That said, this is where it ends. In the new home construction market, the incentive cupboard is mostly bare. No way you say. Way. Believe it or not, the majority if not all of the incentives are directed toward the retrofit market, as well as non-profit and commercial – quietly avoiding new homes. Tough question why but the official answer is that the retrofit market has more to gain than the new homes market being that older homes are less efficient, new homes are built to a better standard, so incentives aimed at old homes will be more effective, shooting fish in a barrel. Also, retrofits are a more significant proportion of the voting population… Did I say that.

That said, if the majority of homes that can make a difference are legacy, and new ones represent an insignificant amount, what difference will it make in the grand scheme of things to include them too? How much more would it really cost or what’s it take extra to incentify the few new homes? Strange enough to wonder if there is another reason.

I think if you were to really think about it, you could consider that with time in the equation, putting tax money into an old home to plug this leak and that will bring it up to a moderate, though better, energy standard than it was. Obvious. This will be likely good for another 10-15 years before the next or subsequent owner decides it’s time to reno and improve once again – but likely not before. So, the chance of energy improvements on this legacy before another decade is slim.

On the other hand, putting tax money into a new standard home that could take it from marginally better – and I mean only marginally in many cases with some builders (http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2009/new_home_nightmares/main.html) – to much better could mean a home that far exceeds legacy standards for the next 25 to 30 years before a reno is required or desired. This equates to almost twice as long. Over simplified logic but logic at that. Because this is at least arguable, it leaves me wondering why new homes could be left out at all when they stand the greater chance of reversing our negative trend of destructive consumption on our planet and resources.

Never the less, this is the case and it’s not about to change.

Enough complaining. There are a few incentives that exist for new green homes worth pursuing. The difficulty in finding and interpreting these is another discussion but with the help of Google and some assistance from our geothermal equipment supplier we were able to locate the following incentives, tax rebates or rumours. I’ll certainly let you know how it goes.

It seems the incentives for new homes are focused around Geothermal, Solar, Wind, Insulation, and of course appliances which include all items installed that become “property” of the home — requiring install rather than furniture — ie. Refrigerators, dishwashers, ovens, HRV’s and built-in fans, AC units, etc.

For us, we will pursue the straightforward — geothermal, appliance and HRV credits or tax deductions. It’s a long shot if insulation has a chance since the wording in the website is very convoluted. For clarity on geothermal, I contacted our Canadian heat pump manufacturer as I believed they should know and happily they turned out to be very helpful.

Randy Waylett – National Sales Manager of Northern Heat Pump says:

“Ontario Government:  http://www.mei.gov.on.ca.wsd6.korax.net/english/energy/renewable/index.cfm?page=geothermal
Ontario Government should match the amount received from the Canadian Government program – $4375 ??

Canadian Government:
http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/residential/personal/retrofit-homes/retrofit-qualify-grant.cfm?attr=4
Should qualify for rebate of up to $4375 for the geothermal system installation – both retrofit and new system construction

The Ontario Government has been matching the Federal Government rebates which used to be $3500 for the Fed Government program and $3500 matched by the Ontario Government program for a total of $7000.

Please see http://www.mei.gov.on.ca.wsd6.korax.net/english/energy/renewable/index.cfm?page=geothermal and click on Financing A Geothermal System.

Now the Federal Government program has been increased to $4375 and I am assuming the Ontario Government is still matching?? You should check with your installing contractor of the heat pump system who will need to certify the system through the Canadian GeoExchange Coalition (CGC) in order to qualify for these rebates. They should be familiar with the process required and all the paperwork that needs to be filled out in order to get the rebate monies, etc.

Regards, Randy

CGC website:  http://www.geo-exchange.ca/en/geoexchange_financial_support_grants_rsc70.php“

In addition to Randy’s advice, I located:

Geothermal
Retail Sales Tax – 3.4% of Invoice
http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/english/refund/windgeo/
http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/english/notices/rst/44b.html

$8750
http://www.homeperformance.com/ontario-rebates-toronto-hamilton-london-barrie-orillia
http://www.homeperformance.com/ontario-geothermal-rebate-grants-for-geothermal-heating

Real Property – Appliances, lighting, room A/C
http://www.rev.gov.on.ca/english/notices/rst/68.html

HRV
$750
http://www.homeperformance.com/ontario-hrv-rebate-grants-for-heat-recovery-ventilator


To sum up, finding and understanding whether we qualify for grants or rebates has been tedious at best. Many many hours have been spent and up until recently, we have been sure there were none. Though our supplier, 4 Seasons could be educated in this area of understanding, as most certainly it would help them to sell a unit or two, they haven’t offered assistance in this perspective as I can guess is similar with other suppliers for various practical reasons; mainly that information just isn’t available to them any more than it is to you and me.

So the short of it is, do your homework, ensure your supplier is qualified and certified by the CGC to do the work, as is 4 Seasons, and inquire if the supplier is willing to do the paperwork for you or provide guidance as part of the deal up front – you don’t want this to be an additional cost as it can be time consuming.

Last note, the grass is never greener over there for me but the US have a leg up on us with a 30% rebate on the geothermal bill – wow:
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=tax_credits.tx_index#c6

First, using the ground to heat and cool your house is called Ground Source. The device which cycles the liquid through tubes down into the ground to capture heat and up into the house to exhaust this heat is called a heat pump. Geothermal is a wrongly  used term to describe the above when in fact it more accurately describes the process of capturing heat from thermal heat sources in the earth like volcanic heated water and steam.

The simple explanation of Ground Source is to look at the refrigerator in your home. The GSHP works the same way. Imagine that the interior of the fridge is the ground – cool at approx. 4ºC to 15ºC depending on the time of year. Then imagine that the rear of your fridge is the interior of your home. Please, anyone, correct me if I’m wrong, or provide a less clunky explanation.

The coil on the rear of the fridge (your heat pump coil) runs loops around and through a compressor (your heat pump) and then travels into the interior of your fridge (into an insulated space in the GSHP that is coupled around the ground loop) and back out to the rear to complete the loop.

The interior of the fridge is warmed when you open the door and exchange the mass of cool air with warm air, as well as when you place warm masses or items of food in there (essentially the equivalent of your ground loop that travels through the ground storing warm energy in tons of liquid – any temperature above 0 Kelvin has energy so the 10 to 15ºC in the ground is balmy).

What happens is the compressor outside the fridge condenses the liquid in the coil to a gas which exhausts any heat before it is pumped into the fridge space. The now cooled gas volume absorbs the warm air trapped in the fridge (ground) as it travels through its long loop. Energy in the form of heat always travels toward the cold, and in this case the energy drains into the coil (warmth in the ground stores in the ground loop).

As the gas in the coil warms, it does what it can to convert back to a liquid and begins to expand, increasing pressure. The warmed compressed gas is pumped to the outside rear of the fridge (into your home) and hits a warmer zone (your home’s GSHP) where it absorbs more warmth, converting back to a liquid. At this point, as it turns to a liquid and passes through the compressor, it can no longer hold the energy it has stored and intensely evacuates the excess heat at near boiling.

On your fridge, a fan blows through this coil (Forced Air Handler) to expel the heat from the liquid before it is condensed once again and the cycle repeated. In the case of a Radiant in floor heating water to water system such as ours, the floor loops of liquid travel into the warm area of the heat pump and wrap around the condensing coil to exchange heat before being pumped through the floor of the house again. And voila.

Eyes watering yet? See our Geo supplier’s website for meaningless colourful illustrations, or better yet, give them a call as they are much better at explaining how it works and best of all, how it will work for you – 4 Seasons Geothermal.

4 Seasons and their overqualified assistant Al Davies of Eco-Options, painstakingly follow a radiant plan prepared in advance by IPEX’s engineers and radiant system planners. The house will be split into logical zones based on a number of practical and climatic factors; in our case floor layout, situation of elevation changes and our expected use – all playing a factor in how we may wish to control the heat output for various areas of the house.

Within each zone, the system uses a manifold or controller to regulate the flow of hot water in the pipes. This control gives somewhat of a sub control – though manual – to each loop of tube that connects through the box. So, if in the case that a room receives more solar gain than expected compared to a cooler northern exposed area, we can tune the manifold to lower output to the loop.

A number of floor sensors and thermostats are also installed to be the eyes of the system and to accommodate future adaptive technologies we will install to run the interconnected mechanicals of the home.

Once the tubes are secured and sensors in their permanent locations, SDS will return to pour their first layer of cement – a mixture of gravel and Ardex – a synthetic gypsum and portland that is designed to withstand the rigors of sub-flooring while distributing heat evenly. Once this subsurface has cured – approximately a day or so, SDS will return to pour the cement topping, our final finished floor surface.

Typical house designs treat the interior environment as one single climate zone when considering heating and cooling loads. This legacy was necessary out of lack of understanding of the interior climate but also due to limitations of heating and cooling equipment and pure cost considerations. However today there remains no logical reason to continue with this legacy idea.

The problem is that it ignores imbalances in temperatures from one end of the home to the other as well as possible passive methods for mitigating temperature fluctuations within the interior. The idea has been overcome the elements with more power – put in a large Heating and Air Conditioning system to ensure everyone is comfortable at least part of the time, in the majority of the home.

Modern house and building design looks at the house as a system or organism – using technology and design to solve inequities or imbalances in heating and cooling needs for the building. These new ideas also consider the occupants and their desires for comfort, at different times of the day, in different locations of the home by function as well as the external pressures on the interior climate which can differ from the North or South sides of the building.

From considering the home as a system – including zones for climate and passive means to control temperature – the house can achieve exceptional energy efficiency as well as occupant enjoyment.

We designed our house to accommodate various comfort zones in two ways. 

First, using radiant and ground source we have zoned different areas of the house for efficiency eg. cooler bedrooms than activity spaces. But secondly and most important, the house recognizes the different climate zones created by a North and South side. 

By locating bedrooms on the cooler North side within which occupants are naturally more forgiving of cooler winter room temps and more appreciative of cooler summer room temps and separating and insulating these rooms from the south facing windows with a hallway allows us to mitigate the interior temperature fluctuations using windows to the exterior as well as interior windows to the rooms. 

The windows to the rooms from this hallway carry natural exterior light into the spaces without the heat. A white TPO roof membrane also reflects a tremendous amount of light into the rooms but without heat gain – reducing energy load of cooling and also desire for artificial light by day. 

The heat gain in this hall during winter and shoulder months can be used to load the concrete floor, charging the radiant, as well as transfered into the rooms when necessary via their transom windows and redistributed using ceiling fans. 

In the end, controlling the house climate with a system of passive techniques and mechanical technologies will achieve a high level of efficiency and comfort for the long term  - for sustainability and the ecology.

Diamond Masonry were chosen for their reputation, previous work and willingness to give it their all to achieve an old school artistic look – reminiscent of drystack ledgerock and rubble.

After sourcing the perfect mix of stone from various local quarries, John Greenis from Diamond experimented for a few weeks on how to achieve the right look while balancing a budget of difficulty and time on job. His solution is nothing short of beautiful – and exactly what we dreamed of.

It’s amazing the reaction from passers by – people who are captivated by the aesthetic beauty of natural stone assembled in a recognizably traditional and craftsman like method.

In the end, aesthetically the exterior and interior stone work will provide a sincere and relaxed elegance and contrast to the modern lines of the home – an old and new ideal. Functionally and as part of the sustainable features of the design, the stone in the interior will act as thermal mass, mitigating temperature change within the interior climate. In summer, the stone will collect night time temperatures and conversely assist in keeping the air temp cool by day. In winter, the stone mass walls will collect direct sun exposure energy as well as ambiant air temperature from the ground source (Geothermal) powered radiant floors by day, and slowly release that temperature through the night to keep the heating system working efficiently within ideal low output temperature ranges.

After 1 week of work, rain and shine, the work is mostly complete – and without a single complaint from the neighbours – that we could hear anyway. In fact, the drilling was remarkably quiet considering what’s involved. The drilling unit itself creates some vibration and the site generator and pump creates most of the sound typical of such equipment which is negligible.

This rig isn’t your typical oil driller – though we did find some natural gas. This driller uses a spinning bit in combination with water and vibration at sonic levels equating to faster and quieter drilling.

What we liked was the minimal imposition and disturbance on the property. The rig was able to mozy into tight areas among our trees and structures so we didn’t have to cut tree branches or move barriers for root protection. The pivoting drill head rotates to cut down on repositioning of the rig and tracks – minimizing the movement minimizes the destruction and compaction on the ground; roots systems and underground services.

Next up, 4 Seasons Geothermal, the Ground Source Heat/Cooling contractor will be in the mud to hook up the loop to the equipment in the house and pool building.

As we got into the process and learning curve we learned that the cost of the two technologies were closer together than we first understood. And when we considered that the GSHP could also provide heating for the pool on the same system, we realized that we were very close to making it a reality. So chopping we went, through the plan, to find room in the budget to go the rest of the way to afford the GSHP.

Recently, through investigating insulation and high performance building standards, we have come across research and recommendations from leading researchers that perhaps the NG Boiler may still be the better choice.

Here’s the debate. Let’s start by talking about money. It is our belief that for every dollar we have to earn, despite our efforts to reduce the industrial impact of our business, we inevitably mow down some trees, create some C02, and fuel our computers on Panda tears. So the most cost effective route needs to be involved in the sustainable equation. Simply, you can’t throw money at the sustainable problem without considering that the high footprint money spent outweighed the positive results unless, the positive results were infectious on others – another story.

So understanding that factor here’s the score card with other factors as we understand it:

GSHP Cons vs. NG Boiler

+ $ cost of money is higher for GSHP

+ the $ spent on GSHP could go to another sustainable feature with more immediate benefits

+ $ cost of electricity is currently higher than natural gas

+ environmental cost of electricity is greater than natural gas in Ontario (we burn coal!)

+ disturbance impact on your building site is greater for GSHP (drilling or excavating your yard)

+ GSHP requires a higher performance envelop to operate efficiently with lower output temperatures — requiring high insulation values, tighter sealing

+ not ideal for all situations, particularly extreme hot or cold average climate zones

GSHP Pros vs. NG Boiler

+ GSHP can easily be powered by solar, lessoning the environmental impact

+ GSHP uses only 1 fuel, NG Boiler 2 (NG and Electricity) – less dependency on utilities

+ GSHP has a lifetime supply of fuel from the get go, the ground, while the NGB is forever dependent on utilities

+ GSHP doesn’t introduce exhaust or venting issues into the home

+ GSHP uses less energy to operate within ideal ranges*

What’s the conclusion? If it weren’t possible to heat the pool with the GSHP and also install solar to run the GSHP we’d be immediately back to NG. Over the next few weeks we’ll conclude what’s involved in heating the pool and weigh in again. If the pool drops out of the equation, then NG it will be.

*For a comprehensive debate, see the attached document from John Straube, PHD, of Waterloo University and Building Science. bsd-gshp.pdf