Wartime Houses = Net Zero Home?

My family and I live in a wartime house.  In the seven years we've lived here I've attempted to redesign our home and draw up plans to renovate. I've also become strongly interested in green retrofitting.  My ambition in life is to build and live in a net zero home, off-grid, if you will.

When I saw this story, I almost soiled myself.  I asked my wife to pinch me, because this was something crazy that I had already been thinking of.

A group of people in Toronto decided they wanted to see if the one million wartime houses in Canada could be retrofitted to become net zero homes.  Simply put, they don't use any energy.  None.

This group won the national competition on energy efficient construction/architecture and will develop a home in East York (where I used to live) in the coming year or so.  After that, I swear to God, I'm next!!! 

I'm so ripe to do this, I'm thinking of getting on a plane to Toronto right this moment.

CTV.ca story also check out the video version of the story to the right

Web site of winners group

Toronto Star story PDF before prize was won

Project highlights

The goal of the Now House™ project is as simple: to demonstrate how home owners and contractors can dramatically improve the energy efficiency of existing homes with a few relatively simple modifications.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation was founded in 1946 in large part to help create affordable housing for veterans who had served their country in the Second World War. Now House™ evolves this uniquely Canadian brand of “hearth and home” by updating these postwar houses to new standards of healthy living, energy-efficiency and resource management.
Just a few of the improvements that will be made to this modest 60-year-old home include upgrades to the insulation, new windows, the installation of solar panels and Energy Star®-certified appliances, and the implementation of a waste water heat recovery system.
The result is a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a healthier, more energy-efficient home. In addition, because wartime houses were often built in clusters, the Now House™ model could easily be scaled up from a single demonstration house to hundreds of thousands of similar homes across the country.
By setting out a blueprint for the energy-efficient retrofit of all of Canada’s older or wartime homes, Now House™ is the start of a truly ambitious project—and a true one in a million home.

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Wartime houses brand every community in Canada. They offer a material glimpse into our collective memory of World War II and the socio-economic challenges associated with that event.
Between 1941 and 1947, the Wartime Housing Corporation (later CMHC) built over 30,000 houses to provide affordable housing for munitions workers, returning veterans and their families.
These houses were based on a standardized, inexpensive, sometimes pre-fabricated 1 1/2 storey designs that served as models for future housing initiatives across Canada after the war. Although they were conceived during a time of wartime conservation and intended as temporary suburbs, wartime neighbourhoods developed distinct social and cultural networks. While many of these neighbourhoods dissolved after the war, some continue to thrive and currently remain a fixture in Canada’s urban areas.