Climate Friendly Homes Tour

Tour homes across BC on April 26, 2025

920 2nd St

April 26th, 2025

Landscaping and Yard

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Note:  This is one of three homes and a laneway house with Sustainable Home Info Sessions and (free) registration is required. View the schedule and registration.

Our home was built in 1929. We did a significant renovation in 2010 to add double-glazed windows, better insulation, lower flow toilets and showers and more energy efficient appliances.

In 2023, we had an energy assessment done with help from Energy Save New West. In 2024, we made some of the recommended improvements including replacing the few remaining single glazed windows with triple glazed and replacing our natural gas furnace with a fully electric heat pump, which utilizes the existing forced air ducting. We anticipate federal, provincial and municipal rebates for these improvements (although the federal program is now closed to new applicants).

We have an electric water heater and an electric oven, so the only fossil fuel burning appliance remaining is our gas cooktop. In our garden we grow lots of food and have many fruit trees. We have plants and a meadow area of lawn that we don’t mow, to benefit pollinating birds and insects. We have taken a break from beekeeping at the moment but continue to have backyard chickens for eggs.

When you come to our house on the tour we will show you the heat pump, answer any questions about our energy saving home improvements and will otherwise focus the tour in the garden and the exterior of the house.

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Note:  This is one of three homes and a laneway house with Sustainable Home Info Sessions and (free) registration is required. View schedule and registration.

Our home was built in 1956 and we have owned it for over 35 years.   Over the years, we have made changes to decarbonize, increase energy efficiency, promote biodiversity, enhance food security and adapt to climate change.   Rooftop solar and EV chargers have been incorporated.   Additionally, we have densified our property by incorporating a basement suite and a laneway home (zero carbon & Step Code 3 – refer to separate entry), which supports community climate action by enabling viable transit, active transportation and walkable communities.

The journey to make our home more sustainable started in earnest in 2008 when we started to be concerned about climate change, and most of our retrofits were completed before rebates were available.

First up was gradually replacing all the lights with LED as the old ones burnt out and most windows were replaced with double pane.   Also, some exterior walls were ‘firred out’ during renovations to allow for a wider wall with more room for insulation, and the vapour barrier was updated.

The heat pump was installed over 10 years ago and was retrofitted to work with the existing gas furnace, which needs to be used when temperature fall below zero.  We are looking forward to switching to a newer all electric heat pump which can handle our winters when our current older model needs to be replaced.

In December 2021, we had an energy assessment done with help from Energy Save New West and benefited from the provincial and federal rebates available at that time as well as the federal interest free loan.  The rebates were used to complete the additional retrofits; included additional attic insulation and upgrading some windows to triple pane.  The energy assessment also identified areas of heat leakage and air sealing was completed in many locations with simple DIY work.

The most recent actions in our climate resilience journey was to replace 2 gas stoves with electric stoves, (one being a fantastic induction range!), and reimaging the landscaping to incorporate more native plants and create a healthier bird and bug habitat.

Additional climate adaptation work has been done to improve stormwater management on the property using the key principles of: “Slow it down, Spread it out and Soak it in”.  Permeable surfaces were incorporated, a rain garden was built, and underground drainage was installed to slow and direct water.   Larger scale water collection is also in progress, which slows water down and also provides water to irrigate the vegetable garden.   To adapt to more extreme heat,  green infrastructure has been strategically incorporated.

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Note:  This is one of three homes and a laneway house with Sustainable Home Info Sessions and (free) registration is required. View schedule and registration.

This Step Code 3 laneway home (LWH) was built in 2020 and it is a zero carbon build.

Building to a higher step code in a smaller space was challenging and the primary lesson we learned was that finesse was required in specific building practices where historically it was less important.   Higher levels of step code require a well sealed envelope with appropriate ventilation. An Energy Recovery Ventilation unit (ERV) and appropriate ventilation was incorporated, but sealing the building envelope was challenging. It is crucial that the vapour barrier installed after insulation does not have any holes, however the crew that did the install did not pay enough attention to the details and that required significant ‘re do’ time to make it right.  We failed the first blower door test and needed a smoke test to identify leakage points before we passed the second blower door test that enabled us to meet Step Code 3 standards.

As every square inch is important in a laneway home, the indoor fan coil unit selected was a horizontal unit and it is installed on the ceiling of the laundry room.  Also, to conserve space an electric hot water on demand system was used, which is also challenging and has some issues to be considered.

An induction cook top was selected and has proved to be impressive.  A professional chef was a tenant and was very pleased with how fast it brought water to a boil and how precisely cooking ‘temperatures’ could be controlled.

Consideration to climate adaptation was incorporated into the build. This home is very close to the Caribou Heights Forest so fire resistant materials were used, such as a metal roof, hardy plank siding and rock wool outsulation.   Other reasons we decided on a metal roof was the life span of 40 years, which is about the same as solar, so both can be replaced at the same time, and the metal is recyclable.  Additionally, larger scale water collection was planned and a metal roof* was a good fit for that purpose (this project is currently in progress).

*Note:  not all metal roofs are appropriate for water collection.

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We are thrilled to invite you to tour Casa Moreno, a single family home that incorporates cutting-edge construction techniques which significantly reduce the embodied carbon footprint and waste.

Still under construction, the home design also reduces future energy requirements by up to 90% through Passive House Design, will conserve and protect water resources and promote occupant well-being through healthy material selections. In addition to prioritizing both planetary and human health, the project incorporates universal design and disaster resilient principles while being budget conscious.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

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This heritage home, known as the Whitehead Residence or Hammond Forever House, may not look like a low-energy, fossil-fuel free house, but it has been retrofit and restored, insulated and sealed. In 2024, the total energy costs, including heating, cooling and powering two EVs was $993.89. This work earned the project local and provincial heritage conservation awards in 2023, its 100th year. 

This tour will interest anyone with questions about the choices and compromises that happen when retrofitting an older home. You will learn about: aiming for net-zero energy use; where heritage considerations compliment or conflict with an energy retrofit; lifting a home to dig a new foundation; insulating beneath foundations and basement slabs; how to super-insulate and seal a pre-existing standard wall; hydronic in-floor and under-floor heating; heat pumps; keeping the air fresh in a well-sealed home without losing heat (heat-recovery ventilation); spray foam insulation; All things solar: installation, incentives, hydronic (hot water) collectors vs. solar photo-voltaic panels, net-metering with BC Hydro vs. battery back-up; how to live without a gasoline-fueled car; how to reduce your household waste so you can cancel your garbage pick-up service; how a heritage revitalization agreement can help; and rainwater conservation.

Much of the home will be open with signage pointing out key elements. The owners will be on hand to answer your questions and key professionals involved in the project have been invited to share their expertise.

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Newly renovated rancher, three bedroom, 2 bath. New metal roof and cement fibre board and batten siding. All new windows and doors. New insulation in crawl space, attic and exterior walls. All new appliances, hot water on demand (gas), heat pump.

Refinished floors in kitchen, living room and hall, matched in bedrooms. Re-garaged (was a bonus room) and removed chimney. Living room wall built out for gas fireplace and mantle. Extra deep window sill in kitchen and push out for living room window. Open plan kitchen and bar had already been done by previous owners. Heated floors in both bathrooms.