Passive Solar Dream House

Pierre and Manon had a shared dream to someday build a Solar Passive House. They knew they wanted to have a smaller house in order to reduce their environmental footprint, so they started from scratch. They hired a contractor who raised the walls and then Pierre and Manon took it from there!

The home has a small footprint, but it doesn’t feel like a small house. It has big rooms and is spacious. A lot of people when building a house don’t necessarily think of its position relative to the sun as they just want the front exterior to look good. However, a priority for the house was for it to be comfortable and for there to be a lot of sun inside during the day.

They shared their build journey on social media as Manon realized that a lot of people thought that just because a home was sustainable, meant that it couldn’t be beautiful. Which in this video you will see is very far from the truth!

They paid close attention to Passive House standards as they really wanted a house that was comfortable and utilized the sun.

Passive House, originally Passivhaus from Germany, sets the bar for energy efficient design. Compared with typical building codes, the Passive House standard achieves huge reductions in building energy consumption, especially for heating and cooling. It’s a flexible design process that works with many different architectural styles, and follows five principles:

1. Airtight Construction – Passive House is the most airtight construction standard in the world, that requires high-quality materials and careful construction techniques. You will not be heating (or cooling) the neighborhood.
2. Thermal Bridge-Free Design – Heat transfers more easily where there are studs or joists than through surrounding insulated areas, a process called thermal bridging. These thermal bridges are eliminated by a continuous layer of insulation around the whole house.
3. Superior Windows – Windows are both a heat gain and loss. In climates with cold winters, the norm for a Passive House is triple-glazed windows with low-emissivity coatings, inert gas fill, and insulated spacers and frames.
4. Quality Insulation – The more insulation the merrier! A high R-value, for example, R-60 walls, means that a Passive House retains more heat, minimizing the energy required for heating.
5. Ventilation with Heat Recovery – We all need air. Heat Recovery or Energy Recovery Ventilation (HRV/ERV) provides fresh air while saving energy.

Something special about this home is that it has polished concrete floors, and incorporates many natural, local sources. It’s inspiring to see dreams come true!