Extreme Green Homes Go Mainstream

Spearheaded by NRCan’s ecoENERGY Innovation Initiative and Owens Corning Canada, a series of building projects across Canada are using extreme green designs whose goal is to be at the forefront of net-zero building.

These homes are meant to produce as much energy as they consume, and as a collective form a larger-scale initiative than the one-off NZE (net-zero energy) custom homes built in the past. Using more than $4 million in funding, five developers in four provinces will together produce a total of 25 NZE homes using technologies such as photovoltaic panels and hybrid heat-pump water heaters, with other renewable energy technologies to be explored as building progresses. The initiative, inspired by an American Association of Architects’ goal to see all homes built to zero-net standards by 2030, is meant to test viability for average consumers using materials readily available to the average builder.

The first set begun last September in Guelph, built by Reid’s Heritage Homes. The latest set, of six condominiums, just broke ground in Laval, PQ; the others are all single-family dwellings.

Reid’s Heritage Homes was responsible for the first LEED Platinum home in North America, back in 2007, and in 2012 was the first home to win the Energy Star Building of the Year Award from NRCan. Once the five Guelph homes are built, which is anticipated for the end of 2016, the homes will be monitored for occupant behaviour for two years.

In an interview with Home Builder magazine, Reid’s Heritage Homes senior Vice President, Blake Seeberger, said their architectural objective was to avoid making the homes look futuristic, but rather for them to seamless integrate with the neighbourhood. Towards that end, they used the floorplans for existing ENERGY STAR homes in the community with some modifications.

Among the technologies included in the Westminster Woods quintet are a drain water heat recovery system, which uses heat captured from shower water to heat the cold water line to the hot water tank, reducing the amount of energy required to heat water; increased air sealing (using an Owens Corning air barrier system); triple-pane windows, and higher R-value insulation in the attic. There’s also a combination air-source heat pump that acts as both furnace and air conditioner, which should result in a consistent temperature throughout the homes, whereas traditional homes generally experience temperature variations of up to eight or so degrees between the basement and ground floor in the summer. Thanks to our weak Canadian sunshine, the homes use a battery backup for the solar panels that captures and stores extra solar energy when it’s available for those times when it’s not.

I don’t know exactly what the project costs, but the myth that green building has to be exponentially more expensive than traditional building is slowly being debunked. While green homes sometimes have upfront additional costs in the neighbourhood of about 2.4% according to the US Green Building Council, the costs are usually recouped through energy savings, and green homes tend to have higher resale values than their traditional peers, with prices on average 8% more for certified versus noncertified new builds and up to 30% more for resales.

I’m finding it increasingly easy to imagine a city where an electric car is plugged into each solar-panel-clad garage and we all get off the grid for good. With cost increasingly not an object, I think we’ll see builders of all scales embracing the new technologies soon.