In the news...

Recently featured in Rossland news: http://www.rosslandnews.com/community/319718261.html

Note:

Rossland Passive House windows and doors had to be specially ordered from Optiwin based in Austria.  After extensive research by Brett Sichello, Euroline Passive House windows and doors were not suitable for this project.  Collective Carpentry used Solitex Mento 1000, a weather-resistive membrane made by Pro Clima in Germany and distributed by 475 High Performance Building Supply.  All other building supplies were purchased from local building centers in Trail and Castlegar, BC.

Prefabricated exterior panels installation - Day 5

Gerry Sawkins, certified Energy Advisor from Natural Resources Canada came to perform the blower door test today.  Brett Sichello & wife, Sarah, came down from Kelowna for the test.

Want to know more about the blower test?  Click here!

Very good results!

Hear, hear!

The view...for now.

Time to clad the exterior of the house, install the roof, and build internal service walls where all the plumbing and wiring will be located.

Prefabricated exterior panels installation - Day 4

Roof panels were installed today!

With the glulam in place, the 1st roof panel is carefully placed

Securing the roof panels

The house is up!

Prefabricated exterior panels installation - Day 3

While most of us had the day off on Canada Day, the Collective Carpentry team were hard at work securing all the panels for roof installation tomorrow.  We paid them a visit and toured the house.

The Collective Carpentry team: Rane, Andrew, Jan & Joey (from Trail!)

Steel beam over the main floor "kitchen"

View from 2nd floor "master bedroom"

Prefabricated exterior panels installation - Day 2

Andrew & Joey joined Rane & Jan for another day of hard work.  All the wall panels had to be installed in preparation for the roof panels arriving on Thursday.

2nd batch of panels ready to be lifted up & secured in place

Andrew securing one of the wall panels

By the end of Day 2

Prefabricated exterior panels installation - Day 1

Collective Carpentry has been working hard prefabricating the panels in their Invermere factory over the past few weeks.  Prior to that, lots of planning happened between Brett, Alison & Rane/Jan.

The panels finally arrived yesterday evening.  This morning, Rane and Jan (pro: Yan) were ready to install the first batch of panels.  What an exciting day!

They came prepared!

Before

The crane & the panels meet for the first time

The first piece

Jan & Rane securing the main floor panels

After

By lunch time

The concrete slab

Bitumen waterproofing (black in color)

Rebars in place

Pouring concrete to form the slab on 5 June 2015

While all these were happening, the house was being built in Invermere by Collective Carpentry.

Progress - 15 to 21 May 2015

Lots of activity before the boom pump arrives.

Here comes the boom pump

Concrete being transferred from the mixer to the boom pump

After a few days - the external stairwell and east wall

The garage

West walls

Progress over the last 2 weeks

Progress - slowly but surely.

Forms

Pouring concrete into forms

The garage - for now.

The external staircase - coming soon!

Not even a 5.2 but we think it is nice - it stays.

What is a Passive House?

Let's answer that question by telling you what a Passive House is not.  A Passive House is not a Passive Solar House.  A Passive House is not a house built by a vegetarian who practices yoga and meditates at least 3 times a day.  A Passive House is:

"A building standard that is truly energy efficient, comfortable, affordable and ecological at the same time.
Passive House is not a brand name, but a construction concept that can be applied by anyone and that has stood the test of practice."  Passipedia.

If you want more information, click on these links:

Passive House Institute
Canadian Passive House Institute

Breaking ground!

Start your engines!  Let the excavation begin!

No rocks! (Keeping fingers crossed)

And the digging goes on and on...

Where is the house going to sit?

Dan had place stakes in the ground to give us an idea of where the house would sit.  Went to check on it after work because we want our house to have the view.

Just checking

The view