Quick Energy Efficiency Facts
Building energy efficient and high performance homes is important to us at Lexis. When we build custom homes, we provide our clients with details about how they can make their home more comfortable, efficient and healthy. We call this our Health-e Homes Program.
Rather than go into all of the intricate details and options for building energy efficient homes, we’ll just highlight from quick facts here. The numbers listed below are based on a typical home in Canada. Each home and location will have different numbers than we have listed here but these numbers will give you a sense for what to expect.
Percentage of energy used in a home built in the 1980’s (approximate):
Heating/cooling: 75%
Hot water: 15%
Electricity (lights, appliances): 10%
Percentage of energy used in a home to current building code (approximate):
Heating: 50%
Cooling: 5%
Hot water: 20%
Occupant loads (lights, appliances): 25%
Percentage of energy used in a Net Zero Ready home (approximate):
Heating: 13%
Cooling: 3%
Hot water: 13%
Occupant loads and ventilation: 71%
As you can see, as energy efficiency improves, less energy is wasted on heating and cooling costs. As the overall energy use is reduced in a home, the energy used in day to day activities inside the home (turning on lights, using electricity, etc) becomes a higher percentage of the overall energy used in a home. It’s not that the occupant loads are getting higher overall, they are just a higher percentage because energy use in other areas are being reduced.
Here are some interesting statistics about where the most heat is lost from homes:
- Air leakage and ventilation: 30% of heat loss
- Basements: 25%
- Windows: 20%
- Upper floor walls: 20%
- Attic: 5%
Many people assume that the attic loses the most heat but with the way homes are built now, it is only a small factor in heat loss. Air leakage and ventilation is actually the biggest source of heat loss!
Anyway, those are some quick facts to keep in mind without getting bogged down in a lot of technical details on energy efficiency. I hope you enjoyed the quick read.