Housing is a unique and essential building form. We all need homes to live in that are energy efficient, safe and sustainable. We serve the various parts of the residencial sector in a number of key ways.
Apartments
Many Canadians, especially those in urban areas live in urban areas, live in apartment buildings,. Many of these apartments were built in the 1960’s and 1970’s when the post-war baby boom combined with high levels of immigration to help our cities to rapidly grow. Today, apartments continue to provide economical housing to a large portion of our population. Many of these buildings were constructed when energy was relatively inexpeive, effective thermal insulation was in its infancy and generally energy efficiency was not prioritized.
As a consequence, apartment building envelopes are inadequate from a thermal perspective. Apartment building windows are often only single pane and many have poor framing from a thermal containment perspective. Most of these buildings also have limit building insulation. This situation is not satisfactory for either building occupants, as well as building owners and managers.
Poor insulation leads to occupant winter season discomfort, and the use of energy inefficient electric baseboard and plug-in heaters, both of which increase the risk of building fires both because of the increased load on old and inadequate building wiring, and due to the fire risk posed by the electric heaters themselves.
Likewise, most of these buildings were built without the benefit of central air conditioning to provide comfort in our increasing hot summers. As a consequen oldce, many building residents use window air conditioners. These air conditioners are often energy inefficient, and
One other reality is that many apartment buildings are run by large property management companies. This can be a very good thing since this provides opportunities that are facilitated by the benefits of economic scale.
The following are solutions we offer for apartment buildings:
Entrance Door Air Curtains – Heat Saving Systems
Busy apartment building entrance doors can lead to the loss of a large amount of building heat during Canada’s long winter season. Installing Heat Saving Systems AC300 heated pedestrian entrance door air curtains can help to preserve valuable building heat and increase occupant comfort. In addition, many apartment buildings have underground parking garages, and Heat Saving Systems AC400 parking garage air curtains can help protect against the entry of snow and cold air into parking garages and reduce heat losses.
Window Retrofit Insulating Insert- Magnetite
These relatively inexpensive window insets can be added to the inside face existing single pane poorly framed windows to provide enhanced thermal protection against cold winter weather. The use of these window inserts should reduce reliance on energy inefficient baseboard or plug-in heating units which have been viewed as a significant fire hazard.
Computerized Maintenance Management Systems – Eagle Proteus CMMS
Canada’s huge stock of older apartment buildings have a higher need for both proactive and reactive maintenance work. An Eagle CMMS can help apartment building owners and managers to plan, schedule, operate and report on apartment maintenance work.
Condominiums
Over the past two decades, high rise tower and low-rise townhouse style condominium buildings have become a dominant development form in cities across Canada providing a huge amount of housing for Canada’s rapidly growing population, especially in our cities.
Condominium construction is by far the largest and fastest growing area of construction and development. Given the current focus on energy and operational efficiency, condominium developers and condominium management boards need focus on energy far more than ever. The following are products that we offer to the condominium sector:
SmartPixel Customized Interactive Video Modelling Systems:
SmartPixel has developed a uniquely dynamic marketing platform for marketing and communicating new development projects. SmartPixel creates comprehensive video models of new developments that tell the new condominium’s story to prospective purchasers. In the COVID-19 era, SmartPixel empowers developers to present and sell their units to prospective purchasers whether they are located in the same city or across the globe. In addition, SmartPixel video models can help to tell the project’s story to other community stakeholders including neighbours and government leaders. SmartPixel’s technology is based on expertise developed from the video game sector to provide a dynamic marketing solution which speaks directly to Millennials and other key market segments.
Energy Modelling Training for New Building Design – Resilient World Institute (RWI) eQuest 3.65:
Ontario Building Code, Part 3, the section dealing with major new building developments including condominiums, now includes an SB10 Sustainable Building Addendum specifying energy performance standards. SB10 requires the development and submission of an energy model together with the building design drawings and specification as part of the building permit approval process. In some jurisdictions, morre stringent requirements many apply such as the City of Toronto’s Toronto Green Standard. These energy models are generally prepared by architects, engineers, contractors or energy design specialists. Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) recommends eQuest as the preferred energy modelling tool for these types of buildings. Municipal building officials need to be able to understand and analyze the energy models submitted by housing developers. The Resilient World Institute trains professionals including municipal building officients on the use of eQuest software.
Eagle Proteus Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS):
Condominiums are a highly democratic form of housing, governed by independent condominium corporations. As a consequence, condominium’s have an enhanced have an elevated need to plan, implement and report on maintenance and capital planning procedures. An Eagle CMMS provides a platform that enables condominium corporation to undertake and manage all the building’s cleaning and management programs. One additional consideration for recent condominium buildings is that Eagle Proteus can import the all building’s maintenance elements from its AutoCAD BIM model, which greatly reduces the work required to create a maintenance model for the facility, as well as the cost of a CMMS.
Houses
More Canadians live in houses than in any other building form. Depending of the date of construction, the home’s location and the quality of the design and construction, there are great variations among homes across Canada in terms of energy efficiency and sustainability.
We offer the following solutions to Canadian housing sector:
Energy Modelling for New Home Training – Resilient World Institute HOT2000
Ontario Building Code, Part 9, the section dealing with new houses, now includes a sustainable Building Adendum called SB12. This code now requires many categories of new houses to submit an energy model together with the building design drawings and specification as part of the building permit approval process. In some jurisdictions, mosre stringent requirements such as the City of Toronto Green Standard have made this requirement mandatory. These energy models are generally prepared by architects, engineers, contractors or energy design specialists. Natural Resources Canada recommends HOT2000 as the preferred energy modelling tool for these types of buildings. Likewise, municipal building officials need to be able to understand and analyze the energy models submitted by housing developers. The Resilient World Institute trains professionals including municipal building officients on the use of HOT2000 software.
Chromagen Solar Hot water Systems can provide a plentiful supply of hot water to homes, which is especially rimportant to homes that are not serviced by urban natural gas supply lines and are dependent on expensive and inefficient electrical hot water systems, or even worse, on proppane or diesel systems to produce hot water.
Solar Photovoltaic Roofing – Solar Shingles Canada
Solar Shingle Canada’s solar photovoltaic roofing systems enables homeowners to use the sun to generate power and become self sufficient year round. Solar shingle roofing makes the most sense in remote and off-grid locations where power supplies are unreliable, or even worse, unavailable. Because they are favricated out of solid steel these solar shiingles are near permanent – and will provide reliable free electricity for decade. Read More
Social Housing
Government sponsored and managed housing provides accommodation to vulnerable population, primarily in urban areas. Because these are public assets, often this housing has limited funding and high maintenance needs.
Eagle Proteus Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
Given the vulnerble population typically residing in public housing, the use of a CMMS can help ensure that vital maintenance is performed on a timely basis. Over many years concerns have been expressed about the level of maintenance services that have been provided to public housing projects. The public ownership of these facilities demands accountability of public funds. The use of a computerized maintenance management system can help ensure that maintenance and capital projects are used as effectively as possible. In addition, the ability to collect and agregate data and financial information across an entire municipality will provide senior management and elected politicians better tools to review, assess and make cogent recommendations about the municipality’s important public housing facilities.
Entrance Door Air Curtains- Heat Saving Systems:
Busy public housing entrance doors can lead to the loss of a large amount of building heat during Canada’s long winter season. Installing Heat Saving Systems AC300 heated pedestrian entrance door air curtains can help to preserve valuable building heat and increase occupant comfort.
Insulating Window Inserrt – Magnetite
Many public housing units have old and poor quality single pane windows. Magnetite’s relatively inexpensive window insets can be added to the inside face existing single pane poorly framed windows to provide enhanced thermal protection against cold winter weather. The use of these window inserts should reduce reliance on energy inefficient baseboard or plug-in heating units which have been viewed as a significant fire hazard.
Seniors Housing
A large and rapidly group number of Canadians live in long term seniors housing as our population continues to age. As baby boomers age and approach the age that they require additional care and support, the population of this housing form can be expected to grow. Wasser Resources offers a number of products of particular relevance to this sector
Wasser Resources offers a number of products of particular relevance to this sector:
Eagle Proteus Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS):
Given the vulnerable nature of the senior who live in retirement homes and long term care facilities, building maintenance is of particular important to this sector. A CMMS is the ideal too to ensure that necessary standards and procedures are planned, executed and monitored. Because seniors housing is of particular concern during the current CUTRIC-19 pandemic. In addition, a cloud-based CMMS can provide effect maintenance management oversight to management headquarters, regulatory agencies and even interested family members, as permitted. In addition to provide additional supervisory control, a CMMS can ensure that limited maintenance resources are deployed efficiently and effectively Finally, the use of a standardized CMMS system across a number of facilities enables effective comparison of performance between facilities or across an entire region.
Heat Saving Systems Entrance Air Curtains: Entrance doors to seniors housing facilities can perfmit the entry of dry cold winter air and snow, which can be quite detrimental to vulnerable seniors. In addition the entry of snow and rain can lead to dangerous slipping conditions in and around entrance. In addition carfully warmed and conditioned air can escape from seniors facilities through entry doors during Canada’s long winter season. Installing Heat Saving Systems AC300 heated pedestrian entrance door air curtains can help to preserve valuable building heat and increase occupant comfort.
UET Chemical-Free Water Water Treatmen for Legionella Protection
Like many buildings. seniors residences are at risk of Legionell from their building’s heating and cooling systems. UET has developed a chemical-free system that effectively eliminates the risk of Legionella. By investing in a UET system the management can effectively proactively address one address one unnecessary health risk for resident and staff at seniors housing facilities.
Solar Window Coatings and Films – eTime HeatShield
It is very important to provide comfortable room temperatures to vulnerable seniors living in care facilities. In some buildings, summer can can bring unwanted overheating conditions to some residents due to unexpected conditions. Often it is hard to adjust a building’s HVAC controls to provide each resident exactly the termperature they need. eTime HeatShield reduces the entry of unwanted and even dangerous ultraviolet and infrared radiation from the sun, while transmitting welcome sunshine. Inaddition to providing additional control, eTimes heatShield helps to reduce the need for air conditioning, lowering power consumption during the peak summer season.