Mike and Jennifer-Lee explore the benefits of working with an Energy Advisor to calculate the building envelope, mechanical systems, and the air-tightness of your home to help provide choice, manage budgets, and above all, increase the comfort of your home when building new or renovating. A performance-based process, tune in for tips from Barb Silverthorn of Capture Energy.
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Co-Host, podcast editor: Jennifer-Lee Gunson: jPod Creations
Co-Host, Mike Freedman, AI Technology & Design
Production: Rami Films
Distributed by Black Press Media: Today in BC.
About the Speaker
Barb Silverthorn, Capture Energy
Owner, Registered Energy Advisor, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Practitioner, Thermal Imager
Three words are at the heart of what we do at Capture Energy: reliability, integrity, and knowledgeability. For Barbara, these are more than words; they are a commitment.
Barbara has a degree in Environmental Studies. After university, she made the shift to hospitality and spent 15 years in hotel management. But she never lost her passion for the environment and she certified one of the first hotels in Canada in the Green Key Program focused on sustainability.
In 2011, Barb and Scott started their own Energy Advising business that grew into Capture Energy in 2013. Scott is the technical expert and Barb concentrates on management, government and efficiency program relations and building their team of energy advisors. She is also a level-one thermographer and a Registered Energy Advisor.
Barbara is trained in consulting on Embodied Carbon and Life-cycle Assessment (LCA’s) and she is pursuing her certification in Integrated Design Process to help teams in the design stage on Net Zero and High-performance building projects effectively manage costs and workflow.
Capture Energy fills the bulk of her day, but she still finds time to cook, travel and explore the trails of the Pacific Northwest.
Listen and like for your chance to win a gas BBQ compliments of our Podcast Partner FortisBC.
Here's the Full Transcript of this Episode
EPISODE 60: Energy Advisors.
JENNIFER-LEE:
Hey Mike, we’re back with season seven of HAVAN’s podcast, Measure Twice, Cut Once.
MIKE:
Great to be back, Jennifer Lee. Lots going on. It’s HAVAN’s 50th anniversary. We’re rolling into season seven and we are looking at an exciting season because we’re going to be looking at building and renovating high-performance homes, energy choices, design and building solutions, and components that make up these amazing homes that we’re building today.
JENNIFER-LEE:
And we have a stellar lineup of industry experts to walk us through the latest in the building science and the choice available to build and design homes that are right for you.
MIKE:
Let’s get right to it. We’re very excited to have Barb Silverthorn from Capture Energy today. Welcome to Measure Twice, Cut Once.
JENNIFER-LEE:
Welcome. I’m so excited to meet you. I’ve never met you before, but Mike speaks very highly of you.
MIKE:
Yeah, we’ve been very privileged. We’ve rubbed shoulders on some job sites before. For those of you who are privileged to know you, can you introduce yourself and tell us a little about who you are and maybe about some of the different titles you hold?
BARB:
Yeah, for sure. So, I’ve kind of come full circle. So, I actually have a degree in environmental studies, which was a combined arts and science degree, which leads in perfectly to being an energy advisor. But then I stepped out of the industry for about 15 years and then came full circle back and we’re a small family business. So, my husband and I started Capture Energy in 2011. But he’s been an energy advisor since 2007. So, one of the very first energy advisors across the country. So, in addition to my degree, I also hold three certifications. I am a registered energy advisor, which is a certification through Natural Resources Canada, a federal government agency. I’m also an integrated design process facilitator, which is something that I just started doing last year, which we’ll maybe go into a little more detail. And lastly, I also hold a certification in doing F280 reports, which is a heat loss and design calculation, but basically for the homeowner and make sure that we have the right size heating systems, cooling system and ventilation systems in your home.
JENNIFER-LEE:
Wow, that’s a lot of hats and a lot of names that I don’t necessarily understand because a lot of this stuff is newer in the industry. And great for you for working with your family because that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time with my family construction business. So, I’m glad that you guys are still married. What, though, is an energy advisor? Because I don’t really know what that is. I tried Googling it. Not too much information came up.
BARB:
Yeah. So, it is a relatively new in comparison to the whole building industry energy advisors. It was established in in 2005 and really only has taken off in the last four or five years, especially here in British Columbia when we introduced the BC Energy step code. So as a registered energy advisor, there’s kind of two aspects to our work, and it depends on whether you’re renovating your home or you’re building a new home. So, for renovation, we kind of start, sometimes we’re brought into a project by another supplier. Maybe it’s a mechanical supplier. Maybe it’s a window supplier. Maybe it’s an insulator. Sometimes it’s homeowners that find out about different programs. There’s federal government initiatives and provincial initiatives for renovation projects to encourage people and help people with the expense of making their homes more energy efficient. So, in that case, we actually start with a visit to the home, get to know the homeowner a little bit, document their house from top to bottom. So everything from their heating and cooling systems, their hot water heating systems, anything that impacts the energy consumption of their home, we look at all the insulation levels, we look at the performance levels of their existing windows, and we pop a big fan in a door and do what’s called a blower door test, where we determine how much air is flowing through their building. Because obviously, the more air leakage you have in your building, the more you have to spend on heating it and cooling it, because that heat is moving out of your house faster. So that’s, you know, then we take all that information we’ve gathered, we go back to the office, we sit down at a computer with multiple monitors, and create an energy model of your home. And then we run different reports to give you, you know, all the information like here’s, you know, how your home is currently using energy. And here are all the things you could consider upgrading to make it more efficient. So that’s kind of the process for renovations for new homes, obviously, since, you know, there’s nothing for us to go visit right away. We start with the designer and the homeowner and, you know, get to know them a little bit as well and what their objectives are and what their priorities are with the build of their home. And then we take the plans and we put that into the energy model and then we work closely. This is where it comes in, the integrated design process. and we’ll see you next time. When I’m engaged to do that as well, we bring everyone together in the design stage to kind of, you know, maximize what we can do with the client’s budget, taking into account what their priorities are. So, energy advising, as you can tell by the way I’m talking, it’s very dynamic and it’s not a prescriptive path. So, it’s performance based. So, what that means is there’s no one right way or no one single path that you have to follow. with your new build or with your renovation. So even if we tell you in a renovation that your heating system is using the most energy that you may want to think about upgrading that but you’re like you know you might have an ocean view and your windows also need upgrading. That’s fine. You can upgrade your windows and sometimes it’s better to upgrade your building envelope before your mechanical systems anyhow. So, there’s a lot of flexibility there. And we really work with, you know, all the parties involved in the project to So get the outcomes that people want while also meeting any requirements that they’re required to do.
JENNIFER-LEE:
I have to say your job looks really cool because when I was Googling it, it looked like everyone was in the CIA on all the computers.
SPEAKER_01:
And I was like, I don’t know what you’re doing, but it looks like you’re doing some secret stuff.
MIKE:
If you’ve ever been to a house where they’re doing this kind of work, it’s almost like NASA showed up with the tubes and everything. It’s really cool. Hey, I’ve got to ask you a really quick question. We often think in terms of high-performance homes, right? Passive homes, net zero homes. Is what you do specific to that style of building methodology? Is this something everybody should be looking at whether it’s mandated or not?
BARB:
Thank you. That’s an excellent question, Mike. So, it is something, to be honest, as much as we love looking at plans and seeing a new build come to fruition, even more exciting for us is someone that’s actually taking an older home And, you know, trying to make it more efficient. It’s a lot more difficult actually to, you know, design an energy enhancements. into something that already exists than it does doing it on paper in the design stage for a new build. And there are a lot of government programs. There’s something called the CleanBC, BetterHomesBC program right now, which offers a lot of rebates for homeowners that are trying to do efficiency upgrades. The other thing about existing homes that we really like is a lot of times there’s challenges with them, right? You know, how many people have lived in a home where there’s one room that’s freezing cold or another room that’s like an oven in the summer? You know, a lot of the work that we do, it not just impacts the efficiency of the home, which hopefully, you know, lowers their utility bills, but it also should increase the comfort of the home. In other aspects, you know, some of the work we do more on the new home side, but we’re making homes much more airtight, which is great because it lowers, you know, the amount of the size of the systems and the cost of the systems to heat and cool your home. But it also introduces then mechanical ventilation. to make sure there is still enough fresh air flowing through the home. But these systems also have all sorts of filters in them, which is awesome. So, if it’s smoky out, you can pop in a filter which will actually, you know, take all the smoke particles out of the air. Or if you have allergies like I do, seasonal allergies, when your eyes are, you know, driving you crazy, you know, you’re all itchy and sneezing, you can pop in a filter that takes, you know, filters out all of the allergens in your home. So, you know, you might be, you know, irritated outside, but when you’re inside your home, you have this, you know, fresh air.
JENNIFER-LEE:
See, it is like detective work. Is there never a home, though, that you look and you’re like, oh, no, we can’t fix this at all?
MIKE:
My house.
BARB:
Have you have you had an energy advisor come?
MIKE:
They mentioned something about my hi-fi system buggering up all their models.
SPEAKER_01:
That was the end of that conversation. Were they like, this can’t be saved.
MIKE:
Something about having to add a hundred extra service and maybe I should look at other things. Anyway.
BARB:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, I would say there’s always things that can be done, you know, and Scott and I ourselves have actually renovated two existing homes. The first one was built in 1890. So. Challenge. Challenge. Yeah, the air leakage in that was so bad that we could barely get it to register on the fan. You know, we never got it to a point where it was, you know, as efficient as a home built today, but we probably doubled the efficiency of it from where we started. So I would say there’s almost always something that we can do to help, especially if there are those, you know, a lot of comfort issues, you know, maybe you have condensation on the inside of the windows or you do have that room that’s, you know, the sun comes in in the summer and it’s like an oven in there and that permeates through the home. There’s usually, you know, things that we can do. You know, and we always advocate to, you know, kind of plan the work that you’re doing over time. There’s nothing that says you have to do this all at one time. You know, based on your budget, you can, you know, kind of pick and choose when to update the various aspects of your home.
MIKE:
It’s interesting. You know, we were talking earlier about air tightness, and I wanted to go back to that very quickly because we’ve gone from older homes, which were not airtight. And then for a period of time, we had newer homes that were too airtight in the indoor air quality. So how do you create that balance between the air tightness of the home and still managing that indoor air quality so that we are breathing fresh air inside of our home and it’s not capturing particulate and VOCs inside of the home?
BARB:
Yeah, you don’t want a home that isn’t properly ventilated. The issue with a naturally ventilated home is the fact that that ventilation isn’t coming equally to all areas of the room. When we introduce what’s called a heat recovery ventilator, commonly called an HRV, into the home, That system is balanced so that basically how it’s set up is it’s distributing fresh air to all of the bedrooms of the home and the living area and exhausting air from the kitchen and the bathrooms. So, it’s taking out the moist, stale air and introducing fresh air. So, and that’s so that’s constantly circulating. So, it’s actually a much more comfortable system for the home than if you just have random holes in your building envelope that are, you know, allowing the air to flow through the home. The other thing about the HRVs is that they’re super cool. They’re just like, you know, a box it’s, you know, two by two, like a large suitcase that sometimes above a closet or sometimes in the attic, um, they just have to be accessible to change their filters. Um, but the other great thing of them is that as the air, the, the warm air is being exhausted out of your house and the cool air is coming in. There are two coils wrapped around each other in the box and so all the heat is being taken out of the air that’s being exhausted and put into the air that’s coming in. So, it’s like pre-warming that air. Again, helping the efficiency of your home because then you’re not having to heat that air as much as you would if you were just using a furnace or a boiler to heat it.
JENNIFER-LEE:
You’re just making me cry because I live in a 1950s apartment.
SPEAKER_01:
Right.
JENNIFER-LEE:
I just feel like the air is like coming through the windows constantly. It probably is.
SPEAKER_01:
Well, it is. I’m sometimes like, did I open a window? And I’m like, no, I didn’t. So, I feel like you’d cry if you come into my building.
BARB:
You know, it’s one of those things like when we look at windows specifically, they have changed so much in the last, you know, 20, 30 years. It’s incredible. And you have to think like here in the Lower Mainland, in the 50s, when they were building these buildings, we didn’t have to worry about really hot summers. It just did not exist then, right? It wasn’t until the last few years where, you know, we’ve really been seeing these temperature fluctuations where we had the heat dome a few years ago, and a lot of these buildings weren’t designed to manage something like that. But now, like the window technology has changed so much. So, there’s, you know, all sorts of different coatings that can be applied to windows. For a while, we, you know, to get a really high performing window, we had to go to triple pane windows. Now, you know, the window technology for double pane, which is, you know, there’s a lot of benefits to it. Triple pane windows are more expensive. They’re heavier. You know, they’re great if you have a lot of exterior noise. You know, you’re on a major, you know, next to your home’s next to a highway or something like that. But otherwise, you know, you can now get double pane windows that are perform almost as well as triple pane. And it’s, you know, a less cost to the homeowner.
MIKE:
That’s fascinating. And I don’t want to, I was going to say glaze over this, but this is too important to go by too quickly. So, what I’d like to do is let’s, before we got too far ahead of ourselves in this discussion, let’s take just a few moments Let’s take a quick break, let’s thank our amazing sponsor partners, and we’ll be right back because I want to learn more about Windows.
JENNIFER-LEE:
Measure Twice Cut Once is grateful to our podcast partners, FortisBC, BC Housing, and Trail Appliances. Support from our partners helps us share expert knowledge and resources with families looking to build, design, and renovate the home right for you. Trail Appliances makes everyday life better with the best selection in Western Canada, hassle-free delivery, and a price match guarantee. You’ll always get the best deal. At Trail Appliances, you’ll love buying an appliance as much as you’ll love using it. Affordable, accessible, quality housing is a top-of-mind issue for many British Columbians. For BC Housing, creating access to housing solutions that meets everyone’s needs is a guiding principle. BC Housing is working with governments, nonprofits, and residential construction industry members to create practical solutions to BC Housing’s challenges. To learn more about BC Housing initiatives, programs, and services, go to www.bchousing.org. And we all need reliable and efficient equipment for better comfort, health and safety of our homes. Whether you want to adopt some energy saving habits or take on major energy efficiency upgrade, FortisBC can help you save energy. Be sure to visit www.FortisBC.com where you can also find amazing tips on low and no cost ways to save energy. Plus, great information on what FortisBC is doing on low carbon energy with solutions such as renewable and natural gas. Competition alert, listen and like this episode for your chance to win a Napoleon Prestige P500 stainless steel natural gas barbecue valued at $1,600. Compliments of our podcast partner FortisBC details at www.havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce. Now let’s get back to our guests.
MIKE:
All right, welcome back. So, we’ve talked about the different homes and the role of an energy advisor. So, I think we kind of understand that now. But I want to talk next about exactly what do you review and what are your energy models based on? Because we talked about how you test it, but how do you come up with the data that tells us what to do in our homes, what the next steps are?
BARB:
Yeah, that’s, that’s a great, a great question. So, for an existing home. When we, you know, we enter a home, we, you know, meet with the homeowners get a little bit of background about their house any issues that they’re having with their home. And then we start in, if there’s a basement, we start in the basement and work our way all the way up to the attic. And on each floor, we’re documenting, you know, how much insulation is in the walls. What is the stud depth of the walls? How big are the joists? You know, your floor, like how deep is the space between the floors? and we document every single window. And for windows, it has a huge impact. Windows, I talk about them a lot because they have a really big impact on the performance of your building. So, the size of your windows is important. The orientation, right? The sun goes from east to west, right? So the windows that are facing east, south, and west, obviously, you know, the performance of them is impacted a lot more than North facing windows if you have a lot of trees right the shading it also impacts it so we look at all of these factors when we input it sounds crazy but when you say Jennifer Lee about you know the crazy screens that you saw for every single window we’re inputting seven factors. So, we’re putting in the size of it, the number of whether they’re single pane, double pane, whether they’re insulated, not insulated, you know, the orientation of them. And so, and we do that same thing with the wall system. So, we’re looking at all the insulation levels in your walls in your attic. And then the last factor is the blower door test results, which is measuring the air leakage. So, the three kinds of key aspects of the work we do is your building envelope, your mechanical systems, specifically your heating system and cooling system, and your hot water heating system. People really don’t realize that generally your hot water heater is using about 30% of the energy in your home. So that’s 30% of your utility bills are going to heat up the water in your water heater. Yeah. More if you have teenagers.
MIKE:
I’ve got a quick question. When you’re talking about windows and you’re doing all this measurement and all these calculations, does that try to estimate what the thermal gain and loss of those windows are or just the overall impact on the house?
BARB:
Yeah, no, we’re looking specifically at what’s called the U-value, which is the inverse of the R-value. So, we’re looking at the insulation of the windows themselves, including their frame. And we’re also looking at something called the solar heat gain coefficient. And so that is the amount of heat that transfers from the sun through your windows into the room. And that’s one of the things that’s changed a lot with the new glazings and the new films that they’re putting on windows. You can change it from anywhere to like about allowing 15% of that heat to transfer through up to like 50%. So, you know, there’s a huge range there and we really work closely with the homeowner If it’s a renovation project, you know, the window company, if it’s a new build, we’re usually doing this in the design stage to kind of find the balance that will work best for the home. And then ourselves, we understand that You know, window companies, we can’t specify we want, you know, a U-value of 1.2 and a solar heat gain of 0.3 and just say, like, that’s it. Like, that’s what it has to be, because there may not be a window that matches that exactly. So, what we do as energy advisors is we always, like, allow some flexibility and a range there so that people can go out, they can, you know, they have choices. They can kind of choose the style of window that they’d like to have, as well as meeting the performance requirements.
JENNIFER-LEE:
How do you get the clients to understand this? Because I really didn’t understand until I moved into an older building and it’s a hot box during the summer and those windows, I don’t know, I feel like they’re made with a little tiny pane of glass and it’s like a windstorm coming through the window every night. But I didn’t know that until I moved from a newer place to an older place. When you’re on site with your clients, how do you get them to understand this stuff is important, that they will eventually feel a difference because they might not be able to visualize it?
BARB:
You know what? One thing that’s great while we’re doing that blower door test, when we’re measuring the air leakage, we can actually leave that fan running and we actually go around the home with the homeowner and you can actually feel the air coming through the windows. Yeah. That’s cool. It is cool. Well, it’s kind of shocking for some people. Um, but yeah, like, and it’s amazing what, what we find sometimes we find in older homes, like they may have switched out their heating system and there’s, you know, a four inch hole where a duct used to run through the exterior of the wall and they’ve taken that out, but they never, they never closed off the penetration. So, there’s, you know, just basically, you know, cold air running straight through, um, into your, into your home. So, yeah, again, it depends on your energy advisor and the experiences that your energy advisor has, the amount of experience they have, you know, and the amount of time they take. So, you know, for ourselves, we really include that into the cost of doing the evaluation. So, you can, you know, just simply go collect all your data, you know, not really engage with the homeowner and send them the report. We don’t see the value in that. So, we really, you know, hope we always try to have the homeowner present when we are doing our evaluations and do spend that time at the end walking through pointing the things out to them. And so, then when they get our reports, it makes more sense.
JENNIFER-LEE:
That does make more sense because unfortunately I’ve seen it where a lot of people don’t educate the homeowner and then it’s like they just get the bill, and they don’t understand. So, I’m glad you guys do that. And speaking of budget, how do you work it with the homeowner’s budget and the priorities? Because obviously there are certain things that you have to hit for certain government mandates and requirements, but I know you mentioned before that you don’t necessarily have to do everything right up front.
BARB:
Yeah. Again, we have to, I always talk in kind of the two streams. So, for a renovation project, yeah, we give, it’s called a renovation upgrade report, which kind of, it lists everything from their least energy efficient aspect to the most. And then if something’s perfectly fine, we don’t even include it on the report as something that they should consider changing. And then, yeah, it’s up to them. And it’s their choice what they want to upgrade, when and how and who they use. So, we don’t have you know, we just say, here’s the status of your home. Like this is this is where it’s at right now. And it gives it it’s there’s something called the EnerGuide rating scale, which is from zero to 100. And a zero is the most efficient home because it’s using zero energy. And that report also compares their home to what a home would be if it was built today. So, it really gives them a lot of information and we’re always happy to kind of go back and walk them through that report or reports because there’s several that we give them at that time. For new homes, we have introduced the BC Energy Step Code, which is requirements that all homes that are built today are required to meet in terms of energy efficiency. Last year in 2023, we went to step three of the step code. And all that means is that the home has to be 20% more efficient than a home built to the National Building Code. So, the rationale between the step code and slowly introducing more and more requirements is it allows builders who have so many things to factor into their project and some time to figure out what aspects work best for them in increasing the efficiency of the home. This is where the whole integrated design process really comes into play. So, if we can use that process, what that means is in the design stage, traditionally, you know, a project kind of went from the designer It went into building permit, the permit was issued, and then it was handed over to the builder and they built it. With the requirements today, and not just with energy, but with the sophistication of the houses, all the low voltage that we include in a home, all the smart home features that are included, there has to be a lot more planning at the design stage. And as energy advisors because what we do touches almost every aspect of the home right from how it’s framed, because that impacts how much insulation can be put in, in the various areas to what I was describing with the windows. You know we with a new home, we talked to the builder and say okay what kind of air leakage results have you been getting on past projects, you know what do you think we can do here, we, we work with, you know, the building envelope, are we going to use an interior vapor and air barrier or an air exterior one. So, what we try to do, the integrated design process is to bring all of those people together in the design stage and talk through everything. And it’s amazing when you put, you know, four brains, six brains, eight brains, all in one room, and it doesn’t have to take a long time, like an hour or two and kind of talk through the process. And everyone has different ideas. And a lot of times that allows us to get a much more efficient home, a more comfortable home within the client’s budget.
MIKE:
Well, if we’ve learned anything over seven seasons, that you get better results when everybody collaborates. And I’m glad you talked about low voltage, specifically about how power shades might affect your thermal calculations if there’s a provision. But one thing that I would really love to dig deep, deep, deep down into is this. Building science is exponentially changing at a very rapid rate. Yes. Right? So, we’ve gone to a new step code. We’re going to have to jump up again. The software that you guys are using, and I’ve seen it, it’s an older software. So how does that software account for some of the changes? This is an example we had Anton from Layton Consulting on last week. And he was mentioning that the software is 20 years old, and there’s eight different levels, and it only captures like one level. And the question I have is, obviously, this is something that you have to deal with day in and day out. How do you get around this? Like, how do you figure this stuff out? And for lack of a better term, anticipate using the software you have, the tools you have in your education to sort of understand where everything will end up, because we don’t know what new window flavors are coming down the pipeline, but you still have to incorporate them into your projections, right?
BARB:
Right. But like many software, it’s 20 years old, but it’s constantly being updated, right? So just like your Windows system or whatever software you’re using, it’s not that we’re using the same version today as we were using 20 years ago. So definitely there, you know, there is aspects as there is with all software systems. And we use a couple different ones depending on the project. Each of them have their strengths and their weaknesses. But I think a lot of times it comes down to who’s using the program. because there is a lot of flexibility built into the program. And sometimes we are regulated in terms of our reporting that we have to document things in a certain way, but that’s not to say that we can’t also do a different iteration of the energy model, taking into account some other factors and incorporate that into the design. It might not be the same as what we have to submit in terms of you know, the permitting or for acceptance from Natural Resources Canada, who ultimately, you know, labels the home with its EnerGuide rating. But there is a lot of options. I think, you know, one thing that’s difficult is you can tell by everything we’re discussing that there is a lot to know, not only just in the building science aspect, but also there’s so much rapid change in the products available. And You know, with our team, we kind of separate things into, you know, different people have different areas of expertise. So, for example, I’m the person that knows everything about all the different municipalities and all their different requirements. So, we have 11 business licenses to operate because we’re working in so many different municipalities. So, each of them. You know, the step code is mandated by the province, but it’s enacted by the municipality. And they all do it slightly differently, and they all want slightly different things. So, we have to take that into account. Some municipalities, it’s mandated to be step three. Some are working, you know, to higher levels of efficiency. The North Shore, for example. you know, they require a project to be step five. So, you know, I focus on that. Scott, he is our, you know, technical expert. So, because he’s been using HOT2000, which is the software that you’re mentioning, since 2007, he knows that inside and out. Um, and then, you know, we have, uh, another EA who really loves the site work. So, he’s the one that’s most often, you know, um, out, uh, on the job site, helping the builders mid construction, making sure they’re on track to meet their requirements, helping he comes from, you known a renovation background. So, he’s, he’s great with, with homeowners, um, because he’s already used to explaining, you know, some of these aspects of their home to them. So, we kind of divide it up that way. But if you’re like an independent energy advisor and you’re new, it’s impossible to know all of this. And so again, depending on the complexity of what you’re trying to achieve, you should really consider the experience of the energy advisor that you’re working with. You know, if you have a home that’s maybe 10, 15 years old, but you know, there’s an issue just with the windows or there’s, you know, the heating system isn’t working properly, you know, a younger energy advisor where you just kind of need those reports and you know, to facilitate the change. But if you have a more complex project, you really want to work with an energy advisor that has some experience.
JENNIFER-LEE:
And as a homeowner, it’s impossible for me to understand, too. So, you need to have people like you on your side, because I think the conversation has been great today. I’ve learned so much, but it’s a lot of information and the right people in your corner to guide you through it.
BARB:
Yeah, just a couple of things, too, for homeowners directly. If you’re trying to find an energy advisor in your area, there’s a couple of resources. About five years ago, energy advisors across the country actually created our own association. It’s called CACEA. and people can go there and see energy advisors that are part of that association and generally energy advisors that have taken that step are really motivated to learn and to do the right thing and there’s a lot of resources just like Haven that that can kind of help you with the learning curve and you can kind of, you know, gather information and share information with other energy advisors. Provincially, there’s also a list of energy advisors and then CHBA, the Canadian Home Builders Association. I should also mention that in addition to being certified, you know, you can be certified as an energy advisor. But Scott also holds two other certifications. He’s a MERB Energy Advisor, which is a multi-unit residential building energy advisor. So that means we can evaluate homes up to three stories high or sorry buildings up to three stories high so we do a lot of townhome projects and small condo buildings and he’s also a net zero energy advisor and we haven’t really touched on kind of the higher performance aspects yet but There are a couple different, you know, certifications and programs for people that are going beyond what is just required. We also worked, you know, on a project with the Chu family in Vancouver. which was the second net zero renovation project that was certified in Canada. We also do a lot of work in the city of Vancouver who has their own set of bylaws and they’ve just introduced a new program with gentle densification where they’re allowing now what was traditionally called a single-family lot. They’re now allowing up to six or eight units depending on the size of the lot. So, these are called multiplex buildings. So, we’re also certified to do that. And one thing that’s interesting with the City of Vancouver, if you go above and beyond the requirements, so if we do a net zero project in the City of Vancouver, it actually gives some additional FSR, you can have the building a little bit higher. So, there’s, they’re trying to use a carrot method to, you know, have builders increase the efficiency of the home. And I think the other thing to go back to that’s really, really important is, you know, it’s nice to increase the efficiency of their home. But I think people are also they don’t always understand that when you’re doing that, you’re also really increasing the comfort of the home and the indoor air quality of the home. So, it’s those three things are always tied together. So, it’s always like, you know, it’s more than just meeting the requirements, it is actually making your home more comfortable.
JENNIFER-LEE:
And it’s great that you mentioned the True Family because we had them on with my host, Zain, in season six. So, if you want to catch up on that episode, make sure you take a listen.
MIKE:
Yeah, that was a great season. We also had Ravi Kalan on talking about densification. So, we’re tying a bow on everything right now. And speaking of tying a bow on everything, I know I’m geeking out. I know I’m nerding out because I talked about windows forever. But I do want to go back and talk a little about the technology. Specifically, you talked about HRV, heat recovery. But there’s also HVAC, there’s mechanical systems. And I think it’s quite confusing and overwhelming for those of us who don’t play in that space every day. Can you talk about that part of what you do specifically? So basically, if someone’s listening to this and want to get some insight into what should they be looking at when they’re thinking about these solutions for their home, whether it’s a new home or renovation, because that’s a really important part of your calculation, as is the building envelope. But I want to talk about mechanical systems specifically.
BARB:
I think sometimes when we try to break down the high-performance aspects to the homeowner, we use some really good analogies. One is, you know, the first thing we talk about is building envelope. What’s my building envelope? And it’s kind of like when we increase the insulation on the building, it’s like putting a sweater on your house, right? So, you’re keeping more of the heat inside. HRVs, think of it as the lungs of your home, right? So, it’s, it’s how your home is breathing because you’ve made it air, you know, airtight. There’s not that natural ventilation anymore. So, it’s, you know, the, the HRV, it’s just basically breathing for, for your home. HVAC is your, um, uh, heating, HV, ventilation, um, And then AC, like air conditioning. So, it’s just shortened to HVAC, but that’s basically, yeah, your mechanical systems, whether you have a heat pump, a furnace, a boiler, that’s what that terminology means. And then in terms of, you know, the building science, it’s kind of broken into those three categories. There’s your building envelope, which encompasses your windows and your insulation on your building. There’s your HVAC, which is, you know, the mechanical systems that are heating, cooling and ventilating your home. And then there’s the air leakage, the blower door testing we do. And those three things combined is what, you know, is kind of the main factors when we’re talking about energy efficiency.
JENNIFER-LEE:
I feel like we’ve learned so much knowledge that I’m just like processing it all.
BARB:
So yeah, I think it is really complex. You know, and I feel like I, you know, well, partially I love what I do. So, I could talk about this stuff for hours. But I think what’s important from a homeowner perspective is just to really understand that the energy advisor, even if you’re not familiar with that, that it is a key person that’s going to be on your team with your build or your renovation. And so just find someone that you’re comfortable with and let us do our jobs. So, you don’t have to think too much about this. We’ll present you with the information and options so that you can make an informed decision.
MIKE:
gone through a lot of highly technical information. And kudos to you for putting it in a way that we can understand. So, thank you very much. A lot of great conversation happened today. And I think what I’m taking away from it is this. Look, at the end of the day, it’s mandated that we need an energy advisor. But there’s different levels of energy advisor. And depending on who you work with, they can help you make a lot of the important decisions that will impact not only the comfort of your home, but the efficiency of your home, your heating and cooling bills. and specifically, the resale value of your home, which is something we don’t think about enough as well. So really- And the budget too, Mike.
BARB:
Absolutely. The budget’s huge. If we can do the energy model, you’re going on about windows. If we can make the energy model work with double-pane windows versus triple-pane windows, that’s an enormous savings to the cost of that build. And that money then can be put towards other aspects. Same thing if we, you know, increase the insulation, you know, that cost can be more than offset by reducing the size of the HVAC system, which will be cheaper for that smaller system. So budget is also like a key factor in, you know, we actually help, you know, manage your budget and put that money to the best use.
JENNIFER-LEE:
And I know you said so many things today, but do you have one more tip for us before we go?
BARB:
Yeah. In terms of the homeowner, I, I think, um, you know, my tip would be not to be intimidated by this. Um, you know, energy advisors are here to help and, you know, there isn’t any, any problem that, that we can’t help with. So, whether it’s a moisture issue, whether, you know, it’s a heating issue, you know, um, you know, give us a call and, and, and we’ll see how we can help.
MIKE:
Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us this week, Barb. It was a phenomenal conversation. Always great to see you. Learned a ton. And I think anyone listening to this is going to walk away with a greater sense of appreciation, not only for what people like you and the rest of the energy advisory community brings to the table, but also the value of why having a great professional like yourself on their team is so important to having great results for the project they’re working on.
BARB:
Thanks, guys. It’s been great to be here. Thank you so much.
MIKE:
You know, if all we did was talk about what you do, and the value you add, it would have been a great conversation. But you know, I forgot to talk about something very, very important as well. In addition to listening to this episode and walking away with a great deal more knowledge than you have, you also have a chance to listen to this episode and walk away with a beautiful brand-new barbecue. So, if you listen to this episode like this episode, you have a chance to win a Napoleon Prestige P500 stainless steel natural gas barbecue valued at almost $1,500, compliments of our phenomenal podcast partners, FortisBC. Details are available at www.havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce.
JENNIFER-LEE:
And for notes and links to everything mentioned on today’s episode, including resources shared by Barb, go to www.havan.ca/measuretwicecutonce . Thank you to Trail Appliances, FortisBC, BC Housing, Rami Films, J-Pod Creations, and AI Technology and Design. It takes a team to build a home and so does it to do a podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and see you next week.
