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

Passive House construction on Vancouver Island Building the first certified Passive House on Vancouver Island, a duplex shared with our son Mark’s family, convinced us that the market in Victoria was ready for Passive House market condominiums. To follow through, we built the North Park Passive house, a six-unit urban ...

The Rainbow Duplex in Whistler is the first Passive House in BC The passive solar design and orientation of homes is anything but new. Solar heat collection is a technique that has been used in home construction for thousands of years. What is relatively new is the rating system developed to certify them. The Passive H...

B.C. paves the way for Tiny Homes on Wheels - here's what you need to know: In a landmark move for the sustainable housing movement, the British Columbia government has officially clarified the legal status of Tiny Homes on Wheels (THOWs), providing a long-awaited roadmap for builders, buyers, and municipalities. This ...

Building Net Zero homes in Vancouver BC As Vancouver pushes towards its ambitious climate targets, building a Net Zero home has become a practical and future-proof investment for homeowners in the region. The city's progressive building codes and strong local expertise have created a unique environment where high-perfo...

Details of the new BC Energy Step Code  The BC Energy Step Code is a new provincial standard intended to provide an incremental approach to achieving more energy-efficient buildings that will help the province meet its goal of having all new buildings be Net Zero Energy ready by the year 2032. The City of Vancouver Ste...

Toilets usually account for about a third of the indoor water use in a home, so toilets that carry the EPA WaterSense® label are a great place to start looking. Then comes the choice of either single flush or dual flush- it's a bit of a toss up but in the end we chose to go with single flush models, because when human ...

What is LEED for Homes about? LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is an internationally recognized rating system for commercial buildings and homes administered by the CaGBC (Canada Green Building Council)  to encourage sustainable building practices. While the commercial program has been in effect for...

LEED Canada for Homes Providers: Atlantic Canada: Quebec: ThermalWise ThermalWise is Atlantic Canada’s leading building performance consulting company. We support building owners, developers, designers, contractors, property managers and communities to be more sustainable, and energy-efficient while also c...

        See the first LEED V4 Platinum house in Canada here. As a movement and an industry, green building is evolving rapidly. Recognizing leadership in this field means periodically moving the goal posts, and rethinking the measures by which leadership is assessed. That’s the reason for LEED Version 4, the next exc...

Vancouver's New Water Heater Rules: A Homeowner's Guide to Upgrades & Rebates With Vancouver's new efficiency standards for replacement water heaters on the horizon, if you've been putting off replacing your hot water tank, the next few months might be the ideal time. The good news is that a robust ecosystem of reb...

The checklist will help you understand the requirements for each LEED category, and help you decide on your targeted level of certification. It will not only be used for the evaluation of your project, but you can use it for tracking your progress. The checklist will allow you to: Meet the criteria for each category D...