We had a full-house yesterday for Passive House Pulse Victoria at the Wollaston Prefab 4-plex. The event sold out a week in advance and had a waitlist of people hoping for a spot. Nothing brings the high-performance community together better than a building tour!
The event kicked off with two tour groups being led by the architect Graeme Verhulst and Dave Fraser who worked on the mechanical design. Each group got the opportunity to hear from both speakers as they pointed out key elements and decision-making they were involved in along the way.
Dave taught us about the Coandă effect, which was the reason for placing the ventilation diffusers in the positioning they did. Later, his presentation covered his teams research that was done on different types of diffusers to mitigate condensation and distribute the hot/cold air most effectively.
Following the tours, we all met in the top floor unit to share some refreshments, and hear presentations beginning with some words from Passive House Canada, as well as the event sponsors who made this all possible.
Dave’s presentation informed us about the 5 projects his team is working on implementing and testing new mechanical technology on, funded by CMHC and SSRIA. The project focused on occupant comfort in relation to ventilation, mould growth and condensation, experimenting with different ductwork and diffusers. When the project is complete, they’ll be monitoring 2 years worth of survey data from the occupants on their comfort as well as the system operation. The goal is to achieve 95% satisfaction.
Graeme covered many of the architectural details during his tours, so his presentation focused on insights of the actual property acquisition, municipal zoning challenges, and many of the lessons learned as he invested in this property from both the architectural side as well as the development side.
If you’d like to hear more about this project, the team will be speaking about it at the 2026 Passive House Canada Conference on Tuesday May 26th. You can find more info here.
The evening wrapped with some great networking, food and catching up with old friends. We even spotted some of the attendees from our Passive House Trades Certification course that just finished wrapping up in-person, in Victoria that day!
You might recognize these people as the PHC team from 2020-2021.
A big thank you to everyone who came out, and everyone who made this event possible including Taylor from Frontera Homes who generously prepared us space in his active construction site.
We’ll see you at the next one!
