The Construction Source

DECEMBER 2020 recovery ventilation) system that is constantly filtering and refreshing the air, so that it never feels stale. “Every single person who has been in there has commented on how beautiful it is, but also how comfortable it is,” Mike says. “They like that it never feels stuffy.” “They also like that it’s silent,” he says. “It has triple pane windows and the walls have high R-values, so once all the doors and windows are closed, you really can’t hear anything outside. It has a very peaceful atmosphere.” “One person we brought through was so impressed,” Mike recalls. “He said it was like the first time he walked into an Apple store and the first time he sat in a Tesla. He’s going to hire us to do a design and build on a Passive House coming up; he’s just looking for a lot. He said there’s absolutely no way he’s going to build any house that’s not a Passive House after experiencing that.” Going into the process, the clients on that home were similarly passionate about energy efficiency. Right fromthe start, Mike says they wanted to build a certified Passive House specifically – “that was always quite important to them,” he recalls. The main challenge, he adds, was the client’s shifting circumstances. The project was originally meant to be their dream home, a place for them to eventually retire, but the scope changed when one of them got a job offer on the east coast. “That was about halfway into the design process,” Mike recalls. “So the project ended up shrinking in budget, and the design had to change to match up with what they were going to use the building for. Now it was going to be a rental, with the potential for them to move into it in the future.” “So we scaled it back, we scaled the budget back, but we still retained the idea of it,” he says. “It was still going to be a Passive-certified building.” Blue Water Concepts ended up doing the full design-and-build of the project – though Mike is quick to credit ‘MIZU Passive House Consulting,’ a firm they hired to assist them, since it was their first attempt at Passive House certification.