Passive House Building System

EkoBuilt’s Passive House Shell

There are three main components that go into every EkoBuilt passive house:

1. the pre-certified passive house shell (what we call our weathertight shell package, which we can ship anywhere in North America)
2. the additional exterior and interior materials and finishes, as well as
3. the mechanical systems for handling heating, cooling, and hot water.

Every EkoBuilt house shell starts with a design and a plan. We offer a large selection of passive house plans or we can engage in creating your design from scratch.

As part of the design process, we also confirm whether you’ll adopt the full passive house shell with R values (insulation) we recommend for your location. We can also decrease those R values to meet your preference. We plan the house that you need.

Note: As of August 2025 we are providing our weathertight shell in prefab format as our default. If you prefer to receive the components to build our shell entirely onsite, we can do that instead. Just ask us!

Shipping Our Passive House Building System

For customers within 2 hours drive of of our Ottawa, Canada base, we can handle the entire turnkey build.

For everyone else, we ship our Passive House Prefab Shell along with a site supervisor who will oversee local installation. Your home is finished to the drywall stage and with a confirmed airtightness test in just a few days.

For those who prefer to handle their own build fully (particularly helpful for owners able to build their own home), we can also supply our shell in its components. In this case, we ship the shell materials (item 1 on this page) in bundles:

1. We ship our proprietary passive house material package from our location in Ottawa, Canada direct to you. This includes everything to complete the home’s weathertight shell, as well as interior framing and interior/exterior strapping.
2. We have more than one pre-certified passive house window and door supplier that we work with for this part of your home’s envelope.

1. The Passive House Shell

This provides your home’s structure, protection from the elements, and air tight envelope. EkoBuilt’s weathertight shell is passive house and engineer approved.

Every EkoBuilt PassiveHouse shell includes all of the items necessary for a watertight, wind tight, and vapour tight passive house. Any experienced carpenter can put this together. This kit includes:

• Passive Home Design: (site plan, preliminary drawings, construction drawings, heat loss calculations, duct design/layout, PHPP energy modelling, P.Eng certification)
• Exterior Wall System: including ventilation frame, water barrier, vapor barrier sheathing, internal and external wall frames, air barrier sheathing. Watch a short video on this.
• Roof System: including everything but the actual roof cover (see below for steel roof cover we recommend) — HT ice/water membrane, underlay sheathing, water barrier, air barrier sheathing, internal and external roof frames, vapor barrier sheathing, service cavity frame
• Windows and Doors: PassiveHouse certified windows and doors
• Other: interior partitions as per house plan, subfloors (floor systems) as required, eave framing, passive approved gaskets and tapes, guaranteed ACH (air changes per hour) of 0.6 or lower

Download a PDF that details the elements in our Weathertight Shell Package (the same whether you go prefab or take out kit). We also share additional options for your project in this document:

2. Additional Passive House Components

• Foundation: Passive house approved insulated slab-on-grade tray OR modified ICF basement system. Actual systems vary by location and are customized to meet customer requirements.
• Roof Cover: Steel roofing, standing seam (no fasteners)
• Fascia/Soffit: aluminum fascia and soffit
• Exterior Siding & Trim: eco-friendly exterior siding and trim, fire resistant options available
• Insulation: Varies per climate zone. Our standard includes R75 walls, R90 roof, R48 slab/basement.
• Plumbing: ABS, Pex pip and fittings, two exterior hose taps, rough and finish plumbing
• Electrical: 100 to 200 amp service, wiring to plugs/switches, rough and finish electrical
• HVAC: Heating, air conditioning, ERV (see section 3 on our passive house systems)
• Drywall: for all walls and ceilings
• Interior finishes: we provide estimates for the following items, which are typically chosen by the client and will affect final budget as per their personal selections: paint, flooring and tiling, cabinetry, trim and baseboards, plumbing/taps and lighting fixtures.

Passive House Plans

We offer a huge range of passive house plans and we can also design your home from scratch using our in-house architecture service.

Contact us to get started on your project!

3. Mechanical Systems

We have also selected robust electrically run systems for heating, cooling, and hot water (although we also work with customers who need to determine their own HVAC systems, depending on geographic location, fuel availability, etc.)

There is no furnace required in a passive house, and the footprint of the mechanical room in an EkoBuilt home is very small!

The systems used by an EkoBuilt passive home are entirely driven by electricity, and a small amount at that. Learn about the systems our home’s use on our Passive House Systems page.

Many of our customers want to go Net Zero, meaning they will install a solar panel system to generate as much energy as their home needs to run.

This is incredibly easy to achieve with an EkoBuilt passive home, as the energy demand is so low. Our passive house model home is so energy efficient, it’s actually Net Positive, creating more energy than it needs.