Your FAQs Answered
Interested in building a super energy efficient new home that you love? Start here!
House plan or custom design?
We offer a wonderful range of 50+ energy efficient house plans from tiny coach or secondary homes to large family homes with garages or carports.
Our floorplans appeal to country folks and urbanites alike!
Yes, we can do custom design! Just ask about our in-house architecture service. We can also modify any of our existing plans to best match your site and your lifestyle.
We also take on specialized projects, like dual family homes with shared living spaces, community townhomes, etc. Just ask!
How are your homes built?
EkoBuilt’s Passive House Building System makes for the most affordable passive home.
Our homes are not generally prefabricated, although we can build this into a project. Learn more here.
What we do that is different: we have an extremely carefully thought through weathertight material kit. The EkoBuilt PassiveHouse kit includes all of the items necessary for a watertight, wind tight, and vapour tight passive house. An experienced carpenter can easily put it together.
This gives our customers choices: have the plans and kit shipped to your destination to be built locally (we ship across North America), or have us supply the plans, kit, and undertake the build through to the finishing touches (if you’re in Eastern Ontario/Western Quebec).
Since our design package is based on our pre-certified passivehouse shell with proprietary materials, we can only provide our house plans with our materials package. We are confident we have the most affordable passive house package in North America!
YES! We ship our weathertight material package anywhere in Canada and the US. Contact us for details!
What does it cost?
That definitely depends on your budget and needs!
We normally provide a price analysis for all of our house plans, right on the energy efficient house plan page. We last updated everything in winter 2022. Please ask us if you can’t find what you need.
We then point you to a blog post where we detail all of the factors in approximating turnkey costs for any of those plans.
Once you know which plan or design you want to use (and we can work with you in figuring that out), we’ll prepare a detailed cost analysis for your project.
What’s the cost per square foot?
Pricing: Material costs have experienced incredible volatility. We last updated all of our pricing at the end of 2022 / early in 2023. Please reach out if you need a cost analysis for any of our house plans.
There is flexibility built in, though. If you read Calculating the Cost of Your New Home, you’ll have a good sense of what will influence your project cost, even though we can’t guarantee specific pricing originally include in that post.
We advocate building smaller and smarter to stretch your dollars for a quality build.
Cool fact: the new EkoModel Home will include four bedrooms in a 1,634 sq ft layout. Storage for this family home is the secret weapon: deep openings above closets and in other smart spots add another 200 sq ft of space for the stuff in your life!
How Does it Work?
Step 1 – Choose one of our existing passive house plans or bring us your design or design ideas. If choosing an existing plan, there are tons of customization options.
Step 2 – We’ll work with you to finalize the plan and costs. We will provide you with a full cost analysis, final passive house design, 3D views, and construction drawings for the permit process.
Step 3 – We ship the material kit for your plan to your location (anywhere in North America), including sourcing some components locally to reduce your carbon footprint (If you’re located in our local area, we can handle the full build).
Step 4 – You hire your own crew or do-it-yourself. Any experienced carpenter can put our kit together. Includes start to finish guidance from an EkoBuilt passive house expert.
Do you offer a warranty?
EkoBuilt believes every home builder should be entitled to a home warranty. A truly sustainable society is an inclusive one.
No new home builder should be excluded from a new home warranty, however Tarion is unfortunately exclusive to their group, and they do not allow owner-built homes to be registered under their umbrella.
Our homeowners are protected by all sub-contractors honouring their own warranty, equivalent to Tarion.
We’ve written an article called Warranty and Your EkoBuilt Home where we detail how our approach to warranty works.
Do you have a model home?
Yes, and we schedule public open houses several times a year. Find out more about our 1,600 sq ft new model home that demonstrates our passion for smart homes. It’s in Dunrobin, in Ottawa’s west end.
If you’d like to see an EkoBuilt home near you, please reach out. Our homes are as popular in urban areas as they are in the country!
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