We caught up with our own in-house architect Kyle Barber for an update on the construction of his family’s high-performance passive home. If you are joining the blog midway through the story, you can read the first two parts here and here.
Each time we catch up with Kyle, he and his family are one step closer to completing their passive house goals. Barber shares, “The interior wall framing is done, the floor has gone in the walls have been insulated, and the membranes are on about half the house.”
“Over the course of this next week the framers are putting the service cavities up. Due to the thickness of the roof, they need to dense pack the insulation it to a certain density. So, because of that, the service cavity needs to go up to hold it all in and keep it intact before they can start to insulate.”
“As far as the general timeline goes, rough-in’s go in next, drywall will follow in the middle of February and then in late February we will be installing wood flooring from Pioneer Millworks. Then in March ABODO siding from Pioneer Millworks will be installed.”
In addition to the aforementioned completed projects, Barber’s upcoming blower door test will stand as the crowning achievement for his Passive House. The Phius sanctioned blower door test is a standardized diagnostic evaluation created to measure a building’s airtightness. This testing is the critical element for a building to receive Phius Passive House certification.
Barber says, “The core tenant of passive house is low energy use and the way you get there is high levels of insulation and a very airtight structure. Right now, we are halfway through the high levels of insulation and we’re finishing up the interior membrane which will be the airtight part of it. After the airtight part of it is done, we can do the blower door test. We’re aiming for a certain minor amount of air leakage based on passive house standards.”
