Every house should be like this one

On the weekend, Darlene and I went to visit Discovery House 4, which was built on the SAIT (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) campus property. Avalon Master Builder constructed the net-zero home, a building that supplies all the energy needed an annual basis.

The 3 bedroom home is outfitted with solar thermal panels and walls that reduce loss of heat, high efficiency windows, and more. When there’s a lot of sun the house will produce enough electricity to feed back into the grid and withdraw what it needs on days where the home's needs outweigh what it can produce.

The house including the lot, a detached garage and landscaping costs $550,000, but Avalon Master Builder is looking to reduce that by $100,000 in the next five years. SAIT president Irene Lewis said the house was built on campus for research, test and demonstrate the latest environmentally efficient building technologies. The house will be on display at SAIT until June before it’s moved to McKenzie Towne. Public viewings are Mondays and Wednesdays from 4 to 8pm and on weekends from 10am to 5pm.

We didn't get to see all of the home's wondrous technology, because part of the home's efficiency is the radiant heating in the concrete foundation (missing for the home at its current site), but the home was impressive. They had no actual heating hooked up and the entire house was being heated by a small industrial electric heater in the laundry room. The entire (south facing part of the) roof was covered with solar panels and there were embedded panels beside the big south windows, which made them look like faux shutters - a nice touch. The whole point was to make it a green house that looks as normal as possible. I'd say mission accomplished. The insulation rating of the home alone would save folks tens of thousands in energy costs.

The picture is of the predecessor home, Discovery III.