Passive Housing

Passive housing uses radically improved building envelope design and components to achieve dramatic decreases in building energy consumption of 80 - 90%, compared with standard Building Code construction. In a Passive House the use of a conventional heating system (e.g. a furnace) is not required to maintain high levels of thermal comfort and indoor air quality. Visit this website to learn more.

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Water: Tips and Tricks

Water bill sky high? Follow these tips and tricks to reduce costs associated with water and energy bills.

To save hot water, take a shower instead of a bath. A typical bath will use about 75 litres of hot water. On the other hand, a shower with an efficient showerhead will use about half of that.

Insulate your hot water pipes, at least the first metre of both hot and cold pipes coming out of your tank and ideally as much of your hot water pipes as is possible.

Install showerheads that use less than 7.6 Litres per minute (2 gallons per minute).

Fix any leaky faucets. One constant drip can waste more than 180 litres of water a week. If it's a hot water faucet that's leaking, you're literally sending your energy dollars down the drain.

To save water and energy, install 1.5 GPM aerators on your kitchen faucets.

Wrap your water heater with an approved blanket made for that purpose to help reduce heat loss.

Wash and rinse clothes in cold water - 85 to 90 % of the energy for washing is to heat the water.

Do laundry only when you have a full load or at least set the water level to the proper wash size.

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Low-Income Energy Assistance Program coming to Ontario

EnviroCentre's General Manager participated in the Ontario Energy Board's fall 2008 Consultation on Energy Issues Relating to Low-Income Consumers and recently provided comments on the proposed Low-Income Energy Assistance Program, which the Board intends to roll out later this year.

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Greening Ottawa Non-Profit Organizations

EnviroCentre has joined forces with The Natural Step to help 25 non-profit organizations based in Ottawa benefit from Sustainability Capacity Building workshops. Modest honoraria are available to organizations with limited budgets to compensate for the staff time involved. Where applicable, EnviroCentre will also provide free energy-efficiency audits of up to 10 non-profit office spaces or buildings. Get more details on how your non-profit could benefit from this free pilot and register by email before February 15 for the next program, which starts at City Hall on March 4, 2010.

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CFL lightbulbs

Burnt out CFL lightbulbs? Visit the City of Ottawa's Take It Back program to find out how you can recycle them. Or you can bring them to a Hazardous Waste Depot.

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Solar Hot Water

EnviroCentre is pleased to partner with Sustainable Ottawa and its Solar H2Ottawa program to install 250 solar domestic hot water (DHW) systems in and near Ottawa over the next few years. The ecoEnergy retrofit program delivered by EnviroCentre already provides a rebate of $1,000 from the Governments of Ontario and Canada, and if you join Sustainable Ottawa, you could be eligible for an additional $1,200 rebate. That would pay for almost half of the cost of a standard system.

Check out the Solar H2Ottawa website for details on the geographic scope and the Enerworks and Apricus solar DHW systems it uses. Three local installers have been identified by Sustainable Ottawa but you can use any CanSIA certified installer. Joining the Sustainable Ottawa Community Energy Co-op costs only $40 to get started and you will get a $25 discount on your ecoEnergy audit with EnviroCentre.

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See where you're spending your energy dollars

If you're interested in finding out how much electricity your appliances are actually consuming, you can borrow a Watt meter for free from any branch of the Ottawa Public Library thanks to an innovative new program coordinated by EnviroCentre and funded by the City of Ottawa's Community Environmental Projects Grants Program.

Use these energy saving decals to keep the power in your pocket!

• Save up to the following amounts* per year:
• $90 by using a drying rack or a clothes line instead of a clothes dryer
• $60 by using cold water detergent to wash clothes
• $70 by using a microwave instead of an oven to re-heat or cook food
• $130 by taking a short shower instead of a bath
• $50 by washing dishes in a sink of water instead of under a running faucet
• $15 by using CFLs instead of incandescent lights
• $120 by using fans instead of air conditioners
• $80 by keeping windows closed during the winter
• $10 by using electric kettles instead of boiling water on an electric stove
• $100 by using programmable thermostats at the appropriate temperatures.

These pictograms are designed to communicate energy-efficiency messages in Canada’s increasingly cosmopolitan communities. They should help both those unfamiliar with Canadian housing and appliances, as well as those who grew up in a period of energy unconsciousness, to conserve electricity. They are printed on 3" x 3" clear, removable plastic decals.

Prompts like these work best when delivered as part of a community-based social marketing campaign. They would also be effective tools for landlords to use with tenants’ associations.

To recuperate our costs so that we can continue to make them available, we are selling them for 50 cents each or $5 for a set of ten, with discounts for bulk orders. Please let us know if your community, office or organization is interested in helping us engage people in their application and use or if you have suggestions on how to improve them.* based on an “all electric” household in Ontario with five members Click here for more energy conservation tips (.pdf).

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