building-envelopes / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Choosing a building envelope
Wall assemblies - new construction

Choosing a building envelope - starting with the perfect wall

What is the best wall system for a home?  We're frequently asked which is the perfect wall system for high-performance LEED, Passive House or Zero Energy Homes, Well, a perfect Answer to that Is, first Ask the Right Questions! - After all, what is the best way to get from one place to another?  You have to choose betwe...

Exterior air barrier membrane © Ecohome
Air and vapour barriers

How to install an air barrier for reduced air leakage - video

The Ecohome Demo House has a vapor permeable exterior air barrier, and with an ACH rate of .69 it is  several times more airtight than the average new home. Air leakage can be responsible for up to 1/3 of the total heat loss of a home and cause significant moisture damage in walls, as one small hole can be responsible ...

Multi-unit Passive House for Heiltsuk First Nation on Campbell Island,
Passive House

Multi-unit Passive House for Heiltsuk First Nation in British Columbia

Bella Bella is a small community located on Campbell Island between the northern tip of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii. Approximately 90% of its 1,500 residents belong to the Heiltsuk First Nation. In 2004, a fire destroyed the staff housing complex at the RW Large Memorial Hospital, and Vancouver Coastal Health [VCH...

Crawl Spaces or Slab on Grade Foundations?
Crawl spaces

Should I Build on a Slab on Grade Foundation or a Crawl Space?

What is the difference between a slab on grade and a crawl space? A slab on grade, or ‘frost protected shallow foundation’ is exactly that, a slab of concrete on the ground. There’s more to it of course, but let’s start with a ‘win’ in the comprehension department shall we?  A slab on grade rests directly on the groun...

R values and insulation performance
Efficient home design

Understanding thermal performance

First published in ecoHouse Canada The thermal performance of wall assemblies and insulation products has long been characterized using R-value, a metric which describes thermal resistance. While R-value is useful, it doesn’t tell the whole story about heat flow through building enclosures such as walls and roofs. Rece...

Balanced insulation levels in a green home
Efficient home design

Insulation in green home building, a balanced approach to putting it where it does the most good

Home insulation - how much do you need and where to put it: Think of the heat in your home as if it were water behind a dam, and that insulation levels were the concrete wall of the dam. Would you choose the height of that concrete wall randomly, or would want an even level of concrete to hold back as much water as pos...

Ontario’s first LEED certified hospital
LEED Homes

Ontario’s First LEED Certified Hospital

Bluewater Health announced today that it has been selected as one of the first Canadian hospitals – and the first acute care hospital in Ontario – to achieve LEED® certification. Bluewater Health’s construction of a 588,000-square-foot complex at the hospital’s Sarnia location consisted of a new addition attached to th...

Artistic rendition of the 2000 square foot sustainable home being buil
Living Building Challenge

Taking the Living Building Challenge

The Living Building challenge is one of the toughest green building certifications to complete, and has yet to be achieved in Canada. The Endeavour Centre, a not-for-profit trade school in Peterborough Ontario, is setting out to change that when they begin construction this spring on a 2,000 square foot three bedroom h...

Energy modeling simulation of heat loss through thermal bridging
Efficient home design

What is a thermal bridge and why is it so important to break it?

It is easy to look at the R value rating of a material and assume that our entire wall assembly matches it uniformly. But when you factor in the thermal bridges caused by framing materials and any discontinuities in the wall structure, you can also quickly deduce that this is not the case. It doesn't take expensive equ...

Efficient home design

Phase change building materials - natural heat storage in buildings

  This article was inspired by a podcast I heard at Positive Energy, where I have yet to hear a podcast that I didn't want to listen to a second time, so check them out if you're like me and you think listening to building science  makes mundane tasks like folding laundry a joy. This particular episode was about phase ...

UBC's Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability
LEED Homes

UBC Lab Exceeds LEED Platinum becoming one of North America's greenest buildings

The University of British Columbia has opened the most sustainable building in North America, a $37 million 'living laboratory' that will help to regenerate the environment and advance research and innovation on global sustainability challenges. The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) is one of onl...