The project innovation is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Site built retrofits are relatively straightforward. You build to what’s there and solve the problems you encounter as you go.
Panelized solutions take a lot of expensive upfront work. This project is innovative in that it builds on the project team’s experience to take advantage of the benefits of both.

The project reduces greenhouse gas emissions by making the wall upgrade portion of the deep energy retrofits more affordable and more likely to happen. It does this be reducing costs below what is currently done.

A range of techniques for upgrading exterior wall insulation have been and are being tried: site installed rigid insulation, both mineral fiber and foam sheets with furring of some kind to attached siding, stick built 2×4 walls supported at grade on treated boxes, site made Larson trusses, I joists, and a couple of panelized solutions. All of these options are expensive and require substantial on site labour.

For the site built techniques, the existing cladding usually needs to be removed and disposed of and there is considerable skilled labour required to cut, fit and install the materials. Panelization requires exacting measurement of the existing building (usually digital) and careful translation of those measurements to panel drawings in order to ensure a good fit. There is also the need for the precise installation of some kind of support bracket, a facility big enough to fabricate the wall panels, trucking to transport them and a crane to install them.

The hybrid component based approach addresses some of these obstacles to reduce cost and complexity as follows:

– Much reduced demolition labour and disposal volume.
– Simple prefabricated components that can be made almost anywhere and that can be transported and installed with minimal equipment. -Components that will reduce installation time over all, especially finicky work from scaffolding.
– Components that can be installed quickly by entry level and lower skilled workers.
– Standardize the treatments for as many of the junctions, utility and service penetrations and building conditions as we can to reduce the labour and thinking required to maintain insulation continuity, improve water resistance and increased air tightness.
– Formalize installation and completion procedures that improve efficiency.
– Uses material efficiently.

In the final phase, the project team tests the idea of simple panel like modules. The expansion potential is enormous but will depend on the size of the market for deep retrofits in Canada and the northern US. That market is dependent mostly on cost and affordability. The project team is confident they can reduce the cost of the wall component of deep retrofits but they won’t know by how much until we test and refine it.