OTTAWA CITIZEN
Monday, June 27, 2005
“ City” Section, Page C-3
Getting off the grid in the downtown
Condominium builders turn to the Earth to heat, cool
by Zev Singer
Ottawa condominium dwellers are digging deep in order to save money. Hundreds of rural homeowners in Ottawa have long been drilling deep into the ground to create geothermal heat pump systems to heat and cool their homes. Yet the technology, which can cut heating bills by as much as two-thirds, has never been used in an Ottawa residential highrise, until now.
The environmentally friendly system is one of the green selling points of EcoCité on the Canal, a 24-unit condominium building that will soon be built on the site of the former Villa Deli at the northwest corner of Bank Street and Wilton Crescent, across from Lansdowne Park. In addition, the board of a 23-storey condominium building on Laurier Avenue is hoping to do a geothermal retrofit.
Geothermal systems heat and cool houses by taking advantage of the difference between the temperature in the home and the temperature below the ground, which remains constant through the year (in North America it’s usually somewhere between four and 10 degrees, depending on the spot). Pipes inside holes drilled hundreds of metres into the ground use the Earth to heat or cool either water or a liquid refrigerant, like freon.
While the technology has been improving, systems of this kind have been around for decades. Carleton University has been operating a variation on the idea to partially heat and cool some of the campus since 1990. For most builders, though, steep capital costs have been the impediment. On an 1,800-square-foot house, the installation costs can run around $15,000. On a project like the EcoCité condo development, the cost will run into the hundreds of thousands.
In the case of EcoCité, however, the buyers are being spared the up-front cost by a financing deal the developer has been able to put in place. Toronto company Maxim Financial will put up the money for the system and will get to keep part of the savings from the condo owners’ energy bills. After the first decade, when the company has been paid back, the owners will keep the full savings.
Bill Dawson, a member of the board of 556 Laurier Ave., a 111-unit condo building at the corner of Percy Street, says the building’s owners will have no trouble finding a financing deal of their own to cover the cost of retrofitting the building, which now uses electric heating. The annual six-digit collective savings for the owners could see the expense paid off in as little as five years, he predicts.
Aside from being a condominium owner in the building, Mr. Dawson, 82, is a still-practising engineer. He says he helped design a similar heating system for a building just outside Montreal more than half a century ago, in 1953. Bureaucracy killed that project before it got off the ground, he said, but he’s always believed the idea is a good one.
“For the last 20 years we should have been doing this,” he said.
Peter Baker, of Earth Energy Solutions, the company bring the technology to the ECOCITÉ site and consulting with the Laurier building’s board, says he believes the ECOCITÉ building will be the first residential highrise in Canada to use a geothermal system.
He adds that the technology is the type of strategy that could help Canada meet Kyoto targets, and laments that federal and Ontario governments aren’t doing enough to encourage geothermal use.
Manitoba home owners can receive loans of up to $15,000 from Manitoba Hydro for installing geothermal systems. The loans can be paid back monthly, with the payment coming off the customer’s hydro bill. No comparable program exists for Ontarians.
“If there was some kind of an incentive for people building new homes, that would allow a lot more people to go that route,” Mr. Baker said.
