Small Strata success story

In order to kick off the process all of our unit holders independently applied for the Canada Greener Homes grant so that we had the option to do any retrofits. We all applied and got in just as the program closed. Next we agreed that the strata would pay for the Energuide audit for each unit with the understanding that the information would be useful to our strata’s common area reserve fund study regardless if a unit holder chose to do any retrofits. Next, the President of the Strata looked at several providers of Heat Pumps and Solar Panel companies to do assessments on multiple units to get a ballpark idea of the up front costs and long-term savings. In the end, 2 of the 5 unit holders decided that they wanted heat pumps for their units while the remaining decided it was not the right time for them. Unfortunately we also decided not to do solar at this time, not because it was not compelling - it was! In fact, the payback time for our whole roof installation was about 7-9 years and would have offset more than 50% of our energy needs. What prevented us from all going forward and doing this and taking advantage of loans and grants was the age of our roof. At 13 years old, it is literally in the middle of its life and so we were concerned that putting panels up now rather than waiting for a few more years would incur additional costs of removing and then reinstalling the panels. The lesson here is that ALL new and newish stratas should look seriously at installing solar. I’m looking at you townhomes of Royal Bay!

With this information, we embarked on creating a Strata By Law and a process by which these two unit holders could get their heat pumps installed in a professional manner that affected the building and its common areas and neighbors in the least impactful manner. This included considerations about the specifications of the units, selection of vendors, drawings and designs, noise, ownership, maintenance requirements and a variety of other considerations to protect the strata and the individual owners. Finally, a thorough review of vendors was undertaken where 7 companies were asked to quote on the work. The entire process did take several months, involved a lot of communication and compromise and was completed in the first week of June in time for the summer season. While this summer was not too hot compared to the last few years, the cooling of the heat pumps was so pleasant in the warmest, most humid days and nights. Also, the initial concerns about noise from some of the members were proven to be a non-issue with the modern heat pumps that were selected. I for one am really looking forward to using the heat pump in the cooler, damp winter months instead of the very expensive and inefficient radiators that we previously used. One final note, we did utilize the knowledge of the CRD’s Home Energy Navigator program and this proved invaluable in the process especially with verifying some of the information about heat pump installation specifications.