heat-exchanger / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Homes built in the last 40 years in Canada are relatively airtight. Before that we generally relied on leaky uninsulated walls to provide fresh air and prevent mold and mildew, and they did that very well. Cost and comfort had us adding insulation, but not necessarily sealing our walls. The folly of this was quickly re...

Heat Recovery Ventilators (HRVs) are an essential component of any air-sealed high performance home, bringing in fresh air and removing moisture. An HRV uses the heat in stale exhaust air to warm incoming fresh air. Until now, this has meant a centralized heat transfer core and a network of ducts feeding and drawing ai...

Having a backup heat source that can operate without electricity should be an important consideration for many homeowners in colder climate zones, especially those who rely on a heat pump or electricity as their primary source of heat. In this guide, we will explore the various factors that can influence the need for a...

District heating and district energy systems: What they are and how they work District heating, also known as district energy (DE), is a large-scale, efficient, and increasingly popular method of heating and cooling buildings from a single, centralized source. For homeowners, it means reliable, low-carbon heat without ...

Are heat pumps really more efficient? When it comes to residential heating and cooling systems, few types of heating systems are as energy efficient as heat pumps. But what exactly are heat pumps and how do they work? In short, a heat pump is simply an electrically powered device that is capable of transferring heat fr...

Urban heat island effect and how to mitigate it Have you ever noticed how much hotter it feels in the city on a sweltering summer day compared to the surrounding countryside? This phenomenon is known as the urban heat island effect, and it has significant impacts on human health, energy consumption, and the environment...

SEER v HSPF v COP (& SCOP) - understanding heat pump ratings Many people are considering making the switch to a heat pump, for a variety of different reasons, including the heat pump grants available in Canada and the USA to offset the cost and the potential cost savings of buying and installing a single unit that ...

Is electric heating eco-friendly? Determining whether or not electricity is an efficient and ecologically responsible means to heat a home should include the initial electricity production as well. Burning fossil fuels to fire electric power generation is only around 30-60% efficient. There is also significant loss fro...

How do the best heat pumps work? A heat pump works very differently than other home heating systems, in that it doesn’t ‘generate’ heat the way a furnace, boiler, radiator, oven or even a toaster or hair dryer would; instead, it collects heat from one place and transfers it to another. Think of your refrigerator as an ...

As a seasoned construction professional with lots of HVAC experience, people often ask me whether it's a smart move to go for a heat pump, taking into account the cold weather performance, sustainability and financial factors. With recent strides in cold climate heat pumps getting the nod from the Environmental Protect...

Our previous update covered aspects of the building envelope, which allowed us to reduce the annual heating requirement to about the Passive House standard of 15 kWh per square meter. Windows are a part of that but they are also part of our energy performance strategy. The house is laid out south facing to maximize pas...