How efficient are new homes here?
The typical newly built, as-built-tested home across every record in this view.
Climbing the code tiers
Canada's National Building Code sets tiered energy-performance levels (Tier 1 = base code, Tier 5 = net-zero-ready). As the code ratchets up, new builds are being pushed higher up the ladder.
Each bar is one year of newly built homes, split by the energy tier they achieved. Tiers were only recorded on evaluations from 2024 on, so earlier years are sparse. Higher tiers (darker green) use progressively less energy than base code.
The whole tier mix, before and after. Homes that beat their design tier outnumber those that fall short by more than ten to one — much of that is plan files filed at Tier 0 or 1 that test far better once the blower door goes in.
Getting tighter every year
Air leakage is one of the clearest signs of build quality. Both audits carry a figure: the plan file's modelled value, and the blower-door result on the finished house. Lower is tighter.
Median across all new homes evaluated that year. Both lines are falling, and the gap between them has held: builders keep beating the value their plan model assumed.
Negative (green) = the finished house tested tighter than its plan model assumed; positive (red) = leakier.
Read the design figure as an assumption, not a measurement. Most plan files carry a round default value — 3.6, 4.5 and 2.5 ACH₅₀ account for most of them — rather than a per-house target, so this compares what the model assumed against what the house actually tested.
Blower-door result across every as-built home in this view — not the design/build gap shown above, just how tight the finished houses actually are.
How new homes are insulated
Insulation level, by building component, across every as-built home in this view — shown in R-value, the imperial unit most commonly quoted in Canada (R = RSI × 5.68).
Unlike airtightness, insulation levels are essentially fixed at the design stage — they rarely move between the plan file and the finished house.
Do they perform as designed?
Every new home is modelled twice: once from the plans (as designed) and again after it's built and blower-door tested (as built). Comparing the two shows whether the finished house lives up to its design. Both sides are shown as energy use intensity — total modelled energy ÷ floor area — so homes of different sizes compare on the same scale.
Each point is a home (or, province-wide, a cluster of homes): horizontal = its design EUI, vertical = its as-built EUI. On or below the dashed line means the finished home matched or beat its design. Lower = less energy.
Negative (green) = the finished home tested better than its design model; positive (red) = worse. Most homes cluster at or just below zero.
Energy & emissions of a new home
How much energy a typical new home is modelled to use, and the greenhouse gases that come with it.
Total modelled annual energy ÷ floor area. Lower is more efficient. Values above 400 kWh/m²/yr are clipped for scale.
Modelled annual operating emissions. The cluster near zero is electrically heated homes on low-carbon grids; the hump to the right is gas-heated homes.
What's being built, and how it's heated
The mix of house types, heating fuels, and sizes among newly built homes — and how the fuel mix is shifting over time.
Top 5 most common outdoor heat-pump units installed in as-built new homes in this view, grouped by brand + outdoor model number. Each line shows heating capacity at 47°F and 5°F outdoor temperature, HSPF2 (seasonal heating efficiency), COP at 5°F, and cold-climate status where on file — click the AHRI number for its directory page. Only certificate numbers that resolve in the AHRI directory are counted: on new construction 79% of non-empty HPAHRI values are a literal 0, and a further 540 installs carry a number with no certificate behind it.
Share of new homes each year by primary heating fuel. Gas still dominates most new construction; watch the electricity share for signs of electrification.
The most efficient new homes
The 20 lowest-EUI as-built homes in this view — real houses, not a hypothetical best case.
| # | EUI | Area | House type | Year built | Floor area | Heating fuel | Heat pump |
|---|
Ranked by measured EUI, lowest first, within the current filters — click a row for insulation, airtightness, tier and heating-equipment detail. A handful of very small or unusual homes can post extreme low values, so read this list alongside the median above, not as a substitute for it.