Passive House in the Woods

Southwest Corner

Just a quick impression today. This photo is already a bit over a week old but it captures the southwest corner quite nicely.

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Insulation under Footings

One of the questions we frequently get is whether insulation can actually be installed below footings. The photos above show a 12″ insulation package below a bearing line inside the building perimeter. These footings are engineered, and the foam that’s being used was selected based on its compressive strength to deal with the specific loads. So the short answer is, it can be done. The long answer is that we look carefully at the specific conditions to determine, whether this is necessary or not. Not all cases will see as many layers of insulation as you see in these images either. When it comes to the application, we try to limit it to two layers of insulation with staggered joints. In this particular case, we only had one area of the building that utilizes this particular foam board, and therefore stuck with a readily available 2″ board material.

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Pouring Concrete

These images show the concrete being poured. We specify fly-ashe as filler for the concrete. Due to the fact that we are pouring into ICFs we can omit additives typically used for cold temperature pours. The insulation shells on either side of the concrete core keep the concrete sufficiently warm. At the top of the pour, we use temporary pieces of insulation to avoid frost exposure.

The plywood braces around windows and at junctions and corners help stabilize the ICFs during the pour. They are later taken off and recycled throughout the entire project. Some of the plywood will likely find its way into the next ICF project.

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First Floor Construction

The first week of January marked the construction of the first floor building envelope. The pictures show the exterior ICF walls and window openings. We use FSC-certified timberstrands as window bucks. They are laminated with ice and water shield on the side facing the concrete pour. The southwest facing corner window framing already shows a glimpse of what the views out of the finished windows will be.

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