EQuilibrium™ Housing is a national initiative led by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) that brings the private and public sectors together to develop homes that are energy- and resource-efficient, environmentally friendly, and healthy to live in.

To help Canadians learn first-hand about sustainable housing, [...]]]>

CMHC’s newest EQuilibrium™ Housing demonstration home opens its doors in Winnipeg

EQuilibrium™ Housing is a national initiative led by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) that brings the private and public sectors together to develop homes that are energy- and resource-efficient, environmentally friendly, and healthy to live in.

To help Canadians learn first-hand about sustainable housing, CMHC has been working with teams of designers, architects, builders and developers to design, construct and demonstrate EQuilibrium™ Sustainable Housing Demonstration homes across the country. The latest of these projects to open its doors to the public is Winnipeg’s Urban Ecology — a two-storey duplex located on an infill site in the heart of the city’s downtown core.

To help Canadians learn first-hand about sustainable housing, CMHC has been working with teams of designers, architects, builders and developers to design, construct and demonstrate EQuilibrium™ Sustainable Housing Demonstration homes across the country. The latest of these projects to open its doors to the public is Winnipeg’s Urban Ecology — a two-storey duplex located on an infill site in the heart of the city’s downtown core.

Designed by Winnipeg Housing Rehabilitation Corporation (WHRC), Urban Ecology includes  energy-efficient and resource-conscious features and on-site integrated renewable energy systems. The result is an attractive and highly advanced “green” home that significantly reduces its energy consumption and minimizes its environmental footprint.

Among its other innovations, the Urban Ecology home features:

• An accessible, adaptable and attractive open-concept design;
• Locally-produced and environmentally-appropriate building materials, to reduce pollution and enhance indoor air quality;
• Energy-efficient lighting and appliances designed to reduce energy consumption to as little as 17 percent of the energy used in a typical Canadian home;
• Passive solar heating and a four-panel flat plate solar collector system to help heat the home and provide hot water;
• A drain water heat recovery system that is predicted to decrease the home’s hot water heating requirements by close to 20 percent;
• A photovoltaic (PV) energy system which will be connected to the local power grid, allowing the occupants to “sell” excess energy back to Manitoba Hydro;
• Advanced water-conserving features and fixtures, including rain gardens and the ability to harvest rainwater runoff from the roof for landscaping during dry spells;
• An air-tight high-performance building envelope to provide a comfortable living environment.

For more information about this project, the CMHC EQuilibrium™ Sustainable Housing Demonstration Initiative or to schedule a tour of a demonstration home near you, visit our website at www.cmhc.ca/equilibriumhousing or call CMHC at 1-800-668-2642. For more than 60 years, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has been Canada’s national housing agency and a source of objective, reliable housing information.

Many users can use the same surface at the same time, [...]]]>

With Microsoft Surface, we catch a
glimpse of the future of computing.  It is a
computer platform where the interface is a table top.
Cameras identify human movement and translate that
into an interaction with digital items just as if they
were physical objects.  There is no keyboard, or
mouse.

Many users can use the same surface
at the same time, so it is ideal for collaborative
ventures.

The price tag right now is around
$12,500 and
at the moment it is available only for commercial
locations like hotels and banks.

In the future, it will be able to
communicate with other electronic devices like cell
phones so that it would function as shown in the video
to the right.

A similar device will
eventually replace your coffee table, or even
integrated into household appliances.

What is Microsoft Surface?

The Microsoft Surface platform has been criticized for being an oversized iPhone, being nothing more that a gimmick because it really doesn’t offer any more functionality than an ordinary computer.  However, the real reason for investing in this project really is not so much its present rewards, but, (like investing in real estate itself)  the real reward comes in the future.  Coldwell Banker is the oldest real estate company in the world and we keep adding to our greatest asset.  With Coldwell Banker’s Microsoft Surface application, it forced us to look at information from new angles, imagining what consumers will demand in the future.  We have learned a lot about how best to convert a physical home into an easier to manipulate digital one, experimenting with what information the consumer expects to have in that representation.

This project is just one of our research ventures, there are other tools that we have pioneered and are in use right now to help our clients.  If you are buying or selling, ask me about some of the technologies I deploy on your behalf that our competition are not able to offer. When you are talking about the place you call home, you will want to have an edge over your competition.