Finding Conservation House

It turns out it wasn’t that difficult to find Regina’s not-famous-enough Conservation House.  A landmark in building innovation and energy conservation, this test project is considered one of the world’s pioneer projects in Passive House design.  It fell off the radar for most people, including the people living in it (according to one internet article), and little did we know that our home town had played an important role in a growing world trend of home construction.

Prairie Innovation in Energy Conservation

I discovered a strange new passion this past year.  It began in August, during the hottest day of 2014 in Regina, Saskatchewan (it was over 40-some degrees Celsius), when I opened the first bag of mineral wool insulation and began placing it in our upper floor attic.  Little did I know that I was engaging in a practice we can now call a ‘lost innovation’ of home building on the Saskatchewan prairies. In our house, my husband and I had completely ripped out drywall and the thin batts of mildewed yellow fiber glass we referred to as insulation and were starting from scratch.  We  already had some experience with mineral wool insulation, having placed it in the rim joists in our last house (a new build) to discover that the floors were immediately warmer in the winter, and the sounds of the neighbours’ screaming no longer awoke us nightly at 3 a.m..  Aside from the immediate comfort of mineral wool, there are the long-term gains:  it is also a fire retardant product, impervious to water it won’t support mold growth, and because it is inert it does not off-gas.