Carbon Busters may seem like a strange name for a builder, but the company has been advising and building green for 27 years. It is among the several Edmontonian builders that have been pioneers in creating affordable, super-efficient, net-zero homes. Carbon Busters has completed some amazing projects already, including the first carbon-neutral garage suite in Edmonton.
It’s no surprise, then, that Carbon Busters is among the first four builders with offerings in Blatchford, the largest planned carbon-neutral community in Canada and maybe the world.
Blatchford is a 536-acre site in the heart of Edmonton, and the future home of up to 30,000 people. Planners envision a carbon-neutral community. With a green building code and a geothermal district energy sharing system already up and running, the building blocks are in place to make this vision a reality.
Carbon Busters is taking the next step: it is the first builder in Blatchford to offer fully net-zero-energy homes.
“Net-zero basically means it’s a building that produces as much renewable energy onsite as it uses on an annual basis,” explains Godo Stoyke, co-owner of Carbon Busters with Shanthu Mano.
Homes that exceed Blatchford’s Green Building Code
Carbon Busters’ homes in fact far exceed the requirements of Blatchford’s green building code and have an impressive list of specifications.
“It’s really cool. You start first of all with a building envelope that’s twice as efficient as a regular building. So you have got a double-stud wall. Next, you use the energy from the ground so you can extract it in the summer and put it back in the winter. And finally, you also use the sun to provide the energy because of solar electricity,” explains Stoyke.
The home requires half the energy of a regular home. Those double-studded walls are 12-inches thick and packed with insulation, giving the walls a rating of R-43. This means no cold drafts will get in the home on the coldest night of the year. The windows are triple-glazed super windows — with an R-8 rating, they are twice as efficient as conventional triple-paned windows.
The basement, too, is super insulated. With walls clocking in at R-43 and floors with R-18 insulation beneath them, the basement will be as warm as the rest of the home.
The home gets its heat from the geothermal district energy sharing system already in place in Blatchford. Fluids are piped into heat pumps in the homes, heating them in the winter and cooling them in the summer.
Compared to regular furnaces, which Stoyke says are about 96 per cent efficient, this heat pump system is over 400 per cent efficient. As a cooling mechanism in summer, it is an even more impressive 900 per cent efficient. All these factors mean the home requires only about six per cent of the energy inputs that a conventional home would need for heating and cooling.
Beyond the actual structure of the building, Carbon Busters’ homes also come equipped with energy-saving Energy Star appliances, including a heat pump dryer that is much more efficient than a conventional dryer and requires no external venting.
The home’s small energy input requirement is entirely accounted for by a solar system located on the roof, which provides all of the energy for the home on a net annual basis, making it net-zero.
“They’re super comfortable,” Stoyke said of the homes. “No cold or hot spots. They are future proof, so no carbon tax because you don’t emit any carbon. They are good for your pocketbook because you save a huge portion of your energy bill. And also they’re good for the planet.”
Carbon Busters Net-Zero Spec Sheet
People-first design: A green building principle
Carbon Busters’ Shanthu Mano was ecstatic when she learned that her company would be building in Blatchford. For Mano, sustainability is about much more than energy efficiency and renewable energy. It’s also about good community urban design and location efficiency — spending less time getting to where you need to go. Blatchford has both, embodying Mano’s idea of people-first urban design.
“I would love to live in Blatchford. This is exactly the kind of lifestyle that I love. One of the things I like to do every day is to get 10,000 steps into my life and Blatchford has those wonderful walking trails and bike trails that I can absolutely use. And I love it that I can walk across the street and be part of a community garden and a fruit orchard and a community fire pit,” says Mano.
Carbon Busters’ townhomes are the lowest density housing allowed in Blatchford. However, the homes are built with the idea that that community-building and human-scale development are requirements of sustainable urban design.
People-first sustainable design is at the heart of Blatchford as a whole. The community boasts an abundance of attractive public spaces, including a lake, an 80-acre park and several planned smaller parks, community gardens, and bike paths, all in a very walkable community.
In other words, high-density living and energy efficiency are central components of sustainable design — but both of these must be balanced with people-first urban design principles.
First net-zero home buyer
Monette Malley was the first purchaser of a home in Blatchford. She’d been watching the Blatchford website ever since the carbon-neutral community was announced.
She says she chose the Carbon Busters homes specifically because they were fully net-zero and included the solar modules.
It is clear, however, that Mano’s people-first vision is not lost on customers. “There’s going to be pathways for riding our bicycles and for walking. We can go shopping, pick up our groceries and across the street there will be a community garden,” said Malley, who can already see herself sitting on the second-floor veranda looking across the street at a park, the fruit trees, and the view of downtown skyline beyond.
Location was also important to Malley’s decision. “We bought in Blatchford because of the location. It’s really close to downtown. There’s LRT within walking distance and all of the amenities within Blatchford are very easy to get to,” she said.
Malley hopes to get rid of one of her family cars, planning instead to walk and cycle more with her electric bike, and to use the nearby LRT.
At the sod-turning in 2019, Edmonton’s Mayor, Don Iveson, described the scale of Blatchford as a city-within-a-city: an entire community designed not only around high-density, future-proof, super energy-efficient homes, but also around thriving and active community spaces. These are some of the highest quality houses — and, more importantly, homes — that money can buy.
Follow the links to learn more about Blatchford and Carbon Busters, and be sure to check out the 27 stories we’ve done on net-zero homes at Green Energy Futures.