Closing the gaps

Canadian designers and builders went to Switzerland for training in high-performance building envelope systems.

It was a whirlwind seven-day trip, but Darren Vander Meer and Jeff Hurdis experienced a wealth of sharing, knowledge and camaraderie with a group of professional Canadian builders, designers and consultants in Europe last month.

Darren is Production Manager at Lagois Design·Build·Renovate and Jeff is Lead Designer. They, along with their colleagues from across Canada, are devoted to the importance of home airtightness and weather protection.

SIGA headquarters in Ruswil, Switzerland

They were invited by SIGA, which produces high-performance building envelope systems, to their factory in Ruswil, Switzerland for intensive training on airtightness, moisture management, passive house construction and the building science behind it.

European buildings are often many centuries older than Canadian buildings. (Photos courtesy of Darren Vander Meer)

The group also went to Essen in Northern Germany to attend the International Passive Home Building Conference, where they spent a full day listening to a variety of lectures. Canadians and Europeans face many of the same challenges in advancing the value and importance of this kind of construction.

At SIGA headquarters, they learned about different air-sealing systems; they also received hands-on experience, applying a membrane (thin protective sheets) and learning about different products and applications.

In the SIGA laboratory, they observed how products are tested and what SIGA looks for in performance. On the factory floor, they watched products being manufactured.

Darren was impressed with the company’s ethos.

“They want to make a difference for the world and for their employees,” he said. “There is a very positive company culture.” He noted that only five people run the factory floor at one time with products that are distributed throughout the world, “so there are some pretty amazing processes in place.”

The group had a chance to do a bit of sightseeing, but even then there was a lot of “shop talk”.

Darren liked meeting up with other like-minded builders across Canada and building relationships with them.

“Just being able to sit down with a well-educated group and talk about building science as a whole was an amazing opportunity,” he said. He and Jeff enjoyed brainstorming details, challenges and solutions in building.

They returned with several “takeaways” to share with the Lagois team:

• In the building industry, everyone’s facing the same challenge: how to retrofit an aging stockpile of homes into high-performance buildings.

• There is a slow process of educating homeowners about how homes operate efficiently.

• The air systems in most homes are operating ineffectively because of improper installation and setup or user error over time. Homeowners frequently cause their homes harm by not understanding how to maintain their HVAC systems.

• In Europe, homeowners face the same challenges as Canadians when it comes to moisture control and allowing homes to dry ‒ important elements in preventing structural damage over time.

• Canadians are not as advanced as Europeans when it comes to long-term investing in their homes.

• Europeans tend to value enduring materials more than North Americans do. Durability and longevity are the primary factors Europeans consider in material selections.

• Canadian homes are 200 years old at most. European homes can be 400, 500, 600, 800 years old, so “Europeans have a greater technical challenge,” said Darren. “But I feel we in Canada have a greater cultural challenge to overcome in the way people invest in their homes.”

• European financial institutions are beginning to offer financial incentive for anyone who wants to retrofit their homes ‒ for instance, stretching out loan terms for passive home retrofits.

• Changes won’t get made all at once. It will be a matter of implementing one step at a time.
  

“Having all this reinforced and being encouraged to keep pushing forward” was encouraging, Darren said, “especially when financial times get challenging.” But he added passive home or net zero retrofits are actually where people really need to be making their investments.

“Although aesthetics are important, they do not stand the test of time,” he explained. “Taste and popular design cannot be predicted. Science can. If you invest in the structure "bones" first, the rest can be changed easily at another time.”

There was one more takeaway, the one Darren said was the most encouraging.

“We’re all heading in the right direction,” he said.