When I was young, our family had an annual tradition, at the beginning of each spring we would load up the station wagon and drive up to my Uncle’s cottage in Grand Bend. It was sort of our way to say good-bye to winter and hello to more sunshine and fairer weather. The cottage was built in the early 1900’s and it retained a lot of its character and charm throughout the years. The fireplace was quite rustic; it was made of natural stone boulders of various shades of grey and brown, each as unique as the next with a big thick mantel. Not only was the fireplace quite the focal point, it also served as the main source of heat for the cottage. Often those early spring days still presented us with some cooler temperatures at night and into the early morning, and since the windows were made of wooden frames and single pane glass, my mom always made sure we packed some thick sweaters and socks to keep warm. I still remember on very cold mornings my cousins and I would use our fingers to draw and write our names on the frost that would form on the inside of our bedroom windows. The cottage would be over 100 years old now and as a builder I’m amazed at how far the science of building a home has come.
Living responsibly and comfortably is driving the future of how we build our homes and communities. As we begin to build West 5, we have the opportunity to leverage decades of building experience plus access to the latest technology in building energy efficient homes.
Our West 5 homes will be a showcase of how we build homes to exceed Energy Star guidelines and feature technologies that deliver excellent air quality, consistent temperatures from room to room, and help manage humidity levels from season to season.
I can only image how much my aunt and uncle would have benefited from these advances. The cottage would have been consistently warmer and the windows would have had consistently fewer fingerprints.
Richard
