Homebuilders who are taking part in a national project to construct houses that produce as much power as they use are celebrating the completion of their first home in the northeast community of Cityscape.

Mattamy Homes and its partners unveiled the first of five Net Zero homes on Wednesday and officials say it is the first master plan community in Calgary for the company.

“It’s our largest presence in western Canada. We’re also quite progressive in putting in environmental reserves, pathways, and thinking contemporarily as it relates to our consumers and the environment in the communities we’re creating so it seemed like a natural fit,” said Don Barrineau from Mattamy Homes.

Barrrineau says the Net Zero homes cost about $30,000 to $50,000 more than traditional builds but the company is absorbing those costs.

“We’re seeing this, in as much as anything, almost like research and development, for ourselves, for consumers, for Canada and so we’re absorbing those costs on these homes,” he said.

Each home produces as much energy as it uses annually and all are equipped with energy efficient appliances and solar panels.

Donna Moore is the CEO of the Canadian Homes Builders Association Calgary Region and says the Net Zero homes give buyers a whole new way of looking at the performance of new homes.

“We hope that by having this demonstration project that we’re going to be able to learn how to add all of these things into many, many new homes as they go forward. I think that we will see a demand and that will come from building them,” she said. “Any kind of energy efficiency and sustainability that we can put into our homes is a good thing and as an industry we want to do that, we want to be proactive, we want to have an opportunity to look at new ways of actually making our communities more sustainable.”

Some additional Features include:

  • A built-in recycling centre in the kitchen
  • Triple-Pane, Argon Filled, Double Low E "Shield" windows
  • Non-polluting or non-emitting materials were used inside the home
  • Faucets have infrared sensors to turn the water on when hands are detected under the spout and will turn off automatically when hands are removed
  • Drainwater heat recovery units capture heat from shower and drain wastewater and transfer it to incoming city water to reduce the amount of energy required to heat water in the hot water tanks
  • The basement is equipped with under slab insolation to increase thermal comfort while providing an additional barrier against moisture and radon gas

Brandon Pool is an architectural technologist and a consultant on the project and says the homes are constructed with three times the insulation and also have triple pain windows to keep the heat in.

“So your house 30 years ago would be built with a four inch wall, three and a half inch studs, so you already have less batt insulation in here so that might be an effective R-12 situation. It would absolutely not have the ridged foam on the outside too,” said Pool. “What we’ve done is we’ve added basically four and a half inches of rigid foam to the outside. This foam is good for a R-5 per inch R-Value so in here you’ll see about a 22 and a half inch additional  R-value added to the outside of the house,” said Pool.

The show home in Cityscape will be open to the public this weekend and the other four should be completed by March 2016.

The Canadian government sponsored the $4M program and a total of 25 Net Zero homes will be built in five provinces.

For more information, click HERE.

(With files from Kevin Fleming)