REEP House for Sustainable Living
Our Community and Our Future
REEP House is REEP Green Solution's latest initiative to inspire Waterloo Region residents to invest in healthier homes and sustainable living. By transforming two side-by-side Century homes in downtown Kitchener into (slightly different) models of energy and water efficiency, our goal is to demonstrate that smart -- and profitable -- renovation choices are ripe for the picking.
By tracking the energy, water, carbon and bottom line savings that result from these two elaborate examples of green re-construction, we will show homeowners, property owners and tenants how and why they should invest in the deepest, highest value retrofits available to them. We believe that people need to be able to stand inside and evaluate an amazing finished product in order to be informed, inspired and convinced.
A Huge, Influential, Communal Effort
REEP House is a community project with local partner participation, as well as funding from foundations and other levels of government. Hatched in 2006, the project represents a collaboration between a highly-accredited team of science-based designers and University of Waterloo brains, and a network of contractors, technology vendors, realtors, property appraisers and bankers, all guided by a committed, innovative, green-minded architect.
The homes themselves are owned by the Regional Municipality of Waterloo and will be used for regional housing when the project is complete.
Meanwhile, the REEP House for Sustainable Living will act as a hands-on showroom for demonstrating an array options, benefits, costs and impacts of home energy and water conservation measures, as well as for exploring products, appliances and strategies to consider installing in your own home or building. Guided tours take place at 20 Mill Street, the first Century brick home in Waterloo Region to be completely retrofitted to near net zero, and the first to share its resources with the public.
REEP House and Waterloo Region
Using the current ecoENERGY program, Waterloo Region's homeowners are averaging a 25 to 35 percent energy reduction in their older homes. There are 43,000 homes in the region that were built before 1960. Many of these have plaster lathe walls with no effective insulation. The heat loss and cold wall effect are equivalent to leaving the front door wedged open two or three inches all winter.
If all of those homeowners could be convinced to reduce their energy use by 50 per cent (the same $25,000 retrofit as we've completed at 24 Mill Street), 750 million kwh of electricity would be conserved, the equivalent of 850 railway cars' worth of greenhouse gas emissions would be saved annually, and $1.3 billion dollars in local economic activity would be generated by the effort.
