Mixed ClimateMultifamily residential buildings account for 62% of the housing stock in the City of Vancouver. Deep energy retrofits focused on the building enclosure present one of the largest opportunities for significant energy and greenhouse gas reductions. This paper describes two related case studies, in Vancouver and Victoria, BC.
Case Study 1: Near EnerPHit Retrofit of a High-Rise Residential Building in Vancouver
A pilot project was initiated in Vancouver to perform a deep building enclosure energy retrofit and HVAC upgrade of a 1980’s vintage, 13-storey multifamily. Modelled energy savings were compared to metered post-retrofit energy consumption. Although the project was not designed with EnerPHit in mind, the retrofit project was compared to the EnerPHit standard mid-way through the retrofit to highlight what additional measures would need to have been incorporated to achieve EnerPHit. This paper provides a brief description of the study building and retrofit project, with an analysis of the EnerPHit heating demand target as it relates to the planned retrofit.
Case Study 2: Post-Occupancy Research at the North Park Passive House, Victoria, Canada
The North Park Passive House, a 6-unit condominium building located in Victoria, BC, was occupied in September 2015. It is the first market strata-title certified Passive House development in Canada. While well-established elsewhere, the potential benefits of Passive House and other low energy design approaches are not as well documented in Canada, and there are limited data on the actual performance of these buildings in the Canadian west coast climate. To address this gap, RDH, in partnership with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Homeowner Protection Office of BC Housing, and FP Innovations, undertook detailed quantitative and qualitative performance measurement of the North Park Passive House. The intent of this research is to develop a comprehensive case study for a Passive House project in the Pacific Northwest climate. This paper will present the study results for quantitative thermal comfort monitoring and building enclosure performance monitoring, demonstrating the viability of Passive House and the chosen building enclosure strategy in this climate. Energy data and interview results were still being processed at the time of writing and are excluded from this paper.
This paper was presented at the 2017 International Passive House Conference.