The motivating title of the article comes from the tagline for 475 Supply; one of the suppliers of speciality materials used in the construction of SpohnHome. Without a supplier like 475, a high performance house would be more costly and more difficult to build.
475 lives their mission to transform North American construction towards durable high-performance, Passive House and zero-energy buildings by supplying essential knowledge and critical building components for projects like ours.
They provided the weather resistant barrier (WRB, Solitex Mento 1000) and tapes shown in the image below. Click on the image below (or this link) to see a blog post they did on our project!
EcoCraft Homes, our builder, has found them to have best-in-class products, with super attention to detail, from both the technical and customer service aspects. One example: they rapidly responded with specific advice due to a permitting issue causing a delay from the time of module manufacture cladding install.
Their company name, “475” refers to the heat demand requirement of the Passive House Standard, 4.75 kilo BTUs per square foot per year. And while we are not building a passive house (see this post), we will come close and our design required many materials and components you would find in a passive house.
Hence, our builder’s go-to is 475 Supply!
We are so happy to have them as part of our project and, literally, as part of our home!
SpohnHome 
Cool! I look forward to learning more
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