Sustainable Energy Savings

Home Heating as it Should Be

This home, located in Burton, New Brunswick Canada proves just how energy efficient a SmartRooms home can be. Despite the 400+ square feet of glass, facing north, this 4,000 square foot home is very inexpensive to heat despite the cold climate.

While the home was built with energy efficiency in mind, it didn't go overboard. The walls are constructed using ICF technology (R22), insulated windows and doors, and R50 in the ceiling. Fairly typical for home construction in 2004.

The homeowners did something a little unusual in that they isolated the heating system circuits and installed a seperate power meter that allows us to monitor the home's heating energy usage seperately from the rest of the home.

The owners don't use any particular energy savings techniques that is common among the energy-concious such as regular room set-back. They simply set their controls to the desired temperature for each room and leave it alone. “Set and Forget”. They don't need to work their heating system — the heating system works for them. As it should be.

The home is located on the south side of a river and therefore the views of the river face north. The owners realized that this is not optimal from a heating perspective, since you're supposed to minimize your northern exposure. But the owners wanted to maximize their view and opted for 400+ square feet of glass facing (mostly) north and west. The home isn't sited to take advantage of passive solar gain. Such are the trade-offs when building a home.

Despite this design decision, the energy consumption is very small compared to other heating systems.