We're excited and optimistic about the future of sustainable housing
Roost Custom Builders has been among a few trail blazers in the Winnipeg residential building and renovation industry who have been focusing on deep energy retrofits. We value this as a way to lower the environmental impact of our client's homes while giving them the spaces of their dreams. We've discovered there is a lot of low hanging fruit when doing extensive renovations and additions to Winnipeg's existing housing stock in terms of improving the performance of these homes. This can be as simple as adding insulation and an air barrier to the walls that we open up all the way to wrapping the entire exterior of a home from foundation to roof peak in a thick layer of insulation.
We've learned a lot, from the smallest details to the big picture
To do these kinds of renovations well one needs to understand the science behind our buildings. The reason a 100 year old house doesn't fail (i.e. the frame rots away) is different from what keeps a new energy efficient house from failing. Buildings are systems and when you try to apply new practices to old buildings without understanding the impacts of those changes to how the building is behaving as a system you can make things worse rather than better.
We believe knowledge, experience, and wisdom should be shared.
Roost is a passionate group of people who understand the science behind what they are doing. This includes a commitment to continuing to learn from all levels of our organization. Whether it is through industry publications, other professionals on social media, courses at educational institutions, or retired neighbors who can shine a light on how they use to do things 50 years ago.
We have taken apart and put back together many homes over the years and have seen what has worked and what hasn't and we have applied that knowledge to our unique projects. After sharing our process on instagram and facebook for quite a few years we have found a community of people eager to learn about how we build. The construction industry can be a very secretive one with people not wanting the competition to know their 'secrets' but at Roost we are taking a different approach.
We firmly believe that by sharing how we build and what we have learned, we can make deep energy retrofits, high performance building, and sustainable design more accessible in an effort to make a greater impact on the challenges facing our climate than what we could do alone.
What you can expect in the comings months and years
This blog is designed to go more in depth on some of the topics we have touched on in our instagram posts and answer some of the questions we get about the how and why of the way we build. We hope you will find this valuable and educational.
Curious about a topic? Lets connect!