Imagine a building so energy efficient, that you can heat it with a candle and cool it with an ice cube. Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation is using this illustration to demonstrate how environmentally sustainable its next planned series of interconnected housing units will be.
Ray Sullivan, executive director of CCOC, said he hopes construction on the units — to be located on Arlington Avenue in Centretown — will start in March and take 10 to 12 months to build.
CCOC is a community based, tenant and member directed, non-profit housing organization that focuses on providing environmentally sustainable living to moderate- and low-income families.
CCOC bought the property, located near the corner of Arlington Avenue and Lyon Street North in the 1970s.
Sullivan said workers will soon be tearing down the original structure located there and rebuilding.
“It’s reached the end of its reasonable lifespan,” he said “The building’s not in good condition.”
Anthony Leaning, the architect for the new three-storey 16,000-square-foot housing unit planned for the site, said that living spaces inside will vary in size.
Some will resemble traditional townhouses, while others will look more like apartments. Leaning said energy efficiency is facilitated by creating better methods of ventilation and by ensuring that the ceiling, walls, and insulation in the building are airtight.
Leaning said a regular building constantly recycles stale air and the only way to get fresh air is to open a window or rely on natural cracks in walls and ceilings. He explained that these methods of obtaining fresh air are not always ideal in the winter because they let all the warm air out which forces home occupants to make the temperature higher. Leaning said that electric heat recovery ventilators — a part of the passive house design — allow fresh air into the building, which is warmed when it mixes with stale air.
The term passive house refers to a standard of energy efficiency in buildings that helps reduce ecological footprint.
Passive-housing ensures that the temperature inside the structure is always consistent so that occupants don’t consume excess energy or fossil fuels like they would by turning up the heat.
Sullivan said the passive house design reduces energy consumption by 80 to 90 per cent.
“The heating energy needed to heat these apartments is roughly equivalent to the heat energy of a couple candles,” he explained.
According to Leaning, better ventilation as well as airtight walls, insulation and ceilings make the building more comfortable. He said the occupants could wear T-shirts in January with the windows open without becoming cold. He also added that the airtight design prevents risk of mold and condensation.
Sullivan said CCOC has built or acquired more than 1,600 homes over its 43-year history. The social housing organization specifically focuses on environmental sustainability in its own designs.
In the 1990s, CCOC became the first multi-residential landlord to offer recycling to its tenants. Three years ago, the corporation won the 2013 National Habitat Award for its sustainable and environmentally-friendly Beaver Barracks redevelopment near the Canadian Museum of Nature.
Now, the new building on Arlington Avenue will become the second multi-residential building in Canada to follow a so-called passive house design.
The first multi-residential building to use the passive house design – built by Ottawa Salus Corporation- opened on Clementine Street this week. According to Sullivan, CCOC acted as a development consultant for the construction of this building, but the Arlington Avenue housing unit is the first time they will be using the design on a home for their own clients.
According to Tomaz Stich, Vice President of the Victoria based Canadian Passive House Institute (CanPHI), passive house design was invented by German physicist, Wolfgang Feist in 1990.
Feist founded the passive house institute in Germany and hosts annual international conferences on the subject.
Stitch said passive house design was introduced in Canada in 2010. The Austrian Passive House Group built one of the houses at Whistler Resort during the 2010 Winter Olympics, hosted by Vancouver and Whistler. The house was used to host the Austrian Olympic Committee and Austrian Public Broadcasting. The Austrians gave the house to the resort as a gift before returning home.
Stich noted that Canadians have only recently started to gain knowledge of the passive house design, particularly amongst young families who are interested in environmental sustainability.
“It’s slow, but it works,” he said.