Located on a wooded property near a ski hill in Wakefield, Quebec is a custom home that we finished recently. The cost effective house design for this home began with a plan to fit three bedrooms into a modest but comfortable 1,200 ft.² bungalow with no basement (the home is on bedrock).
Typically, a three-bedroom bungalow would run closer to 1,500 ft.² or more, but we utilized some space saving techniques and landed with a great design that totals 1,216 ft.²
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We’re so pleased to share one of the first coach homes by EkoBuilt, this one in the village of Pakenham west of Ottawa.
This great little project was designed as a seasonal cottage or chalet for today, with plans for it to become the owner’s retirement residence within five to ten years.
This new EkoBuilt passive home is located in rural west Ottawa. A bungalow, its design is slab on grade and it encompasses 1365 ft.² of living space including two bedrooms and two bathrooms. It was finished in time for the 2018-2019 winter season.
This new custom home is just a stone’s throw from the Governor General’s residence in central Ottawa. It’s a great example of flexibility in an urban setting. The home is situated on an unserviced laneway in a historic neighbourhood just east of the city’s downtown core. The home’s design had to be approved by the city’s historical committee before a building permit could be obtained. Construction was made much more interesting because the nearest intersection was closed throughout for the installation of a storm water collection facility!
All of these challenges made building this home exciting and rewarding. The family we built it for really love the area and it’s fantastic to share the end result with our followers.
We’ve got lots going on this summer across our homebase, the Ottawa region, but we’re also working on a new passive home in the Toronto area. We’re delighted to share a little about that project now.
The home is being built for a young forward thinking family who had to grapple with whether to replace the previous home on their property, which was built in the 1920s. Ultimately, this older home was sacrificing their health with poor indoor air quality and affecting their finances with extremely high heating bills.
Located just outside of Sydenham, Ontario near Frontenac Provincial Park, this custom home is a great showcase for what EkoBuilt can do.
We’re starting 2019 with a great variety of projects, including single family homes, a two-family shared home, a net-zero multi-unit project and a very modern passive summer camp. Read along to learn more!
A modified version of EkoBuilt’s Primrose house plan is currently being built on Danford Lake near Kazabazua, about an hour north of Ottawa. This is a great illustration of the process that we find works the best with the great majority of homeowners: take on one of our 13 house plans and then modify or customize to best suit your needs.
This homeowner is working with us for the design and construction process, and will implement finishes themselves – another great example of the myriad of ways it’s possible to realize the build and finishing of a new home.
When to Include a Basement
We often get asked the question, can we have a basement? This project is a good example of when you can.
The inclusion of a basement in house design comes down to the property and its slope. Some properties will easily support a basement, as with this project, which is situated on natural sloped ground leading down to a lake. A walkout basement was cost-effective to include in this case.
Other properties may not easily support a basement and our demonstration home is a good example of this, being on a clay-based soil with a high water table. A basement in this case would be a bad idea so we instead installed a super-insulated slab on grade foundation over top of an elevated gravel pad. Basement design should always be dictated by the ground on which the home will be constructed.
The Primrose bungalow, on which this home in Kazabazua is based, encompasses just under 1,600 square feet of living space, and features 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.
Click to view full size images. You can also download the Primrose plans.
This project takes the Primrose plan as its basis, and introduces changes to best suit the lifestyle of the homeowners. The ground floor grew to 1,955 square feet and features the addition of a sunroom. The sloping ground on which the home is being built also supports the inclusion of a walkout basement, and the storage/mechanical room is situated on this lower level.
Click to view full size images.
One of the projects currently underway with EkoBuilt is an infill home in central Ottawa. This house is being built to Code Plus standard and is currently being insulated; drywall to start this week.
EkoBuilt’s Code Plus framework designs to the projected building code standard of 2030 when it’s estimated that minimum exterior wall insulation will be R32 (currently R22), and roof insulation will be a minimum of R50 (currently R32).
The house also has a 10 kW solar array attached to the Ontario Micro fit program. Watch for more updates this winter.
