Part 2 in our Green Infill series Anatomy of Passive House Multifamily – Green Energy Futures CKUA.com Podcast.
By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
T5M is a postal code in Canada and it’s also part of the name T5M Connect a small company that has built a green multifamily project that is the poster child for how to increase density and build the sustainable home of the future.
And the icing on the cake is the project was built to the passive house standard and requires only 10% of the energy of a code-built home to heat.
The project was built by David and Melissa Campbell with a couple of partners in their own Edmonton North Glenora neighbourhood.
“This is a 16-unit, somewhat unique, townhome style infill project,” says David Campbell.
It was built on two lots that had single-family homes. “Each one had a decrepit 1950s bungalow. One was vacant and the other had one inhabitant in it, so it was a pretty underutilized site,” says David.
Creating homes and community
David owns Homestretch an experienced multifamily development company, but with this project, he set out to do things differently. Melissa is a community engagement consultant and she has been involved in her community where she is a past president of the community league.
“We know that one of the best ways we can build in order to fight climate change is to increase the density of buildings in mature neighbourhoods like this,” says Melissa Campbell.
“We’re right in the core, the centre of the North Glenora neighbourhood right across the street from the school. So, we wanted to increase density, but do it in a way that was integrated and fit well with the neighbourhood,” says Melissa.
What they built is attractive, accessible and innovative, but the process began with a curious form of community engagement.
“Before we’d even purchased the second site [lot] we put up a sign on this corner that said, what should we build here? And we had Sharpie markers so that people walking by could write suggestions.
Sharpie suggestions
One idea was to build multifamily on the site. Melissa swears it wasn’t David who wrote that and to be clear there were some neighbours concerned about what was coming.
“We actually met with some concerned neighbours just up the street in their backyard because we live in this neighbourhood,” says Melissa.
The decision was made to build some very tasteful desperately needed family housing.
“There were two homes. Those homes are obviously gone. And in its place, there are 16 units. It’s a mix of a whole bunch of different types,” says David
“So we have one-bedroom apartment styles and two and three-bedroom townhomes and some two-bedroom wheelchair-accessible suites.”
Edmonton’s City Plan plans for increasing density in the core, but this project happened before the new zoning bylaw which would have allowed it.
“So, we had to go through the whole rezoning process. Our councillor is Andrew Knack, who is, has been a very supportive and engaged councillor. He has been connecting with us throughout the process and also connecting with some of the concerned people because he’s really good at that,” says Melissa.
Happy residents underscore the importance of quality infill
The project was fully leased before it was completed and as if to underline how accessible the project is Kristi Leer pulled up in her wheelchair just as we were doing the interview on the corner outside the building.
“The unit made this possible for me to feel safe and comfortable and be here alone with neighbours, family, friends, Tamara, and the lady upstairs, I keep forgetting her name,” says Leer. “Cheryl,” says Melissa. “Because I call her auntie,” says Leer. “It’s just amazing – the gentleman across the way when there’s things going on where we’re not feeling safe, I know he’s there.”
The project happened in a beautiful west-end neighbourhood where infill has not always gone as smoothly. Years before and just one block away from T5M Connect the Westmount Presbyterian Church cut a creative deal with the Right at Home Housing Society to build 16 social housing units for immigrant families and the community fought the project initially.
But after some patient and persistent public engagement, the local community wound up supporting the project at Council and it was one factor in helping save an underutilized school right across the street.
The church and social housing project was one of the first geothermal heated, net-zero projects of its kind in Canada.
On average every new home built in the core of the city will result in the occupants producing half the emissions of someone who moves into the suburbs.
Passive House multifamily – in Edmonton!
Fast forward 10 years and David and Melissa Campbell were looking for ways to build a green multifamily project.
“It started with just the desire to do something better,” says David.
“I wasn’t sure what that better looked like, and the more I researched, the more I came to the Passive House standard,” says David.
He liked the clear guidelines and targets for certification. It was in essence a recipe book for building deep green.
“Passive house is kind of the gold standard of energy-efficient construction. The building is super insulated, with 14-inch, R40 walls, R60 in the roof, nine inches of under-slab insulation, really good windows and doors and it’s a super airtight building too,” he says.
Anatomy of a northern climate multifamily passive house
The result was a super-insulated building that allowed less than half an air change per hour.
David says they used two wall systems. The foundation used insulated concrete forms (ICF) with 2 ¾ inches of EPS on the inside and 7 ¾ inches of EPS insulation on the outside.
For the upper walls, he used SI Construction Systems structural insulated steel walls, a local company. Picture a wall made of 14 inches of EPS insulation with structural steel embedded in the middle.
When combined with the nine inches of EPS under slab insulation and R60 in the roof the building is encased in an unbroken blanket of insulation. It requires just 10-20% as much energy to heat as a conventional home.
The units are heated by a mix of centrally ducted and mini-split Tosot air-source heat pumps. The heat pumps are rated for -35 Celsius.
With no backup heating in the upper units at all “They functioned perfectly even when it hit minus 40 in January,” says David. They worked “perfectly, not a single complaint.”
Vancouver loved the Passive House standard so much it’s now part of their green building code for larger multifamily buildings, but the climate is much warmer there. This project proves you can do it in Edmonton, Alberta the most northerly large city in North America.
David says they also built in the capacity for every unit to have an EV charger. “We installed two car chargers, but we made it future-proof so we could install car chargers in all the parking stalls.” The wiring is already in place to install a charger in any parking stall in the building.
So is it Net-Zero?
“Well, it’s not quite net zero,” says David. It’s hard to put enough solar on a multifamily complex because the density means the ratio of roof space to units is low.
“We have ten units hooked up to the solar on the roof, and those ten units are net zero. And then the other six units are really energy efficient, but they’re using grid source power,” says David.
T5M Connect was able to put some of the cutting-edge features in this project thanks to some financial support from the Sustainable Resilient Infrastructure Association (SSRIA) which wanted to show how to take energy efficiency to the next level.
So was it worth it?
“If you just want to make a year one profit, it’s probably not the best way to spend your time and effort,” says David Campbell.
“But if you care about your city and the climate and you think long term and you know that utility costs are going up, carbon pricing is going up, people are caring more and more about environmental sustainability, then it starts to make a lot of sense.”
David Campbell
David, Melissa and their two partners Michelle and Ryan Young (who also live in the neighbourhood) own and operate the building they built.
“I think that what we learned was that the certification was difficult,” says David.
To achieve the passive house certification “Someone had to come here from Toronto, which is ridiculous,” says David.
In addition, some of the wall systems were unfamiliar to the trades which added to the time and expense of building the project.
These issues will be sorted out over time says David, but now with his hard-earned experience, he knows what he will do next.
“The next project that we’re working on now is an eight-unit building and it’s going to be to the net-zero standard,” says David.
Edmonton builders were pioneers of building affordable net-zero in Canada and David plans to simply the design, add a little slope to the roof for solar and focus on the most efficient way to get to net-zero.
