Canada's Largest Passive House Retrofit Project

About the Project

Prior to its full renovation in 2018, Parkdale Landing in Hamilton, Ontario was a tavern, banquet hall, and rooming house. Great Northern Insulation is thrilled to have assisted in the full retrofit of the building, a project that earned the title of Canada's largest Passive House retrofit project. Through GNI's installation of Elastochem spray foam with Solstice liquid blowing agent (LBA) alongside the hard work of many contractors, this approximately 60-year-old building was brought to modern day Passive House building requirements. The end result is a complex that will provide energy-efficient, low-maintenance, comfortable housing for its tenants.

What is Passive House?

Passive House is a complex, exhaustive standard that goes far above and beyond mandatory building code requirements, resulting in an extremely low-energy building that boasts energy performance savings of 80-90% compared to a more traditional building standard. Originating in Europe during the 1980's, the Passive House standard exceeds the requirements for other low-energy building standards such as the Net Zero standard by a significant amount, and relies on advanced window designs with triple glazing, full insulation coverage of the entire building envelope, and extremely high airtightness testing ratings.

This is no small feat to achieve, especially in Canada. Passive House design fundamentals often find that buildings require insulation performance three to seven times higher than that of traditional buildings in order to meet Passive House requirements, largely thanks to our extreme climate differentials country-wide.

How Great Northern Insulation Helped

For any building retrofit project, having excellent insulation solutions such as Elastochem spray foam with Solstice LBA isn't enough - it must be installed by professional, experienced contractors with a high degree of precision and efficiency. When it comes to meeting Passive House requirements, this need is multiplied. Great Northern Insulation was proud to work alongside Elastochem to install spray foam insulation that would meet the strenuous needs of Indwell's $10.5 million dollar Parkdale Landing retrofit.

Great Northern Insulation is proud to assist with many "firsts" for Ontario and Canada, including North Bay's first Net Zero Energy home. Our participation on Canada's largest Passive House retrofit project is just another way GNI aims to assist in the creation of more comfortable, affordable buildings throughout Ontario.

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