Building a Carport for a Passive House

Well, this is, without a doubt, one of the best features we had thought of during the design stage. Paying homage to the mid-century iconic structure, it has become rather a convenience element than a design option. It serves many purposes keeping your cars dry, creating a sheltered passage from the car to the house entrance, and making a nice wind tunnel to keep you cool outside in the summer. (ok, the last one may or may not be completely made up). Since it’s a carport for a Passive House, it did have its challenges during construction but we managed to overcome those with the proper insulation.

Avoiding thermal bridging around carport

The carport is located under the master suite and also has an adjacent wall with the workshop. The workshop itself is not a part of the Passive House envelope, so some design decisions had to be made to properly isolate it from the rest of the structure. Since it is directly under a part of a Passive House, it is still insulated on all sides, including the ceiling. To avoid thermal bridging through the master suite floor, the space between the master suite and carport ceiling was double-insulated. First, the floor joist cavity was dense-packed with cellulose. Then we added a 5-inch deep outer “cage” to the carport ceiling and packed it with Rockwool COMFORTBATT® Thermal Batt Insulation. This roughly added R23 to the total insulation value of around R55.