Blatchford Carbon Neutral Community – Part 5
By David Dodge, GreenEnergyFutures.ca
Kassandra Starkell and Martin Martyiniak were looking to buy their first new home. They were living in an apartment in downtown Edmonton. They were looking for a few good green features in their new home but never dreamed they could afford a net-zero home.
The couple likes living in the core of the City, but they were looking for something new.
Then they stumbled on Blatchford, the largest planned carbon-neutral community in North America
The “Blatchfordness” of it
“In terms of the Blatchfordness of it, we really liked the energy efficiency that was coming with the homes and specifically the Landmark home,” says Kassandra.
The “Blatchfordness” as she referred to it, means their home was built under the green building code in Blatchford and the entire neighbourhood was designed with sustainability in mind. Hoping for a few good green features the couple looked at the Landmark Home and “it just kind of clicked in terms of location and what we were seeing in what the homes were offering,” she says.
They loved that the home came with solar installed, that it was heated by an air-source heat pump and that the home would be net-zero from day one.
And even better, they learned their new home can have zero utility costs on a net-annual basis. The 9 to 10 kilowatts of solar is enough to provide all of the energy the home needs for electricity, heating and cooling.
Batteries included
And as luck would have it, it gets better. The Landmark net-zero homes in Blatchford are part of a battery storage pilot program where the company is installing 20 kWh battery systems in 100 homes being built in Blatchford.
This means the couple should not only be able to pay no utility costs they may actually make money on their home’s energy system.
The details are still being worked out, but the batteries are being interconnected as a virtual power plant and the idea is to sell electricity to the grid during peak demand periods.
Why go green? We wanted to know
Landmark pioneered the concept of net-zero homes beginning 16 years ago and has perfected the design of an affordable net-zero home.
But it has taken years for home buyers to appreciate the incredible value proposition of a home that will cost you nothing in utility costs.
We were really curious about why this is important to the young couple.
“I think it came from an early interest in the environment in general when I was young,” says Kassandra.
“My dad works in the oil field, so I don’t know if it was the rebellious part of me to want to make a change to help out when I could, but my parents would probably tell you from an early age, I would annoy them about recycling properly,” she says.
Kassandra says teachers also influenced her interest in things green and that she loved science.
Kassandra thinks about sustainability when she’s buying clothing, cleaning supplies and when the time came to buy a new home, as we said they had modest expectations and wanted a few good green features.
Making a difference for the planet
“I didn’t think that we were kind of in that price bracket to get a net-zero home or even just a home with solar. So that was a really happy coincidence,” says Kassandra.
Kassandra doesn’t think of herself as a greenie, more middle of the road.
“We have some friends that are car-free, that bike exclusively or use car sharing, but I would say we don’t fall so heavily into that camp.”
“We like to have those [green] options. We’re trying to do our best and make those strides and stay true to our core values and want to make a difference for the planet long term,” says Kassandra.
Kassandra likes cycling to work, and the couple really likes Yorke Mews, the pedestrian-only street in front of their home and in the end they found a new home in the heart of the City that matched their values and goals in home ownership.
“It was just kind of like crazy to think that we were at that point where we could move into a home and be almost reliant only on our solar energy and pull very little from the grid,” says Kassandra.
What, no bill?
“It’s been really great so far. When we moved in in May, we were in peak sun months already, so we actually did not pull an energy bill until we landed in October,” she says.
Blatchford is designed to be home to 30,000 people living a sustainable lifestyle once completed, but these are still early days and the mixed-use developments are still to come.
The couple loves the location, just 15 minutes from downtown, with great shopping and other amenities nearby, but Kassandra says she’s looking forward to having a coffee shop a few minutes away.
But even now there are grocery stores nearby, a large and popular mall a few blocks away, and the light rail transit already has a station in Blatchford.
We noticed Kassandra seemed to be the one with the passion for the cool green features in their home, so we had to ask Martin whose idea it was to buy a home here.
Boom, done
“She forced me into it,” Martin says with a sly smile.
“If you want to stay downtown, finding a newer home is virtually impossible. And I didn’t want an older home. So, the moment we saw this, I was like, ‘Oh, this is my way out. Get the new home. Boom. Done.’”
A happy coincidence indeed.
Video Playlist: Watch the entire Blatchford 6-part Series
Audio Podcast Playlist: Blatchford 6-part series (CKUA Radio)