Deep Retrofits

Existing buildings are full of energy efficiency opportunities waiting to be realized. While some savings are obvious and easy to get, often design teams can realize much deeper savings at little or no added capital cost—and sometimes at less.
Deep energy retrofits improve the economics of efficiency, and achieve bigger energy savings and other benefits at equal or lower cost, driving much larger savings (more than 50 percent) than conventional, shallow retrofits.

Key Aspects to the Deep Retrofit Process

• Timing the deep retrofit with planned capital improvements, breaks in occupancy, and other situations
• Applying integrative design principles
• Using advanced energy modeling, auditing and life cycle cost analysis methods and tools
• Metering and commissioning to verify savings and to continually improve. 

Buildings are systems, and integrative, whole-building strategies recognize how one kind of efficiency gain can affect other building systems and attributes. For example, improvements to the building envelope can reduce mechanical system loads and equipment, which in turn may increase usable floor area. Simply by recognizing how systems are interrelated, design teams can cause small improvements to cascade into substantially larger benefits.

Super-efficient home in Burnaby combines vacuum insulation, solar gain and air-source heat pump to achieve "net-zero" energy

Harmony House generates as much energy as it consumes

Insulation is at the core of efficiency that helps make Burnaby house 'net zero'. But insulation is only one part of what makes Harmony House such an interesting — and efficient — residence.

The two-storey, 4,700 square foot residence with a full basement and attached garage is part of the Equilibrium Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative, a CMHC program to encourage designers and builders to explore truly sustainable housing developments.
A net-zero energy home produces as much energy as it consumes, annually, through energy conservation strategies and the use of renewable energy technologies.
Additionally, the design team set the goal for the home to produce zero greenhouse gas emissions. This eliminated the possibility of using a combustion appliance for space or water heating so there's no gas line into the house at all.

Conducting a recent tour of Harmony was Gary Hamer, manager of technology and innovation with BC Hydro. He estimates that it will take 2,500 kWh per year to heat the residence, about a fifth of what it would be for a conventional home.

The first part of that solution is insulation. In all of the exterior walls of Harmony House are thin panels which use a vacuum space to insulate. They work because heat can't transfer across a vacuum. The vacuum panels also allow buildings to have superior insulation while maintaining conventional wall thickness. While a wall in standard house is built with an effective insulation rating of about R16, Harmony's effective wall rating is R38.

Triple-glazed windows also help keep the house warm. Even on this January day, from the inside of the house the windows don't feel cold. Nearly a quarter of the heat needed by the home will come from solar gain — that's heat from the sun — via windows on the south of the structure.

Additional heat comes from a very efficient air-source heat pump that cycles a refrigerant from outside and into the house. It's is so efficient that it can effectively pull heat out of the outside air at temperatures as low as -18 degrees Celsius. The same kind of heat pump is used to heat water. Gary says that being able to use one outside source, one piece of equipment, to heat both the space and the water is ideal in some circumstances.

But houses need ventilation, and Harmony House is nearly airtight.
So fresh air is brought into the building using a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system. It exhausts stale air from rooms that could have moisture — bathrooms, kitchen and laundry rooms — and brings fresh air into the bedrooms and other living spaces. Rather than waste the energy used to heat the indoor air, the air leaving the house preheats the fresh outdoor air coming into the home. Around 80 percent of the heat is recovered.

Always being on the look out for better and more efficient ways of using electricity, Gary is excited about better ways of heating homes and water. He is currently studying the effectiveness of ductless heat pumps in a pilot on Vancouver Island.
"The pilot's goal is to measure the amount of energy that high-efficient ductless systems can "displace" from the less efficient electric baseboard heaters that currently heat these homes," he explains. "I believe that properly applied, efficient heat pumps hold much promise in saving energy and increasing occupant comfort. But like all good science, what equipment and when to use it must be determined first. That's where our pilot comes into it. And the data gather from the Harmony House will add to our knowledge."

York Products Rebates

Until the end of April 2012, we will be offering rebates on selected York heat pumps, furnaces, and systems. These rebates apply to the purchase of 16 seer or 18 seer Affinity line heat pumps, and also to 95.5%-97.5% furnaces. The rebate value ranges from $100 to $600. Please contact Envirotemp for details. 
250-893-4530

ecoENERGY Retrofit program closes early, LiveSmart BC still open.

The LiveSmart BC Efficiency Incentive program will remain open to new participants until March 31, 2013. The federal ecoENERGY Retrofit - Homes program is closed to new registrations as of January 28th, having reached its goal of 250,000 registered homeowners. This will give all federally registered homeowners the opportunity to apply for and receive a federal grant for their eligible retrofit upgrades. Participants that have a registration number but have not yet had an energy assessment are still able to book an energy assessment.

British Columbians who have not already accessed incentives from either the LiveSmart BC Efficiency Incentive program or the federal ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes program are still eligible to access the existing LiveSmart BC incentives. The first step to access LiveSmart BC incentives is to book a home energy efficiency evaluation by a certified energy advisor. No federal registration number is required to book an energy efficiency evaluation for homeowners who are only accessing the LiveSmart BC incentives.

To help ensure that federal ecoENERGY program participants have the opportunity to complete their required post-retrofit evaluation and apply for a grant, the deadline to complete a post-retrofit evaluation has been extended to June 30, 2012. To be eligible for these federal ecoENERGY incentives, all upgrades must still be completed by March 31, 2012. Upgrades completed after March 31, 2012 remain eligible for LiveSmart BC incentives.

LiveSmart BC program participants must have their follow-up assessment within 18 months of their pre-retrofit assessment or before March 31, 2013, whichever comes first. Program participants can only have one follow-up evaluation. If a homeowner chooses to have a follow-up evaluation before June 30, 2012 to be eligible for the federal ecoENERGY incentives, that evaluation will be also be for the LiveSmart BC program. Participants will not be able to do further work later and access additional incentives from the LiveSmart BC program.