EFFICIENCY MANITOBA
ENERGUIDE RATING HELPS HOMEBUYERS MAKE INFORMED DECISIONS
BY JIM TIMLICK
So, you’ve taken the plunge and decided to purchase a brand new home. Odds are you will spend countless hours perusing a myriad of features such as cabinets and lighting fixtures that are just right for your new dwelling.
H
owever, chances are you will spend far less time thinking about your home’s
with Natural Resources Canada. The purpose of the EnerGuide rating system is to give homebuyers data to better understand their home’s energy performance and what can be done to help reduce energy usage. Obtaining an EnerGuide rating for your new home is a rela- tively simple process. The first step is to inform your builder you want an EnerGuide rating. An independent third-party energy advisor will then input hundreds of details about your home’s design into an energy modelling tool. The tool can be used to optimize your home’s effi- ciency by comparing different assem- blies, materials and technologies in the design stage of planning your new build. For example, it can show the difference between two different types of insulation and how much of an impact each could have on your monthly energy costs. Once that assessment has been completed, the homeowner in conjunction with their builder can then determine what kind of upgrades or approaches they want to take and how much they want to spend on improving the energy effi- ciency of their home.
The purpose of the EnerGuide rating system is to give
EnerGuide rating, if you even think of it at all, which could end up being a huge oversight, according to an energy efficiency specialist with Efficiency Manitoba. “If someone’s thinking about building a new home, including an EnerGuide home energy label is something that you maybe don’t think about as easily as cabinet or countertop choices, but it’s something that should be on that list of must-haves when people are envisioning what has to be in this new house,” Allison Lund says. “An EnerGuide rating is one of the more beneficial investments that you’ll make as a homebuyer simply because it’s using energy modelling to measure and compare the impacts of systems and materials in design and speak to that informed choices piece. It gives the homeowner and the builder data they can rely on that is tailored to that one-of-a-kind home.” The EnerGuide program has been around for some time and is backed by the federal government through Natural Resources Canada. All partic- ipating builders must be registered
homebuyers data to better understand their home’s energy performance and what can be done to help reduce energy usage .
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SPRING 2025 PARADE of HOMES 59
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