Bringing Affordability to Passive House - Natalie Leonard on The Conscious Builder Show

this is a replay of an interview that i did with natalie leonard who is a passive house consultant as well as a builder in canada specifically we get into pacifist here and what we can do to make it more affordable as well as some really interesting wall assembly details this is a long interview so if you want to check out the table of contents in the description below it'll fast forward you to certain areas if there are certain topics that you are more interested in i'm casey gray the founder of the conscious builder and on this channel we help you build and live more consciously if you're new here go ahead and click that subscribe button and don't forget to check out the links in the description below with everything that's going on in the industry you need to be prepared to handle any kind of conversation effectively especially the tough talks conflict drains your energy and time and this trickles into every area of your business and life hurting your health your relationships and ultimately your bottom line i've created two resources for you here at the conscious builder academy called priming for tough conversations and the conflict resolution toolkit my wife natasha who is a former psychotherapist lent her expertise to creating these pdf handbooks that will help you show up to any talk calm prepared and in control able to turn conflict into opportunity they are available individually or in a bundle at a great price so check it out now at the link below or go to consciousbuilderacademy.com now enjoy this episode with natalie leonard natalie welcome to the show thanks for your interest i'm glad to be here today yeah i'm excited to talk to you about this because you know you've been in the passive house world much longer than i have uh so i'm usually learning something whenever i do these interviews so i'm expecting i'll learn even more this time around talking about pacifiers so uh yeah i'm looking forward to this great maybe before we get into all the pacifists and technical and the nerdy stuff that we'll inevitably get into uh where did this interest come from for you maybe let's go back a little bit because uh i think like you're the first certified pacifist builder right for fiesta in in canada right so there's obviously that interest is sparking from summer so i'd love to know where it all started maybe it goes way back to your childhood i have no idea at this point but i'd love to know yeah sure um yeah um i'm a civil engineer by education my dad was a general contractor i kind of grew up around that and um so i like to build things and i was um building spec houses just on occasion as a side aside uh gig uh and i i've always had a big interest in the environment i think one of the one of the things that's really in influenced me was traveling in asia when i was much younger and seeing how few resources were used for housing uh compared to what we used in north america so i've always felt like we could do better in the way that we build and i've taken an interest in that in a long time for a really long time and i went um i went to one of the northeastern green building conferences back probably in about 2004 and i and i said that it was uh 300 people um almost all with long hair in birkenstocks men and women and then five years later i went to the green building council uh conference in boston and there was you know several thousand people and it was suits and ties and it had you know this idea of green building had really moved into the mainstream and you know so i was i was doing r 2000 and i was doing sort of passive solar and and it kind of trying to keep up to find new ideas and new things to try and i was researching on the web and i looked to europe because i knew their electoral rates were so much higher than and i i kind of stumbled upon the passive house movement just by and it was hard to find at that point in time um and and so when i did my training if you did a search for passive host canada you got five returns on the internet and the last time i did it it was several million so um so it just was really non-existent so i went to this conference in boston and the passive host institute had a had a booth so i stopped by and i started talking to mike and kat and um and i said this is this you know i've been researching this and find this really a practical approach to to the use of resources and and controlling our energy use and carbon emissions and uh i said you know maybe next year i'll go to the conference that you guys have and uh um kat said to me you should just come to the training we're starting one next week in in chicago so i went back to my hotel room in boston and booked my flight to go from halifax to to chicago the following weekend and and uh and and just jumped into the training and originally when i did the training i really just did it for my own learning for my own projects but after i did the training i i had this sort of feeling that this is this is an important way to change the way we build and i need to do more than just build a house every couple years is not going to make a big enough difference so and i hung up my shingle and started consulting and and i tried to talk a number of clients into building a passive house like for about i don't know a year and a half and i was complaining to catrin uh that it was really hard to talk somebody into it and she said almost every region got started by building a spec house so i came home from that conference and and uh got busy designing a spec house and sold it for for list price in about three weeks and and then once we got that first one going about six other projects popped up at the exact same time um and so we made all our first mistakes six times instead of once yeah i i know what you're talking about maybe we'll get into some of those mistakes what do you mention the birkenstocks too when we built our first passive house about nine years ago i remember my plumber making a comment or a joke about birkenstocks and i'm like i never owned a pair of birkenstocks in my life and i don't have any hair so yeah i don't have the long hair probably um so maybe actually let's let's let's go there so actually i want to go back to one comment you said he said there was five five search or five items that came up and now there's millions uh i i find like the passive house movement is still really slow there's very few passive houses actually being like certified passive homes actually being built so what like what are you seeing in the industry because the ones we've built we've as far as i know we're the only contractor in the city who's done multiple certified ones but they've all been for architects right because they're all kind of using it as their show pieces homeowners are like i don't want to pay the extra money to get the certification because well we're not doing spec we're doing custom right and yeah so so what's your experience what are you finding yeah and you know this the certification is is tough because that the num the cost of certification has increased over the years uh the amount of time it takes to do a certification is is substantial and um you know so i i i can be kind of the i can be my own worst enemy on that where i'll say to people like you could get enough solar panels to be net zero or you could get a plaque so what do you want to do here and um you know and i get the importance of certification um but the the net zero certification is like what is it 400 or 200 dollars because it's subsidized by the by the by the government so it's really really hard to get and and you know we've really we've really tried to target what we call the mainstream market you know we're we're not designing and building houses for what i call the rich and famous with deep pockets to do whatever they want with we're we we think to make a really big difference we got to get we got to make passive house available to you know are doable and practical for anybody that wants to build a new house and so you know certificate if you're spending 500 000 on a new home spending 20 25 000 on certification is and it's not just the cost of certification it's some of the things you have to do in order to to get the strategies you've got to implement in order to get there so um we've certified a lot of projects it's mostly been for you know like housing nova scotia um builders um folks that just want bragging rights they want the plaque um but the majority of projects that we've worked on and i've lost count but i know we worked on 103 passive house projects last year um and and very few are are going for certification right now right so are they so you call them a pacifist project and could they be certified if they wanted to uh or would they have to jump through some more like would they have to add a little bit more insulation would they like what are you doing to why why is there passive house essentially yeah so so they er so one of the things for me is a passive host must have an energy model right so whether or not you certify it it should be comparing it uh to to the standards and the majority of our projects that we work on could be certified um the ones that we still struggle with a little bit are small you know the under a thousand square foot houses are still really tough to to reach the certification on um but most of the projects could be could be certified if they chose to um you know and then we get into the differences between the the fies certification and the phi certification and those and the requirements of both and and both have some serious sort of hoops to jump through that don't necessarily guarantee the energy performance of the building but some of them are broader green strategies or they want certified products that you must use certified products in order to go for certification and one of the things that we've really worked hard to do is to say we want to use locally available materials that every builder is used to that they they can buy at the local building supply place put them together in a different way to to build a passive house and that doesn't necessarily jive with with some of the certification requirements right okay so i'm going to jump backwards again i want to go back to the mistakes that this the mistakes that you made six times over what what were some of the mistakes because there's a lot of people who are listening who maybe haven't done passive house yet and obviously doing a lot of research uh and we actually have a lot of people for example reach out to us and they they want to be involved in their own project they kind of want to be hands-on be a part of it which we're fine with but what we usually end up getting hired for then is to do the envelope so we help them kind of seal it all up that the stuff that you can't see and maybe they get us to do the exterior cladding and stuff as well and then they do all the interior finishing um but what are what are the mistakes that you had made uh that you learned from on those first projects yeah so like the first project we did we we used a truss wall and we had to figure out dense pack cellulose so there was lots of trial and error on there and what we did was we used the the the uh wall between the garage and the house and there was no sheathing on it we just meshed it so that we could we could test easily test the density in that wall and then kind of figure out what settings we needed on the on the blower to get to get the proper density so you were doing this yourself like you didn't have a subcontractor we had a subcontractor but they didn't i mean this is no we're going back 12 years right nobody was measuring the density of insulation at that point in time so the insulator was kind of scratching his head going you want to do what you know and and but he was willing to and we we talked to the the insulation manufacturer and it was a lot of work just to figure out how to get the dents back in there um but the biggest lesson learned was probably around tape you know we we used blue skin we put it on we came back the next day was flapping in the wind we we went back to the supplier and they said we used the primer so we put the primer on we came back the next day was flapping in the wind and they said oh you're gonna use the the other primer the oil-based primer so basically we were putting blue skin on with contact cement you know trying to get it to stick to things and they're saying you're you know yours your materials are too wet and they weren't and so just and then it fits really well to itself though like on yes it does doesn't it it's the only thing it sticks to yeah and then and so we ended up doing like five pre-drywall blower doors and then trying to fix stuff and then little things like we're using window box you know and we wanted kind of this big wall of windows on the south side and and realized that between the window box there was not really enough space to get your hands in to tape you know and and how to get your thermal breaks in there and so just it's mostly in the detailing you know that you that you just don't think like it's pretty easy to say oh you build a truss wall and you put 10 inches of insulation under the slab and you blow in some extra insulation and yeah that's you know kind of how you do it you make thick assemblies but but detailing everything properly so you get your air tightness and you get your thermal breaks and you get your your you know your your um continuous thermal comfort and your your bulk water and all of the different building signs stuff it it it's really in figuring out figuring out the details and i often say that when i did the first one if i hadn't known how hard it was going to be because there was nobody i could call you know there was no one to reach out to um i would have never done it but after i did like three or four i wondered why i thought it was hard you know it just seemed easy after that so yeah yeah it's definitely in and as a contractor that that's one of the things that we struggle with because we were you know we're not doing design and although now we can offer it uh we have partnered with somebody but we would often get plans whether they're pacifists or not they're just they're always beyond co the projects that we do same thing usually it's net zero these days um but there are there's so many details that aren't in the plans and uh it's hard to explain to a homeowner like we don't have what we need to actually give you all the pricing for everything right because there's like the okay for pricing set of plans and we're like it's not really it's i guess that we can give you a range but it's those it's those little details that aren't on the plans that that that really end up killing us and taking a lot of time as a contractor uh and we like get a siding company or somebody to try and price it they show up to site they're like oh well we didn't know it was like this it's like they don't read the plans right they're just so used to doing it a certain way yeah yeah they're just giving you their standard their standard pricing model yeah yeah so that's definitely a big challenge so keep that in mind all of our listeners out there yeah and we try like we've tried pretty much everything you know like we and and we still kind of have the even though we don't we don't build ourselves anymore we partner with builders to to execu so we kind of at first we were just you know design building and we do you know half a dozen projects a year and we're pretty tiny there's just two of us and and then we realized that kind of 85 of that build was just standard construction dry walls drywall floorings flooring you know roofing whatever and so what what we started to do was partner with other builders where they would do the finishing and we would do the envelope and then we just kept inching back from that to say okay now we're just going to do these pieces and then we became subcontractors to the builders and then we just now we're down to just doing construction support and we've worked with boat i've lost count again but somewhere around 50 builders so it's the first time they've built a passive house um so we so and we so we kind of know what questions are going to get asked from a design perspective and and um and you want to make sure like we want to make sure our drawings are such that any good builder who's willing to try a few new things can actually execute execute the details because um if you make a one one builder it wasn't our design but one builder told me he basically paid for a four-year university education figuring out how to detail the windows in the middle of the wall um you know on on on his first project so um and we just take the energy penalty and put our windows on the outside of the wall like we we have harsh weather and we'd rather have the windows tied directly into the weather barrier and take that small energy penalty to do that and you you can do that yeah i'm a fan of the big window sills inside too yeah exactly yeah so they're much easier to detail when they're when they're tied in on the outside and builders know how to you know tighten windows on the outside of a building yeah i was just i'm having a conversation with with uh my head of operations before i hopped on this call about a window detail on a project that's not passive but i just we tried a new window we did they had like a super deep uh brick mold that we tried and it's like it's not the we're like uh well it's gonna work well but we're like we still think that there's got to be a better way to do it right and it's it's always it's always one it's just like one of those details that we haven't quite got to what we'd like but it's also partly because we work with different manufacturers and every project is custom there's all these different requirements right so yeah uh yeah because we're doing it you know we know how you get windows and doors into your assemblies is is you know there's a lot of kind of knowledge and expertise that has to go into making that fairly simple and cost effective but robust and and meet the standards yeah absolutely all right so let uh let's jump actually to the different the differences between the pacifiers international standard and the passive house us uh because that's you know new within the last 10 years i think fies was was about nine sorry 2008 we were just talking about 2007 or 2008 or something like that yeah i think they started yeah about 14007 i think um i know they started building maybe they maybe they incorporated in 2008 or something like that but but because because i went to the second training that they did so it was pretty early in 2009 so what are the difference so if i you know if somebody's looking to build a passive house uh i guess it doesn't really matter where at this point like what are some of the pros and cons versus going the the typical the past the european right the pacifist international or going with the passive votes u.s model uh and can they go for both should they is one make more sense than the other depending on where they live uh how should they approach this yeah and i i definitely think it's you know it is climate specific like so for instance um you know we often hear from folks in vancouver the the phi standard works great there's no problems with the phi standard which is a set of targets that are the same regardless of what climate zone you're in and um that's not surprising to me because if you look at the climate data for vancouver and victoria it's essentially very similar to germany and in annual heating and degree days and cooling degree days and and amount of solar radiation so of course it it works well there you you move that standard to edmonton um or a poor colleague who was in fairbanks alaska trying to get certified with his with his five feet of insulation in the attic and three feet of insulation in the walls and still couldn't get to the standard um there is a diminishing return on insulation right like the heat loss is calculated using the u and u is the inverse of r and so it it diminishes as you make it bigger so when you start looking at um when what happened really of what because we started uh fetus was following the the um the german targets and our first certifications were were using those targets and um and what they started to note two things that they really started to notice one was either if you're in heating dominated climate or a cooling dominated climate it became very very difficult to achieve the target and most of canada is in a quite a heavily heating dominated climate so the um the next thing was that in order to reach the target we were over glazing the south side because it was the heating target that we were having trouble reaching and so what would happen was we put these massive expanses of glass on the south side in order to he reached the annual heating demand target and what they were finding as a result of that was overheating in the shoulder seasons the sun is still you know it's low it's still coming in the building and you don't need that much heat and there's a lot of overheating problems and then the poor people in like in you know places like new orleans they would spend their entire their entire cooling budget um just times too just trying to dehumidify right so so it just and so what what we found is we had to take some pretty use some pretty drastic actions in order to our strategies to it to achieve the heating targets for us and um so then phi is in working in really a wide range of climate zones um you know from from florida to alaska um really found that uh it it just didn't it wasn't cost effective and basically you were doing more to achieve the passive house standard um and then it would be to just use some sort of renewable energy technology to replace the the energy that you need to make up and so what they did is they changed to a climate adjusted uh target so that you fill in a little form for where you're located and it spits out what your what your targets have to be for annual heating demand and and uh um annual cooling heating and and also peak loads for both heating and cooling and then they had uh a primary energy target the other thing that they changed which i was also a fan of was um they changed to the metric of measuring air tightness in cubic feet per square foot of building envelope instead of air changes per hour and air changes per hour is a lot more familiar for builders except in the commercial world uh but the the big the big challenge around that is like we were doing two projects at the exact same time one was a 9 000 square foot commercial building the other was about a 1400 square foot house and we were wanted to certify both and the house we got a .67 and and we as another early mistake was we were pretty good we thought we were there well we thought when we finished everything we hit the point six we were at like point six seven when we did the pre-dry wall we were at .67 when we did the final we did not improve from there right so but they you know everybody was high fiving themselves for the point three two we achieved on the large building but when you figured out this the the leakage per square foot of building envelope the little house was tighter than the big building i didn't realize that they changed that for fiesta i didn't know that they looked at it differently yeah so that's that's that's one so that's that's a bit one of the big metrics that they changed and then they change instead of having uh the other thing that that we that was really noticed with the german standard was that small small um high occupancy homes were kind of penalized on the primary energy targets right so if you had uh you know a 2 000 square foot house with five bedrooms um the amount of energy you could use for your primer energy was 120 kilowatt hours per meter square measured in the square footage of the building and so what it was rewarding was like great big houses with few bedrooms and it was penalizing small densely occupied houses and you know for doing good by the planet we want to to reward density in our buildings and and make it um make it more difficult to achieve so they they change the metric instead of the primary energy being a metric of you know 120 kilowatt hours per meter squared of of um footprint it it changed to a metric of per person so each person got an energy allowance and and it it's based on number of bedrooms plus one so so that's a different metric as well so it's actually easier to get small projects certified whereas with the german standard we were having quite you know in my these are all my observations of course but um yeah but you're speaking we're having trouble getting small projects certified yeah no i appreciate that because i always tell people there's always the theory and then there's reality what actually happens right because obviously we have to model and we need to base our you know assumptions on something right that's the only way that we can plan but the the most successful projects also have that experience aspect involved with it where they you know what worked and what didn't work in the past and you can apply that right like the overly the first one that we did too we had tons of south facing windows and we had that overheating problem not like we did pretty good it wasn't so much overheating in the shoulder season uh because we had our windows up high enough and a large enough overhang to block it but we were overheating in the middle of the winter just because we had so much glass and and you know if it's minus 25 out and and sunny uh you can't there usually is sunny when it's that cold right that's right you can't turn off the heat right so we're inside boiling like and it kind of defeats the purpose when you're opening so that's one thing that we bring when we talk to people it's windows are good you don't want in my opinion don't rely on them for heat if you want a comfortable home uh if you're gonna rely on them for heat sure just understand that when it's on it's on when it's off it's off yeah there's no no thermostat you don't control it yeah yeah and and and then so that kind of leads to it uh another point around the standards which is you know that the the the german argument would be that their standards um define comfort and if you thin out the assemblies and use more energy for for annual heat demand and and and peak loads then um then you can't maintain that that thermal comfort that's related to you know the change between the difference between surface area of the exterior walls and the indoor temperature and all of the parameters that are the comfort parameters within buried within the passive house and um you know we just it was interesting because when when we had clients that wanted to certify you know we're really pushing to get down to that 15 kilowatt hours per meter squared for annual heat demand um but when they didn't we were using the energy model to say okay what makes the most sense for this project and you know they're still using tiny heaters so you know getting it below that there's really no point because your heaters can't get any smaller and and when you when you look we were doing a lot of projects where we were at about 20 to 20 to 22 kilowatt hours per meter squared in the early days and when the climate adjusted standard came out it was at like 22.5 and we had tons of feedback from clients to say we don't we use a ductless mini split in our great room we have our we have our baseboards off you know we've got a 12 000 kbtu mini split in here and it heats the whole house except for maybe a couple days of the year on the northeast side upper bedroom we have to turn on a little bit of heat you know so so and this side the other thing that's a bit different so you i could talk forever about this stuff this is good the other the other thing around it was that a lot of people would say there's no heating system in a passive house and that just hasn't proven out in most canadian climates i know that there was a project done early on and they had their monitoring data on the web they take it down because the bedroom was never above 16 degrees you know so so there is um there yeah we do we do need heat um you can't supply enough heat through the ventilation system in most canadian climates in order to um maintain comfort so yes you can say you know passive house maintains comfort but when you really break it down it is climate specific and you know we don't we and the fiat standard is ver has a very strict calculation that has to be done around thermal bridging you know so and making sure that none of the assemblies are cold enough that you're going to get rotten molds because they're too cold so so they're protecting against kind of those parameters while still allowing um more energy uh to be used for heat so i always say it's like going to the grocery store you're told you've got a hundred bucks in the german standard you must spend 15 on on meat and you must spend 15 on vegetables well with the climate but you got 100 total and with the climate adjusted standard if you're in edmonton you get to spend 29 of it on on meat and one of it on vegetables right and then vice versa for the for the the cooling dominated climates right now another thing that comes up often is uh passive solar houses right versus a a passive house or a certified passive house what would be the difference for that and and i've i've heard it less but i do see people out there promoting their houses as passive houses or passive solar actually just one came up on the market that my real estate agent had sent me and said hey there's a passive solar house for show and i looked into it and it's it's nothing the 1970s yeah and that's a real thing for us here because it was a really strong passive solar movement um pre-passive house so early on it often you know we're talking about passive house and people would say my uncle's had one of those for 40 years you know that the end and they're talking about passive solar and um you know passive solar the biggest thing for me about a passive solar home is it has no energy model you know so my own house is a passive solar house that was built before i learned anything about passive house and um that you know the idea is that you don't really care much about the building envelope what you do is put enough thermal mass in the building and capture enough sun from the sun every day through massive amounts of surface and glazing that you can store that energy and as the transmission losses occur overnight there's enough stored energy to maintain the temperature in the house and you know the the the um the issue with that is if the sun's not shining you know you just have tons of transmission losses so typically those passive solar houses also have like a big fireplace and and they're using that to augment the days that aren't sunny um and which is not necessarily helping eat the house because it's a big hole now yeah exactly well a wood stove or a kiba like uh that you see a lot of the soapstone uh stoves in those houses at least we do here so so it um you know it it kind of got parts of it where yes we want to orient the house to to the sun and we want to get all also the daily the natural daylight and the the bright cozy spaces as well as a certain amount of heat from the sun but when you actually um when you actually let the energy model tell you how you're doing um passive solar doesn't doesn't perform very well when you when you put that in the model um it's it's much more practical to super insulate make it airtight and then worry about your and and it's interesting often in our climates thermal mass has a bigger impact on the cooling loads than it does on the heating loads yeah it works in both directions right exactly i've never been a fan of relying on thermal mass for anything because once again it's and i'm always thinking comfort and you can't you can't control that right like you said if it's not sunny it's probably it's working against you at that point it does help buffer temperature swings um you know thermal mass will help but again it's it's pretty you know it's it it's a factor but it's not a huge factor right so you have a lot of designs on your website pre-designed homes uh that you're you mentioned that they're passive homes now are these homes that could be certified or like you to to your point it's a house that's been modeled so obviously you modeled these houses but if i were to buy those houses and you know stick them here in ottawa would they would it be possibly certified or how does it work because it's going to change from climate zone to climate zone and i'm assuming it's going to be over overdone for another climate zone right if you put it somewhere warmer yeah that's a great question casey and so the stock plans really came from our desire for pacifists to be much more mainstream and you know it just broke my heart that somebody would call and say i really want to pass the pedals and then you say well you got to pay for architectural custom design because it's the only way you can get a passive house and they would say well geez you know we can't roll that into our mortgage we we just can't afford it and um and so a lot of people that we that we would really you know had an interest and and and valued that that kind of uh investment just just couldn't afford the upfront cost and sometimes people can afford the upcoming upfront cost but they don't have the time or the the interest to to to work to do a custom design so that was kind of getting getting under my skin that we were losing people to to what i perceived as a barrier that you had to have a custom architectural design in order to get a passive house and um we were really fortunate so we kind of come up with this idea and we we took it to nrc and we got some funding um from nrc to do some some product development and um what what what we did was we energy modeled it was it was it was a cool project and we put a lot of hours into it but we what we wanted was to figure out assemblies that we could draw that wouldn't change dimensionally if we moved between climates but we could change we could change the r values and we could change the the glazing on the windows so because if if we have to make the walls thicker we got to redraw everything now because none of the dimensioning is proper on on a stock plan right so so that was kind of our goal then we had a bunch of other goals like we wanted a nailing base in our wall type because who knows what kind of siding people have might be vinyl siding it might be cedar shingles it might be stucco you know we wanted we wanted something that any kind of siding could attach to on the outside we wanted an airtight layer that was embedded somewhere in the wall so that it wouldn't be damaged but you know during construction or afterwards so we had all these kind of criteria and um so we did and so and we wanted to make sure that it was um you know the moisture profile worked in in in all climates and um that we could certify the projects if if a client so chose to do that and and that's to the climate adjusted standard that most of most of these would not um meet that 15 kilowatts of the international standard um in most climates in canada so um so it was kind of cool so our wall type is is a double stud wall with with foam layer in the middle and we um so we can upgrade the high density bat we can go from eps up to to um to poly iso so we can range the r value in the wall we've tested and it was really amazing that like a wall type that that worked in st john's newfoundland would fail in edmonton and vice versa you know so we also wanted something that would work in all climates and um and one of the things i tell builders at the builder training i teach is do you know don't just take a wall type somebody else you saw on the internet or somebody else told you about in a different climate zone it it's imperative that you know your assemblies work in your climate um and we we we proved that when we were doing the testing so that's how well sorry you modeled these homes to like this wall type works in all climates across canada okay great yeah yeah and we can we can increase the r values by just changing the material but we don't have to change any of the dimensioning so they're all the same so you know we go we go rock rock solar high density bat instead of regular bath and and then we'll we'll we'll upgrade um we'll upgrade the insulation it's pretty easy to add more insulation in the attic it's pretty easy to add more foam underneath the slab so the wall kind of becomes the tricky the tricky part and um and then we we modeled every project in um in those six in those six climate zones uh it's super easy once you've got the model done you just change the climate location and you can kind of check it through so so now that being said some of the smaller projects are still really hard to certify like anything that's under like 1200 square feet in size becomes difficult because you just have so much surface area for for the the volume and and the um square footage that you're living on so you've got tons of transmission uh surface area to to deal with how's it work if i purchase a plan i'm a homeowner i i purchase a plan and obviously that the lot is going to vary uh how does it work uh if i well i buy a plan here in ottawa and i have a two acre piece of property what would i expect to get and what would i expect to have to do after the fact and would this be something you help with or does they do they find somebody with their bcin or somebody to help them get the permits here yeah yeah so ontario is a great one right because of the the two bcin requirements so we we have bcin in house for the architectural and right now we're we're still subcontracting out the hvac pcin depending on you know depending on our volume we've talked about getting we we're back to visiting uh we're doing so many that we're back to visiting bringing it in-house for our listeners just in case because they're from all over bcin is a building code identification number that's required for professionals in ontario and well different areas to get permits get a building permit yeah and and in some in some municipal like we just did a project down in niagara and my heavens their building permanent requirements were way beyond just the drawing set you know it was super extensive so there is municipal requirements outside of our drawing set for sure um but but uh most like i think we've had two stock plans go out the door with no changes so most people change them you know some most of our plans do not have a basement um you know so we we've added basements we've added walkouts we we've um you know changed the exterior style if people like the floor plan but they want to you know more traditional style or more modern we'll we'll change it you'll navigate all of this from wherever you are so that they can build it where they are exactly yeah okay yeah and so it's a full permit set you know everything is everything is done and and ready to go um we usually try to get the their builder or a local person to do the site plan because we don't like to do site plans on on uh locks we haven't seen ourselves so we usually try to get the builder to most builders will have a way to get get a site plan in as part of the permit and um yeah and then if they want if they want to do um net zero we do we do some more energy modeling and some specking of a system to get get them to net zero if they want to certify then we do some specific energy modeling to their shading and their their lot orientation but all the plans are oriented either south side yards so front yard or south backyard and and then you know that the tricky one is that 45 degree orientation and we have done uh and we'll just work the window design a little bit to to um you know so because basically you've got you then end up with two faces uh two elevations that are that are getting solar gains that so we will kind of rework it in that way so we do quite a bit of changes to them um but but but it's you know kind of like a quarter of the cost or or less yeah that's going to be my next question what you know what's the range because i know it's going to vary from the plans but what's the range that somebody would expect to pay when buying one of your stock plans but adding some you know having to do some minor changes maybe yeah so the plans themselves are are 6500 and and that includes all the passive house detailing and and knowing that that the building is energy modeled and you've got all your your moisture safety happening um and but the average is around 10 000. so with modifications in the site plan or other energy modeling and so forth it's and and we've you know we've kind of taken the the stock plan as an inspiration and comp you know completely changed it and you can end up you know almost 20 grand when you do that but still now you have yeah uh so in that case now uh if they're building that house are they gonna have like do you do interior elevations as well like as a builder i need to know like tile patterns where plumbing fixtures go where to put blocks we don't we tell the clients if they don't want to do that that work themselves to find a local often they'll find a local interior designer and and often they just work with the builder to to do the selecting so it just depends you know stock like stock plan folks are are you know they just want a really good house and they can't find anything to buy so they're not necessarily building their dream house where they want to invest a ton of time you know designing a custom tile shower or a backsplash or whatever they're yeah it's a good point you know it's just a little bit different different level in in in the market yep absolutely well it's great that you're that you're addressing that model and bringing this to making it accessible for so many people because i i think it's important to build better right that's obviously what we stand for yes absolutely an efficient home so and it's been fun we've done one in the nuvik we've done them in colorado and bc i think most provinces and and new york michigan like they've gone all over the place now it's been fun yeah that's exciting so yeah you've carved out a good little niche for yourself uh for sure at the see how where do i want to go with this now i have so many more questions i have to do round two that might be easier to do a round two so yeah so yeah let's let's do that we'll we'll have to set up another time because obviously we can go into a lot more from here um but we've already covered so much and i think that that's you've provided a lot of value and explain what's possible with passive house and i think that this is great to show people and even for myself to have this knowledge to be able to if somebody reaches out to us this is an option right we can go this route still get you a net zero home not have to pay 20 30 40 000 whatever it's going to cost for the architectural drawings and we do request interior elevations just because we run too many issues without having them right but yeah but we can we have some we have some contractors that will use for that as well if you know if a client really doesn't have anybody they want to work with locally we we usually encourage someone to find someone local because because then they can help them shop right right so for us for us to to subcontract and and and and make selections we don't even know if they can they can buy without a real hurdle to get to get access to the supplies so so that's typically how we'll help will address it so one more question maybe we'll end with this where do you see the the future of construction in in you've been in the industry for a while even before the pat you've jumped into passivhaus where do you see construction going there hasn't been any disruption uh late in in this industry and we obviously have a lot of work to do to continue to improve our our buildings uh not just new buildings but existing buildings too are there technologies that you think could help us is there something that's really going to change the way we build is there a product out there that you you feel really confident about a way of building maybe yeah i mean for me it's just this like let's just like for for one thing i don't believe in the the small incremental changes to the to the building code i would really like to see a giant leap forward and our our mission as a as a company is is that that passive host level construction becomes building code and um you know we'll probably work ourselves out of jobs if we can get there but but it's the right thing for the for the planet and and it would provide people better better homes that are more adorable and and resilient in storms and all all the rest of it that we all have drunk the kool-aid know know or the benefits of of building this way and so i i would like to see that and then i think you know let's stop making it complicated it doesn't have to be that complicated like you know you can you could and making it so precious like it just can be really sensible practical construction and i use locally available materials just put them together in a different way but the trades are already familiar with them and you know originally when i started i was having a colleague in maine ship me tape because i just couldn't get it and now it's in the rebuilding supply place you know i can go in any store in halifax and pick it up so you know so it it doesn't need to be we we don't even make it overly complicated it's just better construction more attention to detail and and use locally available materials and you know before all of these crazy price price increases we've seen in construction over the last couple of years we could build a passive house for the exact same cost as a co-built house in nova scotia because we're getting rid of the central heating system which was generally a central heat pump for the tune of you know 15 to 25 grand depending on the size of the house and we had a 10 000 rebate from efficiency nova scotia and our upgrade cost for about 25 grand so we could build a passive house for the same cost so why why wouldn't you yeah that's great well natalie this has been fantastic thank you so much you're obviously a wealth of knowledge uh and we will definitely get you back on again to continue this and yeah well as you can tell i can talk about this for a long time so i'll happily come back yeah that's fantastic so what's the best way we'll make sure we share all your links below but what's the best way for people to get a hold of you or to reach out to you or website whatever whatever it is yeah the website is is good and there's a contact form right on the website it's um it's passivedesign.ca great well thanks again natalie and i'm looking forward to our next conversation yeah me too it's fun thank you if you enjoyed this interview you will also enjoy this video that i did on what it's like to live in a certified passive house until next time i'm casey gray and remember to live consciously [Music] you

Channel: The Conscious Builder Inc.

Views: 1,496

Keywords: custom home builder, the conscious builder, efficient home, comfortable home, sustainable, green energy, energy efficient, construction, general contractor, healthy home

Id: _OtF0osQ0Cc

Length: 51min 39sec (3099 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2022