Category: Residential
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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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Hybrid Heating
We were initially under the assumption that we had to make an all-or-nothing choice: basically a) go 100% electric to get to zero carbon, or b) replace a gas furnace with a new gas furnace and lock in to a carbon-emitting heating system for the next 20 years – the estimated life of the system.…
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Mid-Century Matters
Mid-Century Modern design has always appealed to me, the low pitch, butterfly roofs, big beams that shoot through floor-to-ceiling glass, consistent ceiling to soffit transitions, natural materials, quirky cantilevers, open concept Kitchen-Living-Dining areas, what’s not to love? For houses that were designed in this style from the 1940’s through to the 1970’s, the ‘Atomic Ranch’…