A LEED Platinum Home project overview

As building rating systems drive building codes to greater levels of performance, the rating systems themselves need a periodic upgrade to stay ahead of the curve; enter LEED version 4 (V4.)This latter version of the LEED rating system involved a comprehensive overhaul and to ensure relevancy and adoption LEED v4 was reviewed and broken down into positives and negatives by technical advisory groups. Over its three-year development process, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) received 23,000+ public comments and released six drafts of their update. The final draft was approved by 86% of the consensus body.

One of the biggest differences when comparing and contrasting LEED V4 vs. LEED 2009 – its most recent predecessor – was the rating system and dependency on project type.

当加拿大绿色建筑委员会(CaGBC)宣布住宅LEED评级系统将提高LEED V4项目的门槛时，我们EcoHome已经在考虑建造一个展示绿色性能的住宅作为教学工具的想法，因此决定对新的LEED V4进行测试。我们已经计划建造一个生态负责、超级高效、被动加热的房子，所以我们认为LEED项目的大部分要求无论如何都会在这座建筑中实现——但有趣的是，新的LEED V4方法包含了更多的综合过程。这要求所有的团队成员都积极参与到项目中，让他们一起工作，发现独特的方法来降低成本，材料的使用，最大限度地减少对家庭本身的环境影响，以及家庭居住者的习惯，需求和生活方式。

For example, one new aspect was to include a credit category for Location & Transportation, placing more emphasis and attention on reducing main contributors to global warming: transportation. The Location & Transportation category includes strategies to reduce costs, pollution and resource depletion related to daily commutes - so the EcoHome team decided early on to reduce the energy consumption of the home to a minimum while providing Electric Vehicle charging as an integral part of the energy use calculations.

We were pleased to get the confirmation that the Edelweiss House in Wakefield, QC received final certification of Platinum under the LEED V4 for Homes program, the first project and home in Canada to do so. Not only that, the EcoHome Edelweiss House project was only the second LEED V4 Platinum home certified worldwide - a result we are proud of and which promptedThomas Mueller, President and CEO of the CaGBC to comment:

”The Edelweiss House is a phenomenal achievement - the first Canadian project to meet the stringent requirements of the latest version of LEED at its highest level, I commend Ecohome for being a leader in the Canadian home building community and for demonstrating to the industry that high sustainability standards can be achieved right here in Canada, right now.”

What is the cost of a LEED Platinum Home?

The final Edelweiss 1552 sq.ft. house was built for only $295,000 appx Canadian (about $222,000 USDat current exchange rates), or $190 per sq. ft. (about $144 USD per sq.ft.) which is exceptional for such a high specification home, but does include some unbilled time from the owner - who paid particular attention to such aspects as air sealing details which take time.

它包括一长串environmentally friendly materials, specifically chosen to ensure ahealthy internal air quality for the home, and includes mechanical systems with not one but three interwoven and世界杯2022赛程时间表最新 .

Some of the Eco-friendly features in the Edelweiss LEED V4 Platinum home (included in the build cost) :

First performance benchmark for Edelweiss: Passive Solar Index 15

Registration date:August 25, 2015
Region:Outaouais, Quebec
Type of construction:Single-family New home
PSI rating:15 kWh / m²
Method of calculation:measured post-occupancy

One of Edelweiss's most impressive attributes is its extremely low energy demands and operating costs.Energy-modeling software predicts that the house will use an average of 24.6kwh of electricity per day, or an average over the year of $1.39 (Canadian) per day based on current electricity rates from Quebec Hydro. For a full year, heating, cooling, and interior plug loads should add up to about $507 ($385 USD)

Even if the owners drove the 33 km to Ottawa every day for work in an electric vehicle, using the incorporated charging station at the house, that would bring total energy consumption to about $2.30 per day ($1.75 USD).

Edelweiss House was designed and built by two founders of Ecohome, Emmanuel Cosgrove and Mike Reynolds, and as Reynolds puts it:"It’s not that hard, you don’t have to blow the bank to have a high-performance house. You just don’t. That’s why we did this project, to show that it could be done affordably.”

First and foremost, Reynolds said, is the passive design of the house.”The primary heat source is the sun,”he said.”The majority of the heating requirement is met by the windows. Our primary heat source would bepassive solar gain, by design.”

The EcoHome Team even designed Edelweiss to make use of deciduous trees on the south facing side of the building lot to effectively shield the windows from any possibility of overheating in summer, while allowing the lower summer sun to stream into the main living area in winter and heat the thermal mass of the concrete floor, using it as athermal batteryfor night time residual heat release. To make certain that theeco-friendly polished sealed concrete floornever feels cold underfoot, there is a 10-zonehydronic radiant-floor heating systempaired with an electric boiler with carefully controlled backup heating control system too.

这个LEED白金认证的房子可能在能源方面很吝啬，但它在舒适方面很慷慨!

Exterior wall assemblies for this beautiful LEED platinum home include:

Insulation:

8 in. of semi-rigid mineral-wool insulation on the outside of the sheathing, and another 5-1/2 in. of mineral-wool batts in stud cavitiespackaged in a high-performance building envelope. Exterior walls of the slab-on-grade house have a total of 13-1/2 in. of mineral wool (5-1/2-in. batts followed by 8 in. of semi-rigid insulation) for a total R-value of 58. Seehere for full details of this LEED home's super-insulated wall design.

There isR-32 worth of mineral wool under the slab, see here, andR-95 of mineral wool in the ceiling under the green roof, see here.

Air Sealing:

Edelweiss incorporated verycareful attention to detailin designing the air sealing for LEED wall system design- as well as usingthe correct methods for fitting windows and doors very tightly within the LEED and Passive House designed walls.

Canada's first LEED platinum V4 certified home - The Edelweiss House © Ecohome

Which Renewable energy system was chosen?

Photovoltaic panels or wind-energy systems to offset building energy requirements are commonplace on high-performance homes, especially asthe cost of solar panels continues to fall and choice increases. But for the LEED certified Edelweiss project, Ecohome didn’t think they would contribute sufficiently to offset their initial investment or the additional carbon footprint.

”You can get so much more if you invest first in efficiency,” says Reynolds. “There are enoughhouses that are going net-zero energyby popping on solar panels. But we kind of wanted to bring it down to the basics and just show how little energy a house needs to use. Yes, we could have installed solar panels on top of it, but there’s so little consumption as it is.” Also, added Mike, "utility power in this region comes from hydro sources in Quebec, not coal or another fossil fuel, so EcoHome was OK with the power source as being primarily sustainable." Reynolds also makes a very good point when he continued with; "We also realized that during the times of year we would need most energy, the winter, there's a good possibility that any solar panels would be covered with snow and therefore operating very minimally if at all - so we would have needed to add ahome battery systemas well!"

Why Choose LEED Certification instead of Passive House?

EcoHome also decided for LEED certification instead of Passive House certificationbecause even though the Edelweiss House’s energy consumption for heat and its level of airtightness are at or near the required levels. “We met the Passive House heat requirement and had virtually the same on air changes. Passive House is a great initiative, but the targets don’t reflect a Canadian climate on the whole, and LEED is a far more encompassing system that also includes the idea of a healthy home in it's choice of building materials. We also like the ongoing idea of influencing a homeowner's energy choices by incorporating real time energy monitoring & including an Electric Vehicle charger as standard - which are part of the LEED V4 certification.”

Which is Canada's greenest home? Is it the Eidelweiss project?

With a heating requirement equal to that of Passivhaus, top points for energy efficiency of LEED V4 platinum, a slew of recycled materials and excellent interior air quality, we'd like to think the Edelweiss Housewould be a main contender. But we acknowledge it's really hard to say; there are so many variables and criteria to consider.

Eidelweiss is a simply designed yet elegant Scandanavian feel, passively heatedslab-on-graderancher capable of housing a family of 4 comfortably in a sustainably sized home, without resorting to building aTiny House. Andbest of all, it was done well within a conventional building budget.

雪绒花之家的前提是主要集中在极致的性能，耐久性，健康的空气质量和最重要的是-可承受性。性能住宅不需要超出预算，经济适用房也不需要是能源大户。雪绒花的房子节省的能源是如此的极端，它将相当便宜的购买和生活在这所房子，而不是一个简单地建立的房子，以满足建筑规范的基本要求-几乎在北美的任何地方。

The Edelweiss House is in Quebec, so it does benefit from lower than average power rates but then the climate is also potentially more extreme, so homeowners in other parts of North America should not immediately write-off the idea of heating a house like this with electricity based on high daytime rates. As a house such as this requires very little heat to begin with, its passive heating by design and ability to retain heat by a combination of thermal mass and high performance insulation and building envelope design would make it very easy to limit any heating to off-peak hours if preferred.

”The biggest message we’re after is not to look at the building-code base requirement as a target to achieve and then just resign yourself to spending tons of money every month to pump heat into your house,” Reynolds said. “Rather, invest that in insulation and the payback is immediate. People think the payback is going to be 25 years, and it’s not. The payback starts when your neighbor turns on the heat and you don’t.”

For more information on this outstanding LEED Platinum V4 home and its construction, we have documented the entire process in:

If you would like to try a LEED Platinum V4 home before deciding to build one, and you'd like to visit this beautiful region of Quebec, then you canrent the Edelweiss LEED certified home here

LEED Platinum Edelweiss House
This LEED Platinum home is warm & inviting with cork floor, reclaimed wood ceiling & zero-VOC Kitchen © Ecohome
LEED Platinum Edelweiss House
The reclaimed wood doors give the Edelweiss LEED platinum home extra points and some added charm © Ecohome
LEED Platinum Edelweiss House
Rooms are flooded with light with carefully placed windows © Ecohome
LEED Platinum Edelweiss House
Local slate was used for the bathroom floor & walls, as were low flow eco-friendly taps & toilet © Ecohome