'I don't want to just look out for my generation': Saskatoon designer hopes his passive house project will pave the way for more
Orion Morgan expects the Buena Vista home to produce as much energy as it consumes, and hopefully help prove the concept.
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Orion Morgan wants to change the way people build houses, and hopes his latest project will convince even the most hardened skeptics that sustainable construction is not only possible but comfortable.
Morgan’s company, Salt Box Studios, is the force behind Saskatoon’s newest passive house, which went up in Buena Vista last year. It has no furnace, and is expected to produce exactly as much energy as it consumes.
“I guess I feel like I have a personal responsibility toward myself and my children and their children,” said Morgan, who built “run-of-the-mill” houses in Saskatoon before discovering the passive house concept while studying architecture in Toronto.
“I don’t want to just look out for my generation, right? I want to make sure the things that I’m doing aren’t going to negatively impact people 50 years from now, that kind of thing.”
From the outside, the 1,000-square foot house Morgan built looks like any other funky, prismatic infill development — except all of the windows face south, away from the busy street outside.
There are other, more subtle differences that, according to Morgan, should allow the house to lose very little heat and produce all of the electricity it needs, saving its new owners thousands of dollars over its lifespan.
Those differences include a roof that will soon be equipped with a 7.2-kilowatt solar array, more than twice as much insulation as a normal house, an efficient heat recovery ventilation system, a condensing clothes dryer and extremely “tight” construction.
It also has a specially-insulated basement to avoid what Morgan described as the heat loss that comes with a standard foundation. Perhaps more importantly, he said, the whole house cost less than $400,000 — a rarity for passive houses.
Tests conducted over the last several months suggest the home will be able to more than offset the roughly 9,000 kilowatt-hours its smart electric heaters, lights and appliances will consume over a 12-month period, he said.
The concept of passive houses is not new. People have been experimenting with the idea since at least the 1970s, but it has not gained significant traction in Saskatchewan, where bitter winters create more challenges for designers.
Saskatoon has a few examples, however, including a well-publicized duplex on Temperance Street that functions in much the same way as the home Morgan designed and helped build.
“It’s so much smarter to save money by just insulating our houses; we live in a country that gets to -40,” Holly-Ann Knott, who owns the Temperance Street house, told the Saskatoon StarPhoenix three years ago.
Jessika Agioritis takes a similar view. She and her husband were aware of passive houses, followed Morgan’s build and, after looking at several more conventional homes, bought the passive home late last year. They moved in last week.
“So far so good,” Agioritis said with a laugh, adding that while many people still doubt the concept of a passive house, she hopes Morgan is able to continue building and selling them in Saskatoon.
The designer said that’s exactly what he plans to do.
While there are significant challenges — the need for south-facing windows means not every lot is suitable for a passive house — Morgan hopes his first project will help demonstrate the concept and pave the way for more passive homes in Saskatoon.
“You kind of have to prove to everybody that this concept (works).”
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