Project Overview

Builder Jason Szakaczi attended CanPHI’s Ottawa training course in early 2015, and was inspired to try for the Passive House Standard on his first commercial-scale project, a 12-unit apartment block in central Peterborough, Ontario. As he says: “Passive House just makes sense: as a landlord for these apartments I can offer far better levels of comfort and indoor air quality to my tenants than they’ll find anywhere else in town”. The thick walls and heavy triple glazed windows will provide a quiet indoor environment. even though the building is located on busy Lansdowne Street. This superinsulated building has 12 apartments, each 1000 ft2 in size, and heating is via the ventilation airstream from a gas boiler. According to PHPP modeling the annual heating cost for this apartment block will be lower than that for an average Peterborough single family house. This will be the first privately-funded apartment building achieving Passive House performance anywhere in Ontario, despite receiving no subsidies or municipal or federal support of any kind.

Construction cost is on schedule to come in at $130/ft2, and according to Szakaczi: “that includes everything, even the storage building: we’re showing that Passive House quality can be achieved in Ontario today for a building this size at an extra cost of just $10 – $15/ft2 over conventional 2×6 builds. There’s opportunity here for any builder who wants to get ahead of the curve and offer their clients a totally superior product “.