Benchmarking

Work with our CEAs to evaluate your current building plans and practices for energy efficiency and find out where you can improve.

You'll quantify your current building practices for energy efficiency using the EnerGuide Rating Service from Natural Resources Canada.

Preconsultation

Talk with a Certified Energy Advisor (CEA), a government certified green building sciences expert, and get your questions answered.

Your CEA can help you understand what matters most for energy efficiency for EnerGuide rating your homes, as well as some of the qualitative components that go into an R-2000 or Built Green Home.

EnerGuide Label Your Homes

1. Energy Modelling

Your CEA will take your house plans and specs and create a software energy model for a home. The energy model captures the geometry as well as the systems of the home and how they impact energy efficiency.

An energy model captures everything from the orientation of the entire home with respect to sunlight, takes into account collected weather data for the city it's located in, and of course factors in features such as insulation, HVAC, and more.

 

2. Blower Door Testing

Next, your CEA will blower door test the modeled home. The blower door attaches to the front entrance of the home, windows are closed, and the home is pressurized to measure the amount of air that escapes.

This results in an air leakage profile for the home, which then becomes part of the overall energy model. Only with air leakage data can the energy efficiency of a home be effectively quantified.

Air leakage can vary tremendously from home to home, and depends largely on construction practices. So, part of the blower door test is an opportunity for your CEA to explain how you can improve your practices to minimize air leakage.

 

3. Get an EnerGuide Label

Once the energy model includes the data from the blower door test, a final EnerGuide rating can be calculated and an EnerGuide label printed, to be affixed on or near the breaker box for the home. Even without making any improvements, just being able to quantify the energy efficiency of a home has tremendous value

This rating is on a scale of 1 to 100, with an "average" home being around an EnerGuide 72 for current (2009) building practices. At the other end of the scale, an EnerGuide 80 home is extremely energy efficient.

See our EnerGuide At-a-Glance page for more information on the EnerGuide program.

 

The Outcome: Know Where You're At

You will probably want to complete the benchmarking process for several homes, depending on how many homes you build and variation between house plans.

Once you've had a few homes EnerGuide labelled, you'll be well-equipped to make the best price-to-performance improvements to your building plans and practices.

The Next Step: Optimization