Sustainable in the news–fabulous pre-fab

If only we could build houses like we assemble Ikea furniture. Wait! We CAN – and we DO! This Spring the new growth wasn’t only on the trees. In just 3 days in late March, a new sustainable house sprung up in Toronto’s ‘Pocket’ neighborhood. From ground floor to a fully enclosed house with roof, walls, and even windows, it took just 3 days for Maxwell Development’s crew of carpenters to erect this new home. Plus the help of a very large crane, of course.

This form of pre-fab building is called panelized construction. And the result is pretty fabulous indeed. For about the same cost as a normal build, the Owners will benefit from a comfortable, healthy, draft-free home that uses very little energy (aka $$$) to heat and cool thanks to its super-insulated and air-tight exterior envelope. The planet benefits too, as this is low carbon building par excellence, thanks to the Simple Life Homes panels. This all-wood based system doesn’t use any fossil-fuel based insulation to achieve near Passive House levels of performance.

If that isn’t impressive enough, this house was built 3 storeys tall with less than 24” of space between neighbours on one side and just 12” on the other. Our solution to this very challenging site was to have Simple Life Homes pre-install the metal cladding and even the windows in the factory – a first for them. This approach avoids the need for anyone to try and work in that narrow gap between house to finish the siding.

But don’t just take our word for it. Check out this great article by Marco Chown Oved in the Toronto Star, or the video by Andréane Williams that aired on Radio-Canada news (Oui mes amis, c’est en français. Aprés-tout, les panneaux sont bilangue)

And this past weekend, CBC’S ‘The Cost of Living’ aired a segment with Paul on the potential for this form of pre-fabrication to help speed up the building of the millions of new homes that Canada needs: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/cost-of-living/id1475150937?i=1000707020503