Building Green

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Web resources

Light House Sustainable Building Centre (Vancouver)

Light House is a Vancouver-based information centre that hosts a weekly free Guest Expert series with sustainable building professionals speaking on various topics, including landscaping and gardening. Check their schedule of upcoming workshops.

PassivHaus dwellings (International)

PassivHaus, or passive house dwellings, are highly energy efficient, requiring little to no heating or cooling inputs. While not common in North America yet, the first certified PassivHaus in Canada is being built as part of the Avalon Ecovillage near Kelowna, B.C.

Earthships (International)

This home design is the invention of a New Mexico architect. Earthships are energy-efficient and the construction materials are mostly recycled as well. There is also a film, Garbage Warrior, about Earthships and their inventor.

Insulating Your House (National)

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has a downloadable PDF on Insulating Your House, as well as other insulation information available on their website. For more information, read about insulation in our Home Heating and Home Cooling guides.

R-2000 Home Construction Standard (National)

Whether you are buying, building or just curious, visit Natural Resources Canada’s Office of Energy Efficiency for information on R-2000 homes.

The Handy Canadian (National)

To help with your energy-efficient home heating or home cooling, the Handy Canadian has some information on do-it-yourself insulating.

Natural Home Cooling (Vancouver Island)

The natural home cooling section of the eartheasy.com website has some information on insulation and venting your attic. This information is helpful for home heating as well as home cooling.

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Local resources

City of Vancouver Passive Design Toolkit

The tool kits provide best practices for energy efficiency and sustainable construction in new homes and larger buildings. The City of Vancouver Passive Design Program aims to not only educate City staff and the development community about green building techniques but to align regulations and bylaws, making it easier to design and construct green buildings.

For further information, view the City of Vancouver’s Passive Design Toolkit Best Practices for Large Buildings document [PDF, 3.2 Mb] and City of Vancouver’s Passive Design Toolkit Best Practices for Homes document [PDF, 4.9 Mb].

Built Green™ Municipal Incentives (Saanich)

Built Green™ offers a building permit fee rebate for homebuilders who achieve R-2000 or Built Green™ certification. If your home meets all permit and inspection requirements, rebates are issued to the building permit applicant, calculated on a percentage of the base permit fee.

There are four categories of eligibility:

• 30% rebate of the building permit fee for R-2000 Certification
• 30% rebate of the building permit fee for Built Green™ Gold Certification
• 20% rebate of the building permit fee for Built Green™ Silver Certification
• 10% rebate of the building permit fee for Built Green™ Bronze Certification

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