Canadian experience in healthy housing

Canada’s efforts in healthy housing are based mainly in various low energy house programs. Since the early 1980s, Natural Resources Canada has launched two major programs to promote the construction of energy efficient or low energy houses (Mayo and Sinha 1996, Sinha 1996). The first one is the R-2000 program that was established in 1982. The performance target for R2000 houses was based on a 50% reduction in the energy consumption for space and hot water heating compared to houses built to the 1975 National Building Code of Canada. Even though this performance target was focused on energy conservation, some of the measures incorporated in the R-2000 houses to reduce energy use (e.g., increased insulation level, improved whole house airtightness levels, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery) also resulted in the added benefit of improved indoor air quality. More than 8000 houses have now been certified as R-2000 houses. In response to the Canadian government’s commitment to reduce CO2 production and global warming, Natural Resources Canada launched the Advanced Houses program in 1991. The Advanced Houses program used the same performance-based standard as for R-2000 houses, but went beyond energy efficiency into issues such as selection of environmentally-friendly building materials, indoor air quality, water and waste reduction, recycling, and elimination of CFCs. To stimulate interest, a competition was organized to challenge the building industry to build houses that were twice as energy efficient and twice as “green” as the best R-2000 houses currently on the market. Of the thirty-one teams entered the competition, ten winning proposals were selected, and the construction of these houses was completed in 1993. Figure 1 compares the purchased energy for R-2000, Advanced and conventional houses. As shown the values of the total purchased energy were normalized for house size including basement and for climate, in terms of floor area and heating degree-days, respectively. In Figure 1, R-2000 (1983-1986) and R-2000 (1986-1988) refer to the measurements conducted on houses built from 1983 to 1986 and from 1986 to 1988, respectively. The 1975 Code and 1983 measurements refer to conventional houses built to the specifications recommended by the 1975 National Building Code and 1983 insulation levels in most new houses. The 1983 measured result is a good indicator of conventional houses built today.