The owner of this beautiful prefab eco home, Roman Szumski, is a physician and pathologist & was deeply involved in the process of designing & constructing a healthy home for his family. Prefab LEED Platinum kit house in Montreal Ellen and Roman Szumski earned LEED® Platinum certification for their home in Labelle…

Two new types of mass timber panels similar to cross-laminated timber are hitting the North American construction market. The commercial construction sector has warmly embraced cross-laminated timber (CLT) in recent years, taking advantage of it as the base structure, but also as a design feature. The assembly of…

Both plywood & OSB have benefits & drawbacks, with much misinformation about permeability - Ecohome investigates the latest data for new code to help make the best choice. OSB v plywood - which is best? Odds are, that if you pass a housing development of wood-framed houses, it will have OSB (oriented strand board)…

A certified Passive House in North America & Canada can be certified by the Passive House Institute PHI or PHIUS, the US certification system. Discover the differences to decide which Passive House certification is best for you. What is Passive House certification? The term “Passive House” was once obscure jargon…

We all like money saving ideas for the home to keep our bills and energy use to a minimum, one of those ideas is low-flow shower heads. Are low flow shower heads worth it? So, let's start with this somewhat shocking reality -  North Americans will on average use over 1.4 million litres of water per year, or about 4…

Design and furnishing ideas to make the best use of empty spaces in a home. From underneath a bed, under a subfloor or the underside of the staircase, there are many underutilized areas in a home that can make life in a small home a lot less cluttered. Here are some ideas on how to transform dead space into storage…

The Windsor Park Net Zero House in Edmonton won 2017 Canadian Green Building Award in the technical category, proving that green building a home is both possible and beautiful. As owners of this net zero energy home construction project , we acted as both the designer and general contractor. The objective for the…

The Lockeport Beach house in Nova Scotia is the residential winner of the 2017 Canadian Green Building Awards. Originally published by our print affiliate SAB Magazine Jury comments: This house has a light environmental footprint that derives from the philosophical approach taken by both the client and the…

Dust and chemicals in building materials can trigger permanent respiratory issues such as asthma; here are some ways to safeguard your air and health while work is going on. Construction is a dirty business, and living in a home under renovation can aggravate asthma and other respiratory illnesses, it can also lead…

The Tesla Solar Roof is available this summer in Canada but it won't be cheap. Tesla's Solar Roof hit the news last year on the heels of their Powerwall home battery , both of which brought a lot of great attention to home solar power generation. When we first reported on it during that exciting news cycle, there…

How to prevent flooding, sewage backup and leaks from appliances with a couple of 'smart' devices. Preventing flood damage in basements is a hot topic as we are regularly seeing the effects of climate change in the form of extreme weather events and unpredictable weather patterns. Snow melt combined with torrential…

Mark Hutchinson, Vice President of Green Building Programs at the CaGBC, speaks about the new Zero Carbon Buildings Initiative. SAB: What does the CaGBC hope to achieve with the Zero Carbon Buildings Initiative? Mark Hutchinson: The CaGBC launched the zero carbon building initiative in 2016 to champion the move to…

Follow owner/builders Sarah Cobb and William Murray as they build a home targeting both Passive House and LEED Certification. Building a Passive House that's also LEED certified This is an owner blog Ecohome posted following the personal experience of Sarah Cobb and William Murray of Rocket Construction Inc. as they…

Tiny houses, accessory dwelling units, coach homes; whatever you like to call them, we will soon see more of them popping up in Ottawa back yards. In the fall of 2015, the City of Ottawa conducted a public-consultation survey to gauge interest in a change of bylaws to allow secondary dwellings (Coach Houses or Tiny…

Why are some homes more comfortable than others? Learn about how to design a home for human comfort, which also makes for a more durable and efficient home. Have you ever noticed that at times you can feel cold in your home even though the air temperature is exactly where you like to keep it? That's…

High levels of radon gas in the air of your home might be coming from your water and not the floor of your basement. It is a very wise idea to have the air of your home checked for high levels of radon gas. Health Canada has identified exposure to radon gas as the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking…

The SANC02 is the first heat pump water heater available in Canada to use outside air for heating water. Great technology, if a little pricey. There are many manufacturers of heat pump water heaters on the market, which, rather than heating water with an electric coil as a normal electric hot water tank does, employ…

Adding insult to injury - trying to mask the smell of airborne contaminants with more airborne contaminants. Given that we spend about three quarters of our time indoors (counting both home and work), it is essential that we work to ensure clear indoor air quality. Contrary to what many people believe, indoor air is…

As a part of their Greenest City Action Plan, Vancouver is helping builders get homes certified under the Passive House Standard. Vancouver has set a goal of being the greenest city in the world by the year 2020 . Some of the policies included in that plan are expanded public transportation, bike lanes, encouraging…