Innovation

Community
The EchoHaven community has pushed the standard of community development in many ways. From maintaining natural features and drainage patterns to a precedent-setting agreement with the City of Calgary allowing free flow of water between developments. In addition, the storm water will be 100% stored onsite eliminating the need to be connected to the City storm water system.

The new approach to the community will:

• minimize site disturbance and ecological footprint
• provide solar friendly building orientation
• ensure low maintenance landscaping by preserving natural features
• reduce infrastructure dependency and costs
• reduce dependence on fossil fuels and long-term utility costs and enable self sufficiency

Reducing Consumption

• Power – reduce electricity use to 1500 kWh/home or an 80% reduction from an average home
• Greenhouse gases – by purchasing wind power to supplement onsite solar generation and eliminating the natural gas line, consumption can be reduced by 18.8 Tonnes/year or 470 Tonnes/year for 25 homes.
• Water – by collecting rainwater for toilets, clothes washing and outside uses we can reduce water use by 72% from the typical Calgary home. Each home can save 264 cu m/year or 6,6000,000 litres/year for 25 homes.

Homes | Each home will incorporate design and construction to provide:

• superior building envelope with a high level of insulation
• upgraded windows
• minimum standard of EnerGuide 84
• rainwater collection and a cistern
• low flow plumbing fixtures
• natural daylighting and passive solar strategies
• solar heating
• natural cooling and ventilation
• strategies that reduce waste of space and materials
• healthy, durable and recycled materials

House Schematics (right-click "Save As")

• Rainwater Harvesting PDF
• Solar Heating in Winter PDF
• Solar Heating in Summer PDF
• Waste Water PDF

EQuilibrium™
EchoHaven Demonstration Home is one of 13 homes selected from a cross Canada competition sponsored by the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). The objectives of the EQuilibrium™ Sustainable Housing initiative are to balance our country's housing requirements with the need to preserve and protect our natural environment.

The EchoHaven home highlights CMHC’s five principles of Healthy Housing™ and focuses on energy sustainability. This home will be a net zero home meaning it will produce at least as much energy as it consumes and has been designed to address occupant health and comfort, energy efficiency and renewable energy production, resource conservation, reduced environmental impact and affordability.

Sun Powered Pay Back
The EchoHaven Demonstration Home is powered by PV panels all year round. The house will produce more power than the occupants can consume and the utility company will buy back the excess electricity through a process of net metering.

Picture Gallery: See our progress!

Demonstration Home
The Echohaven Net Zero Demonstration Home is no longer available for touring. The demonstration home is now in the 1-year monitoring phase to measure performance when occupied.

For information or to see the lots at EchoHaven, call 403.716.8206.

Tour Map

Find out more about this amazing project and download a tour map of the EchoHaven Demonstration home.

Sponsors

Click here to see a list of our sponsors and team members who made this project possible.