The Manitoba R-2000 Home Program is your complete solution to building a better new home.

Looking for a good builder?

It all starts and ends with your critical selection of a good builder — someone who can take responsibility for your dream. By contracting with a licensed R-2000 Builder, you access the knowledge and experience working for you to build your new home to the highest performance standards.

Knowledge is the key to a superior R-2000 Builder. Mastery of the principles and practices of building energy efficient, durable, healthy homes is not a simple process. R-2000 Builders must take training in R-2000 building techniques and understand how to create a house as a system that provides healthier indoor air quality and reduced environmental impacts while saving homeowners money through the lowest possible utility costs. R-2000 Builders must maintain their position as industry leaders by taking continuous technical update training.

Committed, licensed R-2000 Builders don’t mind being held accountable for the quality of the work they produce. In fact, they welcome R-2000’s third party quality assurance procedures to confirm that they indeed produce a better product than their competition.

Decisions, decisions…

Before the ground breaks, we take the time to help you make fully informed decisions to optimize the design on all the energy, indoor air quality and environmental related aspects of your new home.

Upon enrolling your home in the R-2000 Program, you will benefit from working with one of Manitoba R-2000 Home Program’s Licensed Design Evaluators. These individuals have many years experience working in the residential construction industry and are experts in constructing a house as a system to meet or exceed R-2000 standards.

Keep in mind that R-2000 is a performance ‘standard’. As such, you are not told that you must use a specific type of window or x-amount of insulation. Instead, our standard states that you cannot use more than a certain amount of energy on a yearly basis to provide heating, hot water and ventilation for your particular individual home design.

Your individual house plans will be analyzed with a computer program called HOT2000. With your home modeled within the program, all upgrade options available to you can be considered to help you make the correct decision on that component to meet R-2000 standards. For example, you could determine: How much energy would I save by increasing the attic insulation from R-40 to R-50? How would energy consumption be affected and what are the benefits of using a ground sourced heat pump as opposed to a furnace to heat my house? What are the benefits of upgrading to a high performance window?

Some R-2000 home owners get intimately involved with this part of the R-2000 process and consult their Design Evaluator for details on all matters. Others simply ask their builder to have their design meet R-2000 and leave it to the builder to work out the most cost effective design.

Once we have helped you make all the proper choices regarding the construction of your new home it’s time to start building.

Construction phase

Enter the construction of your home with the full support of the Manitoba R-2000 Home Program behind you. Your design evaluator remains available to you throughout construction to work with you and your R-2000 Builder to iron out any technical difficulties. Should the inevitable change take place, we help by providing our opinion on the impact of the revision being considered.

On-site quality assurance procedures

At the end of construction, a commissioning procedure of the home takes place to ensure the house meets R-2000 standards and functions as intended by the design evaluation done previously. This allows any potential problems to be identified through R-2000 testing and inspections and be corrected by your R-2000 Builder.

A Licensed R-2000 Inspector and Air Tightness Tester will visit your home, usually in the presence of your R-2000 Builder, and perform a final inspection. A blower door test is done to determine the airtightness of the outside walls and ceiling of the house to either confirm that your builder has done a good job or identify leakage areas for correction.

Should your house design incorporate a wood burning fireplace, a depressurization test is performed to ensure that the flue vents properly and will not backdraft carbon monoxide or particulates into the house.

A visual inspection is conducted on all the R-2000 energy related house components to check that they are installed and operating correctly as envisioned during your original design evaluation. For example, is the correct amount of attic insulation installed? Have the windows been changed from the original design in size or quality?

Your home’s heating system is tested to assess that it is sized properly and is distributing its heat correctly to all rooms. For forced air systems that means measuring air flows at the furnace and on each room’s supply air grill. Your contractor is advised on balancing corrections as necessary and you are left with comfortable even temperatures throughout all areas of the house.

The Heat Recovery Ventilation system is also thoroughly checked. Supply and exhaust air flows are measured to ensure that the contractor has properly balanced the unit and it is supplying the correct amount of air. This is a very important step. Should the HRV be out of air flow balance it can cause a multitude of problems ranging from frozen door locks to moisture deterioration of wood framing. The correct operation of all HRV controls are confirmed along with the proper installation of all other system components such as supply and exhaust hood locations. These checks & balances ensure the operation of the ventilation system provides you with superior indoor air quality for your family’s health.

Mistakes, although not intentional, do happen. This final quality assurance procedure regular highlights defects which are corrected by the R-2000 Builder. Defects which would have gone unnoticed in conventional homes and resulted in various degrees of performance inefficiencies for the homeowners.

• When a visual inspection takes place on the installation of all R-2000 componants…
• When you measure the air tightness of the house…
• When you measure the depressurization caused by exhaust fans…
• When you measure air flows through ventilation systems…
• When you measure air flows through heating systems…

Their correct operation & performance is assured.

Final R-2000 certification

It is only after the house passes all the final tests and inspections that it becomes officially certified as an R-2000 Home.

You will be provided with a R-2000 Home certificate. In addition a sticker will be installed on your electrical panel designating your home “R-2000”. Should you ever misplace your wall certificate, the sticker will always be there to display your R-2000 Home enrollment number. And at any time you can call the national R-2000 Program office, quote your house number and find out information on your home.

In addition, once your home has been certified under the Manitoba R-2000 Home program, the technical support of the program stays with the house through your provincial office.

Costs

*Payment due upon receipt of application
** Payment due prior to or on-site at the time of inspection

Please make cheques payable to Manitoba Hydro.

View more information on costs