Students set to break ground on affordable, net-zero house
This article was originally published on À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ News.
A student design team at the University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ is scheduled to begin work soon on a 130-year-old house in Kitchener that it is redesigning and retrofitting to become a net-zero, energy-efficient home for an Indigenous family.
The project, undertaken in partnership with the Kitchener-À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ Urban Native Wigwam Project (KWUNWP), is student team Warrior Home’s entry in a high-profile competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The two-year  is slated to culminate in the spring of 2023 with judging of completed energy-efficient homes by student teams from universities in countries including the U.S., Canada, India and Australia.
The À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ team, which is primarily comprised of students in engineering programs, will mark an important milestone on its way to that event with a  at the building site at 32 Mill Street in the Victoria Park neighbourhood of Kitchener at 4 p.m.
Retrofitting the two-storey house, which was built in the 1890s, is expected to cost $150,000. It has been vacant for several years since À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ Region donated it to KWUNWP, an Indigenous non-profit group, as part of an affordable housing initiative.
The last  project involved the construction of a net-zero bungalow for an Indigenous family on a reserve in the Owen Sound area north of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ. It took second place in the 2021 finals of the competition.