
Construction on a unique mass timber passive house is underway
in Courtenay
Tom Grimmer built his first passive house in Comox about seven
years ago. It was among a small handful of passive homes on the
Island at the time.
Now, he’s building another one in Courtenay. This time, it’s a
mass timber passive house, possibly the first on the Island.
“This is the first mass timber, that I’m aware of, the first
mass timber build on Vancouver Island and there’s very few in
Canada for that matter,” he told CHEK News Wednesday.
Mass timber is described as “a family of engineered wood
products known for their strength, durability, versatility and
sustainability,” according to naturallywood.com, a B.C.-based,
global supplier of sustainably-managed forest products.
It adds that mass timber products are made by “taking smaller
wood elements such as dimension lumber, veneers, or strands and
connecting them with adhesives, dowels, nails, or screws to
create larger structural building components.”
A Passive House
is a German building technology that results in 90 per cent
efficiency over traditional builds.
“The idea of a passive house is that you use about one-tenth of
the energy that you would for a conventional home because of
various principles that go into it like triple-glazed windows,
super insulation, thick walls,” said Grimmer.
The insulation for the home goes on the outside, not inside the
walls, and it all comes from Germany, but from a material that
is readily available in B.C. if there was enough demand.
“One of the main components is wood fibre board and it’s used
for insulation. This is made from wood byproducts, what we would
call waste wood in Canada,” added Grimmer.
A local contractor took the job and says it’s unlike anything
they’ve done before.
“I was cautious obviously but this is a process we’re going to
be pushed to be building with this kind of efficiency before too
long so we’re a step ahead so it’s exciting. Obviously it’s a
gamble and there’s a lot of learning curves,” said Tyler
Schwindt, owner of Heartwood Contracting.
The house is built air-tight to the highest standard in the
world, resulting in high efficiency.
“You could actually heat this house with a hair dryer and the
other thing is it doesn’t require any air conditioning so you
have a big saving there. So this house is modeled to stay below
25 degrees celcius,” Grimmer said.
The house will cost about $400 per square foot to build because
much of it is prefabricated overseas and then shipped to
Vancouver Island. But Grimmer says he hopes to see local demand
increase and maybe someday see local facilities built to make
the pieces.
Source:
cheknews.ca