St. Albert homeowners can learn more about saving money and the planet this weekend as some of the greenest homes in Edmonton open their doors to the public.
The 2022 Eco-Solar Home Tour is back and in-person this year after a two-year pandemic gap. (Last year’s tour was virtual, while 2020’s was cancelled.) This free event gives people a chance to explore some of the most energy-efficient homes in the province and hear from their owners about how they were built.
This year’s tour features 35 homes in Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge, and (for the first time ever) Canmore, said organizer Andrew Mills.
“In my retirement I’ve gotten a little crazy, and I just keep adding cities [to the tour],” he joked.
The Canmore tour, organized with the help of the Biosphere Institute of the Bow Valley, features a solar-powered electric bike kiosk and an 1890s-era church equipped with solar panels. Lethbridge has two homes with geothermal heat, while Calgary has one with a wind turbine.
Mills said a big focus for the Edmonton tour this year was net-zero energy use, with 10 of its 14 homes built or retrofitted to that standard.
“I think we’re getting our message across!”
New and old
The federal government said last year Canada is to be net-zero in terms of emissions by 2050, Mills said.
“Eighty per cent of the homes we’re going to live in have already been built, and very few of them are net-zero energy. We’ve got a big job ahead of us to update all this older inventory of homes in order to get us to net-zero energy.”
Mills said his home, which is on the tour this year, is one example of how that could be done. Originally a drafty, barely insulated bungalow built in 1949, Mills has spent the last 17 years slowly bringing it up to net-zero standards. He added insulation to the walls, replaced the windows and doors, installed a ground-source heat pump, switched his appliances to electric (allowing him to shut off his gas line), and built a garage to host solar panels.
“We actually did not have a net utility bill last year,” he said, adding that they got a $250 credit on their electricity bill.
Also on the tour is Jim Sandercock’s 1951 home, which is the first single-detached home in Canada to be retrofitted with the Energiesprong method.
Energiesprong is a program from the Netherlands that allows for fast, cheap, green-energy renovations to homes. Instead of ripping open walls to add insulation, as he did with his house, Mills said Energiesprong sees crews bolt pre-built insulated panels to a home’s exterior.
“You don’t have to move out and you don’t have all the construction on the inside," Mills said.
Sandercock said his home was pretty drafty and poorly insulated, with a basement that was too cold to use in the winter and an upstairs that was too hot to sleep in during the summer. Seeking to lower his environmental impact without shrinking his living space, he called net-zero guru Peter Amerongen and signed onto his efforts to test-drive Energiesprong in Canada.
Sandercock said Amerongen and his partners previously tested Energiesprong at the Sundance Housing Co-op (which is also on this year’s Eco-Solar Tour). This pilot aimed to see if Energiesprong worked on standalone homes in Canada.
Crews have so far dug a trench to add insulation to his home’s foundations, and are getting ready to hoist the new wall panels into place, Sandercock said. When they’re finished, his family will be able to use 100 per cent of their home year-round, all without producing carbon emissions.
Mills encouraged guests to check out the tour, as he did before he started his renovations, to see where they could start saving on energy. The Electric Vehicle Association of Alberta will also showcase electric cars at most tour stops.
“The people on the tour have already done their research,” he said, and can show you the pros and cons of what they did.
“It’s not in the future. It’s here and now.”
The Edmonton part of the tour runs June 4 and 5. Visit ecosolar.ca for details.