When it comes to housing in Canada's North, the weather is not your friend. Dramatic shifts between long winter snowstorms and deep freezes, spring thaws and summer rain can loosen weatherstripping, strain ventilation systems and damage insulation and foundations. With only a two- or three-month building season, getting construction materials and crews to remote communities is also a struggle.
But a recent research project in the Yukon has made encouraging inroads into these challenges. Supported by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and funded by its Arctic and Northern Challenge program, the NRC and Whitehorse-based Earthrise Building Services have come up with practical strategies for speedy deep-energy retrofits that are ready for onsite trials.
According to the 2016 Yukon housing census, 22% of the Yukon's dwellings date back to the 1970s. In addition, there is a shortage of modern housing. These factors made the territory a good candidate for research on rapid retrofitting solutions to improve Northerners' quality of life with more energy-efficient and healthy homes. The project so far has identified 6 homes on Champagne and Aishihik First Nations in which to conduct air quality monitoring.
"The work will help us identify how boosting a home's energy efficiency affects indoor air quality," says Boualem Ouazia, senior research officer at the NRC's Construction Research Centre and technical lead for the Challenge program's Housing research theme. This includes determining whether typical improvements to energy efficiency have a corresponding positive or negative impact on air quality—and if negative, developing solutions to mitigate these issues.
From the findings, the team can shape advice for Northern builders, housing corporations, and First Nations and Inuit communities and residents. "The approach we devised is key to ensuring long-lasting quality and healthy homes as well as completing retrofits in a short time," adds Ouazia.
While still in the initial stages, the three-year research project is expected to yield useful data for retrofits in any Northern and remote communities by 2027. It will also help Earthrise create scalability strategies, find economies of scale and build more in-house expertise.
Partners for progress
The partnership with Earthrise brought the necessary elements for success to the table. The NRC's experts in ventilation and indoor air quality will examine the living spaces before and after retrofits to assess indoor air quality, indoor environment quality and ventilation. First, they will conduct indoor air quality tests, which involves sampling for volatile organic compounds (VOCs), other chemicals and molds, carbon dioxide, radon and particulate matter of 1-micron, 2.5-micron and 10-micron diameters. In addition, they will carry out tracer gas analyses using an in-house perfluorocarbon tracer (PFT) method. Then the project team will send the samples to the NRC's chemical and mold labs for analysis and compare the pre- and post-retrofit findings.
Earthrise has rallied a community of local builders, contractors and tradespeople to explore ways of doing more retrofits faster without forfeiting quality. Earthrise CEO Matthew Ooms reports that one new idea formed by the community was incorporating prefabrication into the retrofit workflow. "We met a few months ago with about 10 different organizations—mostly from the Yukon—to look at opportunities for using prefabricated panels in retrofits," he says. "We walked away with a really cool concept that we hope to implement this summer."
Ooms points out that a critical factor the success of the project has been the support of First Nations partners, who are engaged in everything from making retrofit decisions to recruiting homes for modification. "Our First Nations partners have been the real leaders, championing the benefits of energy efficiency and clean air," he says. "They have, of course, played a central role in connecting us and the team with the community members living in these homes, the support of which makes everything possible."
Building the future
A key advantage of projects such as this is the learning experience, while a major challenge is ensuring that the outcomes are well documented and used. For example, residents will have new systems and features in their homes that they must understand and manage long term.
"That's the exciting part for me—new knowledge being developed along with a mechanism to apply it on the ground to make a difference in people's homes and lives," says Ooms.
He adds that he and his partners are working toward creating a shared, accessible database for all who need it, when they need it—builders, owners, project delivery specialists, technology suppliers, manufacturers and others. "There's real potential to create something that brings the ecosystem together." Builders will benefit from existing knowledge while residents will appreciate the importance of their role in managing the new elements.
Ooms foresees that this "retrofit recipe" will reach beyond the Yukon to help other communities understand their housing and retrofit needs and use it to plan, fund and execute projects to benefit all. And the NRC's Construction Research Centre will continue making key contributions to this work, together with industry, emerging businesses and community residents.