ecohome-house / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Rendering of the Ecohome demonstration house
Efficient home design

Ecohome Demo House: High performance, affordable cost

The guiding principles during the design of Ecohome’s Edelweiss House demonstration home - passive heating and cooling, healthy living space, affordable to build and operate, resilient and flexible design.  The underlying goal of the Edelweiss House was to design and build a modestly-sized but functional home that wou...

Passive Solar Home design at it's best - Kenogami House - EcoHome
Passive solar home design

Ecohome Kenogami House wins Home of the Year Award

Along with its unprecedented achievements, the Kenogami House continues to act as a laboratory for resilient, cold climate building practices. Through software energy modeling it was determined that the Kenogami House would likely require 14.6 kWh of heat per square metre per year, but its actual performance seems to b...

Canada's first LEED V4 Platinum certified home - The Edelweiss House
LEED Homes

Canada's first LEED V4 Platinum house - An Ecohome project checklist

A LEED Platinum home project overview As building rating systems drive building codes to greater levels of performance, the rating systems themselves need a periodic upgrade to stay ahead of the curve; enter LEED version 4 (V4.) This latest version of the LEED rating system involved a comprehensive overhaul and to ensu...

The passive solar home in Lac Kenogami, Quebec
Passive solar home design

Ecohome design wins House of the Year Award from Green Builder® Magazine

The first house designed under our Passive Solar Index (PSI) program won "Most Resilient House" in the 2013 Green Builder® Home of the Year Awards. The Kenogami House is a living laboratory of high performance design and technology, called "The Most Resilient House in North America" by Alex Wilson, founder of the Resil...

Slab-on-grade for Ecohome's upcoming video building guide
Slab on Grade

how to build a slab-on-grade on standard soil

There are many ways to build a slab-on-grade (or frost-protected shallow foundation), the following is a step-by-step walk though of a thickened-edge slab floor we built. XPS or EPS rigid foam is typically used under concrete slab floors, in this case we used mineral fiber insulation. Note: our mineral wool was provide...

Mobile tiny house
Tiny house

Is Tiny House living in a cold climate good or bad for the planet?

Are Tiny Houses Worth it? Are Tiny houses a good investment? That depends on your lifestyle and how well you build them. Here are some things to think about before you join the Tiny House Movement and commit to life in an extremely small space.  We have featured a number of tiny houses on our pages over the past few ye...

Resilient home construction - Kenogami House of the Year
Efficient home design

"The Most Resilient House in North America"

A resilient home for Sustainability Northern Quebec isn’t a place where one might expect to look for a model of resilience. It’s bone-chilling cold in the winter with 10,450 heating degree days per year (Fahrenheit degree-days, base 65°F); there isn’t all that much sunlight in the winter, and Quebec—let alone northern ...

A Tiny House for sale locally set me thinking, should I buy a Tiny Home?
Tiny house

ARE TINY HOUSES FOR SALE LOCALLY A GOOD CHOICE FOR A FIRST HOME?

To buy, or not to buy, a tiny house on wheels? That is the question... I’ve recently been looking at Tiny Homes for sale, mostly THOW's, but first, the background. As a single woman approaching the “big 3-0”, and especially with current events forcing changes in everyday life, I realize how lucky I’ve been to spend the...

Which Houseplants are Best to Clean Air & Remove Toxins?
Healthy indoor air quality

Which houseplants are best for purifying air? Ecohome investigates

Do house plants clean indoor air? The idea that house plants filter and clean indoor air is at best a mini-truth, and at worst a total myth, and like any pseudo-science health trend, it can have a negative impact as well. Providing false solutions to human health issues gives people a false sense of security. Having pl...

Step by step guide for slab-on-grade home construction
Slab on Grade

Slab-on-grade construction: the ecoHOME A to Z Slab building guide

Slab on Grade foundation, detail design; the basics There are many different soil conditions and corresponding slab designs. This page is about how to build a thickened edge concrete slab on grade FPSF footing on soil with a high water table to prevent frost heave, by first installing drainage below the slab.  Related ...

Building science for LEED v4 wall design made easy
Concept and design

Building science for LEED v4 wall design made easy - video

LEED Platinum V4 Wall Design: Building Science  The wall we designed for the Edelweiss house, Canada's first LEED Platinum V4 Home is best categorized as a 'REMOTE' wall, a high performance building envelope developed by the Cold Climate Housing Research Centre in Alaska. REMOTE stands for 'Residential Exterior Membr...