This N.W.T.-built home could cut energy bills by almost half, says not-for-profit

From the outside, it looks like just another house; but if you lived there, you could save a pretty penny on energy.

The structure stands, still under construction, on the Fiberglass North property in Kam Lake, Yellowknife.

"These houses should be able to provide their own energy with solar for 10 months of the year," explained Bruce Elliott, the owner of Fiberglass North, as he shows CBCNews inside the two-bedroom unit he and his team are working on.

It's the first homehe's ever built.

Elliott is building and selling energy efficient homes he designed. They havethicker walls and insulation throughout the whole structure to keep in heat during frigid N.W.T. winters. The idea is to provide people with cleaner, more affordable housing.

Elliott's team buildshalf the structure in Yellowknife, before shipping it toanother community where the owner, or local contractors, finish construction. The two-bedroom unit he showed CBCNews will be heading to Hay River in December.

One two-bedroom unit comes with a $300,000 price tag, which includes the cost of shipping the houseout of the capital city. Elliott said he aims to ship these houses "all the way into the high Arctic."

Could slash energy costs

"It doesn't take much of a heating device to maintain the heat in these houses," said Ken Baigent, a senior energy management specialist with the not-for-profit Arctic Energy Alliance. He recently assessed the building's energy efficiency.

"[These houses] could be heated with almost any option a small propane tank,electric heat would work."

During his assessment, Baigent found the current model could save homeowners up to 46 per cent of their energy costs, though he plans to conduct a final evaluation in January, once the structure in finished in Hay River.

Baigent said he's seen more energy efficient homes being built in the past few years, especially in Yellowknife, where a bylaw laying out energy efficiency requirements for new buildings came into effect in 2010. That bylaw was removed in June 2018 and replaced by another energy efficiency bylaw in September of the following year.

"The one Bruce is [building] now would be at the top of the scale," Baigent said, referring to energy efficiency. "It's the type of house that wouldbe energy efficient once it's deployed and continue to be energy efficient for the occupants for many decades to come.

"Hopefully we'll be seeing houses of this efficiency level being deployed through the Northwest Territories."

Elliott is already busy at work on a second home for a client. He said for him, this work is "payback."

"The North [has been] very good to me, and I'm 73," he said. "I wanted to give back to the North."