The Passive-Aggressive House - Our History of a Passivhaus Build

First, the background to this Passivhaus

My partner and I are geeks. Our idea of a romantic dream was to build a house so well insulated you could heat it with a hairdryer. For added fun, we wanted to do this on a tight budget while raising a young child.

The hairdryer part wasn’t a pipe dream – it’s a common way of describing thePassive House certification standard or Passivhaus，这是德国大部分地区的建筑规范。在许多欧洲城市，新建筑也是强制性的。然而，尽管建造被动式房屋的成本只比传统房屋高5%，但在加拿大，被动式房屋却屈指可数。在加拿大，冬天似乎并没有成为一种短暂的趋势。

The living and dining area of Ann Cavlovic's Passivhaus House © Mark Rosen.

当人们疑惑地看着我时，我常常背诵这些事实;“被动房屋”这个词，没有进一步的解释，似乎使人们想象一个房子，如果你击打它就会倒塌。还有人将其与20世纪70年代的“被动式太阳能”房屋混淆，后者通常有太多的窗户，导致昼夜温差剧烈波动。

“There’s no good reason,” I used to say, “why we don’t build more Passive Houses in this country.” I assumed it was just Canadian denial of our climate; we like to wear thin jackets and complain about the weather. Are we this way with our permanent shelters too?

There are indeed no good reasons. But there are reasons.

Our Passivhaus design was engineered

We initially thought ourselves lucky to meet an engineer with impressive Passive House credentials. After months of discussions, he presented us with floor plans, which, to our eyes, looked dreamy and wonderful.

然后我们把它们拿给朋友们看。当足够多具有设计背景的人使用“地下城”和“地堡”等词时，我们不得不承认自己陷入了困境。

通常，建造房子需要两位专家:建筑师和建造者。在被动式住宅中，你需要第三个人:一个认证的被动式住宅设计师，他会用电脑模型来判断你是否达到了标准，或者你需要做哪些调整才能达到标准。为了做到这一点，有六个“常见的嫌疑人”可以玩。The most obvious includethickly insulated walls, window placement to make good (but not excessive) use of the sun’s energy, and tightly sealing all cracks. Less obvious, perhaps, isthe minimization of “thermal bridges”比如混凝土阳台——就像大多数公寓的阳台一样，整个冬天从地板上吸走热量。

Asuper-duper heat recovery ventilator有必要在引入新鲜空气的同时尽量减少热量损失。最后，该结构的表面积体积比需要最小化。这些都不涉及太空时代的材料(你可以使用普通的绝缘材料，尽管数量是über)，尽管North American suppliers of Passivhaus high quality windows, tapes, and equipment have been slow to emerge.

The key word in all this is “design.” Acertified Passive House designerdoesn’t necessarily know much about aesthetics. It should ideally be an iterative process, a tango between an architect and a Passive House designer. But many early European projects were only “designed” by Passive House designers, who are often engineers, not designers in the usual sense. So unfortunately, Passive Houses have a reputation for being reminiscent of Cold War era communist housing, or something made by a structural engineer who’s never kissed another person on the lips.

Change of plan - where art thou passivhaus architect?

将我们自己从与工程师的安排中解脱出来并不昂贵，但我们却失去了大量的时间和情感投入。任何建筑项目，更不用说绿色项目了，都迫使你在频繁的投资之后重新开始。这只是我们的第一次。

当我们开始寻找建筑师时，我们惊讶于许多人热衷于设计一个相对较小的生态住宅。然而，找到另一个认证的被动式住宅设计师并不容易。我们地区的某些机构曾卷入一场冲突，导致德国被动屋研究所和美国被动屋研究所之间臭名昭著的离婚。

但后来又出现了一个新人——一家公司的一位建筑师刚刚获得了被动房设计师的认证。美学和能源效率可以在内部协调它们的创造性紧张关系。这些建筑师都很年轻，他们的业务几乎是全新的，但缺乏经验有一个重要的另一面:没有包袱。他们还没有惹毛一个人。我们签了一份合同。

应该有专门从事建筑相关夫妻咨询的治疗师。建立关系就像翻新一样，考验着一段关系中的每一个触发点:金钱、分担负担和压力管理。对我们来说，在与建筑师见面进行最初的“了解你”(get-to-know-you)会议前15分钟，导火索就被引爆了。我们来到他们的办公室，礼貌地表达了我们对生活的梦想，但只是部分地隐藏了我们想要勒死对方的欲望。

A few weeks later they gathered us around a table and presented their design on slick laptops using 3D modelling, with shadows falling as they would at 2:30 pm during winter solstice. Rather than our crankiness, their design was inspired by the raga and drone in Indian classical music, which they felt reflected our need for both individual pursuits and the constant hum of family life. We had left the domain of the utilitarian geeks and leapt right into that of the artsy.

A beautiful Canadian Passivhaus design © Mark Rosen

Their design was stunning – and tens of thousands of dollars over budget. This was due to a miscommunication only possible with a Passive House: when we’d said we could afford so many square feet, we were thinking total footprint, but they were thinking internal dimensions. The difference is negligible in conventional houses, but not in a house with almost two-foot thick walls.

But our architects defied the stereotype – they had small egos and several non-black articles of clothing – and went back to the drawing board. We soon had a smaller but beautiful design even our friends approved of. Maybe there was some raga and drone in there, we didn’t know, but we sure loved it.

So, who was going to build our passivhaus?

为了保持较低的成本，我们想在得到一个真正挥舞着锤子的建筑商的一些“现实核查”之后最终确定计划。和建筑师一样，我所拜访的建筑商似乎也热衷于建造一座小房子。但当我解释了被动屋元素后，热情就结束了。“你为什么要这么做?””其中一个说。另一个人告诉我，我在我们这里的气候下这么做一定是“疯了”;它看起来会像摩登原始人的房子，吸引霉菌。另一个让我明白额外的隔热是无用的(这一点在有热桥的传统房屋中是有效的，但在被动式房屋中不是)。他们也没有一个人欣赏这样的推论:有一种比他们多年来一直在做的“更好的方法”。

Eventually, we found a builder who had completedsome near-passive house projects. After bribing him with a free lunch, we met at a pub where he leaned back in his chair, exhausted, repeatedly mentioning he hadn’t seen his wife or kids in ages. His current Passive House projects were draining, he complained, because he had to constantly police his carpenters who didn’t want to bother with details like using specific draft-sealing tapes in specific places. He’d recently had to open up a wall and restart because they’d skipped a few steps. He was spending so much time on-site that he was neglecting the management of his business. As a result, he didn’t think he’d make any money this season. Despite all this, he wasn’t sure his projects would meet the standard, as the certification process was so onerous.

Basically, he was one burned-out dude. With zero enthusiasm he said he could build a house for us but couldn’t guarantee it would work very well.

It was around this stage I started fantasizing about driving to a model home in the suburb of my least affection, and choosing from an existing palette of floor models, paint schemes, and conspicuous consumer upgrades. For a granola type like me, this was extreme. But no one would call me crazy. I’d feel so normal. I could forget that it’s often these carelessly-built tracthomes, even if built “to code,” that develop mould within twenty years.

When I was 8 years old my friend Chantelle died of leukemia. Her parents had recently had foam insulation sprayed into their walls, a type that was subsequently banned for containing carcinogens. No one could prove the foam was the cause of her cancer specifically, but even as a child I could make the link. After she died, the company sucked the foam back out of the house at its own expense.

It’s a wonder, then, that I cravedwalls with the thickest insulation imaginable. Although we planned to useblown-in cellulose insulation– basically plant fibers resembling shredded newspaper, one of the oldest and safest insulating materials around – still the fear of doing something “different” resurfaced in remembering Chantelle. So I began to empathize with builders who had an aversion to new techniques. Mistakes can happen in any project, but the risks increase when the depth of experience is shallow. And Passive Houses are certainly not immune: in one project in Belgium the insulation and ventilation systems were improperly installed, leading to levels of mould and formaldehyde (from the wall sheathing) that rendered it uninhabitable. There is simply less room for sloppy technique in a high-performing, Germanic house.

So maybe a Canadian shivering in a thin winter jacket has a point after all. Maybe they once had a warm coat, but it gave them hives, so they’re sticking to the leather jacket that’s tried and true. They just need proof that warmer options exist, are safe, and don’t look like a hemp sack. I still hoped that’s what we could achieve.

During all this, I attended a conference on climate change. The panel spoke about the things that need to change in our society: the ways we transport ourselves, grow food, generate energy, and yes, build structures. Although I’d heard most of this before, I sat at the back of the room and felt the weight of this ‘inconvenient truth’ more palpably in my bones. For the first time, I was trying to lift something with my own hands, instead of just making relatively easy lifestyle choices or pointing fingers at government.

But others still carry most of the weight. Building a sustainable house is our small contribution, and nothing I’d been whining about is as inconvenient as tearing up coal plants or pushing transit through a city designed around cars. Stuff has to move. It can’t wait twenty years. So this is how my family and I will take one for the human team.

换句话说，猪头战胜了焦虑。我和我的搭档以前都不是什么东西的尝鲜者，但我们不打算建造一座消耗大量化石燃料的房子，只是为了让木匠有更多的空间搞砸。所以，我对自己说，重新开始吧，我签了一张支票，让建筑师和一个国际认证机构来监督最终的建造过程。生命是太阳创造力对地球熵的不断应用。这是太阳辐射物理学:“吸取吧，公主。”

避开安全的和平庸的似乎是典型的加拿大人。但是，让我来反驳这种刻板印象，因为被动节能屋的标准起源于加拿大。During the 1970s oil crisis, the Saskatchewan government askedHarold Orr, an engineer, and a committee of keeners to design a passive solar houseappropriate for the local climate. The result wasthe world's first Passivhaus - The Saskatchewan Conservation House, which not only incorporated passive heating from the sun, but also many of the elements that make up the current Passive House standard:careful sealing with tape for air-tightness, jaw dropping amounts of insulation, and a fresh air intake and heat exchange system designed from scratch (spawning a company that still exists). It was no solar hippie house.

The first Passive House - Saskatchewan Conservation House Image via the Saskatchewan Research Council

但当石油危机结束后，人们基本上忘记了这一点。后来的业主没有意识到它的重要性，并在正确的方向上删除了不完美的第一次尝试，如尴尬的百叶窗，以弥补他们不得不满足的脆弱的窗户。然而，德国人并没有忘记。沃尔夫冈·费斯特(Wolfgang Feist)是创立“被动式节能屋”标准的两位物理学家之一，他将其灵感归功于萨斯喀彻温省环保屋。

Some Canadians do wear a proper winter coat

Or maybe that’s just in Saskatchewan?

Because I was clueless aboutwhat “timber framing” means，我打电话给我们最终合作的那个人。

Timber framing is how most Europeans built houses until the 1800s. Four or more heavy logs provided structural support at each corner of the house, and light walls were built between them. It fell out of fashion mostly because a new stud frame method – in which the wall construction also provided the structural support – was cheaper and required less skill to assemble.

Building a stud frame wall initially involved a bunch of two-by-fours standing two feet apart, connected at floor and ceiling by nails instead of the more labour-intensive “joinery” used in timber frames. A flat backing such as plywood stabilized all this and created rectangular cavities into which insulation could be shoved. (In my former 100-year-old house, that included newspapers, socks, and other unmentionables.) Mechanical ventilation wasn’t necessary, since the whole contraption leaked so much air you didn’t have to worry about air quality or mould. After the oil crisis there was pressure to insulate better, so the industry moved to two-by-sixes to get two more inches of wall depth. But every wood stud was still a thermal bridge that continually leaked heat – in nearly every North American home only about two-thirds of a wall is actually insulated.

Passive Houses usually get around this bybuilding two stud frame walls back to back，中间有一层连续的绝缘层。但有了木框架，人们可以挂在结构上的墙的厚度几乎没有限制。另外，建造一堵厚墙要比建造两堵薄墙便宜，这就抵消了木材的成本。因此，木结构框架是一种老式的方法，可以说更适合现代建筑科学。我很高兴一些木匠坚持使用它，尽管它已经过时了200年。

And this builder wasn’t burned-out. In fact, he seemed excited about trying something new. Most importantly, he was a rarity for having a long-standing crew of skilled carpenters who hadn’t lost their pride in artisanship. And accommodating two timber posts in the middle of the house required little design adjustment. So our choice was made. When I gave the builder a deposit, we both brimmed with positivity. He nevertheless added, “But still, by the end of any project, I never want to speak with the client again.”

This bit of honesty was actually a gift for building

Building any house is an exercise in problem solving, decision fatigue, regret, and sorrow. The most resilient embrace each blow to the head, and the wallet, as an “opportunity” to overcome a challenge. Our tendency was more toward ugly tears. But surprisingly, only a small portion of those “opportunities” were linked to the Passive House elements of the house.

Screw-ups will happen during any project. If your tradespeople are skilled and conscientious, as ours fortunately were, screw-ups will still range from the minor to the moderate, as a simple function of moving from what works on paper to how life unfolds in practice. Aesthetic screw-ups we could live with. What haunted us was wondering what was different enough about our anal-retentive house to make a screw-up more consequential, whether that meant not meeting the standard, or worse, something that would jeopardize our health or safety.

When a suspected issue arose, we’d fire off an email to the builder and architects. This became a race to see who’d be the first to throw the other under the bus. The builder would say the plans from the architects weren’t detailed enough. The architects would say the detail was on page A4.2 if the builder cared to read it. Because the issues were technical, we couldn’t decipher who was “right.” I began to feel like the child of divorced parents. ‘I love you both. Can you kiss and make up?’

But in fairness, I should be objective about what kind of clients we were: friendly, cooperative, detail-oriented, and prone to anxiety or even borderline personality disorder about mold, structural failures, and other catastrophes. Or more succinctly: nice but not infrequently pains-in-the-ass. We were once told that my partner’s repeated emails about tiny gaps in the foam under our foundation, which turned out to be a non-issue, cost $200 in project management time. This wouldn’t be the last. There were certainly mistakes we “caught” to good effect, but they amounted to about 5 per cent of the things we worried about.

Our passivhaus is risen

Yet slowly, a house emerged. Any “deficiency” the architects reported was sneered at by the carpenters at the end of a scorching summer day, but fixed. Our carpenters took pride in their work, which is far too rare these days yet crucial for any high-performance building. They practically stalked the electrician, plumber, and other sub-trades to ensure no unplanned holes were poked through the air barrier. As a result, the blower-door test proved the house met the air-tightness requirements, which is no small feat.

Near the end, passers-by would holler out, “Nice house.” Much like the process of having a baby, we took great pains to ensure the health and safety of our creation, and then only wanted to hear how darn cute he was.

And cute isn’t superficial. As our architects point out, we take better care of things that are beautiful. An ugly or trendy kitchen will get ripped out, landfilled, and replaced sooner than a simply beautiful one, with all the attendant environmental impacts. To make our house, or any Passive House, something people might desire and care for over many years, beauty is a very practical requirement.

Passive House Design, it's all about attention to detail to make a house work © Mark Rosen

I’m completing this essay in the writing nook designed for me. I look out through three panes of glass at a row of trees, a west-facing view that casts the perfect light for writing. It’s going to be a scorcher of a summer’s day, but we’re letting the cool morning air blow through before closing the windows and turning on the ventilation, keeping us cool without air conditioning. Last winter, we used one electric baseboard heater on cloudy days and otherwise relied on the low-angled winter sun to add heat to a house that barely lets it escape. On the first brutally cold and sunny day after we moved in, I sat beside our south-facing window in a tank top.

And energy-geekiness aside, we just love our home.Comfort isn’t only about the reading on the thermostat; our bodies perceive gradients in temperature across different parts of the skin, which is why I wore a fleece in my drafty old house when the thermostat said 21°C whereas here I’d be in a t-shirt. Theindoor air qualityis so much fresher too. Aesthetically, the house doesn’t fit us like a glove; it fits our better selves, since we hang out with each other in more positive ways – we often linger at the dining table playing a board game, something we’d never do in our old house, mostly because that space was drafty and uninspiring. In the end, the marriage of old-fashioned timber frame and modern architecture is the perfect balance for us soft-core hippies. Mom and dad worked it out after all.

Our own relationship survived as well – no small triumph, that. Our son, who “helped” in little ways, yelped for joy on moving day.

游客们似乎对我们的“生态”房子不像蘑菇感到惊讶。冬天的时候，大多数人都很震惊，因为我们只有一个小加热器，但水泥地板却不冷。在参观之后，他们通常会问，“为什么不是每个人都这样做?”

There are indeed no good reasons. I hope, very soon, there will be no reasons whatsoever.

Toread more about passive house standard houses see here, to see more details onArchitect designed prefabricated Passive House & LEED ready Kit Homes available in Quebec, Ontario, New York, Vermont, Maine or New Hampshire hereor see thisGuide about Passive House Certification in North America here, fromthe EcoHome Green Building GuidesonNorth America's favorite green building website - EcoHome.net...

安·卡洛维奇(Ann Cavlovic)是一位居住在渥太华地区的作家。Her fiction and essays have appeared in several Canadian journals and newspapers includingThe Fiddlehead,The Globe and Mail, andPRISM international.Find her at:www.anncavlovic.com. Article first written in Canadian Architect Magazine,