Passive House Concept in Saskatchewan 1977
- FTFO
- 13 hours ago
- 2 min read
Chris Hatch's May 11, 2025 article in Canada's National Observer highlighted a novel house built in Saskatchewan in 1977 in reaction to the energy crisis North America was facing.
The government asked (us) to design and build a solar house appropriate for Saskatchewan,” Orr explains matter-of-factly. And so they did. The team turned conventional design upside down. Instead of asking, how do we heat and cool this thing, they designed a home that needs as little energy as possible. The Saskatchewan Conservation House was built in 1977 by a provincial crown corporation with Orr as lead engineer.
It used 85 per cent less energy and cost about $30 to $40 in electricity per year. No furnace at all, but still appropriate for frigid winters in Regina. It even had an early heat exchange system. And it’s still there, its building envelope still functioning as designed, all these years later.
(Fun fact: As part of the project, Orr invented the blower door test, another unsung Canadian invention you will have encountered if you’ve ever had any home efficiency work done.)
"Over 40 years ago ago a team of visionaries and construction engineers designed and built a house in Saskatchewan, Canada, that was able to operate using only a fraction of the energy other homes required. The premise was to rely as much as possible on the energy freely available from the sun.
The Saskatchewan Conservation House was oriented for maximum solar heat gain in the winter, yet incorporated shading to avoid overheating in summer. It also had lots of insulation, with the building envelope made up of R40 walls, an R60 ceiling, and triple glaze windows.
It was extremely airtight (even by today's standards) and most importantly, because it proved that Passive House and Passive Solar designs could work as a practical liveable home, it was one of the first houses ever to have its fresh air supplied by heat recovery ventilation, which is now standard on any high-performance cold climate home.
“How we build matters,” says Efficiency Canada. The organization calculates that the most effective way to minimize additional carbon pollution comes from adopting the most ambitious tier of Canada’s building codes (the net-zero energy ready standard) and implementing full electrification. If new construction proceeds under those conditions, “Canada can reduce emissions by two-thirds and reduce household spending by $5 billion per year.”
Green Energy Futures wrote an article on the project and Harold Orr, project lead, in 2016.
“The government asked the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) to design and build a solar house appropriate for Saskatchewan,” recalls Harold Orr, who, along with his SRC colleagues, went on to pioneer the passive house concept."
Canada can and must enact regulations requiring all homes to be built to the 1977 Orr concept reducing emissions and embodied carbon. And they must be climate resilient.