Project manager Harold Orr was honored at International Passive House Conference
Darmstadt, Germany. This year’s Pioneer Award, which recognizes the trailblazers of energy efficient construction, will go to Canada. In particular, the Saskatchewan Conservation House will be recognized, with which many features of the modern Passive House Standard were successfully tested in 1977. Against the backdrop of the oil crisis at the time, a broad team of experts looked at possibilities to significantly reduce the consumption of heating oil. Their studies showed that it was mainly a question of thermal protection of the building envelope. Canadian mechanical engineer, Harold Orr, one of the driving forces behind this project, will receive the Pioneer Award at the International Passive House Conference 2015 in Leipzig.
The above paragraph was directly purloined from the International Passive House Association and the news is bitter sweet for Canadians. Sweet because so many excellent Canadians pioneered the core concept of Passive House and bitter because the growth in supper efficient housing is happening in every industrialised nation except Canada.
This bar graph shows exponential growth in the Certified Passive House builds in the USA. Get on it, or be run over by it… with the exception of Canada – we’re still at the 2007 marker.
The graph above only shows half the picture for projects certified by PHIUS which doesn’t include homes certified by PHI. Though take-up in Canada has been slow, industry insiders feel a surge in interest. The CBC* reported recently on a Smithers, BC house to be built and Passive Buildings Canada has been gaining membership and general public interest in the talks they regularly host. All this to say that Harold might just see the fruits of his early labours finally come back to Canada. There is hope and change is coming – starting perhaps with the election in Alberta today!
*Its a shame that CBC sandwiched the earthship article in the above link. Passive Homes are meticulously planned, energy modeled, built by professionals and rigorously tested to produce a known energy performance. This means Passive Houses are poised to go mainstream whereas earthships are cobbled together, typically not energy modeled, rarely tested and have a history of being plagued by many issues. As the story reads “Earthship life has its challenges — the couple endured their first winter with no source of heat other than the sun (they have since brought in a wood stove.)”