Nelson Residence | Certified Net Zero Home

Burgers Architecture Inc

Short description

Burgers Architecture Net-Zero Passive Home: A high-performance home that feels familial, quiet, and integrated into nature within a populated urban setting.

The creekside topography and riparian forested area surrounding the property in West Vancouver, BC plays an instrumental role in the design of a Net Zero, Certified Passive, private home for the firm’s principal architect and his young family. For Burgers Architecture, the design of the Nelson Residence begins to anticipate the region’s Step Code which incrementally increases energy efficiency culminating in mandatory new building Passive Certification in 2032. While meeting the stringent Passive certification, the home has become a deeper study into future living. The challenge was not simply meeting the Passive House technical requirements, but how to create a high-performance building while giving opportunities for a deeper connection and appreciation of nature. The rushing creek, protected old growth trees, working vegetable garden and fruit orchard, create dependent bonds between the home and its stewards. A daily sensory and exploratory relationship that goes past the technical requirements of sustainability.

Design:
Situated on a creek with headwaters at the top of Cypress Mountain, the property has a unique rushing waterway that acts as a green corridor for wildlife, with lush vegetation providing privacy and cooling. The topography required remediation of the creek’s riparian zone to return its embankments to a natural state and remove invasive plant species and hard surfaces. Sloping from north to south, the design response is a layered, multi-level home connected to the property at each of its three floors with a large courtyard in the center. The courtyard is bordered to the west by a solar heated swimming pool, black tiles mimicking the reflective black alpine pools bordered by granite slabs and overhung with alpine vegetation, appearing as apertures to another world below their mirrored surfaces.

On its lowest level, the house contains a secondary suite, parking, and storage spaces. This level also connects to an orchard garden containing apple trees and hardy plums, pears and peaches. The main floor is a fluid system of living spaces that connect to the courtyard and pool, and at its heart, a wood burning stove. The lower and upper floor offer private spaces for retreat, and although away from the fluid, open nature of the main floor to the creek and forest, offer views to embrace its still, natural environment with floor to ceiling windows in every room.

Performance, Construction and Cost:
The economic formula for the home required that its cost be kept below $400 per square foot to make it viable. For comparison, new homes in West Vancouver start at $500 psf. As an additional challenge, Passive homes are more expensive to build than standard code-built homes due to the increased insulation, airtightness, high performance windows and ultra-efficient HRV. Using the owners’ construction company, costs were analyzed in great detail. Several key initiatives were adopted:
• Elimination of CLT in favor of standard wood frame construction
• Commitment to low cost but durable polished concrete flooring
• Elimination of generalized hydronic heating, with electric in-floor heat in bathrooms
• Direct importation of certified windows from Slovenia
• Elimination of ducted heating and cooling, using the HRV ducts for low-load heating and cooling.
• Use of high-load EPS foam instead of XPS foam under-slab and outside of foundation walls. EPS foam is 20% thicker to obtain the same R-Value as XPS and required digging deeper for the slab.