The largest passive house project to date in Canada is being built. It’s a six-storey wood frame 85 unit market rental building with retail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the case of this project called The Heights, the walls are comprised of a 2\u00d76\u201d wood exterior structural wall with insulated cavity next to a 2\u00d74\u201d rigid insulation barrier and a 2\u00d74\u201d interior-side insulated wall for mechanical\/electrical needs. To help meet these standards, the roof is R-45, triple-glazed and insulated frame windows are R-8 and additional floor insulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The design priority is air tightness. Passive house\nstandards are 0.6 per changes per hour and The Heights measures only 0.3 air\nchanges per hour. In comparison, new well-built homes see five air changes or\nmore per hour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
European designed HRV systems have been employed to ensure that proper ventilation is used in this project, as improper use could lead to problems such as condensation in interior walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Scott Kennedy, is the architect and engineer designing The Heights. He has been on a passive house training course which is the only way you can build to passive house standards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once they have passed this course, one of the challenges faced by Kennedy is creating a thermal-bridge free building which is key to passive house standards. \u201cThere are a lot of tricky spots\u201d in wood buildings but, he said, “new materials marketed and used correctly can resolve most of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n