Innovative Homestead Recognized by Maverick Awards
Ellenwood Homes in Nelson, BC, honoured as finalist in national awards
With the launch of Built Green Canada’s inaugural awards program, designed to reward and profile leadership in sustainable building, entries for the three exclusive awards categories came from British Columbia to Ontario. One of the finalists for the Innovation Award is longtime builder member, Ellenwood Homes from Nelson, British Columbia, for their Mountain-View Homestead: a 1,675 square foot single family home located on an acreage in Slocan Park. This award’s purpose is to recognize creative ways sustainable building is happening and progressing industry. Mountain-View Homestead offers a range of innovative features, with a focus on prioritizing a fast carbon cycle, energy performance, alongside resilience and health.
Ellenwood strives to keep operational carbon emissions as low as possible, preferably close to zero. They don’t usually install any gas-fired mechanical equipment or appliances. Working with experts to model their homes, they do embodied carbon analysis on all their projects. Embodied carbon refers to all those emissions straight from raw material extraction, through transportation, waste, surrounding operations—it's the hidden carbon footprint. This professional analysis helps Ellenwood make material substitutions to reduce the home’s embodied carbon.
As a first step, they began substituting insulation materials (using cellulose and mineral wool fibers versus foam plastics) and reducing traditional concrete in their designs. And now, they’re analyzing not just building materials and assemblies, but also mechanical systems in the embodied carbon calculations, towards further addressing operational carbon.
Ellenwood Homes already targets holistic sustainability practices, integrating advanced, net-zero building methods as part of their strides to be innovative, while prioritizing locally sourced, low-impact materials, which is especially resourceful in their more remote region. And then, from this project's inception, the homeowners emphasized the importance of energy efficiency and sustainability. Their clear vision provided Ellenwood with guidance, shaping many aspects of the design and construction process. This unwavering commitment to energy efficiency motivated Ellenwood to push boundaries and explore new avenues for sustainable construction.
Compared to a typical house, the homestead has a 46 per cent reduction in energy use. The annual expected costs for electricity, including all loads, heating and ventilation, is around $1,700 per year. This house does not use any natural gas or propane, which saves on utilities, and alongside the additional insulation, utility savings will have a payback period of less than six-and-a-half years.
The kitchen is outfitted with a mass heater and wood-fired cooker and bread oven. This provides warmth to the entire home and allows the homeowners to use firewood, a renewable resource with a fast carbon cycle, rather than gas. While a homeowner favourite, this appliance also challenged Ellenwood on a critical goal: air tightness was required to reach their efficiency goals, alongside their municipality’s Step 5 building code.
Wood stoves are notoriously difficult to seal around, with their pipe penetrations through the roof, because of the required air gaps around combustible materials. Therefore, special care was taken to ensure all aspects of the building envelope received proper air sealing. Meanwhile, the mass heater required additional engineering to support its 2,500 kg weight, and an installer was sent from Quebec to install the stove. The wood-fired cooker also required fireproof assemblies, with increased clearances and modifications to the standard kitchen layout. All these considerations factor into why it’s not easy to incorporate a wood stove and meet building code.
This one-and-a-half storey house features a spacious loft overlooking the vaulted great room, accentuated by exposed timber collar ties salvaged from an old barn on the property. The primary bedroom and bathroom are located on the main floor to accommodate future aging in place, while the loft consists of a lounge area, home office and second bathroom.
There are numerous green features with health benefits and utility savings. This includes triple-glazed windows to save on utilities around heat loss/gain; an air source electric heat pump with HRV system to reduce overall energy consumption while circulating fresh air; zero-VOC paints and materials to improve indoor air quality; low-flow plumbing fixtures to enhance water conservation; FloorScore Certified and CARB II Compliant engineered hardwood flooring contributes to better air quality in the home, while the hardwood can be refinished in the future, rather than replaced. Meanwhile, the home is solar-ready, giving the homeowners the option to use more renewable energy and reduce energy costs in the future.
Durability and disaster preparedness are also key features. The metal roofing lasts significantly longer than asphalt shingles and is recyclable at the end of its life. Plus, heat is reflected rather than absorbed, helping to keep the home cool during the summer. Between this and the FireSmart siding, the house is more fire resistant—an important consideration, due to forest fire risk where the home is located.
Each year, homes across Canada are affected by natural disasters and severe weather, and given the increase and severity of both, largely due to climate change, Built Green offers disaster preparedness options, which builders like Ellenwood incorporate to increase homeowners’ safety and security. While a lesser discussed aspect of sustainable building, resiliency is a growing area of the programs.
Mountain-View Homestead’s principles of carbon mitigation, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, resilience and sustainability transcend geographical boundaries and climate conditions.
Moving forward, Ellenwood aims to exceed the energy outcomes achieved at the Mountain-View Homestead in all new builds, and to get as close as possible to these outcomes with renovations and deep energy retrofits. Seeing a need in the market for more modest-sized, affordable homes, they are in the process of further developing plans for homes that can meet that need. The company hopes to see more innovations that align energy efficiency with cost efficiency to make green building more accessible to a wider range of homeowners.
Having learned from this project and their ongoing research, the next challenge on their path to greater sustainability is research on both reductions in carbon emissions and reductions in embodied carbon. Their company has recently joined an advisory committee, [name of committee], with the City of Nelson to reduce emissions, while applying insights gained to new projects.
Ellenwood Homes is a full-service design and homebuilding company committed to resource responsibility: they're dedicated to building stronger communities for a climate-forward future. The Ellenwood team designs, builds and renovates innovative homes throughout the Kootenays. With ongoing research into advanced net zero building methods, and a commitment to working with locally sourced and low-impact materials whenever possible, they aim to stay at the forefront of the sustainable building industry and build homes that are comfortable to live in, more affordable to run each month and that customers can feel great about. All their new builds are recognized through third-party certifications, including Built Green Canada, Energy Star and CHBA’s Net Zero.
The Maverick Awards are another step forward in Built Green Canada's mission to progress sustainability practices and recognize leadership; three winners have been announced in conjunction with title sponsor, BC Housing. The Innovation Award, sponsored by Heidelberg Materials, went to Kanas Corporation for the Innovation Award for their Calgary-based project, Orion at Lumino Park, which is the tallest ICF building in Western Canada, with a state-of-the-art cogeneration system providing 534 KW of electricity. The Maverick’s awarded the Ambassador Award to Kelly Williams for championing company-wide BUILT GREEN® adoption, while rallying trades and suppliers for full activation, driving Sterling Homes Edmonton to become the next generation of sustainable production builders. While the Transformational Award went to Major Homes in Greater Vancouver, who transformed from a traditional builder into a leading energy and sustainability focused builder, and catalyst to the custom home building sector.