Very importantly, a high performance, energy-efficient home lays the groundwork to a healthy home and vice versa! At British Columbia Timberframe, healthy living and working spaces, energy-efficient buildings and sustainability form part of our vernacular. We design and build to specification for Passive Homes as well as for ENERGY STAR accreditation. In 2015, company owner Kelvin Mooney earned ENERGY STAR accreditation for the completion of the first qualified home in Squamish, BC within the ENERGY STAR® for New Homes in Canada Initiative. Imagine that only as little as $150/month heat and run this home in the coldest months of the year. Often you won’t need to turn on the heat before November 1st for homes located on the West Coast!

Healthy and energy-efficient homes are benchmarks for the future of home building. Off-site production, state of the art technology, weather independence, as well as natural and renewable building material selection; at British Columbia Timberframe, these key components are employed in our custom home packages.

In a recent article for the Guardian..
Rick Fedrizzi, CEO of the US Green Building Council states, “In 2016, (…) buildings will also be expected to directly contribute to the health and wellbeing of the people who live, work and learn inside them. For buildings, healthy will become the new green.”

New building code guidelines in Canada now require builders to seal up the building envelope of every new home in order to burn less fossil fuels. To ensure air quality and comfort, this new way of building also mandates the installation of a HRV system (heat recovery ventilation) which may ultimately lead to these benefits in your living or working space:

• a dry environment with no mould
• less air contaminants or allergens
• a considerable reduction in noise
• fresh air at all times in the living space
• significantly reduced heating and cooling costs for the home owner

For optimal energy efficiency and genuine natural material selection for your home, we recommend factory-built wall and roof panel systems. These remarkable homes ensure less construction waste and a quicker time to lock-up of the new build. Your investment achieves some of the highest insulating efficiency which serves to either heat or cool the home according to climate zone and season. Building panels that create your wall and roof system are known as SIP’s (Structural Insulated Panels), but at British Columbia Timberframe, we recommend working with SNIP’s (Structural Natural Insulated Panels).

SIP’s use foam insulation which has inspired the development of the next generation of building panels: SNIP’s, Structural Natural Insulated Panels. With SNIPS, there is little to no shrinkage of materials as can be experienced with a foam product. Material shrinkage with foam insulation can lead to inefficiencies in energy use to heat and cool the home. SNIP panel material selection is exclusive to natural and renewable materials; recycled wood for structure manufactured with natural adhesives, as well as spun volcanic rock or recycled glass bottles for insulation.