Tiny but Mighty

Project Priorities

• Reduce Energy Consumption
• Increase Thermal Comfort

Project Goals

LEEP10 is a General Contractor-led pilot project supported by BC Hydro, NRCan, and the Canadian Home Builders Association. The Community Energy Association and the Retrofit Assist program and City Green Solutions supported program administration. Most notably it piloted the application of an aggregated 10-homes Integrated Design Process to create 2-phase Deep Energy Retrofit Plans. DER’s provided homeowners with an accessible starting point, including a roadmap to 50% energy/GHG reduction, and to Net Zero.

The Home’s Starting Point

This is a very small house, but mid-way through the energy assessment the homeowner added a proportionately large mudroom/foyer into the building envelope. (Note: This addition of square footage to the scope increased overall energy usage and skewed the final "Annual Energy Savings" number.) There is a basement suite that uses a lot of energy. The electrical service is 100amps with 31.25amp available for use for addition of electrical load. Homeowners want capacity for future solar, EV charging, and possibly a hot tub and RV connection. Homeowners already planned to replace the siding.

Key Goals: (goals that must be met, or the project will not move forward)

1. Budget – The project must stick to client budget.
2. Improve Ventilation
3. Heating – Eliminate in-wall electric heaters and some/all baseboards on main floor. Add a heat pump in the basement
4. Insulation – Mech room needs insulation and air sealing, upgrade wall insulation
5. Solar – Electrical service and panel upgrade to handle necessary disconnect and solar load, 8kW potential

Secondary goals: (goals that can have some flexibility, could be described as preferences rather than must haves)

1. Resiliency- setup for solar and battery backup in future
2. Long term comfort improvements and energy bill reduction – lower energy bills in conjunction with siding replacement At the outset, this homeowner was already planned to replace all siding. Adding exterior insulation and air sealing resulted in an incremental cost addition of approximately 16% over siding-only.