Josie Constantini: Passive House Window Install Details

Josie Constantini stopped by the July 6 episode of Construction Tech Tuesday. Josie is a project manager at Ontario-based Schilthuis Construction and a PHIUS Certified Passive House Consultant. You may also remember her from the She Who Constructs Summit in March 2021, where she was one of our panelists.

Josie described the technique, the technology, and the technical aspects of Passive House window installation details. This is an extremely important part of Passive House construction because of how important window installation is to moisture management, airtightness, and thermal bridging. Given that Schilthuis Construction specializes in Passive House multifamily construction and has become one of leaders in commercial Passive House buildings throughout the greater Toronto area, Josie had a large pool of experiences to pull from.

In her presentation, Josie provided several examples of the how her team overcame detailing challenges while onsite and the lessons learned from doing window installs in conventional steel and wood structures. Josie focuses primarily on how her team learned how to better sequence window installations as well as how to better prepare windows offsite for more efficient installation. Additionally, she discussed the nuances of installing windows on precast projects.

Three specific points that Josie made toward the end of her presentation were:

1.       Watch your corners! Corners can be difficult to tape effectively, so make sure you use your tape application tools.

2.       If a part of your site is going to remain exposed for an extended period of time (say, a few months), you may want to hold off on your interior taping. There’s a lot of dust and debris in any construction site, and unless you’re putting drywall up right away, you may want to wait to air seal.

3.       Complete a mockup before you start installing your windows.

You can check out Josie’s entire presentation by clicking on the link above. View the chat transcript here.