Through the Carleton Research and Innovation in Sustainable Energy House, or C-RISE, Carleton students will research ways to reduce heating and cooling costs, mostly through solar energy.
The firm's demonstration home for the project will cost the company around $200,000, Urbandale Construction general manager Matthew Sachs said in a previous OBJ interview.
In early September, Carleton engineering professor Ian Beausoleil-Morrison received $582,242 from the Canada Foundation for Innovation to pursue the program. Panasonic Canada will also provide vacuum insulation.
Carleton and Urbandale have already been working together on design ideas through a class of fourth-year students, which gave suggestions this spring that include ground-source heat pumps and orienting the house to best use solar heating.
Urbandale is aiming to make its houses compliant with the 2012 R-2000 energy target, which is a 30-per-cent energy reduction from the current 2005 R-2000 standard that all of the company's houses meet.
R-2000 is a voluntary measure of energy efficiency that encompasses building envelopes, water conservation, indoor air quality and other metrics defined by Natural Resources Canada.
