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B6
GENERAL
TheStarPhoenix.com
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Home sweet home
—VerEco Homes Exhibit Photo
This eco-friendly home can be seen at the Western Development Museum in Saskatooon. Net zero means the home produces as much energy as it uses
q This VerEco home is Canada’s first “net zero” home on display
For The StarPhoenix
anada’s first net zero home exhibit
C
opened its doors at the Saskatoon Western Development Museum this October.
The exhibit, which runs for a year, showcases green building for Saskatchewan’s climate.
Ronn Lepage, president of VerEco Homes
Inc., wanted to show that green building can
be done both ecologically and economically.
This means that while the home was
designed to be net zero, cost was also a big
factor in the design of the home. But what
exactly does net zero mean?
Typically, the aim of green buildings is to
greatly reduce energy consumption.
Net zero homes go a step further: They
produce as much energy as they consume over
the course of a year.
Not to be confused with an off-grid home,
the VerEco Home uses SaskPower Eneraction’s Net Metering program.
When the home produces more energy than
—VerEco Homes Exhibit Photo
it needs, for example, on a sunny summer day,
energy feeds back into the SaskPower grid and Inside the home is just like any other home, but there are unseen differences
we get a credit on our bill for that energy.
At times when the home can’t produce
enough for its needs, energy is taken from the
SaskPower grid. Net zero means that these
balance out over the year, with an overall deficit in the winter and a surplus in summer.
But first, it’s important to do the following
three things:
1. REDUCE,
2. REUSE,
3. REPLACE
These three words are the key to making the
VerEco Home a net zero home.
It doesn’t make any sense to spend money
on alternative energy systems like photovoltaic panels to generate energy if it’s just going
to be wasted, so the first step is REDUCE.
In the VerEco Home, REDUCE means a lot
of different things. First, super-insulating the
walls has increased the energy efficiency of
the building. Think of it as putting on a thick
sweater to help keep your body warm.
Most homes today are built to insulate to
—VerEco Homes Exhibit Photo
about an R-level of 20 in the walls, but the
VerEco Home wall is 16 inches thick and
A look at the panels that are used as part of the Replace program
provides an R-value of 60 for the walls.
Heat isn’t lost through the walls as easily as winter time, and that you make sure there isn’t summer comes around, it can help shade the
windows and keep the sun out in the months
it is in conventional homes. As well, on hotter too much sun coming in the windows in the
when the sun is higher in the sky.
days, the home doesn’t change temperature as summer, when cooling is more important.
The VerEco Home uses passive solar design
Finally, REDUCE also means using Energy
quickly as a normal home.
by facing south with a specifically designed
Star appliances wherever possible and installamount of window area on the south-facing
ing energy efficient lighting to help bring
REDUCE also includes passive solar dedown the amount of energy the home needs to
sign, a concept where your home is oriented to wall.
There’s also a floor covered with concrete
function.
maximize how much energy you can get from
tile in the south-facing rooms to absorb heat
The living and dining room area in the
the sun without things like solar panels.
from the sun and slowly release it.
VerEco Home is lit with LED light bulbs
This means that you let the sun shine in
The roof has been angled so that, when
— we have about seven or eight different
through south-facing windows to heat in the
kinds of bulbs in the home.
LED lights are very energy efficient, but are
still more expensive initially than an incandescent bulb. The bulbs we’re using range from a
$13 three-watt bulb to a $65 12-watt bulb.
Of course, the energy savings from using
these bulbs offsets the cost quite quickly,
and they last anywhere between 25,000 and
50,000 hours.
Overall, LED lighting is changing quite
rapidly and offers an energy efficient alternative to regular incandescent bulbs.
REDUCE means that using these types of
technology has reduced the VerEco Home’s
energy demand by about 75 per cent.
For REUSE, the VerEco Home has a few
items to help it waste less energy.
First, there is a heat recovery ventilator.
This brings in fresh air from the outside and
preheats it using exhaust air from the inside
that’s already room temperature.
Heat is transferred in a heat exchanger so
that the air streams don’t mix. That way, the
home receives fresh air while reusing heat.
The other REUSE technology in the home
is a drain water heat recovery (DWHR) unit, a
copper pipe that recaptures heat from showers
when they drain.
It can recapture about 40 per cent of the heat
that would otherwise be going down the drain.
REUSE ensures that energy is not wasted.
REPLACE, the final part of reaching net
zero, uses alternative energy-producing technologies.
The VerEco Home has solar photovoltaic
panels to produce electricity: the panels convert the sun’s energy into electricity that can
be used by the home for lighting, powering
appliances, and more.
The other source of energy is a set of solar
thermal panels, which heat a water-glycol mix
for preheating hot water and for space heating.
These technologies offset the home’s energy
demand so that it produces as much energy as
it consumes.
The VerEco Home REDUCES, REUSES,
and REPLACES to become a net zero
home.
To see these technologies in action, you can
visit the VerEco Home Tuesdays to Sundays
for a guided tour at 10, 11, 1, and 2.
Tickets, which are $5, are available at
verecohome.com or at the Saskatoon Western
Development Museum.
In addition to the general guided tours, the
home also has a Grade 7 elementary school
program, a lecture series on Tuesday nights,
plus regularly updated online content.
—For more information about these programs, visit verecohome.com