R-2000 - Still Crazy After All These Years
By Don Johnston

It was 20 years ago that R-2000 started the revolution in how we build houses. Since then, R-2000 has been through many highs and lows, but there is no doubt that it's had a positive impact on all residential construction.
"R-2000 has been the Innovation Department for our industry," says Richard Lind, the current chair of the National R-2000 Builders Committee. "It's also been where a generation of new builders have gone to learn building science and how the house works as a system." This is one reason the industry, through the Canadian Home Builders' Association, has been a partner with the Federal government on R-2000 from the outset.
R-2000 has always been more than a standard - it's the complete package: training, coaching, quality assurance, and marketing, although some would say that marketing has never been its strong suit. "Most buyers are not aware of R-2000's importance to them and do not put it at the top of their list," observes Lind. "I sell myself as a builder first and then sell R-2000 to the buyer."
Louis Marmen, the director responsible for the Federal government's energy efficiency efforts in the Buildings Sector at Natural Resources Canada, notes that it is the R-2000 builders who are the primary asset. "Whether you're buying an R-2000 house or not, you know you're more likely to get a well-built energy efficient house if you buy from an R-2000 builder," Marmen said recently to a meeting of the National R-2000 Builders Committee.
There were years in the mid to late '90s when energy efficiency was simply not a consideration for home buyers. R-2000 survived those years by emphasizing the increased comfort of an R-2000 home. The other message that resonated with many families was the health benefits of improved air quality in an R-2000 house. Later, with the growing awareness of global warming, the environmental benefits of R-2000 brought it back into the spotlight again.
It's been the smaller custom builders who have been the backbone of R-2000 over the years - builders like Stephen Tobey of Brighton, Ontario. The all-important blower-door test at the end of the construction process can make a builder lose sleep the night before. "Larger tract builders don't need that hassle," says Tobey, "and to meet the target consistently, you need trades that you can count on."
The nail-biter "pass/fail" air-test and the fact that R-2000 is a "performance standard" that is hard to explain to customers are two reasons we've seen the emergence of other labels in the market in recent years.
Built Green in Alberta, Powersmart in Manitoba and now Energy Star in Ontario are all "prescriptive standards". They use lists of features with point scores attached. The more points, the higher the rating with various levels of recognition. They all require a certain air-tightness, but not as tight as the R-2000 requirement of 1.5 air changes per hour. After 20 years of R-2000 leadership, the industry can build at 2.5 air changes per hour without much trouble, a significant improvement over the 3.0 or 4.0 air changes typical of houses in the 1970s.
As far as explaining what a performance standard is, many R-2000 builders translate how they achieve the performance requirements into their own prescriptive list of features. "This makes it easy for the customer to understand while still allowing a lot of flexibility to make changes," says Tobey.
The other thing that R-2000 has struggled with is the perception that there is too much paperwork. When the Federal government reinvested in energy efficiency in 2000, a number of additional inspection requirements were added to the R-2000 Standard and this provided room in the market for competitors that were faster and cheaper. However, NRCan responded by simplifying the quality assurance process and minimizing the paperwork.
We've got the highest standard and the best QA system," Lind says proudly. "The challenge is to turn this into an asset. For example, we're quite excited that the solar subdivision near Calgary at Okotoks is being built on an R-2000 platform. I'd like to see R-2000 do more to encourage the use of renewable energy in future. There will always be a need for a leading edge vehicle to show the way forward. We want that to continue to be R-2000." HB

Don Johnson is the Director of Technology & Policy for the Canadian Home Builders' Association.