A Kala house is designed and built using passive house principles to control air moving in and out of the house, to keep walls free of moisture at all times, to ensure that only small energy inputs are needed to maintain temperature stability regardless of what is happening outside, and to be durable and resilient.

Via four, carefully designed and expertly constructed control layers: air, vapor, thermal, and water.

Controlling air flow significantly lowers both the demand on your HVAC system and the moisture carried by moving air that gets trapped inside wall cavities and causes mold and wood rot. We control air by sealing the tiny and seemingly insignificant gaps and holes around the structure that code-compliant construction allows.

While preventing excess from flowing through your walls, we make them vapor open to allow any humidity or condensation that forms to dry quickly. This ensures the long term durability and health of your walls and windows. 

Keeping your home cool in the summer and warm in the winter is a result of not only controlling air movement as noted above but critically, by breaking the path thermal energy uses to flow through your walls. We achieve this by adding continuous exterior insulation, beefing up interior insulation, and integrating high-performance windows. These windows have thicker frames constructed with air pockets and channels that create cavities, slowing down the transfer of thermal energy between the inside and outside.

Controlling for air and vapor via a wall assembly that includes high-performance windows, a water-resistant barrier (WRB), ventilated rainscreen, and other features that either block bulk water or carry it down and away from the home creates a powerful resiliency factor. A waterproof and fully insulated basement completes the enclosure, ensuring decades of trouble-free performance through the wild swings of weather we experience in our region.

Because it’s not just us making claims. The physical differences between code-compliant structures and a Kala home are mathematically modeled and documented during design. They are easily observable during third-party field testing and verification during and after construction. Once you move in, you’ll experience high performance daily through greater comfort, lower energy bills, cleaner indoor air, lower maintenance costs, and other small joys.

Not if performance is designed in from the beginning. A Kala home gives equal weight to the square footage and finish level on one hand, and durability, health, comfort, and sustainability on the other. This results in a home that is the perfect blend of functionality, aesthetic appeal, and quality that every house should offer, regardless of your budget.

Yes, but you might not need to. A Kala home sips so little energy that adding rooftop solar may not provide a sufficient return on the required investment. With thoughtful site and window orientation coupled with the control layers noted above, many Kala homeowners choose not to install solar panels. We always help our clients plan for the possibility of solar by constructing the roof and utility chases necessary for getting production from panels to the mechanical room. So you can decide to add active solar at any time.

No. Every Kala home is designed and built using passive house principles, and it generally only takes a modest effort to bridge the gap to certification. This is an extra step that we are happy to discuss with you.