Graham Cubitt:
Okay. So, I'll start off with the first couple slides. Graham Cubitt is my name and I'm the director of projects and development with Indwell. We are a charity based in Hamilton, Ontario, but serving communities across Southern Ontario, providing affordable housing and supportive housing to people who many of whom live with a mental health issue or other kinds of disabilities, but all of our tenants have a low and fixed income. And so, the affordability has always been key to us in developing our projects. I'll briefly highlight, sort of, the arc of our journey. And then, we'll talk specifically about one of our projects [Mawest 00:00:58] and loss. But 10 years ago, we opened our first, sort of, multi residential larger scale project. Before that we just, sort of, owned multi residential buildings that were building the sixties or small group homes, but we turned this bar into a new three story building, it had 46 apartments shooting for about 40% better than code.
That was our first experience at trying to do something related to energy efficiency. And it was actually quite successful. The next attempt we made was to convert an old industrial building, the factory that being vacant for about 20 years into 54 apartments, since then we've added another 26 units. So, it's a total of 80 tenants living there. And in that building, we tried geothermal off of an open loop ground source heat pump running off of an aquifer under that city. So, that's an interesting experiment and it's actually worked it very well, but again, trying to push ourselves towards energy efficiency, using the best knowledge that we had at the time, 2015 was when that was. 2016, we opened a new construction building, our first time building a new multi resident building and told our design team, "These are what we're shooting for."
Everybody was like, "Yep." All on board, our architects paid attention, our structural engineers paid attention. Our mechanical engineer said, "Yes," To everything we asked for. And they said, "well, we do it all the time like this on Toronto condos." And we ended up with a building that didn't perform nearly like we'd hoped or thought we designed. So that was also a learning curve along the way. In the next photo there, we realized like... Okay, if we're going to make a big change, we actually need to rethink from the ground up, how we're doing energy efficiency.
And we... By that point had enough experience working with our design team, excluding that mechanical contractor I was talking about, to say, "We like working with all of you, from the contractor to the design team, to our in-house group. If we step back and want to relearn or want to shoot for these very low energy targets to the goal of becoming [GHG 00:03:04] free, what are we going to need to do?" And can we set aside everything that we know, or at least this, "Well, we've always done it that way," attitude and focus on relearning from the ground up. And so, we did that. Our team joined. We sat on the same side of the table in a sense, and said, "Okay, we're going to learn forward." And did so, starting with this project, Parkdale Landing, which was a retrofit of an old nightclub bar, room house complex using the [initerfit 00:03:33] standard from [Phi 00:03:35], turned into 57-
Emma Cubitt:
You can see what it looked like on the bottom right.
Graham:
Yeah, it was.
Emma:
It's really ugly.
Graham Cubitt:
When the demo contractor says it's in their top 10 worst projects that they've seen, you know that you've got a real piece of work on your hands, but in the end, it's 57 studio apartments providing an enhanced level of support for tenants who've been homeless, combined with some ground floor commercial and even in a community or a neighborhood food hub and culinary kitchen... A culinary academy in a commercial kitchen on the ground floor there. So, a lot of learning from that project along the way, for sure. That's the first part of a site, called Parkdale Landing that [Maston 00:04:17] loft is on, but Emma, I'm not sure which slide I'm supposed to finish on, if it's this one or-
Emma:
Oh, keep going.
Graham:
Keep going? Okay. As part of that journey though, committing to passive, as you said that we were designing multiple projects at the same time and needed to, sort of, learn simultaneously, or at least in very short succession with quite a bit of overlap.
This project was our third project designed, but our second project constructed, it was 34, 1 bedroom apartments with quite a bit of amenity space, four tenants. But we used a prefabricated system called build smart as part of that project. And really trying to, again, push ourselves to learn on the [fly 00:05:01] and incorporate everything we could from that one into our next project, which was designed... Oh, there's another photo there. Actually, that's interesting, that photo there, you can see the solar panel array there. The building was designed to be 69% more energy efficient than code, and actually generate 67% of its... No, 69% better than code, 67% reduction in GHG emissions and actually be electricity positive based on the consumption projections for that building. So, that was a lot of learning in one site. And you can see there, it was a conversion or a rebuilding of a building, where there had been an old group home. So, we were also dealing with a very constricted site.
Emma:
In the end, this building just got certified with Phi for a low energy building, but I bet. We could have gotten better than that because they didn't end up plugging in all the refrigerators in the kitchen.
Graham:
That's right.
And then, this project here was our fourth pro... Or third project to passive house standard. Passive house... PHI, Passive House Institute, and just got certificate... Well, it's just pending certification. We're just in the final throws of that. It's been open for a year now and has 45 apartments, but also on this building, half of these square footage, about 30,000 square feet of church space, which the large gathering hall, community kitchens offices, and 500 seat auditorium gymnasium for the church facilities. So, it was a large scale project. It was our second project through design, but the third project finished. And so, many of the things that we were able to learn in the first two projects were incorporated into this one, as we moved through construction. And then, that project opened in 2020. And then, in 2021 we are thankful to open McQuesten Lofts, which is the project we're going to talk about tonight.
And it's in the background there, you can see part of it. And that one was to the PHI or Phius standard and got certified three months after opening last February. We got certification for that project. So, I'll pass it over to Emma now.
Emma:
Okay. So, I'm going to share some of the construction photos that we've put together. So, you can see the progression of this project as we went through the different phases. And then, Greg is going to talk more about the technical parts of... He was our past house consultant for this and really helped to guide the team beyond what we had learned in our first three projects, to really tighten up what we were doing and be able to create a building that I think would be very replicable.
So, you can see the... One thing that we changed in our detailing is how we were doing foundations. And then, this one, we have regular footings, but in the earlier projects we were wrapping insulation all the way around the footings and underneath, which is just a lot more work. So, on this project, we modeled it so that we could just go to the top of the footing, just a few things that were small differences that made it easier for contractors. And we've, kind of, used that going forward, but each time we do model it to make sure that we're within where we want to be. This project was all... Pretty much all wood construction except for a few chefs and share walls. So, you can see that going up here.
Emma:
Sorry, it's slow. One interesting thing we did was, we've started using zip boards. I know it's very common in the states, but in Canada, not as much, but we had learned about them by using the build smart system on the project before this, where it was all prefab wall panels, all the way to the past house windows and then brought onto site. And we realized that we really liked having that weather barrier integrated into the wall system. And we also really liked on that project, how we had two by six studs with the mineral bats and then the air barrier was the zip board sheathing. And then, outside of that, we had several inches of insulation. It's, kind of, changed on different projects depending on other factors in the design. But I think on this project, we had three inches on the outside and now we've moved to using four inches more often. Is that right, Greg?
Greg Leskien:
Yeah, it's right. I like this photo-
Emma:
On outside of the sheathing, but when we have stairwells, then we'll have six inches on the outside.
Greg:
Yeah.
Emma:
Because of the connectivity.
Greg:
I like this photo, Emma, because it's an energy model's dream. There's no windows. So, I got my way on this project.
Emma:
We were worried when people were driving by and they'd think like, "What is this." That's housing. So, a few more pictures of things coming together. So, you can see the... We started with more complicated details around windows, on our earlier projects. And we had fiberglass angles that were supporting windows that were sitting outside of the structure, things like that, but then began using plywood books. And on these projects, you can see where we used... What's it called? [Thiskin 00:11:01]? To do an air barrier seal around it, actually on more recent projects, we've been using a membrane instead to do the same thing. Just trying to see what can be, kind of, easier and more cost effective for our contractors.
Another thing, the picture on the bottom right, shows how we have... I think it's one inch of interior insulation that goes over the jams of the window. And while... We actually, on our first projects, had both exterior and interior over insulation. And by doing thermal models on those projects realized that we got more bang for our buck by doing it on the inside. And it was also a lot easier for them to install. So we've... And it also didn't conflict with different types of windows that we would work with that would have weeping holes and stuff like that. So, we've moved to having interior insulation and making sure that the hinges of whatever window we end up using will work with that. So, you can actually see middle picture, this is [Aveta 00:12:15] window, which is out of Poland. And we've been really happy with these beautiful wood windows, but because of the way the hinges work, we ended up hinging in the middle so that you don't have any problems when you're working on the jams.
Emma:
Also, on earlier projects, we were doing the ceiling from the outside of the window and, kind of, going around the box and realized that was a lot of work. So, now we've been ceiling from the inside. Here, you can see punched windows happening and how they're overhanging into... Partially into the layer of the exterior insulation. We also have balconies in this project, which are common balconies for each floor, for the tenants and has self supported structure.
More progress moving up. This is the common room on the top floor has some very nice views. And next one is... So, this is how we were doing the exterior insulation and we've actually replicated this wall system on the next, I don't know, half dozen projects that we've been working on. And yeah, 10 projects, because we know that we've found the type of fasteners that work well with the firing found the, kind of, most cost effective, but type of strapping that we're comfortable is going to be able to be partially outdoors, but still be able to withstand the weather.
What else do I say about this? Sometimes we've had to do double strapping when we have fiber cement panel, but on this project, we were using a very cost effective cladding, which was corrugated metal, looks like shipping containers because we were trying to replicate some of the industrial sector that this project is right next to in gritty industrial North End, Hamilton. So, anyway. So, we could just have the horizontal fasteners and then the drainage was behind. We ended up using comfort board [110 00:14:39]and on our projects going forward because it's got extra rigidity so that it would be easier for the siding to go on and, kind of, hold its form.
So here's the project coming together. You can start to see the shifting container look a bit. Greg, maybe you can speak to the mechanical system. It's not my forte as much.
Greg:
Sure. Yeah. I am happy to do that. So, the ventilation system is a central system and there's a two swag on ERV that provide ventilation to the... All the rooms in the building. And they do have VRF post heating and cooling on them as well to temper that air before they get supplied to each space. And then, the main heating and cooling system for the building is a VRF system. And I'll talk a bit about that later on, but in the rooms themselves, they're small rooms, they just have a ductless mini split. And in different spaces like the common area Emma had mentioned, or the library there's, ducted fan coils. And this project, it was a number of years ago when it was designed, that we were still in the air when we were using natural gas, hot water heating. And that is something that Indwell has really made it clear they do not want to do moving forward. So, we are trying new things, but this was one of the last natural gas central water heating systems that you guys did.
Emma:
Great, thanks. So, just a few more pictures of the completed project. And then Greg will be able to share more of the technical aspects to the project. There's actually an indigenous partner that Indwell had for this project that, this placement of some of the tenants. So, we used that the design ethics, I guess, of the local indigenous community and some of the landscaping that we created, here is a living room, typical living room and a typical kitchen coming up. So, I don't know why it's so slow. Oh, shoot. Hey kitchen. Here's the ground floor library. It's just a little branch library and there [first past 00:17:03] house library in Canada, I think. It's a bit of the... About the rooftop soul that we have on this project.
Emma:
And yeah, we're so happy to be able to win this amazing award for the project and hope it's something that can be really replicated in other communities. So, going forward, we have a ton of projects that are currently under construction and just as many that are in various stages of design right now, for Indwell specifically. And we've also... My firm has been able to grow to design for lots of other, especially non-profit housing organizations to passive house two, which is amazing. So, few of the projects here. For those that are familiar with Ontario, it's all across Southern Ontario and actually have four projects that are going to be getting occupancy this spring. So, we'll be able to continue to share the past council with those tenants and monitor them and study them and hopefully learn from them so we can keep making these projects that much better.
And so, we just had five takeaways. Kind of, high level takeaways that Greg and I have shared another talks. One would be willingness. Willing and trusting partnerships are key. You can see that in the team that we were doing the initial passive house training with, we're pretty much the same team now. We've, kind of, been learning and growing together for most of these end all projects. However, we want to also work with others so that we can, kind of, teach them too and have this movement be able to grow. Learning career can be a big one to overcome in the first project, but it gets easier over time.
It's a great tool to meet low carbon targets. We've certainly learned that as we've gotten off gas on the last several projects, also a great tool, at least in Canada, for the type of funding that Indwell has been able to get from the federal government for these projects, [inaudible 00:19:33] candy costs competitive. On our slides, we were sharing the cost per square foot. And while it's very regional and there's been so much escalation over the last few years, it's really hard to be able to compare costs when we do with other market contractors that are willing to sell, to share their numbers. We know that it's pretty darn close. We actually had a [NR can 00:20:00] study done that showed about 5% increase. Four to 5% increase and we believe that to be true. And monitoring is key. So, Greg's going to share a bit more about how that's been going too.
Greg:
Great. Thanks Emma. So, I just thought I would, kind of, close up the presentation and maybe add a few interesting little ideas we could talk about in the QA, but by adding five, kind of, lessons learned that I've had going along with the journey with Emma and Graham, some of these are going to be pretty obvious, but there's a lot behind them. So, I thought I'd just mentioned them. One of the really cool things about working with this group is that, we've had this amazing set of projects, all sequentially, and it rarely ever happens in the life of a passive house consultant. You're here and you're there and you do all this work on one project, and then you got to start over from scratch on the next. And with this group, we don't have that same kind of challenge. So, one of the lessons that I've learned is an obvious one, and that gets talked a lot about a lot of it on accelerator, but it's the acknowledge that further work is required to make sure that we align PHPP with WUFI passive.
This has really come to light with Indwell. I really hope to do a presentation on this in the future, but Indwell has done an amazing thing and that they've let us do energy monitoring on 10 different multifamily projects and not just one meter. We have meters for almost all the end uses that match up to the energy model, everything from closed dryers to washers to their commercial kitchens. And we're slowly going through, the data's coming in, we're seeing it and we're tracking it versus the PHPP and WUFI models. And so, I think there's a lot that Indwell is going to be able to offer the people on this call and others in the passive house industry to help develop things. The second thing that I just... I feel is really important out of this learning experience is that a good contractor is critical.
And, obviously, that is a pretty clear statement. I've worked with some really poor contractors that don't care, but Indwell has somehow found some really great contractors. And I think part of it's because they're going with something along the lines of a construction management, where they are interested in the project from the beginning of it, very early and they're with us the whole way through. And anytime we have a technical challenge, they're bringing idea. The next one is ERVs. Just a question there, I'm starting to question whether central ERVs are a good approach for multifamily. So, we can talk more about that a bit later. There's a couple interesting things that we're learning Indwell projects. The other big lesson learned that we had area very early was that we, kind of, gave into the temptation of going to very basic variable refrigerant flow systems for heating and cooling, the type that don't give you simultaneous heating and cooling, and don't let you move heat around the building.
That's something that I'd like to, kind of, talk about. We've learned our lesson. We're going to be going with simultaneous heating and cooling ones in the future with heat reclaim. Next slide, Emma.
Emma:
I'm trying.
Greg:
Yeah. And this is the last one I just wanted to leave you with. And I got a couple interesting slides right after this. So, the biggest thing is that... It's interesting to see how each team... And one common thing I see as a passive house consultant a lot, using PHI and FIS is that, each project seems to always want to start from scratch again and throw out all the ideas from other people and from previous projects and come up with new great details. There are some exceptions, and this has been one of them where the team basically just learned from their first project Graham started with, and we just went all through each project and we learned, and we looked at the details over and over again, we asked the contractors what we needed to do better.
We fixed them. We tried them on the next project. We tweaked it. And, ultimately, it's so much better now. There's less education required for the designers, but a lot on the site as well. People just know what to do now. And that just results in material and construction optimization. So, two good examples of that are the wall systems where we started our passive house journey with build smart at first. And that that wall system shows all sorts of potential. And we did build the one project with it. The second one, which, kind of, started the same time used the photo that you see there, which was all exterior insulation. The product there is greener with six inches of cavity rock, Rockwell cavity rock, but we ended up through pricing and working with the contractors and finding out what they liked and didn't like about those projects.
We ended up with this last system that Emma described from McQuesten Lofts. And that one we've just replicated it for nine projects. We've thickened the insulation. We've had ways to optimize it, but it's a very cost competitive wall system, and we all know how to make it airtight. And the next slide shows that. I just thought this slide was really cool. I took all the air tightness tests that had been done for the Indwell projects. And what you see here is that, their first test, which they do when the air barrier complete are the blue bars. The second test is after mechanical systems and most of the electricals in, there might have been a few exterior doors missing at the time and the gray bars where they ended up in the end. And this graph is organized sequentially. So, their first projects to the top and they're next at the bottom and the red dotted line is the passive house target.
So, you can just see how great these contractors are doing. Their first tests are always below 0.2 air changes per hour. And they always end up less than the targets and they're getting better and better each time. And that's because they know what to do on each project. And we've just gained the level of comfort doing that. And the next slide is the same, just articulated it slightly different to the FIS. Interestingly enough, some of the projects wouldn't meet the FIS targets, but they did meet PHI. But anyway, I thought that was a really unique thing that just showed how we all built as a team and where we are now.
Graham:
And Greg, that first one there is, [inaudible 00:26:28] actually, so that one-
Greg:
Yeah.
Graham:
Was a complicated.
Greg:
Yeah