benefits

We build better houses. With smart design and great material selection you’ll find yourself enjoying the little things. Life is better with optimized day to day details like where you’ll store your road bike, how many steps you have to take to do laundry, and whether or not you can see the kids in the playroom while you’re cooking dinner. You will experience:

Luxurious comfort. A Healthy Lifestyle.

You’ll experience a comfortable climate controlled home (even during our Alberta winters). Our houses have no drafts or cold spots thanks to well sealed triple-glazed windows, a well-insulated envelope with almost no thermal bridging, and HRV’s (heat recovery ventilators) that provide a continuous supply of energy efficient fresh air.

Healthy Indoor Air Quality

Good air quality is something that the whole family will appreciate, particularly those with allergies. We install controlled ventilation with heat recovery ventilators, control humidity with balanced ventilation and avoid materials that have high levels of formaldehyde and other toxic off-gassing agents.

Energy Efficiency

We are Canada’s pre-eminent leaders in net-zero-energy design-build company. All of our houses include the following energy-conserving features:

⏐ Insulation levels for walls, attic, and basement that are well beyond code minimums
    – Effective wall insulation levels from a minimum of R28 to as high as R70
    – Effective Attic insulation levels from R60 to R100
    – Effective basement frost wall insulation levels from R32 to R50
    – Effective R10 to R24 under the basement floor slab.
⏐ Triple-glazed windows with argon fill and 2 lowE coatings
⏐ Thermal bridging analysis and control.
⏐ Exceptional airtightness- 1 ACH-50 or less

For more information on energy efficiency, please see our section on sustainable design.

Disaster resilience

Our houses stay habitable for days after the power goes off. A single gas fireplace or small wood fireplace is enough to keep the house livable for long stretches of the coldest weather.

Peace and quiet

Our clients often comment on the quietness in their homes. They are cushioned from the hustle and bustle of the outside world by airtight construction, triple-glazed windows, and highly insulated walls.

Enhanced Durability

There’s no reason that a well-built wood-frame house can’t last for hundreds of years. Your home will delight and impress family and visitors for generations to come.

Here are some of the proven features we incorporate to make your house last.

• Vented rain screens – No cladding or wall assembly is ideal. We put a free-draining air space between the exterior cladding and the waterproof layer. This space allows any moisture that does get through the cladding to drain out the bottom, keeping the structure of your house dry and rot free.

• Sensible junctions of different materials – We detail the exterior so one material can be replaced or renewed easily without damaging the adjacent materials.

• Enhanced airtightness – Leaky air/vapour barriers allow warm, moist air to escape into your outside walls. In winter, this moisture will condense into water that can cause rot. Our airtight houses reduce this risk substantially. Even if a small amount of moisture does get in, the walls can dry safely.

• Better foundation – The foundation is the most important factor in the longevity of your house. For years, we’ve been specifying extra rebar that is well beyond building code requirements.

• Better basement frost walls – To prevent damaging moisture build up, our 10” thick frost walls include 4” of rigid Styrofoam insulation against the cold concrete.