Now House has officially opened a 60-year-old wartime home in Toronto that has been retrofitted to require almost no energy and to produce enough energy from renewable sources to pay its own energy bills.
Now House™ is one of 12 winning teams in Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) EQuilibrium Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative, and the only project among the winners focused on the renovation and retrofit of existing houses.
“The residential sector in Toronto accounts for 25% of our energy use and 25% of the city’s green house gas emissions,” said Lorraine Gauthier, president of The Now House Project Inc. “Improving the energy efficiency of existing houses is a big environmental challenge. With Now House we will prove you can take an old house and improve its energy efficiency beyond the standards currently required of new buildings.”
Now House is a 60-year-old post WWII home located in the Topham Park community of Toronto. The retrofit features sustainable building technologies such as upgraded insulation, new windows, radiant floor heating, ENERGY STAR® appliances, solar hot water system and solar panels. There are 200 similar wartime homes in this community and an estimated million wartime homes across Canada.
The Now House Project Inc. promotes the energy efficiency improvement of existing houses in Canada. Now House™ was the brainchild of Work Worth Doing a design consultancy that works in collaboration with a variety of experts to initiate social and environmental change. The first Now House is located in the wartime housing community of Topham Park, Toronto with additional houses coming soon.
SOURCE: Environmental Communication Options
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The rehabilitation of heritage and existing buildings is crucial to reduce the environmental impact caused by new development and constructions.
Initiatives like this one http://thegreenpages.ca/portal/bc/2009/02/vancouver_heritage_foundation.html are the first step in raising awareness about this necessary bridge to sustainable development.
As it says on this guide, 50 tons of carbon emissions are generated from a new construction compared to the 15 tons of the refurbishment of an existing property.