Passive Home Builds in Squamish

What is a Passive House?

These homes are designed around a set of passive building principles that builders use to meet a high standard of energy efficiency. Creating these homes means builders must account for the area’s climate, maximizing any gains the climate offers while minimizing losses. According to PHIUS, the Passive House Alliance, the basics for building a passive home include:

• Continuous insulation throughout the entire building envelope.
• Prevention of thermal bridging, which happens when temperature transfers between materials through physical touch.
• Creating an airtight building envelope that stops the infiltration of outdoor air or the loss of indoor air.
• High-performance windows—usually double or triple panel—are essential to prevent overheating in the summer and heat loss in the winter.
• Balanced heat and moisture recovery ventilation to ensure interior comfort.

All of these factors and others combine to create a home that is extremely energy efficient, requiring a minimal heating and cooling system to keep the interior comfortable. These homes are draft-free, with consistent temperatures and humidity levels throughout, which makes them not only energy-efficient but also extremely comfortable.

What is the Difference between Passive Homes and Passive Solar Design?

There is quite a lot of confusion about the difference between passive homes and passive solar design. In fact, these two terms are often used interchangeably. Even though there are similarities between passive homes and passive solar design, there is an important difference.

Passive homes focus on a couple of key factors: Limiting energy usage, and eliminating air leakage. Passive solar design also limits energy use, but it does this by focusing on ways to use the home’s natural surroundings to augment heating and cooling systems. A passive solar home, for example, might make use of winter sunlight coming through windows to help warm the home. In the summer, when the sun is at a different angle to the Earth than in winter, passive solar homes might seek to minimize heat gain through windows through the home’s orientation and window placement.

How Much More Does it Cost to Build a Passive House?

One big myth about passive home design is that these homes are prohibitively expensive to build. However, that simply isn’t the case. In most areas, it only costs about 5% to 10% more to build a passive home as opposed to a home built using traditional methods. Compared to homes built to Energy Star standards, passive homes typically cost no more than 3% more.

For that extra upfront cost, you’ll enjoy an enormous return on your investment, not only in terms of comfort and sustainability but in drastically reduced utility bills—which can climb quite high in places like British Columbia!