What is likely St. Albert’s first net-zero energy home will open its doors to the public next weekend as part of the Eco-Solar Home Tour.
The 20th annual Eco-Solar Home Tour is this June 1 and 2. This free event gives Albertans a chance to explore some of the most energy-efficient homes around and meet the people who live in them.
Roughly 40 per cent of the world’s heat-trapping pollution comes from buildings, said Andrew Mills, president of the Eco-Solar Home Tour. If we make our homes more efficient, we’ll improve both the environment and our pocketbooks.
This year’s tour features 25 buildings in Edmonton and, in a 20th anniversary twist, 11 in Calgary. The Calgary sites will be open on June 9.
“I plan to go to all 36,” Mills said.
Mills said these homes are meant to show what’s being done today in home construction and to connect guests with owners and builders.
“The new thing people are talking about is deep-energy retrofits,” he said, where you rip a home down to its studs and rebuild it so it’s vastly more efficient.
This year’s tour will show a new spin on retrofits with the Sundance Co-op, Mills said. Here, instead of ripping open the walls, the builders laser-scanned the home to build new insulation panels that fit precisely over its old walls, allowing them to get it to nearly net-zero energy levels in just days.
Also featured are a completely off-grid straw bale home near Nojack, a house built from shipping containers, and Mehmet Yigit’s ultra-efficient fireproof home in Sturgeon County.
St. Albert net-zero
New to the tour is 10 Legacy Terrace, a net-zero home currently under construction in St. Albert. (Net-zero homes produce zero net greenhouse gas emissions because they produce as much energy as they consume in a year.) Although there’s no way to be sure (as no one actually tracks these developments), the Gazette’s research suggests that this is the first net-zero home built in St. Albert.
Home designer Heiko Lotzgeselle said that his clients (who wished to remain anonymous) wanted a home that could minimize their energy footprint and follow the principles of the Chinese art of Feng Shui. That latter aspect is why the home’s front door is on an angle from the street and why the home features showers instead of bathtubs.
The house features ultra-efficient triple-pane windows, super-efficient appliances and plumbing, and tonnes of insulation, Lotzgeselle said. Three-foot overhangs outside provide shade in the summer and let in light for passive heating in the winter, while 1,500 kW worth of solar panels on the roof provide all the home’s heat and electricity needs. The owners suspect they’ll also be able to fuel an electric car with the panels, but might have to add more panels to the garage.
Most furnace rooms feel like furnaces due to waste heat from the boilers. Not the case here, Lotzgeselle said. This home’s furnace room feels cool because its hot water tank uses an air-source heat pump.
“It works like a fridge in reverse,” Lotzgeselle said.
Instead of burning gas, the tank takes in warm air from the room, extracts the heat, and expels cool air. A second air-source heat pump pulls heat from the outdoors to warm the rest of the home; it can also cool the house like an air conditioner. Combine this with a drain heat recovery system, passive solar design, and all that insulation, and the home can be heated and cooled year round without any natural gas.
“It’s a very, very elegant solution,” he said.
Lotzgeselle said making this home net-zero cost about $50,000, which the owners would recover in energy savings in about nine years.
“After that, it’s money in the owner’s pocket.”
10 Legacy Terrace will be open for visitors from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. this June 2. Visit ecosolar.ca for details.
