elsewhere...somewhere like Australia, say...visiting friends also building their own little piece of paradise within a smaller environmental footprint.

An early version of the Casa Tortuga floor plan.
©2012 Chris Straka, Vert Design

Just over a month ago, Ras and I went with architect Chris to meet with Homesol Building Solutions, a premier Canadian company providing accurate and cost-effective residential energy design services. They provide all the modelling and testing services necessary to achieve Passive House certification. Homesol's list of services also includes LEED, Energy Star, Home Energy Audits, R2000 Certification and much more. In building a Passive House it is important to test for a super tight air seal during construction so any leaks can be fixed before the drywall is installed, not after, when fixes would be more difficult and costly. They handle intricacies of the building details necessary to achieve our goal while saving us time and money. Homesol also takes care of all the paperwork necessary for certification. And if all goes well, Casa Tortuga will become Canada's latest certified Passive House, an honour bestowed upon few presently. Fingers crossed...although we will probably not need it. We have a very experienced team with Vert Design and Homesol Building Solutions working on bringing Passive House Casa Tortuga to reality!

The following image is a screen shot of a Twitter conversation I had with Ross from Homesol Building Solutions. July 17th was that wicked hot day and it was sweltering inside Priscilla as well as on the dock. I wanted to know what it was like in Ross's Passive House.

Maybe the building of our little turtle palace, as one friend nicknamed Casa Tortuga, will help get the word out about Passive House construction just a little bit more. Feel free to pass this blog onto others you think may be interested in discovering the benefits of  living in a home that is low maintenance, durable, super energy efficient and sustainable.


Much more to come,
Mimi

Giving phantom load the boot

Now that summer is over, our focus will turn from outdoor projects to the larger task of choosing the type of house we want to build and sizing a renewable energy system for it. Our goal is to build an off grid home with all the modern conveniences we have grown accustomed to over the years. The thought of this was a bit daunting at first having read that the typical off grid home runs on the same amount of electricity per day as the typical clothes dryer uses to dry one full load of towels. Having a look at our hydro bill, I thought it can't be done. If this little house we live in averages between 17 kWh/day in the summer to 39 kWh/day in the winter, there's no way we will ever reach our goal to have a self-sufficient renewable energy home.

A little research and a little knowledge can go a long way in taming fear. Doing more with less is the driving force behind living off-the-grid. Doing more with less does not mean doing without; it means being more efficient. A few months ago I started the exercise of determining the amount of energy each electricity-sucking item in our house consumes and where we could trim some excesses. I was nicely shocked to find out how easy it was to reduce 6,336 watts or 6.3 kWh per day without reducing the quality of our lives or adding extra workloads. Our last hydro bill, compared to the same billing period from last year, showed a reduction of 399 kWh, bringing our summertime daily average to just over 11.5 kWh/day.

The following chart lists what I changed and how many watts were saved each day. The yellow high-lighted items are strictly phantom loads that were reduced simply by switching things off or plugging into power bars that can be switched off. The next biggest reduction came from changing the type of light bulbs used in the rooms where we spend most of our time. I have the small added task of hanging one, maybe two, loads of laundry on a drying rack once a week...no biggie. The two question marks in the chart are there because my energy meter cannot be used to find the usage of the oven because of the oven's plug size.

Having seen the results of using energy more efficiently, and taking into consideration our house was built in 1938 with its lack of insulation in the walls and terribly inefficient duct work, I'm starting to believe that it will be possible to run a properly built, energy efficient house with the same amount of electricity our dryer uses for one load of laundry.

Some may look at a daily reduction of 6.3 kWh as a drop in the bucket and why such a big deal is made about saving approximately $200 per year. It's about taking a step in the right direction to reduce the amount we consume unnecessarily. If every household in North America were to take steps to eliminate just the phantom loads in their homes then there would be no more need to build new coal-fired or nuclear generating stations. These steps are easy and the benefit to homeowners is immediately measurable. The benefit to the environment will be massive.

Read this CBC article about the difference using electricity more efficiently can make.

"Studies show time and again that for every dollar spent on conservation there will be a $2 or $3 return," says Ben Chin, formerly vice-president of communications at the Ontario Power Authority. "Since 2006, we have spent $1.7 billion on conservation programs — and that has saved $3.8 billion in generation costs and has saved 1,700  megawatts."                                                                                               -CBC News, March 2011

Enthusiastically eliminating phantom loads everywhere,
Mimi