004 - How Curiosity Built a Retrofit Leader

Ben: Welcome to Renewing Homes, the Residential Retrofit Podcast. I'm your host, Ben Hildebrandt. This show explores how we improve existing homes through better planning and design, better retrofit work, and better decision making. Better homes through better retrofits? Enjoy the episode. Joining me today are Peter Darlington, owner of Solar Homes, a local retrofit contractor serving the Calgary area, and Cooper Lee, the general manager, I believe your correct term is, or senior manager of Four Elements. They're a sustainable building service organization mainly providing energy advisor services to the Calgary area across Alberta and beyond a bit. You guys do a lot of work.

 

Cooper Le: senior management.

 

Ben: lot of great work in a lot of areas. So above and beyond just simple energy audits for the Energy Guide for Homes rating system. we're gonna have a great conversation today. But before we dive in, just wanna give you guys a minute to give a bit more of an introduction to to yourself. So Peter, if you want go first and then and then Cooper.

 

Peter Darlington: Sure, yeah, my name's Peter Darlington. I started doing retrofits in about twenty fifteen. and we've done a bunch of net zeros, some labeled, some not, and we're really proud of the work we've done and hope to carry continue it over the coming years.

 

Ben: Awesome. Cooper?

 

Cooper Le: I'm Cooper Lee. I'm as Ben mentioned, manager at Four Elements. I'm also a master energy advisor, which is a newer designation for those in our industry. I've been in EA for about sixteen years now. Peter's House was one of the first existing homes we did, or that I did. We mostly work on new construction. So Peter's house really spoiled me. It was the first existing home I did. It was the first Net Zero labeled C H B A project in Canada. really spoiled me on working with existing homes, so

 

Ben: Yeah. Awesome. And I guess that's kind of the starting off point we wanna make on this conversation, Peter. retrofitting your own home. And that was and I'm if if you want to kind of take a minute and talk about kind of your journey that got you to deep energy retrofits. And I know your home was the first, as Cooper said, the first Canadian Home Builders Association net zero renovation label that was provided. what were you doing before that? net zero innovation, what made you make that decision to tackle it.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, I'm gonna start at the beginning. It's kinda funny how life takes us different places. I got fired from a job because I slept in and didn't show up till like noon when I was like seventeen or eighteen. And I answered ad and Newspaper and had a new job that afternoon doing prep for stucco wire. Did that for a couple years, went to Europe for a few months, came back, started my own company, and started doing stucco wire in 2000. Did that for a while, a decade and a half, and you know, that company kind of advanced through to full stucco to commercial. We did a lot of EFIS, we did some four and six inch EFIS even back in like 2012 we were already doing some pretty heavily insulated buildings and then in 2014 I was going to renovate my home and I was kind of in the planning phases of doing that and We were gonna put two inch ethos on the outside of that the my home and I just stumbled across this website, it was called Heat Spring and a course by Mark Rosenbaum called Net Zero Homes and he talked about new construction and I said to myself, well pfft, that's pretty simple. Like I could I could probably pull that off as a retrofit on my house. So we started planning it. I built the garage, a big double garage specifically to handle 40 solar panels. put four-inch eaves on the outside of the house. Ethos is insulated cladding. It's basically four inches of EPS styrofoam, white styrofoam, covered in a couple acrylic coatings. but it's you know a super efficient way to clad a home. So we put four inch eats, we did all new windows, doors, we ripped out the mechanical systems, which you know, coincidentally that winter I had to manually start the fan to get it going. So it was

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: kind of on its way out anyways replaced the hot water tank disconnected the gas and just you know put a bunch of solar panels up on that the garage we specifically built i i it everything kind of worked out perfectly because like i didn't realize when we bought this house that the backyard was gonna be perfectly southern oriented for so that garage has it's like three degrees off perfect due south yeah right so

 

Ben: wow.

 

Peter Darlington: So, you know, everything worked out really well. The house, we operated it, I think completed construction about 2015. And as part of that course that I mentioned earlier on Heat Spring was a simple Excel spreadsheet that came with it that did all the heat loss calculations and energy calculations. And we put the numbers into that and decided to run it for a couple of years to see whether it was actually gonna work, because the lake at this time about In 2015, you know, heat pumps in Calgary were totally unheard of. I think there was like one or two in new constructions in in Edmonton, and maybe a couple in Calgary, but very, very rare. solar panels, like a big array like that, 10 kilowatts, pretty unheard of. and you know, like simple things like now you get 3D models on your solar panels. I ran three strings from the back of my house to a two by four I had screwed to my fence.

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: To see where the sun went for six months before I built the garage, right? Like, you know, simple things like that. We didn't have any of that back in 2015. Anyways, so we ran it for a couple years and the numbers were like really close to that energy model. I was blown away. You know, some things were a little off, generation was a little higher than expected, consumption on the heat pump was a little higher than expected, but that was offset by the additional generation. but all in all, we were really, really close to.

 

Ben: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: To net zero or close to what we thought we'd get with just the 10 kilowatts. I we knew the 10 kilowatts would be a little short. and then so we did that, built the house.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: And then a couple few years later I got involved with the CHBA. you know, once I was confident that that the home would kind of perform the way I expected it to. David Dodge did a video on us that kind of got some attention brought to us. and we started people started calling, asking us to to replicate it for their homes or at least portions of it. so we really we started doing that. We joined the CHBA to see what it would take to kind of scale it. So I stepped back just a little bit and kind of my motivation.

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: to to the Canadian Home Builders Association was because I've been in Stucco for almost three decades. I have seen so many poor installs over that time that have, you know, big hotels, commercial blocks, houses that have gone to the cheapest bidder, and then three years later I've seen the entire cladding come get ripped off because it was so poorly installed. And I thought if if this

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: idea of retrofitting homes to net zero had a chance to to move forward, it it would be d heavily dependent on minimal number of failures. And I thought the CHBA, the Canadian Home Builders Association, was probably one of the best institutions to step up and kind of assure run quality assurance, make sure that the contractors were going to be around for a couple years and that they had building science knowledge and they had, you know, excellent energy advisors behind them. So we joined the CHBA, worked on the new home labeling program for a couple of years, and then got started on the renovation labeling program. And it's funny that my house really kind of met all the requirements of that program years before the program was even in place. So like the error changes, but it had to be that way. Like that was the only way you were ever gonna make net zero was to knock those energy consumption numbers down so low.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: Low with those almost obvious measures. but so yeah, and then a few years later we put some more solar panels on the house and Cooper helped us get through the rest of the paperwork and we got the label for the first renovated net zero CHBA labeled home in in Canada. Then we've done a couple more since then and yeah, we love working with Cooper for elements, they're really incredible to work with and they've helped us get through a bunch of these files, so we do appreciate that as well.

 

Ben: Yeah. Awesome. And so so I guess talking about Cooper and four elements. and so you'd done that, you had that Excel spreadsheet to kind of do your loading and kind of some work. So did Cooper just come in to help with that CHBA certification or is he supporting you before before they got into the net zero rentals labeling at CHBA? And C H B A they started looking into the net zero rentals, I believe, around two thousand and twenty in in that that range. Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, that's about right. I think when we did our first Cooper, you know, do you remember when you first came and blow doored my my house?

 

Cooper Le: I do, I can tell you the date. Give me what the one one second I can t it was June twenty fifth, 2020 was the day I tested your house.

 

Peter Darlington: There you go.

 

Ben: He's bringing up the file.

 

Peter Darlington: Okay, so this is several years later and i it turns out that we were, you know, sub one and a half air changes at that point. The ethos really is a great product for that. Like the liquid applied air barrier, super inspectable, you're hard hard to screw it up.

 

Cooper Le: Yeah.

 

Ben: Yeah, and that's I think that's one to not go down too many rabbit shells, but that's one thing with with retrofits, like one of the key things is improving the air tightness. And when you're moving that air barrier to the surface of the sheathing system of the home or out like somewhere outside of the exterior wall system and and not the interior poly or what is attempting to be a poly air vapor barrier on the inside. Like that's really hard to improve that air tightness layer where it is. So when we move it to the outside as part of retrofit work, it it it makes it work quite well. So so I guess going down the four elements route a a little bit, so Cooper verified that hey, you did do great work back in twenty back in twenty fifteen.

 

Cooper Le: I did, yep.

 

Ben: How was having Cooper and his team involved in your subsequent projects supported things? were you still using that same Excel spreadsheet, Peter, or or were you kinda passing some of that planning work off?

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, the Excel spreadsheet has kinda gone the way of the wind. But Cooper Cooper helps us on most of the projects. We kinda tried to sprinkle some projects around this last couple of years. We've been so busy as they have. and but they are really good and they've helped us on a bunch of projects.

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: And I think it c it kinda adds like a level of you know, quality assurance that the homeowners are kinda getting what they expect and that you know, it's not just me kinda spitting out numbers and eyeballing stuff. There's you know, theoretical math behind it.

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess so my mind is going in so many different ways right now. So you did your house in twenty fifteen and that was your first project where you're looking at significant energy improvements for a home. And then it was after that, before CHBA got into net zero rentals. You you you started doing more correct me where I'm wrong, but you after that you started offering that as a business service that you were doing. What led you to make that decision?

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, I mean it wasn't really a big stretch from where we already were as an exterior contractor. we'd done lots of rentals over the years, you know, a lot of lipsticks and a lot of four inch epis six inch efus. So You know, it it's tough to say. I think my my daughter was born in 2015 and I think shortly after that I kind of felt a responsibility to do what I could to reduce emissions and that has really driven me over the past decade. I think it's probably the most important thing that I can do in my lifetime. whether I'm actually accomplishing anything significant or not remains to be seen, but at least the efforts there, right?

 

Ben: you are.

 

Cooper Le: There's I mean, we could do that math for you, Peter, if you want it sometime.

 

Peter Darlington: No, I know I know there is some obviously some benefits there and the world is very crazy right now. I don't know that globally we're pushing in the right direction and it's frustrating that we do a lot of work to improve individuals' carbon footprints and then all that work kinda gets wiped away by an AI data center.

 

Ben: Yeah. We do we do what we can. We'll we'll try and avoid the big AI rabbit hole we could dive into now about about where it's going, what's it really gonna be like in the next five years, how many of these data centers are actually gonna materialize as as I begin the rabbit hole right now. but yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: But I think it it's it's certainly been interesting because I think that was my primary driver and I see for a lot of my customers that that is one of their drivers. and or motivators, but there are other benefits to these net zero retrofits. They are absolutely the most comfortable homes to live in. There is no doubt. Once you live inside of a net zero and you have that steady 20 degrees 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, you have no idea what it's like outside. You have fresh air pumped in all the time, you have no energy bills. I mean, there are lots of really cool things about these retrofits too, outside of the carbon benefits. So it it's it's been interesting because like early on we had a lot of customers who had young children and were very much interested in the emissions and footprint benefits. But as we've kind of evolved it seems like more and more kind of chasing some of those comfort, you know, air quality, energy, the ability to make their own energy. And so we'll see how it how it plays out over the next ten years and should be fun to chase it.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I I like I like looking into those other benefits of of have of having a net zero home because there's primarily we've been federally and it it depends kinda politically where things are leaning in general conversations, but the the degree to which emissions reduction is a priority kind of wanes and gets stronger and fades out.

 

Cooper Le: Yeah. The like knock on effects. Yeah.

 

Ben: The other main thing a lot of people look at about improving home's efficiency is for that cost savings. but as I understand, and and one of Cooper's colleagues of days of your Tyler Hermansen had often said, like, no one is going to retrofit a home for the cost savings. Cause particularly in Alberta and many other areas, the utility structure and Peter, you're you've got a response to this, but a lot of places that

 

Cooper Le: It's

 

Ben: that utility payback for efficiency is not that short of a term to kind of look at of what you've spent on a retrofit to how much you're saving on utilities. What say you, Peter? Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: No, I mean you're absolutely right. Nobody's gonna spend 150 or 200 grand on a building for cost savings. That doesn't make any sense. We we're not dumb. We can run numbers. but there's a lot of people out there spending 100 grand on their houses anyways. Like just doing reclads with new windows and standard siding. So I don't look at these retrofits as like a single

 

Ben: Who

 

Peter Darlington: large purchase. I look at it as an up upsell to a purchase that's already going to be made anyways. And then when you look at it that way, if it's only a fifty or an eighty grand up upsell, then you can start making a lot more sense on just on the cost savings. Because as my house is an example, I pay nothing for energy. I have no gas bill. my electricity it nets out over the years, so that costs me nothing. my wife pays nothing for her car. I still have to pay for my truck, but she pays nothing for her car. So we're

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: That's five six thousand bucks a year. So if you're fifty-eighty thousand dollar upsell, that's a 10-year payback. And at the end of those 10 years, all the stuff is still there. The insulation is still there. The solar panels are still there. Maybe your inverters might die, but the tech lasts forever. That that those panels are gonna last 30 plus years. They're warranted for 25 years. So the next 15-20 years, it's all gravy, it's all free money. And then you start thinking about that, like the cost of your lifetime, the total cost of your energy from the time you're like Like you know, ideally you're buying a house when you're 25 or 30. So the time you die, forty-fifty years at five to ten thousand bucks a year, that's a lot of money, right? So so I think I think it can be justified when you're looking at it with that kind of lens. but yeah, go ahead.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And

 

Cooper Le: It's also hard to like Peter's point earlier, you can't quantify the comfort level. like a lot of those things and one thing Peter didn't mention is often in our net zero houses what the one of the biggest impacts a homeowner will see o over time is sound reduction. So like you might live next to a major road and you're just used to hearing that background noise in the in your background all the time.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Cooper Le: you get into a net zero house, the air tightness has gone down, you added more insulation, which is also sound dampening, and you're in that house and now you can't hear anything outside. And I've like, we've had clients that have said like it's actually a little unsettling at first because you go from like just hearing the park across the street and like kids playing in the park and now you don't hear it. And now they open their window so they can hear it. Or you have a house that has a party wall and before they couldn't hear

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Cooper Le: their neighbors ever because there's so much other noise coming in from the outside and now you can hear people like walking around just the house you're in or the house next to you. So like those those elements of comfort don't get quantified in in a way unless unless maybe you're really into following Robert Bean on LinkedIn and you watch everything he says about Ashray fifty five and he really pushes comfort and how buildings don't measure comfort people do. But yeah.

 

Ben: That's Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Build for people. Good buildings follow. I'm gonna start a tally of how many episodes Robert Bean gets mentioned on this podcast. Yeah. yeah. Maybe I'll see how long I can hold out before I have to break down a break. No. I'll probably bring him on sooner rather than later. But I I Yeah. Part one and part two. I think that's really interesting on the comfort side is is really important and and it's how do we change the conversation.

 

Cooper Le: That's right. Yeah. Before he gets onto the podcast.

 

Peter Darlington: Ha ha ha.

 

Cooper Le: You might have to have a double episode for that.

 

Ben: beyond just emissions and energy savings to improving the lifestyle. And there's a lot of different ways we can go for that and or go to the with our conversation beyond that. But but I think the other aspect too, which is scientifically proven by many peer reviewed research papers over a decade old, just of the health benefits, primarily of achieving high levels of airtightness and then providing Proper controlled and filtered mechanical ventilation. Just those two aspects, which are done in almost every single one of these retrofits that we're doing, there's significant health benefits. I've heard of a study, I've heard heard it referenced multiple times over the years. I've never found the original one, but apparently some community in New Zealand was all high performance homes. This is like the early twenty tens or something, I believe, in in that range. So airtight mechanically ventilated homes in this entire community. And then they did a study or survey kind of comparing families in that community to other communities. And they had the numbers were something like 30% less sick days from work and 60% less sick days for the kids from school. Like once you're properly changing out that air and controlling where it comes from, a lot can change. yeah, there's a lot of different angles we can go Back to so Peter, you just mentioned about like the additional cost for the efficiency upgrades. I think that's really important. So you mentioned about fifty to eighty thousand dollars. And I think a lot of the retrofit work we do, it's best aligned everyone would agree it's best aligned with systems that are already aging out and in need of replacement. Why re why replace perfectly good cladding? Why replace a furnace that has half its life left? Unless it's an old like low efficiency furnace from the eighties, that might warrant replacement anyways. arguably those are past end of life if you still got one. it might still be they they do. We yeah, we replaced ours a few years back.

 

Peter Darlington: they'll chug around they'll chug along for years and years those old furnaces.

 

Cooper Le: you can get them out of the out of the homes that use it all the time and those can go into people's garages and workshops. Those are really good things for those things.

 

Ben: Doesn't help with cutting off the gas in its entirety though. But but Peter, I wanted to dive in, like what's what's that if we're looking at a rough percentage of work, if someone needs to look at re cladding their home and their mechanical systems are due for renewal, they need new windows anyways, what's what's that approximate percent and and this is rough and things change with over time, but what's that rough percentage increase we're looking at to the cost?

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, so some things are lower additional costs. So l I'll start with windows. Double to a single pane window, maybe ten percent. That's come down quite a bit. if you're going from like a standard hardy install to an install with six or nine inches underneath it, probably a hundred percent on that particular line item. heating systems they're not really a lot more. I mean it's just over twenty grand for a heat pump, but that's gonna run heating and cooling, so that's not a lot more than you'd pay for a furnace and a AC unit, at least a modern one. and then it's really just the solar panels on top of that. But you know what i i it depends.

 

Ben: Yeah. Mm-mm. Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: The costs for a simple square rectangle are lower than the costs for a house that has twenty outside corners and three dormers and you know it's tough to say a square foot cost to a dormer versus a flat wall.

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Well you know, it's a good thing that ninety nine percent of homes are nice square boxes, right? If only Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: Ha ha ha.

 

Cooper Le: Pretty much pretty much all of them.

 

Peter Darlington: but sorry, just stepping back to, you know, at time of replacement, I don't think that Necessarily applies even just to individual components. Like I think there's a lot of houses that are getting knocked down because they're old, uncomfortable, they smell bad. but they're really nice houses. Like some of the 60s, 50s houses, you cannot buy lumber like that anymore. Those houses are rock solid. They've got great lots, they're really comfortable size for maybe not a a full-size family, but you know, a a couple. so I think a lot of those houses with a couple hundred grams. thrown into them could be turned into extremely comfortable. Like we we delete, we eliminate that bad smell of the house, we eliminate those uncomfortable spots. there's a lot of things that we take care of. so I think I think it it kind of extends just beyond individual components, but of course, you know, these hail storms, taking vinyl siding off and putting vinyl siding on. Come on, you know. I'm not saying you have to put nine inches, throw an inch or two underneath it of st a styrofoam. Like it it it's ridiculous. To put an inch of styrofoam under vinyl is nothing. It costs virtually nothing to do, in the grand scheme of things. So not that not that I'm a big fan of hash measures, but something is better than nothing. And you know, we can't keep going on the way we're going on with replacing stuff for the cheapest available product.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Cooper Le: When we're seeing when those hail strikes like in Calgary we do with those hail storms, we worry about those every late summer, right? Like we're going into hail season now. and we're seeing insurance companies that are start they're like they're gonna do the replacement once and then they're not gonna cover siding again.

 

Ben: Mm. Yeah. And I'm so I I'll say too quickly, I'm in northeast Calgary. We've been hit by hail three times. The last time in twenty four wasn't so bad. I still haven't gotten up on my roof. I was actually in a tent in Canonascus and we got hit with hail out there. Luckily much smaller, but it was still an adventure. and our pride of walking out of that diminished greatly when we heard about the massive hail storm that hit Calgary at the same time. It's like okay, we're not gonna mention our our trials in the wilderness. but

 

Cooper Le: No, I was I was in Livingston the next day like the day after the hail to test homes and like these were homes that were turning over to like new homeowners. It might have been their first home they bought and the siding was Swiss cheese, some like that there were there's hail that went through windows and cars and like it would it was just carnage out there that day after and that was a twenty minute hail storm.

 

Ben: It's been intense. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm. It's crazy. Yeah. I've seen like in Calgary we had so that one in twenty four was much more widely spread across North Calgary. And it also seems like the the trajectory of the hail was different to I guess we don't take this as a fact, but it seems that there were a lot more busted windows in the twenty twenty four storm than there were in the twenty twenty storm. And I've I have friends up in the neighborhood in 2020 that got the tennis ball hail and it's it's intense. But when we're I guess drawing it back to to retrofits, like you can replace final siding every time. And if you're not in the hail area, the key is when you replace your clouding system or you put in new windows, barring it being damaged from hail and needing to be replaced sooner, you're locking that in for twenty, thirty years or beyond. And there's no financial reason to remove that cladding before it wears out. So to your point, Peter, like we're missing an opportunity if we don't upgrade. And and I would agree if if someone could at least get an inch or two of insulation on there, if nothing else. But but also it's it's planning it properly and not if we're if we're only talking one inch or so of foam insulation on the outside of a home, that could create some moisture issues in the assembly as a whole if it's not planned. But But I think planning is is the the key thing. So I don't know, Cooper, if you want to provide some of your thoughts on how how have you been helping Peter and and others doing retrofits in Calgary to make sure they're making the right plans for for the projects.

 

Cooper Le: So with Peter Peter's the easiest client I work with. I'll give him that respect right off right off the bat because he knows what he's gonna do when he starts and we've seen enough of them now. Like he I I he didn't mention it, but he doesn't use that EF system anymore on what he does. He switched to a different type of renovation. But like I know what he's gonna do, I know what it's gonna look like in the end, I know how it's gonna perform. When I get like a new client that comes in with a retrofit, well we might run four or five different options for them for their assemblies, so and then they can get those priced.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Cooper Le: choose the one they think is the best price based on maybe the gigajoules saved or or whatever whatever their goal is. and then we will like much you guys have both mentioned it, like if there's a if we're worried about there being a moisture problem in the wall. 4Elements hires almost exclusively architectural technologists like you Ben. and we so we all know how to do that dew point calculation across the wall to determine if there's gonna be a moisture problem in that wall. So we'll look at that on any of our renovations as well to make sure the renovation isn't going to cause any of the problems.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Cooper Le: And then if the air tightness is a problem, well on almost every retrofit we recommend an HRV or an ERV anyway, because if you're gonna improve the airtightness, now you need a mechanical way to ventilate. So it's the it's really using the we haven't mentioned it here, but like the house as a system concept. you can't just change one thing in a house. One change will affect other things down the line in a house. So you gotta kinda look at the house holistically.

 

Ben: Yeah. And I think that's one thing to keep in mind when we're looking at if we're just doing one component of the home, like just doing the cladding or just doing the windows, it's keeping in mind what's that overall plan. We we can do half measure is better than no measure, but we need to be aware of that potential of locking in inefficiencies in in the system or what we do here might prevent another improvement in another area from from working properly. I like what what Peter Amrongan really pushes. He's done a lot of amazing work up in Edmonton with panelized retrofits and just retrofits as a whole, but he really pushes for the fact that we need to start with the plan for every home and it it's it's easy when we're looking at a full deep energy retrofit. We're renewing the envelope and mechanical systems all at once. Great. we can hit that goal quite easily. But when we're looking at only doing one improvement or another, just improving the attic insulation or the exterior walls or a mechanical system. We need to have that goal of where this home is going to be at the end and make sure everything's going there. So it's important to to start with that in the beginning where possible. If only we can get some funding to help that happen on more on more homes. So it's not just entirely up to the homeowner to to understand and being willing to commit to that cost of of time for for a contractor and energy advisor to work together and develop that plan to look at house as a system and how do we get this house as a system from a poor performing, uncomfortable, inefficient, unhealthy place that you're living in that keeps you somewhat warm from outdoors and you're not stuck in the rain. But how do we get that to this nice system of health and performance and and comfort? Like We need a plan if we really want to get there at the end.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, and I g I really like what the C H B A has done over the last decade. you know, like I said, when when I did this in twenty fifteen, there was really very little support. on on any of the components of it now. but you know we went to a conference in January where there were you know 150 people in that room that were all trying to figure out how to do these more efficiently, safer, faster, scale them faster. So you know even in that short ten year time there's been quite a bit of movement. And and it's come quite a quite a ways. We're obviously not at a point where it can be scaled out cheaply, which I think is probably the ultimate goal. Whether it's I don't know whether that's even a realistic goal. We've tried so many different wall assemblies. It's you know the installation itself is cheap. Like the six inches of EPS is

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: cost effective. Six inches of dense pack cellulose is cost effective. That's how you encapsulate that insulation that really carries the bulk of the cost and labor. but I think there there's certainly a lot of people working on it. There's a lot of great minds like Cooper who are figuring out what the sweet spots are and you'll see we'll see what happened. I I think what's interesting too is like

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: For whatever reason, it seems like the neighborhoods that are getting destroyed by hail are mostly new builds. Like there's not a lot of old neighbors. I don't know if it's the overhangs, maybe it's because older houses are are smaller, they don't have as much exposed surface area. but the newer homes, yeah, so go ahead.

 

Cooper Le: There also There are also areas that we just knew had that problem. So we didn't used to build there. And but now it's you know, like Calgary specifically is a a sprawling city. so we grow in all directions.

 

Ben: Yeah, I actually hadn't thought about that before, Cooper, about like yeah, the hail is concentrated in the north a bit more towards the northeast Calgary area, but why hadn't they expanded that direction before? That's that's that's it Yeah.

 

Cooper Le: I I that just what my heart feels is like we were like, Well the there's a weird ecosystem that happens there and and the weather's a little bit more like varying than it can be across the rest of the city. So maybe let's not build there but then s land becomes a premium and that's now the closest undeveloped land to downtown, so let's start developing that.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's interesting.

 

Peter Darlington: I was gonna say that like, you know, to those newer builds, adding an inch of insulation outbound, you know, that's an R22 effective wall that they're starting with, a two by six stud wall. so an inch outbound of that makes that you know something like an R26 effective. The houses that we're looking at that are built in the 50s, 60s, 70s have two by four walls and maybe are getting an R eight effective.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: so the difference is pretty astounding. Like you you you really have to put a minimum of four inches outbound insulation to that two by four to bring it up to modern code code requirements. so like all these older houses are not even close to to the level of comfort that a brand new build is or energy efficiency. So I think it's it's it's interesting to see that every building has a solution that is specific to.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm.

 

Cooper Le: Trickier. But then you get programs like in BC, they've there's a program called Leap Ten that's happening in like the Windermere Sundamere area. And they're like they've taken ten houses in the same area, and it's I think that's Think Bright Homes with Meredith, who was on your first podcast. they're they're working on that to do to be like, Well, these ten houses are were built around the same time in the same neighborhood. Can we do the same thing on all of these and have that be effective? And I think that's where that

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Episode one. Yeah.

 

Cooper Le: Scalability will start before it happens. Peter, your you've had projects, you just finished the one with Calgar Housing where you got to do three units all at once and that proved some of the scalability as well, right?

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, and I think that's probably the way to start scaling it out is with a single owner that owns multiple properties. When you're dealing with ten individual homeowners, it's gonna be tough to get them all to agree to that large expense. whereas, you know, with the city of Calgary that has thousands and thousands of properties in their portfolio, you know, go into one block, do the entire block of sixty units or whatever that looks like. you know, that's how you're really gonna drop the numbers. down the costs of running it.

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I think so when it's finding the I guess if it's not being fully funded by some organization that's left up to the homeowners. It's a matter of like we're limited to those homeowners that have the available funds for the improvements they're looking at and are also planning on staying in that location for for a while. Like we have many areas of Calgary that have a lot of turnover and and and we don't want to discount. There are there are still many people that do stay in their homes for a long period of time. But The other factor of that is how do we get efficiency and and I I think this is a slow long curve we're gonna see. how do we get efficiency improvements and health improvements in homes really recognized in the value of those homes for for resale, like in the industry as a whole, has talked about like what what renovations do you get the most resale value out of? Like if you're gonna spend forty grand on a kitchen, how much are you gonna get back in the resale of your of your home? And as a whole you don't necessarily g get the value back in through aesthetically renewing or functionally renewing interior spaces. But I think efficiency improvements, there's a lot more potential to to get improvements to the home that that last long, especially with the shell of the home. We improve it. We talked about cladding, we're locking it in for this long, but once you improve the envelope of a home, you've got thirty, forty years of performance with minimal to no maintenance, depending on exactly what materials or systems you y you use. Like It's kind of a no brainer how do we get the value recognized?

 

Cooper Le: But yeah. That's a really good point, but we actually had like Peter and I working through that Towards Net Zero renovations pilot had a really hard time finding any appraisers in Alberta that could like actually appraise value to sustainability or energy efficiency upgrades.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, I I Yeah, I think it's a real shame because you know, my house costs five grand a year less to operate than my neighbor's house. I mean, there's obvious value there. There's obvious debt servicing ratio advantage, there's the ability to pay the mortgage off faster i I d I don't I don't really understand why that doesn't immediately tack fifty or seventy K to the value of my home, but you know, I think one of the challenges is that it's worth what somebody will pay for it. And these net zero retrofits, nobody's ever sold one. Once once they've done that work and they're living in those houses, they're not selling. They're just so nice to live in. I could not imagine going back.

 

Cooper Le: Which itself is a selling point, right? The the fact that people are moving a renovating and then being like, This is my forever home now, I'm staying here.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah.

 

Ben: Yeah. Well I d I do know if you go on I I'm aware of one. I've never had the conversation with the homeowner that retrofitted it then s sold it, but it's the Richie Retrofit on the Retrofit Canada case study repository library there. That one has been sold since it was retrofit. That's a good conversation to bring on for an episode. Bring on the the owner of that house and yeah. How how did that sale go? What can we do? What can we

 

Peter Darlington: Realtors.

 

Cooper Le: do you think you got more from some of the upgrades you did?

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Now I've got another idea. But I guess there were two more points I wanted to dive in as we're as we're just wrapping up here. So Peter, one thing you mentioned when you retrofit your home in 2015, you installed the heat pump. This was like six or seven years. I'll avoid referencing a certain meme. before wider heat pump adoption and and subsidies across Canada and and and the knock on misconceptions of heat pumps which are largely led from improper sizing or installations. But how how did that heat pump work for you? What was that experience like? And like did you have any issues? Did you have to tweak it or it's just been chugging along nicely? And I guess from a cold climate point of view, hopefully not piling too much on here to the question. How what what did you do for like the super cold periods for for backup heating or how have you managed that?

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, no, the machine runs awesome. you know, at the beginning when we first installed it, we were really kind of looking at all the numbers and following very closely. And there was this like 150 watt phantom load that I never could figure out. It took me like two and a half years to figure out it's a drain pan heater, so the ice doesn't accumulate underneath the unit. But it's still chugging along and it will run, it'll keep our house comfortable right to about minus 27.

 

Ben: Yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: and at which point in engages. in this one we installed a two stage backup resistance coil. So there's a seven and a half primary, seven and a half kilowatt and then a five kilowatt backup. and it almost never fires that five kilowatt our heat demand is is very close to the seven kilowatts that that was modeled. and yeah, I mean it's it's quiet. It keeps the house at like I said, I we keep it at twenty one degrees. I set back to nineteen overnight. and it it's just slick. It works really well.

 

Ben: Even. Yeah. Awesome. That's good. And would say like that's experienced over ten or eleven winters of of it performing well. So yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah.

 

Cooper Le: which was that minus forty January we had that everybody says their heat pumps failed, so yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, I will say like it it is expensive to run when it's minus forty for three weeks and it's running strictly electric resistance. but the rest of the time I mean I I honestly don't care how much it costs because I got almost sixty solicanels on my house making a ton of energy, so done bother me none at all.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think another interesting aspect to look at that too. Like we talk about, yeah, heat pumps can be really expensive when the electric resistance heat has to come on, but it's a matter of looking at how much that is likely to happen on average. And Nate Adams actually developed a tool last year playing around I believe he's playing around with some vibe coding, with some great outputs. So he developed a tool, I'll I'll link it in the show notes where you can look at different cities. And it basically says based on the climate data, like how many hours per year it's expected to be within certain temperature ranges for for lows for heating. So it's it's really interesting. Like, yeah, it's gonna I'm gonna need my backup heat if it gets below minus twenty five, but if that's only expected to be two or three dozen hours out of the year, I it's more for Calgary probably. But but then

 

Cooper Le: Not even then, a lot of that is at night when you're already setting back anyway.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So so it's cool.

 

Peter Darlington: And and I will mention like I do a way better job now on these houses that we do today than I did on my house. We just added four inches. Smaller, the backup resistance are s super small, like you know, t sub twenty thousand BTUs. so the the machines are getting smaller and smaller and smaller. So

 

Cooper Le: And the heat pumps are considerably smaller than the one in your house.

 

Ben: Yeah. So I would say one I guess one thing to another thing to wrap things up. what was your biggest learning from doing your own home retrofit that you then applied to your following projects? And following that, what what advice would you have for a contractor or renovator that's looking at tackling their first retrofit project?

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, I mean Don't get me wrong, it is complicated, but it's not as complicated as you as you think it's gonna be. I would say don't overthink it. just put an insulated cladding on, make sure your air barrier is continuous. and for anybody trying to get into it, I would say be up on your building your building science knowledge. That's really gonna be you know super critical. there's a lot of talk about you know dew points and stuff like that. but and and that is a concern, but the vast majority of failures are gonna be bulk water intrusion. Make sure your flashings are in place, your waterproof membrane is correctly installed. These things are super critical.

 

Cooper Le: Yeah, to the dew point thing, we like while I mentioned we did the calculations on many projects, we've never once done that calculation and and been like, whoops, we almost made a mistake. It's never been a problem. It's just like most of those have been a peace of mind calculation for somebody who heard that that's a thing they should ask for.

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. And what's that saying? Trust but verify? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's one of the go a go ahead, Peter.

 

Cooper Le: Yep, trust by verify. Never bad.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, y as long as you're not you know, if the inside wall's got plastic on it and you put plastic on the outside wall, you've made a big plastic bag that's gonna hold water. Don't do that. Just avoid that.

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah.

 

Cooper Le: Provide

 

Peter Darlington: something

 

Cooper Le: a direction

 

Peter Darlington: that's

 

Cooper Le: for water, That's the biggest thing. Every assembly needs to have a way for it. If water gets in, water shouldn't get in. But if it gets in, where does it go?

 

Ben: Yep. Yeah. Design it to keep water out, but always make a path for it to get out 'cause it's gonna find a way. and I think that's one of the key things in a retrofit to kind of think about it's beyond just improving the energy efficiency through adding insulation and paying attention to air tightness and installing a new mechanical system to to make everything work better. But we really need to pay attention to that moisture performance of the building envelope or building enclosure. We've got to make sure we're managing that that vapor in the wintertime or or when there's times we might have condensation in the assembly. How's that gonna be managed? And then also we gotta pay attention to the bulk water from precipitation and and make sure we have a plan for how, as we said, how that water is gonna get out. I think that's one of the big risks in the industry right now as more and more people are taking on projects like this. I'm worried about those contractors out there is as well intentions as as they may be that are willing to just try and tackle something new 'cause they'll get paid for it. there there's a risk to your point, Peter. Ed education is is important and and I think building science is is one of the best things to kind of understand in tackling these projects.

 

Peter Darlington: Yep, I agreed. it's almost a shame that there's nobody out there, you know, as part of the permit process inspecting the waterproof membrane. Like I don't know why that is a thing.

 

Cooper Le: Was are you asking Peter for there to be more inspections on the homes you renovate?

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah. Less failures is what I'm asking for.

 

Ben: Or yeah.

 

Cooper Le: That's yeah.

 

Ben: Yeah. Or conversations I've been having recently across the industry is and and I know a couple others in our in our network have have talked about this in the past. Like how can we get a building envelope technician type trade? Cause right now in the majority of Canada, the people Even even framing the walls, but installing the insulation, the vapor barrier, the weather barrier, installing the cladding and windows, there is n and all the attic work and all that stuff, everything that's protecting the home from the elements and managing the flow of air, moisture, heat. there's no requirement for any formal education for those people. A lot of it's been learned on site. Peter, you learned a lot of great stuff on site. You found a an amazing course online which helped increase your knowledge, which you applied and you've done great work with. So education is key, but how do we how do we get I think some requirement would be great and I think maybe maybe that education piece might might work better maybe and be more a bit more proactive than adding a a checkbox onto the permitting. And I've heard as well in work in the past conversations I've had with some lead inspectors with some municipalities in the past, like they're really hesitant to be offering counselor direction in terms of the billing envelope because then the municipality is is diving into that liability. So it's a concern.

 

Peter Darlington: I'm kinda going off in a different direction, but I think as part of scaling this is our kind of The direction we've been trying to go is try to make it as simple as possible so that anybody can do it. You don't need this high level of building science knowledge. You know, why I really like liquid applied air barriers. It's paint. Either the building is yellow or it is not. there's no failures on overlaps. It's it's super easy to check. but I think that that's you know one of the challenges going forward for sure.

 

Ben: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

 

Cooper Le: Which to that point, Peter, like one of the things I get to hear a lot is when I go to a conference is like, you're in Calgary, do you work with Peter Darlington? Because I see his TikToks and his videos on LinkedIn, like you're not afraid to just show people what you're building. Whereas a lot of other people would be like, No, this is proprietary, it's mine, I hold on to it. I'm the only one that knows how to do this.

 

Peter Darlington: Mm-hmm.

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say it it is nice in the industry. Like there are a few others like Peter that that are kind of sharing the work that they're doing. And I appreciate there's so many in the retrofit space across Canada that are open to to conversations. Peter, you you have conversations and drinks with your local competitors in the space as well. And and it's it's great. Like I think it's rising tide lifts all boats. And as we share this information, that's how we can move things forward the best way.

 

Peter Darlington: Yeah, for sure. I mean that's you know, getting back to emissions reduction is kind of my primary driver is the more people that are doing this, the better off they are. So I'm super happy to share everything we do. hopefully if I'm doing something wrong, somebody will tell me in those TikTok videos or LinkedIn videos and they'll let me know that I'm screwing up before I do it over and over again. but you know, we share everything we do and check out our LinkedIn. There's tons of content there.

 

Ben: Yeah, and I guess those those videos you're sharing, the comment threads in there's can in those can result in some passive education for yourself. I guess you don't have to go to school. People just give you the comments right there potentially. yeah.

 

Peter Darlington: Mm-hmm.

 

Cooper Le: People are generally not afraid to tell you when they think you've done something wrong online. Even when their name is tagged to it, they are not afraid to tell you.

 

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good and a bad thing. Yeah. Well, I appreciate both of you taking the time to to join me today. And I and I think I really want to close by kind of drawing back to one of those comments you made earlier, Peter, about why you're doing this. And it's kind of my motivation too for being involved in the retrofit space is how can we make buildings better for our children and for the next generation?

 

Cooper Le: Yeah. No, absolutely.

 

Ben: And even though it's discouraging, we might see other projects going or political policies that kinda seem to be knocking our knees out from under us in terms of climate progress. these things are within our power to do. And every little bit does make a difference. It's like the the story about the kid throwing a starfish into the ocean. And I th I think that's what we need to re to remember and we've got an amazing upcoming generation. Hopefully the work that we're doing and sharing can help inspire them to carry on what we're what we're starting.

 

Peter Darlington: Absolutely.

 

Ben: All right. Thanks guys. I will have you on again for further conversations. There's many more opportunities, but but f for now, thanks again for joining me.

 

Peter Darlington: Thanks for having us on, Ben.

 

Cooper Le: Thanks, Ben.

 

Ben: Okay. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Renewing Homes. If this conversation added to your thinking, consider sharing it with others working to improve homes. Better homes through better retrofits. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests, and do not necessarily reflect those of any affiliated organizations.