INSIDE THE HOUSING EVOLUTION by Matthew Sachs
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Urbandale builds the first home in Canada to the new 2012 R-2000 Standard
Natural Resources Canada recently announced the launch of the revised 2012 R-2000 Standard. Urbandale played a major role in this launch by hosting the event in our demo home – the first home in Canada built to the new standard.
This event was symbolic for me personally because it represented the results of several years of [...]
Live Chat Today on Ottawa Citizen Online
Today I’ll be doing a live chat for the Ottawa Citizen website on energy efficient construction. My guest panelist will be David Foster, the Director of Environmental Affairs for the Canadian Home Builders’ Association. Log in here today between noon and 1:00.
Read morePassive House VS Active House: Two Competing Visions for the Future of Homes
Passive House is a building standard originally developed in Germany that can reduce heating needs by an astonishing 90%. They reach this target by making the house extremely well insulated, virtually air-tight, and by orienting and designing the house to maximize passive solar gain. Although this concept has been slow to take off [...]
Read moreCarleton University High Performance Housing Group
The Carleton University Engineering program has a 4th year design project that focuses on High Performance Housing. The students in the course have spent the year investigating construction techniques and technologies that dramatically reduce the energy use in homes. I’ve been very closely involved with this group of students because one of their course deliverables [...]
Read moreSolar Water Heaters – The Lonely Spinster Aunt of Energy Technologies
The conventional wisdom around marketing energy technologies has been that the only thing that purchasers care about is payback. Certainly, that’s the first question that anyone asks. The assumption is that the decision to purchase energy efficiency or renewable technologies is strictly financial, and if the technology can pass some internal hurdle rate in the [...]
Read moreWhy Are R-2000 Homes Healthier to Live In?
Health Canada has been studying the health of people before and after moving into new R-2000 homes and non-R2000 homes. Their results clearly indicate “that people who moved into R-2000 houses found that their health improved more than those who moved into conventional houses.”
Urbandale R-2000 homes are healthier than conventional houses because they have improved [...]
Green Home Labeling Programs
Third party verification through labeling programs are critical to promoting green building because frankly, if we say our homes are great, customers may not believe us, but if a third party says it, then a purchaser may take that more seriously.
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