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.

What has been a lot of effort has been sourcing for a few reasons that simply shouldn’t be.

1. Communication
Ironically, finding suitable suppliers of sustainable goods and services is tricky when you have a criteria of sustainability. This criteria seems like it should have minimal effect on products; locally produced or sourced, energy efficient, eco-conscious, excellent quality, affordable and available but it is limiting by cutting down on the selection pool on suppliers.

Now the difficulty isn’t with locating the goods themselves. In fact, there are countless helpful resources for materials and suppliers, be it online or in print, that point you in the right direction toward piles of info to absorb and decisions to make in order to narrow the menu. However, once you’ve chosen the product or service, the hard part starts.

Getting the suppliers to react, to reply to emails, to quote or return phone calls, is often tiring. Basically, the service of sustainable goods and construction materials in general isn’t where it should be in our region.

Perhaps it’s a case of a good run in a busy economy, or because of shortages in availability, or because of limited technical ability behind technical online faces or pure lackadaisical attitudes but whatever the reason, this symptom of a greater problem makes the task of finding the right fits for our home the most time consuming task.

In the end, many suppliers of sustainable products are just too hard to deal with. No, not more than other suppliers but when you consider that their products can cost more and may have more limited availability, adding hard to deal with in the mix doesn’t make convincing the average altruistic but tentative consumer or builder that much easier.

2. Knowledge
The next experience from some suppliers once located is equally confusing but more easily explained. That is that some of the suppliers we’ve dealt with simply don’t fully understand what they are supplying or have an arms length understanding of sustainability and where their products fit into the criteria of the category. For them, it can be just another product in a supply chain and without personal or corporate sustainable beliefs and practices, it is just another product.

Furthermore  and almost more importantly, there is a general lack of relationship between the products they supply and other products that will cohabitate with theirs in the sustainable home. Essentially, their is a subtle lack of graciousness to acknowledge their roommates and to lead you in the right direction toward others. There is a general lack of time available to educate the consumer or builder as to the benefits of sustainability beyond the product, and certainly little time to share in the knowledge base of what other products may be available either in a competitive set or otherwise.

If sustainability is to be as successful as we need it to be in the short time we have to reach goals for our ecology, this frontier has to participate beyond selling a product. The pressure against them is a building industry that is hesitant to change and is looking for every reason to stick with status quo and worry about change and new suppliers the next time. And you can’t blame them, it isn’t easy to change sometimes.

In the end, we’ve managed to locate most everything we needed to suit our design and along the way we’ve dealt with many suppliers who stood out as being communicative, helpful and resourceful. Along with Branthaven, our builder, it’s these partners that have made the overall build successful — providing quality products and services and a positive learning experience while also creating an atmosphere of  sustainable community.

Some of these partner suppliers that come to mind so far:

+ Stüv Fireplaces – 80+% efficient wood stoves
+ Schreiber Roofing – TPO Roof system
+ Pella Windows – Energy Star FSC Windows and Doors
+ Jarvis Insulation – Closed Cell Foam Insulation
+ ALD – Energy efficient lighting calculations and design specifications

Though the top of mind costs do appear to be significantly higher from the invoice – 10% to 25% for LEED qualified materials and technologies, my observation and experience is that in general these solutions are also significantly better – quality + performance + longevity — and I believe this is worth weighing.

What has kept the costs per LEED point down however has been the design. Instead of looking at sustainability as something we can buy our way through using LEED as a structure, designers should first review the power of good, simple and logical thinking as a first go to solution. To the credit of the LEED program in recognizing this, many points can be gained by utilizing intelligent design solutions in the home in lieu of tech to reduce everything from excess materials dependency, energy waste, material redundancy and material waste – all equating to less costs at end of build and over time.

With this in mind I feel the cost of build for LEED is and can be lower than often quoted. If anyone is considering a LEED build, I believe it’s worth the extra costs for LEED certification because if you are building for a sustainable goal independent of LEED, the $2+K for process is essentially the only additional cost, and for some, possibly well worth the label that defines the result.

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.

Not only is collecting rain water for reuse a cost saver as you pay for both municipal water in and out, it is also an environment saver. Rain water that runs off a property to the street via hard surfaces and drain pipes simply fills storm sewers and heads to the lake, taking with it a broth of chemicals and particulate that chokes the aquatic ecosystem. Collecting the water and using it for irrigation slowly and responsibly means it gets used by vegetation – converted into natural air cleaning and air conditioning. Furthermore it is slowly released into the water table after being filtered by the soil and plants.

The installation, though seemingly invasive for the massive holes you require for such large tanks, was quick and painless with minimal disturbance of the site. The only downside following the install are the protruding vents and man covers that are necessary for maintenance of the units. With a little planning – which was not entirely afforded to us by surprise – you can do a lot to hide what can’t be avoided. We’ll simply extend the rear patio to cover what we can while building a box/bench to cover the remainder.

Next, the greywater recovery unit will be installed in the house. This unit will filter, treat and temporarily store shower water making it available for our low flush volume toilets and laundry machine. Overflow from the system will head to the cisterns. Eventually, once municipalities come to grips with ecological technologies, we will be allowed to cycle the cistern water back into the house for non potable household needs like laundry.

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.

TPO stands for Thermoplastic Olefin or Polyolefin, a roll sheet material that is unrolled, and in our case glued to the roof deck and hot seamed using special irons to ensure a pool liner like continuous membrane. For flat roof applications like ours, it doesn’t get much better for the cost. Of course there is arguably better performance with some other technologies like “Liquid Plastic” but when compared to cost vs. minimal improvements, this is the stuff.

Aside from great leak protection, the TPO provides:

+ great UV resistance
+ excellent puncture resistance, but it’s not a dance floor
+ long term puncture repair-ability
+ responsible light reflectance
+ reasonable “green” factor when compared to other roof technologies
+ effective root membrane for living (green) roofs

In a practical sense the TPO roof was chosen for many reasons that can’t be understated. Firstly the white colour simply doesn’t collect heat in the summer. That means a cooler roof above and below the surface. Recently Toyota Canada installed this surface on one of their plants and saw an 8ºC performance increase in their cooling. That’s huge when you consider the goal is a 24º setting equating to essentially 30%. While showing the roof to a friend, we stood on the 2nd floor deck at noon when the sun was blaring. Though the air temp was just 20ºC, a regular black roof would have been unbearable, but this surface was still feeling like 20º though we needed serious sunglasses. The nice thing was that just inside the house, there was absolutely no warm air blowing in from the surface.

Secondly the white roof colour reflects light (not heat) into the house through the clearstory windows and illuminates the rooms. It’s really spectacular. Have a look at the two ceiling shots and see how well they are lit up considering the shots were taken at 7pm. This should equate to a major reduction in our need for artificial lighting during the day and evening.

Lastly we hope to install a living roof in some sections which with most surfaces would require a special root membrane of inorganic material to resist the plants from breaking down the surface and causing leaks. The TPO is an excellent root membrane so with the additional load capacity we’ve design into the structure, we can freely add to the green roof as we need to.

Maintenance on the roof is simple – keep it clear of debris and give it a wash once and a while if you don’t like the gradual staining due to our dirty cities and blown organic material.

I asked if we invested in an alternative power generation like photovoltaic roof panels or wind in our back yard, and generated in access of what we could use, what would happen to the over production? And if they considered that our power was arguably clean or carbon neutral, would it be possible that our neighbour might, if only for a moment, be using clean power from us? Hmm.

Well this is essentially what Bullfrog Power has to offer. We chose to use or invest in Bullfrog Power, if at least in the short term, as a alternative to investing in non renewable power generation supplied by Ontario Hydro and the local Burlington Hydro provider. Bullfrog Power invests in renewable and arguably clean energy sources, much of which in our area is wind, and channels it to the established grid.

Customers then chose their power provider to be Bullfrog Power and buy electricity from the grid. Bullfrog in turn invests profits back into supporting and creating more alternative and renewable energy production – in our back yard – so to speak.