The average Canadian home contains most of the six major appliances, which are: a refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, range, clothes washer, and clothes dryer. In this average home, the appliances are responsible for 23% of all home energy consumption (Howell, 2008). Natural Resource Canada’s Office of Energy Efficiency shows the average amount of energy used by each [...]

House temperatures are typically controlled by a programmable thermostat or in the case of older homes, manual adjustments to the thermostat. I always remember my father nagging us to ‘turn the thermostat down’ when we were going to bed or leaving the house for the day. There are a number of programmable thermostats readily available. [...]

My son Mark and I recently travelled to Chicago to tour the Michelle Kauffman Smarthome at the Museum of Science and Industry. Kauffman’s Smarthome is a manufactured home and we wanted to get a sense of how appealing it might be to Canadian home owners. Although the Smarthome is not truly net-zero, we have the [...]

The Building Saskatchewan Green conference was in Saskatoon last week. Although I could not attend the entire conference, I did get a chance to attend the Friday luncheon and visit the expo. I always find the expo to be the most interesting. I feel I can get a sense of what is happening in the [...]

Chuck Berry is credited as being one of the founders of Rock and Roll in America. Dr Rob Dumont is the Chuck Berry of sustainable home design. Dr. Dumont is from Saskatoon and has spent most of his career studying energy efficient home construction. We are planning to build a net zero demonstration home at [...]

Net Zero Energy Strategies – Structured Insulated Panels (SIPs)

Last week I mention our tour to visit net zero homes in Alberta. One of the homes we visited is the Mill Creek Net Zero home (MCNZH). The MCNZH collects 54% of its annual space heat through passive solar design by: having huge south windows that are specially manufactured to maximize solar heat gain containing [...]

My wife Gwen and I recently had an opportunity to tour a number of Net Zero Energy homes in Alberta. One of the highlights of the trip was a guided tour of three Net Zero homes in Edmonton. Our guide was Gordon Howell of Howell-Mayhew Engineering, Inc. Gordon is an electrical engineer and specializes in [...]