Author: arthomson
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A Brief Note on Airtightness in Canadian Codes
On teaching a course for Passive House Canada for Building Officials last week and today, I was re-introduced to the numerous disparate adoptions of the NECB and NBC model National Codes by the provinces. I have never yet in my career (30yrs) seen such broad disparity. Ontario, my jurisdiction, is clinging hard to the actually…
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OBJECTIVE 4.012 ~ Now Available in BETA
OpenBuilding OBJECTIVE: A Free Early-Stage Energy Modelling Tool That Actually Works Canada wastes $44.6 billion annually** on building energy inefficiency—more per capita than any country on Earth. Despite decades of voluntary standards, expensive certifications, and complex modelling software, the performance gap between modelled and actual building energy use can vary by an incredibly wide margin. …
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Domestic and Service Hot Water Use (DHW, SHW)
Summary of Canadian Domestic Water Heating Research (Using kWh) Based on the 2005 CBEEDAC report “Domestic Water Heating and Water Heater Energy Consumption in Canada” (Aguilar et al., 2005), alongside recent findings from Abdeen et al. (2020, 2021), we have reviewed our OBJECTIVE framework’s domestic hot water (DHW) energy consumption model (values expressed in litres…
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TEUI G.4.1 Net Usable Gains
First of all, if you’re not sure what TEUI3 is, Take me to the Index of Articles! If there is one, single thing that differentiates Passive House Energy Modelling from most other methods, including Hourly, Dynamic modellers, it is probably what is called the Net Usable Gains Calculation. Just semantically, think of a building as…
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TEUI T.10 Thermal Energy Demand Intensity (TEDI)
Flashes of insight aren’t that common. And when they do occur it’s easy to miss them, dismissing our intuition over what may be well-maintained orthodoxies, even if incorrect. But we can’t doubt our hunches when they unrelentingly demand our sustained attention. Such was the case while poring over about 3,000 lines of javascript code in…
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TEUI L.2 Heating and Cooling Degree Days
If you’re not sure what OBJECTIVE or TEUI3 is, Take me to the Index of Articles! Heating and Cooling Days (HDD and CDD, respectively) are an effective shorthand for defining climate-related impacts on heating and cooling loads of buildings. The idea is simple enough, but the units – a mashup of time and temperature –…