Jackson Digney of Enduro Builders shows how to seal a Passive House display home with an Intello membrane and proper insulation. Common mistakes include insulation gaps at the top plate and incomplete batts, which create thermal bridges. The team tapes the membrane to window frames to form a continuous airtight barrier, then runs a blower-door test to find leaks.
Hi, it's Jackson Digney from Enduro Builders. We're back at the display home finishing off 2 of the pillars of a Passive House, airtightness and insulation. So you can see behind me that we have started installing the intello membrane. The intello membrane gives the house the airtightness that we need to get Passive House certification. It also makes sure that we get the airtightness without locking moisture into the home. Locking moisture into a home is clearly a bad idea, and one of the reasons that we use a membrane like Intello is that it's designed specifically for the purpose of making homes airtight whilst also letting the moisture pass through to the outside. Another key component of getting ready for putting in an our internal membrane in is checking the insulation and making sure that it's installed properly and that there aren't any gaps between the insulation and the building elements. A lot of people overlook this really simple step of getting the insulation installed correctly, and it's amazing, given that it's such an easy product to install, how often you see it done badly. So you can see up here is This is a common example of insulation not going over the top plate, and what that means is that that black area is basically a thermal bridge to the outside world. So once we slide those batts down into place, that will be fixed. Another example is this bit of insulation here where we've got pieces of insulation used. so that we don't have much waste, but not installed as well as they could have been, 'cause you can see that gap in there. And what we often do is fill them with foam or cut a new bit of insulation. These little details with getting your insulation install done properly are really easy to fix, and it's amazing how often they're not done properly and they're not checked. And so that's one of the reasons why one of the most important points of building The most important thing in any Enduro home is our insulation inspection. And we will walk around and check for the things like I've shown you and repair them as we go so that when we're done, we know that the thermal envelope of your home is completed and is completed correctly. Once we've finished installing all of the intello on the walls, we'll do the cutouts for the windows that you can see are not cut out behind me. And, and then the intello will be taped to the window frames, which Which completes the airtightness all the way from the floor, through the windows, up to the walls, at the top of the walls, around the floor system for upstairs, and then all the way to the roof. So there you have it. We're up to the point now where our thermal envelope is complete. Very soon the rest of the airtightness system will be installed, and then we'll be able to do our mid-build blower door test. And, uh, not only confirm that everything that's been installed to date is airtight, but if there are any gaps anywhere, we're going to find them and we're going to fix them before we cover everything up with the linings.
