Building better gives you reasons to feel better
When my son and I were building our house, my wife refused to believe we wouldn’t need a clothes dryer. Here on the coast, where rain can fall for months, how could we hang clothes in winter without them becoming musty and smelly over the days it would take for them to dry?
“We won’t need one,” I told her. “We’ll have this high-performance ventilation system. It will keep the air fresh, dry and moving through the house. And the house’s constant warm temperature in winter will prevent condensation or mould.”
“Wire the plug in,” she said. It was not a request.
We’ve now been living in the house for 3 1/2years. We don’t have a dryer. Towels and jeans dry in six to eight hours on the clothes rack — even in winter. We also don’t have a furnace, heaters or air conditioning.
We don’t wear sweaters indoors during the winter. Or slippers. Or heavy socks. We do yoga in our ground-level living room without feeling chilled. We sit by the windows and watch storms whip the tops of nearby Douglas-fir trees and feel no cold or draughts.
In winter, the house is warm and cosy. In summer, it’s comfortably cool. It’s also quiet. My son and I built the house to the Passive House Standard, an international high-performance, quality-controlled building standard. Instead of relying on mechanical systems to keep the interior comfortable, we rely on really good windows, lots of insulation and a design that shades the windows during the summer, but lets the sun in during winter and eliminates “thermal bridges” that conduct heat and cold between the indoors and outdoors. We also have that ventilation system mentioned above.
When we were designing the house, we were told it couldn’t be done, it would be too expensive, it wouldn’t work.
Well, it does work, and it costs only a bit more to build than another house of similar size. We’ve recouped those costs by not having to pay for a furnace and by paying less than $300 for electricity each year since.
The principles of high-performance building design and construction can be applied to any kind of building — homes, apartment buildings, offices, mixed-use spaces and institutional buildings. Dozens of such buildings are now being designed or constructed throughout Vancouver. The energy savings aren’t lost on the City of Vancouver and the B.C. government. The province recently adopted the B.C. Energy Step code, which permits municipalities to require higher levels of energy efficiency, building toward “Net Zero Ready” by 2032.
Similarly, new City of Vancouver bylaws require new buildings and applications for rezoning to include energy-efficient work and living spaces. This is critically important to the city as it navigates toward becoming the world’s greenest city by 2020. Buildings currently contribute more than 50 per cent of Vancouver’s greenhouse-gas emissions.
To address climate change, the city, the province and Canada must address building inefficiency. Vancouver has chosen to lead by ensuring residents are able to enjoy the benefits of such high-performance buildings.
But come see for yourself some of the energy benefits high-performance buildings offer. Two weeks ago, Passive House Canada, with support from the city, Vancity and members of the local design and construction industry, installed two structures at Olympic Village Square in False Creek. One structure is built to the B.C. Building Code, the other is super-insulated like a Passive House building.
We placed about one tonne of ice in each structure on July 27, then left them to withstand the summer heat. Next Monday, Aug. 14, we’ll open the structures.
How much ice will remain in each? We invite you to submit your guesses online (iceboxchallenge.com) until 11 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 14, for a chance to win a Whistler getaway.
Stop by Olympic Village Square any time before then to see the structures or visit the website. See for yourself how we all can build better, feel better, use less energy and keep Vancouver one of the best places to live and work.