APRIL 2026 in passive building circles, partly due to the concrete element, and partly because it’s simply not widespread in certified passive projects. For Dennis, however, the logic was clear. “If moisture gets into a control layer in an ICF wall, it’s not going to rot, it’s not going to mould, it’s not going to do damage to your building,” he explains. “To me, it’s a great insurance policy – and it’s also a product I’m very comfortable with.” Many passive builds, Dennis notes, rely on complicated wall assemblies with multiple control layers that perform well when installed correctly but leave more room for error. ICF simplifies that equation. His designer was initially sceptical that ICFs could achieve the airtightness numbers required for Passive House certification, predicting leaks and complications. The results have put that concern to rest. The certification threshold requires 0.6 air changes per hour. The home is currently testing below 0.2. “Airtightness has been phenomenal,” Dennis says. “We are way below what we needed to be.” At the beginning of the process, Dennis and his wife also made a deliberate aesthetic decision: the home should look and feel like a normal central Alberta home, not something that announces itself as a science project. “We very much wanted to build a home that still looked and felt like a normal home you’d see in central Alberta – the same kind of finishes, still aesthetically pleasing,” Dennis says.
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