Build Your Home Ideas

2nd Blower Door Test: Thanks to all for the great turn out for the open dining room ! We estimate there was about 150 people who came to check out the progress. No doubt this was a motivator for us to keep up the work and keep the blog up to date! Thank you! After everyone left on Saturday we sealed off the open plumbing drains and the attic access hole and performed another blower door test.  Our 1st Test Results: Only the 3 1st floor southern windows were installed There were zero penetrations in the zip system The house volume was calculated to be: RESNET, BPI and ASTM standards                                     38,698 CUFT Passive House Standard                                                        27,299 CUFT The Blower Door number ...

Open House! Rochester’s 1 st Certified Passive House 340 Quaker Meeting House Rd. in Honeoye Falls Saturday March 26 th 10am-4pm If you are thinking of building or renovating you won’t want to miss this! Come see 1st hand: Passive House Design Super Tight  Construction Heat Recovery Ventilation Super Insulation Passive House Windows We will be on hand to answer questions and give tours If you cannot make this Open House contact me at: MattB@airtightservicesinc.com to set up a time to come check it out! Drywall will be starting soon, so come see everything before it is covered up!

Construction Update 2 Things have been happening at a fairly rapid pace for the past few weeks.  Both the plumbing and electric rough in's have been completed, and inspected.  Our electric meter was installed by the Utility.   Insulation of the outer wall assembly is complete The Zehnder Ventilation system has been installed (except for the ducting to the outside) The air source heat pumps have been installed. So lets take a closer look at the plumbing system:  We have incorporated a few different components not very common in our area.  Drain Water Heat Exchanger This is a slick little device. It looks like a big copper tube. From an engineering perspective, the fewer moving parts the better! Moving parts break or need maintenance. In a Passive House the largest energy load is heating hot water. The drain water heat recovery component simply takes the warm water going down the drain and "pre-heats" the cold water going to the shower valve as well as the cold wa...