Net Zero challenge:Building houses that generate their own energy.

Four Quebec firms are working on plans to build a new kind of house: a financially feasible, environmentally friendly home that gives as much as it takes

By Mary Lamey

The Gazette

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Architect-builder Sevag Pogharian has built enough houses to know that there is something fundamentally flawed with the way most Canadians think about them. It got so bad that Pogharian began to re-evaluate what he did for a living.

"I've built some pretty big houses in my time and I reached a point where I didn't want to do that any more. Seeing the dumpsters and waste, I was discouraged," he said in a phone interview.

He was dismayed by the number of new homes chosen from plan books and plopped on lots with little regard for how they fit into the landscape, how the sun hit them and what effect the prevailing winds had. He's had his fill of suburban chateaux.

Pogharian believes there's a better way to build, one that allows houses to work with their surroundings instead of against them.

"There's so much you can do just with passive solar energy," he said.

The possibility of designing and building a practical, affordable house that produces as much energy as it consumes and sits lightly on the Earth, excites him.

Pogharian isn't alone. His company Sevag Pogharian Design is one of four Quebec firms that have made it to the second round of a Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. program called the Net Zero Energy Healthy Housing Initiative.

The federal agency is challenging industry to propose a new kind of house - healthy, comfortable, financially feasible and environmentally friendly. The term "net zero" means that at the end of a calendar year, with the help of solar energy, an efficient building envelope and other tricks of the trade, the house generates the energy that it consumes.

More than 100 groups from across the country took part in the initial CMHC call for proposals. Twenty of them have made it through to the second round. In November, the agency is expected to greenlight between six and 12 of those projects and to offer financial backing so that they can be built.

The four Quebec groups in the running are radically different. In addition to Pogharian's firm, they finalists include: Studio MMA, architects working in partnership with Eco-Cite; Alouette Homes, a builder of modular and panelized houses headquartered in the Eastern Townships; and L'OEUF, the Montreal firm behind the ambitious redevelopment of Benny Farm.

L'OEUF wants to put the lessons learned from building affordable, energy-efficient community housing at Benny Farm to use when it builds 125 units of affordable housing on a city-owned site on Rosemont Blvd.

Studio MMA has a long engagement with environmental building design. It was involved in the creation of Montreal's "green" Mountain Equipment Co-op store. Last year, HomeFront featured another Studio MMA project - a triplex in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, whose thoughtful owners were determined to reduce, reuse and recycle their way to an environmentally friendly and energy efficient home. With Eco-Cite, it is proposing an ecological rethink of the traditional Montreal triplex. It plans to build a large project, dubbed Abondance Montreal in southwest Montreal.

Pogharian is proposing a site-built, three-bedroom single-family home in Hudson, with a price tag aimed squarely at the middle-income market.

Alouette Homes, which already exports its energy-efficient panelized and modular homes to Europe and the U.S., is proposing to build a two-storey single-family home in a rural setting near Eastman in the Eastern Townships.

It is too soon to say what any of the final projects will look like. The groups, each of whom is aligned with at least one partner and, in some cases many more, are still in intensive blue-skying mode.

Bradley Berneche, president of Alouette Homes, exports hundreds of homes to Europe each year that qualify under the Super E energy-efficiency program. There was a time when Canada was a leading player in that field, Berneche said. We've lost ground to countries that are more preoccupied with issues of global warming, higher heating and cooling costs and dwindling resources. Berneche thinks the Net Zero challenge presents a real opportunity for Canadian builders, architects and suppliers to regain ground.

He thinks Alouette's design will be a two-storey house with photovoltaic panels on the roof to capture and convert the sun's rays into usable energy. The roof will be pitched just so to make the most of those rays. The windows will be placed to catch the most sun in winter, offer optimal shade in summer and a natural daylight year-round.

There is no set definition for what constitutes a net zero healthy home. CMHC and the stakeholders know that consumers are interested and want to buy in. The initiative is the first step toward making those better houses a reality. Stay tuned for developments.

For more information on the Web, go to: www.cmhc.ca, www.spd.ca, www.studiomma.ca, www.loeuf.com and www.maisonalouette.com

mlamey@thegazette.canwest.com

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006

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