Building the Future: Passive House Construction

“Passive Building can be thought of as the highest standard of building, not only in terms of energy efficiency but also in terms of quantifiable comfort and quality,” Valle explains. At its core, Passive Building aims to optimize every facet of a building's energy efficiency through five specific building-science principles: envelope airtightness, super-insulation and thermal bridge-free construction, optimized windows, balanced ventilation, and minimal use of space conditioning.

“One of the primary objectives of Passive Building is to create an extremely airtight building,” says Valle. This key goal serves to prevent unwanted infiltration of outside air and preserve conditioned air. Passive Homes are known for their use of Energy Recovery Ventilators, equipped with heat-exchanging cores, ensuring controlled ventilation while retaining up to an impressive 88% of a building’s energy. 

This highly insulated, solar-powered homestead is so efficient that the client did not have to turn their heat on once during the harsh winter of 2016. It features a series of greenhouses, a workshop, a guest house, and an underground root cellar.

With an air tightness standard five times tighter than an average building, a Passive House requires a blend of meticulous design, precise construction, and high-performance materials. “We recently utilized a technique for identifying very small potential air leaks, which involved putting the structure under negative pressure to create a condition where the entire exterior basically becomes a giant vacuum pulling in outside air,” Valle shares. “We then used a fog machine to provide a visual cue to pinpoint any tiny leaks in order to correct them.”