WestHouse - The Sustainable Laneway Home
posted: february 11. 2010
West House: The SFU Sustainable Laneway Home
[2:16 mins]
West House is a made-in-Vancouver demonstration of a sustainable laneway home. It showcases leading-edge small footprint residential design, energy efficient, integrated systems and interactive technologies that encourage a sustainable lifestyle. The result of a partnership between government, academia and industry, West House is on display during the Olympic Games at the Vancouver Yaletown LiveCity Site and will be moved afterwards to a City of Vancouver owned site where it will serve as a technology showcase, research and development test bed, and "living lab".
It Takes a Village to Make a House
West House is the product of an extraordinary collaboration involving academic researchers, planners, designers, architects, builders, engineers, computer scientists, and policy makers. It began as the brainchild of two SFU professors, Lyn Bartram and Robert Woodbury, and David Ramslie, the Sustainable Development Program Manager of the City of Vancouver. Fresh off their experience building the interactive systems for North House, the 4th place finisher at the 2009 International Solar Decathlon in Washington, DC, Bartram and Woodbury contacted Ramslie to see if there was interest in showcasing North House in Vancouver. An expert in sustainable buildings and a board member of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, Ramslie was enthusiastic about the research. However, he pointed out, the Vancouver region boasts a richness of green capital, technology and building expertise and industry. Why not build a new house, he proposed to Bartram and Woodbury, who loved the idea.
The Sustainable Laneway House project began in December 2009. The owners of Smallworks, experts in small footprint homes, enthusiastically agreed to build it. MSR Innovations literally took the roof off their demonstration building to supply West House. Embedded Automation, Rainforest Automation and VerTech Solutions worked overtime with the SFU team to design and install the home automation backbone and interactive systems. A grant from Western Economic Diversification to SFU funded the building of West House, along with contributions from the City of Vancouver and BC Hydro Power Smart.
The resulting project demonstrates that the sustainable home of the future is not so far away. In the next few years we expect that this exciting partnership between SFU, the City of Vancouver, and our industrial partners will blaze new territory in how to advance sustainable homes.
The Building: Small is Beautiful
Designed and built by Smallworks Studios and Laneway Housing, West House offers all of the amenities and technologies that people look for in a new home in only 610 square feet. The house is highly passively efficient: insulation exceeds Canadian standards at R-26, and proprietary building methods ensure a continuous thermal envelope with no thermal breaks. In addition, an efficient heat recovery ventilation system reduces heat loss and improves air quality. Smallworks is committed to sustainable building practice. They use locally-sourced non-toxic materials and prefabricate part of the house in their Southlands shop to minimise construction waste and enable expedient installation. A Smallworks house can be built and ready on the residential site in 8 weeks from start to finish.
The Power of Renewable Energy
West House augments its efficiency with two types of solar energy. A solar thermal system preheats water for the in-floor radiant heating as well as for domestic hot water use. The patent-pending SolTrak™ advanced roofing system designed by MSR Innovations comprises a special roofing tile containing an integral solar-electric panel and mounted in a flexible track system, integrating the solar collectors into the actual roof structure itself. Day4 Energy Solar Photovoltaic panels produce more energy per area than any others in their class and will be used for the solar tiles when West House is installed on its long-term city site. A Schneider Electric PV inverter and Branch Circuit Power Meter ensure that the electricity generated by the home is usable and measured effectively. Rainforest Automation provided integration of the Energy Management System with a real-time wireless feed from the smart meter. Terasen Gas will work with the West House team on solar thermal and other renewable energy technologies when the house moves to its permanent site.
The Engaged Resident: Supporting Sustainable Behaviour
A sustainable house is not only a green building. It is a living experience that encourages people to use fewer resources more effectively. To that end, an in-home information system developed by SFU School of Interactive Art and Technology researchers, VerTech Solutions and Embedded Automation helps residents track and manage energy use. The Adaptive Living Interface System (ALIS) integrates energy consciousness and device control into daily routines of the resident using touch screens embedded throughout the house. Pulse Energy™ software within ALIS provides real-time performance feedback about the home’s energy use. Social networking and personal milestone tools support the West House resident in sustainable community living. Beyond the traditional computer interface, ALIS incorporates informative art elements like the dynamic kitchen backsplash, whose illuminated display subtly changes with water, electricity and gas use. ALIS runs on a Web-backbone; the West House resident can see and control how the house is doing from any Web browser anywhere. And because the interface is also available on an iPhone™, the West House resident can carry the house in a pocket. Embedded Automation and VerTech Solutions built the Energy Management System: the control and monitoring systems that underpin the house information systems.
Contact: Lyn Bartram / Rob Woodbury
Simon Fraser University
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WestHouse in the Press
This article is from the Vancouver Province Newspaper. It can be viewed online here: http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Laneway+homes+unveiled/2549447/story.html
A prototype tiny, perfect "laneway house" will demonstrate Vancouver's "Greenest City" goals to 250,000 Olympic visitors to Vancouver House.
West House Photo Gallery - click for more
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Mayor Gregor Robertson opened the 610-sq.-ft. house yesterday, with the help of Treasury Board president Stockwell Day, who noted the Western Economic Diversification fund contributed $347,000 to the "West House."
Day and Robertson toured the house, which has a combined living/ dining/kitchen area, bathroom and loft bedroom with a small balcony, plus a 226-sq.-ft. garage with an electric car charging outlet.
"Today we open the door to the future of eco-friendly construction and design," said Robertson, noting that since the city approved laneway houses last year, 21 permits have been granted and 50 more applied for.
The city's goal is to densify the estimated 66,000 mostly single-family lots with compact housing that has a smaller ecological footprint and greater energy-efficiency.
The little house, with free admission to the public, is located next to Vancouver House in Yaletown, as part of the LiveCity Yaletown site.
Simon Fraser University professor Lynn Bartram worked with city sustainable development manager David Ramslie to get West House built and ready for the Olympics.
Both proudly gave tours yesterday to the minister and mayor of their little house, which was built by Vancouver firm Smallworks.
Fitted with photovoltaic roofing, the house will share power with the electricity grid.
Its kitchen backsplash sparkles with lights that show how much energy the house is saving and a cool hallway "cockpit" allows a homeowner to control heat or lighting in the hall, or remotely from a smart phone.
It will be moved to a new site after the Games, with tentative plans to let someone live in it and blog about it for six months.
Day said he was "pumped" for the Olympics and praised "the people much smarter than me" who designed and built "this ecofriendly house."
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