Coles Notes | Your Guide to Net Zero Living
Barriers, efficiencies, heat returns, solar, what does it all mean? We wanted to break down the jargon and science of a Net Zero home, so we called in our in-house Operations Manager, Mike Cole.
Episode 1
@sterlinghomesyyc Welcome to episode 1 of Cole’s Notes. Want to know the nitty gritty of what goes into the construction of a new home? Mike Cole, Operations Manager, can assist. Today, we are going through our Net Zero showhome in Sirocco and talking about wall insulation. For the quick version, Kelsea can summarize in about 12 seconds. For the long version, here are the Cole’s Notes: Standard construction would see a 2x6 wall with the stud going directly to the outside sheeting. What we have here is a 2x4 wall with a 2-inch high density Styrofoam behind it. Why is this important? Cold conducts through the studs quite easily, so if you were to take a thermal image of a standard wall, you’ll see the cold on each stud, showing the transfer right through the wall. By adding this 2-inch Styrofoam, we are eliminating that cold conduction that comes through the wall, creating a far more effective insulation on the Net Zero home. YYC New Homes | Calgary Real Estate | Dream Home | New Community | Home Builder | Build Your Life | Net Zero | Built Green
♬ Vlog ・ Chill out in the lounge at night(1279860) - Ninja Muzik Tokyo
Barriers, efficiencies, heat returns, solar, what does it all mean? We wanted to break down the jargon and science of a Net Zero home, so we called in our in-house Operations Manager, Mike Cole.
Sterling is proud to be a leader in the energy-efficient home building, and our latest showhome in Sirocco is a fantastic showcase of that. As a CHBA Qualified Net Zero Builder, our mission is to create homes that champion sustainability while offering a plethora of benefits to homeowners. Many of these benefits are hidden in the walls and the mechanical room of the home, and we thought it was time to talk about them more.
Enter our in-house energy efficiency guru, Operations Manager Mike Cole. Mike has been with Sterling for decades and is our go-to person when it comes to explaining the whys behind how we build a Sterling home and how we constantly improve upon that. Mike is very passionate about Built Green certifications, optimizing efficiencies, and reducing energy footprints.
We knew that Mike’s expertise was invaluable but also realized that his thorough explanations could be quite long-winded, making it a bit challenging for everyone to grasp the key points easily. Therefore, we had to get creative in streamlining his knowledge into bite-sized, easy-to-digest pieces so that everyone could benefit from his wisdom without getting overwhelmed.
Enjoy the series, and we hope you learn more about Net Zero Living. If you ever want to discuss further, reach out to our team in Sirocco and stop by the Amber today.
Author: Bailee Schaetzle
Episode 2
@sterlinghomesyyc We are back with Episode 2 of Cole's Notes and going through the nitty gritty of Net Zero Home building. Today, we're looking at the exterior building envelope. For the quick version, Kelsea summarizes it all in about 14 seconds. For the long version, here are Cole's Notes: Looking at the building envelope of the home, we want to talk about the air exchange rate. One thing you want to ensure you have on an efficient home is an exterior air barrier. Right now, you see that we have a weather barrier on here, you can see some untaped seams, etc. but when we are done this house, every nook and cranny will be 100% sealed. So not only is there great insulation on the inside, with the Styrofoam for that thermal grade and a poly layer for an interior barrier, but there will be a second layer of an exterior air barrier to ensure that this house is well under that 1.0 air exchange rate. This one little additional really astronomically improves that efficiency for this house. YYC New Homes | Calgary Real Estate | Dream Home | New Community | Home Builder | Build Your Life | Net Zero | Built Green | Net Zero | Built Green
♬ original sound - Sterling Homes YYC
Episode 3
@sterlinghomesyyc Episode 3 of Cole's Notes has us visiting the basement and chatting about flooring insulation. Kelsea summarizes it all pretty well Our Cole's Notes on the long version: Concrete is very conductive and really absorbs the heat or cold that it is exposed to. This house features R10 insulation in the floor, so no matter when you get up, you can walk across the floor in your bare feet comfortably. It's actually a great way to add more high quality insulation to your house and pretty reasonably priced, compared to adding heated flooring instead. YYC New Homes | Calgary Real Estate | Dream Home | New Community | Home Builder | Build Your Life | Net Zero | Built Green | Net Zero | Built Green
♬ Energetic Indie Pop - Sergo Music Studio
Episode 4
@sterlinghomesyyc The weather is taking a turn for a cold this weekend, so let's talk about windows and heat loss today.  Mike Cole's Notes: A very important factor of your net zero house is the windows. It's well known that windows are a big heat-loss area. Look at the wall and you can see your styrofoam, you're going to have great insulation in this wall, it's clearly a well-insulated space. When you come to the window, you obviously lose all of that insulation, so now we have to talk about how we can make this window perform better. There are lots of ways that triple-pane windows are great - but I want to break down a window a little bit better for you. Whether dual-pane or triple-pane, there are actually insulating gases inside of the window itself, which can significantly change the insulation properties of that window. You also want to look at how well the window is built - so is it air tight? What gases are in the glass? And also coatings. If you think of a magnifying glass, it's just a piece of glass… Well do you want this window to just magnifiy that heat and bake the inside of your house? (No, of course not!) To combat this, we have multiple coats of Low E to deflect those rays of heat so that your window isn't one big magnifying glass. This helps to ensure that the sun doesn't bake the inside of your home and crank up your air conditioning charges. So, a great triple-pane window is not only triple-pane, but also has argon gas and has multiple coats of Low E sun stopper, like this window you see here.  YYC New Homes | Calgary Real Estate | Dream Home | New Community | Home Builder | Build Your Life | Net Zero | Built Green | Net Zero | Built Green
♬ original sound - Sterling Homes YYC
Episode 5
@sterlinghomesyyc The house is complete and it's time for a mechanical room tour! This one's a doozy and Mike is really in his element. Keep reading for all the details of what you'll find in a Net Zero home's mechanical room and stay tuned for our next episode where we finish off the tour! Mike Cole's Notes: Here we are in the basement of our Net Zero house. A couple of key things that we want to talk about are…dual power! Solar! Power in, from the sun, awesome. Solar inverter, for the sun rays coming in through the solar panels and getting routed throughout the whole house come down to this inverter. So power comes in a couple of places. The house is going to use the solar as much as it possibly can and if there is a reason that we can't use solar, then we have conventional power in to help manage the whole house as well. When we have more solar than the house needs to use to run, we are actually putting that solar back on the grid and getting a credit for producing power. What's amazing about this, is that it's an air source heat pump electric hot water tank. This presents two options for running. It will work with electricity to create hot water. Using electricity for this purpose would be quite expensive on a regular basis, but it's a good back up system to know that you will always have hot water. Ideally, it's designed to work by taking heat from the air surrounding the system and transfer it to the hot water. A really amazing thing about this type of system is that it is incredibly efficient. Additionally, it's about 400% efficient - meaning that 1 unit of energy in can get you up to 4x that amount of output. It's a great way to maximize what your house can do for you. Which is great because there are no gas lines in a Net Zero house, so we can't rely on that. You also have the option to do a full electric hot water tank, and add more solar panels to the roof to compensate for that, but why not steal the heat right out of the mechanical room and put it to work in the rest of the house too? YYC New Homes | Calgary Real Estate | Dream Home | New Community | Home Builder | Build Your Life | Net Zero | Built Green | Net Zero | Built Green
♬ Complete Work - fiikuri
Episode 6
@sterlinghomesyyc As we venture into the completed version of a Net Zero home, we also get to take a look at what homeowners will use daily in their Net Zero homes. Mike is giving us the run down on the Honeywell thermostat today and - drumroll please - he does it in under a minute! Enjoy an unabridged, non-sped up Cole’s Notes today, we can’t promise it will ever happen again 😅 YYC New Homes | Calgary Real Estate | Dream Home | New Community | Home Builder | Build Your Life | Net Zero | Built Green | Net Zero | Built Green
♬ Upbeat Energetic Indie Rock Pop Fun - SonicMusic
Episode 7
@sterlinghomesyyc We wrap up our Net Zero Home edition of Cole's Notes today by visiting the exterior of the house again. Let's look at the air source heat pump's outside unit and chat about why it's great year round.  Mike Cole's Notes: When we were in the basement, we talked about the air source heat pump - and how it steals heat from air… free energy! So, this is the outside unit for that air source heat pump. Air goes in, it take it to that unit inside, steals the heat and sends cold air out. What's awesome about these, is they are actually an air conditioner as well. So if you're just stealing heat, you can do the same in reverse. You can steal heat, but when you need air conditioning, you can steal cold. Air source heat pumps are great systems - free air conditioning included!  Thanks for joining us on this Net Zero Home journey! Want to check it out for yourself? Visit our Sirocco showhome at 260 Creekside Terrace SW, or feel free to reach out to our sales team to learn more about our Net Zero and Net Zero Ready packages!  Please note, Mike is on a well-deserved vacation this week and is unavailable for comment.  YYC New Homes | Calgary Real Estate | Dream Home | New Community | Home Builder | Build Your Life | Net Zero | Built Green | Net Zero | Built Green | Solar Panels | Local Celebrity
♬ Break The Road - Marscott
