Updates coming to the Ontario Building Code will force new homes to be more energy efficient and while it will cost more to build them, homeowners will save at least that much in lower energy costs, says an expert in residential energy efficiency.
“Energy efficiency is not something that’s just a fad,” says Ross Elliott, president of Homesol Building Solutions, who was speaking Tuesday at a meeting of housing industry professionals hosted by the Greater Ottawa Home Builders’ Association.
Here’s what he says to expect from the code update, which will take effect in 2017.
- New homes will be required to be 15 per cent more energy efficient than those built today, which will be achieved through more insulation, better windows and homes that are less leaky.
- Furnaces can be 30 to 40 per cent smaller, allowing for more efficient distribution of heat for greater comfort.
- All new homes will have HRVs (heat recovery ventilators), which will bring better air quality and better moisture and condensation control.
Although the changes will be incremental — today’s Energy Star homes are already more efficient than what the 2017 code will require — they will have an impact, Elliott says, offsetting the $2,500 to $5,000 increase in cost to build.
“The energy savings is actually going to end up being about double what the additional mortgage cost would be,” he says. “Energy efficiency more than offsets the additional cost to make a better home.”
But he admits that he is often told it can be a tough sell. “Energy efficiency is hard to see; it’s hard to understand. It’s not a granite countertop.”
As the building code is beefed up, the Energy Star and R2000 programs will also step it up to keep them ahead of the code.
To help get ready for the changes, the federal government will introduce a new EnerGuide rating system that will make it easier to compare the energy performance of one house to another and one builder to another.
“This is really going to change how buyers are looking at houses,” Elliott says. The new system is expected to be introduced April 1.
