build-leed / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Why build LEED?
LEED Homes

Why build LEED?

There are no LEED certified builders, only LEED certified buildings. To build a home to LEED certification is something that is accessible to anyone, no accreditation is required to undertake the process. It is simply a matter of registering your project and successfully completing the requirements of the program. Why ...

LEED Homes

The 19 LEED for Homes Prerequisites

This is designed to offer only an overview of the 19 LEED for homes prerequisites that must be met for certification. Not all categories have prerequisites, and some have more than one. Please refer to the rating system for more details. Innovation & Design Process (ID)  1.1 Preliminary rating:   Conduct a prelimin...

LEED Silver mid-rise in Gatineau, QC.
Lifestyle, location and commuting

Sustainable building practices create prosperous communities

This post is courtesy of Hutchinson Builders Sustainable building practices are doing more than just helping the environment - they are also helping to create stronger and more prosperous communities. This is according to the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), with its chief executive Romilly Madew explaining ...

The LEED rating system
LEED Homes

The LEED rating system

  There are 8 LEED categories with a total of 136 available points, and a minimum amount is required to achieve certification. This point threshold is determined by the size of the house compared to the amount of bedrooms. To encourage increased housing density, homes with more bedrooms per total square foot have lower...

The LEED Platinum Beachaus II in Vancouver, BC
LEED Homes

The Canada Green Building Council (CAGBC) Measures the Environmental Benefit of the LEED Certification Program.

After certifying its first LEED project in 2005, the CaGBC collected data over the next eight years, measuring the direct impact LEED Canada made on various aspects of the environment, including greenhouse gas emissions, national energy and water consumption and waste diversion. The results were compelling: A 312,006 C...

Canada one of the top 10 countries building LEED homes
LEED Homes

The top 10 countries outside the U.S. certifying buildings with the LEED rating system

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has released its list of the top 10 countries for LEED® outside of the United States, on which Canada ranked No. 1. The list demonstrates the global reach of the movement that is transforming the built environment into healthy, high-performing structures that benefit the planet a...

Students at New Frontiers School Board to build LEED home to be donate
LEED Homes

Quebec carpentry students to build LEED house for Habitat for Humanity

After completing a design workshop for high performance wall systems, teachers at the New Frontiers School Board in Ormstown, QC have settled on a building envelope that will outperform houses built to code by a factor of almost 3. The school will be releasing videos following the progress of this first of its kind pro...

Building a Passive House that's LEED Certified too - an Owner's Tale
Passive House

An owner/builder's account of building a Passive House

Building a Passive House that's also LEED certified This is an owner blog EcoHome posted following the personal experience of Sarah Cobb and William Murray of Rocket Construction Inc. as they built a home in Abercorn, Montérégie, Quebec. Setting the bar about as high as you can, they targeted both LEED certification an...

Midori Uchi
Efficient home design

A new contender for the title of Canada's Greenest Home

Naikoon Contracting Ltd. is embarking on a new residential project that's expected to achieve some of the highest green residential construction standards in the country. "Our goal is to take current green residential building standards to the next level by employing some of the most advanced sustainable systems and ec...

Leed platinum plaque
Green building certifications

All about green home certification programs and rating systems for USA & Canada

Why pay for a green home certification? As more people pursue high efficiency green home rating certifications, they become increasingly well known and trusted. Consequently, more people seek them out. Developers build smarter homes when consumers demand them, and the existence of certification programs raises the bar ...

Resilient Homes, why they're important in dealing with Climate Change
Lifestyle and environment

Resilient Homes; Why we need to build to withstand climate change events

Future-proofing homes for Climate Change:  Anticipating future climatic challenges and constructing resilient buildings to withstand them should be an important consideration when building any new home - but we're often told that "a Green Home costs more", and too many people then decide in the face of resistance from ...