Yakisugi Passive House on Vancouver Island Blends Science and Beauty

Building sustainably, Lee adds, "reduces the daily [environmental] stress of inefficient heating, and of wasting water and other natural resources. "As it is my intention to take care of the land in an ecologically responsible way, I am interested in the ways that the damage can be minimized by mathematics and engineering principles based on physics." 

That's why she chose to build a Passive House. "We love the science-based solutions, and the mathematics is a comfort to us," she says of the Passive House methodology, which is a rigorous, performance-based, and energy-efficiency construction standard based on five core principles. 

Foam-Free Passive House 

"We took on the challenge of building the house, which required all of our experience," says Jamie Kuhn, project consultant, Pheasant Hill Homes. The biggest challenge, he continues, "was that the homeowner didn't want to use any foam products and wanted to use the most environmentally friendly products in her home." 

"Our deep desire was to minimize intrusion on the site," Lee says. "For example, despite the cost, we decided not to use any foam products at all in the construction."

For the Pheasant Hill team, that meant "We had to find a way to design the home specifically around these parameters while still meeting Passive House standards,' Kuhn says.  "We did that by designing the house with an unconditioned crawl space while using cellulose and rock wool to insulate the floor system," he says.

"This worked so well," Kuhn says of the super-insulated enveloped, "that we are using it again on another high-performance building." 

The air-tight home has Euroline triple-pane windows and a Zhender HRV system that provides consistent fresh air year-round.