Nick and Elizabeth Portman love older homes.
So it was only fitting that when they relocated from Calgary to Sackville two years ago, they moved into a heritage house that had been built by a local ship captain more than 140 years ago.
But like many aged homes, the house was, to say the least, far from energy efficient and so it wasn’t long before the couple embarked on an extensive restoration project to transform their new residence.
The massive renovations, which have mostly been completed although Nick continues to make some finishing touches to the home at 49 Queens Road, took more than a year and involved a number of local contractors, including Energreen Builders – a Sackville-based company that focuses on energy retrofits.
“It was a lot of work . . . maybe more than we intended,” says Nick.
But all that effort has paid off.
The couple recently earned provincial honours when they received a Premier’s Award for Energy Efficiency for top residential retrofit in 2009.
The Portmans’ home was selected because it had the greatest increase in the EnerGuide Rating through Efficiency NB’s home upgrades program – moving from a 17 to a 77.
“For us to be able to get to a 77 on this house, that’s more than we ever could have asked for,” says Elizabeth.
This is indeed remarkable since the standard for an energy-efficient new home is an EnerGuide 80 rating and the Portmans’ home is now almost as energy efficient despite being over 140 years old.
While doing research prior to the renovations, Nick had learned about Efficiency NB’s Existing Home Upgrades program and soon arranged for an energy evaluation.
He says he found the initial assessment and evaluator’s report extremely valuable.
“The thing that was most helpful was that the energy evaluator told us where we should focus to get the most gains,” he says.
Since then, the Portmans have completed a long list of upgrades.
They replaced their old wood furnace with an air-to-air heat pump and upgraded the stone foundation by sealing many cracks and gaps and adding insulation to the basement walls and floor header.
They poured a basement floor, which they also insulated, and installed radiant heat. They also added foam insulation on the exterior foundation walls.
On the home’s main floor, they added blown-in cellulose insulation in the walls to an R-30 value, increased the attic insulation to an R-40 level and properly sealed the attic hatch.
The Portmans also installed a solar hot water system and have been very pleased with the ample supply of hot water. They have plans to add more panels in the future.
“We wanted to do what we could to get away from fossil fuels and we hope in time that we can generate some of our own electricity,” says Nick.
The results from the retrofits are astounding.
The couple has cut their heating bill in half and has greatly increased the comfort level of their home. They have also decreased their greenhouse gas emissions by 21.26 tonnes a year, the equivalent of taking four cars off the road for a year.
Also bringing home Premier’s Awards for Energy Efficiency from the recent ceremony in Fredericton were Mount Allison University student Keleigh Annau and Sackville-based organization EOS Eco-Energy Inc.
Keleigh, who was honoured in the individual category, is a strong advocate for energy efficiency and environmental issues, both at Mount Allison University and within the town of Sackville.
Her journey towards becoming a youth leader started at the age of 16, while she was a high-school student attending the Youth Climate Change Conference in Victoria, B.C. She was both scared by what she learned and inspired to take action.
The experience led her to develop Lights Out Canada, which has become an international initiative and has expanded into 10 countries. Lights Out is a one-day activity during which schools across the country and the globe turn off their lights and spend the day learning about climate change and what youth can do to take action with the help of lesson plans and participation guides which Keleigh provides.
When Keleigh became a student at Mount A, she brought the program there and the university has participated for the past two years. This year, 30 New Brunswick schools participated along with 300 others worldwide, bringing the total number of student participants to over 300,000 since the event began in 2006.
She is now working toward the launch of the Lights Out Challenge, which will encourage a sustained commitment from schools to measurably reduce electricity consumption over a four-month period.
Keleigh, a second-year BA student majoring in international relations with double minors in economics and environmental studies, is also a student representative on the university’s environmental issues steering committee, one of four members of the SAC’s environmental issues committee and a leading member of the eco-action student group.
This past year, Keleigh was the senior residence assistant at Cuthbertson House, Mount A’s sustainable residence. She led 12 students in reducing energy consumption and minimizing waste.
“It’s been really rewarding living in a house where everyone cares about the same things you do,” she says.
The residence has low-flow shower heads and residents are careful to minimize shower time, are diligent about turning out lights, drying clothes on their huge clothes line, and consolidating food purchases and minimizing packaging by buying bulk organic food orders.
Keleigh’s future career interests are in politics and international climate change policy.
“We definitely need policy on climate change and that will only come with grassroots understanding and acceptance. Lights Out was something I could do to affect grassroots change,” she explains.
The community award for outstanding energy-efficiency achievement was presented to EOS Eco-Energy of Sackville and accepted by its board chair Roland Chiasson.
EOS Eco-Energy Inc. is a nonprofit organization created around a vision that the Tantramar region could be a model for energy conservation, renewable energy and sustainable community planning.
In pursuit of that vision, EOS has a number of priorities – to become self-sufficient in electricity generation; reduce reliance on fossil fuels; and meet the challenges of climate change and create vibrant healthy communities.
In 2009, EOS launched a ‘standby power campaign’ based on a community-based social marketing model.
The group identified barriers to taking action on standby power, which included a lack of awareness about the issue and the inconvenience or difficulty in remembering to unplug certain appliances and electronics.
Both prior to and during the campaign, articles on standby power ran in the local newspaper and were included in newsletters and websites of participating towns and villages in order to educate citizens about standby power.
The campaign consisted of gaining a commitment to unplug non-essential electronics or to plug them into a power bar that can be turned off.
EOS created a challenge among the four communities – Sackville, Dorchester, Port Elgin and Memramcook – to see which community could reduce the most standby power on a per capita basis. Port Elgin was declared the winner.
The group also engaged the Mount Allison community by providing support materials such as reminder stickers for appliances and energy meters and worked with the eco-action student group to implement a standby power campaign for off-campus students.
EOS also initiated several events to celebrate Climate Action Day (Oct. 24) in partnership with the wider community, including a talk on climate change by Mount A geography professor Jeff Ollerhead. It also collaborated with the Sackville Chamber of Commerce to distribute a ‘Greening your Business’ package to local businesses with tips for reducing energy use.
EOS has also been instrumental in the development of the Sackville Sustainability Plan, which is having success due to its approach to planning.
Project co-ordinator Katie Friars describes the approach as using a triple lens (economic, social/cultural and environmental). She says Sackville residents are engaged in the process through surveys, focus groups, visioning practices and exercises that identify the values of the community.
“By getting buy-in from community members throughout the process, it creates a sense of ownership so that the sustainability plan becomes a living document – not a municipal plan on a shelf somewhere,” says Katie.
