Electrify Your House or Multiplex To Avoid High Energy Costs

The Ongoing Argument To Abandon Fossil Fuels

If you don't adjust how your new house or multiplex is designed, the cost to heat the home and its water could possibly double in the near future.

Taking a lesson from the article below could avoid your space heating and water heating bills going way up. The present events in the Middle East could resolve in a way that results in a sustained, far higher price for fossil fuels. Iran is writing legislation to charge a toll for the passage of oil shipments, Russia's ability to export oil is being reduced by Ukrainian attacks, and new Asian trade deals will begin to relieve the bottled-up supply of Canadian natural gas.

Many new homes - single family houses and multigenerational homes alike - still are being built with gas ranges, gas water heaters, and sometimes "high-efficiency" or "dual-fuel" furnaces or boiler-fed hydronic heating systems. These homes dependent on fossil fuels are vulnerable to volatile natural gas prices. In Vancouver where greenhouse gas emissions calculations are part of a building permit, you can still install gas-fired equipment. Although the Hormuz crisis cuts the supply of primarily fuel oils, it also may eventually raise the price of natural gas here in BC due to Asia's increased appetite for Canadian liquefied natural gas (LNG). As the federal government continues funding innovation, it may in the future reinstate the carbon tax. Homes that use natural gas will see their bills balloon; it's just a matter of when.

First, I'll review six big myths around designing to 100% electric supply; then I'll point out a few major advantages.

Myths About Electricity To Replace Natural Gas

Myth #1 The Electrical Service Will Be Too Big and Too Expensive

Your current mobile phone isn't the same size as the ones from 40 years ago - those giant bricks that needed a battery the size of a small child. We haven't discovered some magic that shrunk the phone. The design of the phones evolved and miniaturized in the same way most tech does. If you design a building to be as inefficient and primitive as the ones from 50 years ago, yes the electrical service required will be enormous.

Electrifying a building's design doesn't create the problem of a massive service; it instead reveals the inherent problem that a gas pipe hides: inefficient design. Designing to meet the current building code's energy "efficiency" requirements is a little better, but projects which follow that plan often face larger services, transformer upgrades, and difficult conversations with BC Hydro. The root cause is almost always unmanaged PEAK demand - how much power is needed for everything running at the same time.

The most effective approach to avoiding expensive supply is to reduce the load. A high-performance envelope does most of that work. Airtightness and insulation are not upgrades in this context; they are the primary means of shrinking the problem to a manageable scale. The arithmetic is unremarkable yet key: eliminating demand is typically less expensive than building the capacity for it, and unlike fancy heating and cooling equipment, a better building envelope can perform for nearly a century.

The remaining loads - domestic water heating, cooking, and vehicle charging - don't need to draw from the grid simultaneously, yet they are assumed to. Automatic redistribution of the electrical supply is another innovation that puts this bed to myth, and I cover it further down. Address peak demand at its source, and the perceived problem of infrastructure shrinks, along with the size of the utility.

Myth #2 Electric Heating Is Expensive and Inefficient

The criticism holds in the typical condition: a building that loses heat easily and requires a constant, high input to remain comfortable. Under those circumstances, resistance heating will be expensive and localized to wherever there's a baseboard heater or heated floor. An electric furnace is likewise expensive because you need a massive element to heat the air going into the blower... and out through the walls.

Change the building, and the argument changes with it.

When the walls, roof, and windows are more airtight and better insulated, the heating demand drops to the point where system efficiency becomes a secondary concern. You're losing less heat (or cooling in the summer), so you simply need to deliver less energy.

The heating elements aren't inefficient - only the overall building configuration. Resistance heating (baseboards, electric underfloor heat) is 100% efficient, and you feel the immediate response for example in a tiled bathroom with in-floor heat. That doesn't scale efficiently for the whole house though, so we bring in the magic heat pump.

Heat pumps remain a strong choice for larger zones. They're great because they can do both heating and cooling and they're magic because they're more than 100% efficient - somewhere around 300%-400%*. You get more heat energy in or out than electrical energy you pump in.

(* This is a simplified statement for the sake of this article. To the eggheads: I do understand where the extra kinetic energy's coming from.)

Myth #3 Electric Systems Are Uncomfortable or Crude

What is often described as a problem with electric heating is, in practice, a symptom of uneven heat loss and uneven heat supply. This picks up from where I discuss the "inefficiency myth" of electric heating. Baseboard radiators heat the air directly in front of them, and that heat floats up. Four feet away, and you feel cold. The cool air at the floor replaces the heated air, and you've got a draft. The exterior walls are cold, the floor is cold, yet it's too warm and stuffy at head height. Anything touching the baseboards melts or burns. I still carry a grudge over the tiny burn holes in my jacket sleeve. The surfaces in the room aren't getting the heat, and your body can feel that (radiative asymmetry).

Key to ultra high-performance is understanding current building science and technology. The first disproof of this myth itself is the effectiveness of an electric in-floor heating mat, as touched on above. Heat is uniform everywhere, and your feet are as comfortable as much as your head. Without improving your walls and roof (and floor) though, you run into the 'expensive' issue. Better insulation results in interior surfaces that aren't constantly losing a great amount of heat, so they warm up and tend to stay warm.

With a better building envelope, there's a way to improve even further - an ERV. The ERV recovers the heat in outgoing air, but it also recovers the moisture. A furnace blowing hot air through the house can make the air dry because of how its supply stream works. The air coming from the ERV feels more comfortable - not just fresher - and it's being supplied all the time at a low speed. You don't feel or hear the airstream unless you put your hand right up to the diffuser.

As with heating mats, you can also design a heat pump system in zones to allow different parts of a multigenerational home to respond to their own schedules rather than a single averaged condition. Where specific areas require additional heating or cooling, localized radiant elements can address them without introducing unnecessary complexity across the entire building, unlike gas-fired equipment.

Comfort follows performance. Once the building stops working against the system, the system no longer needs to compensate.

Myth #4 Hot Water Performance Without Gas

Some people believe that an electric hot water system's recovery rate isn't enough to keep pace with periods of high demand. Unfortunately, they're right... unless you look into options.

A typical gas-fired hot water heater tank once emptied of all heated water will bring the cold water more quickly than a typical electric hot water heater tank, but if you've installed a small instantaneous hot water heater, the system is adding as much heat as a gas-fired unit. Note that the added instant heater is only running if you've used up all the hot water and are still drawing more. One of the items in my SAPPHR Strategy is determining what your water use habits are.

Sizing the water tank itself to suit the total required capacity can avoid the need for an additional heater and for the extra electrical capacity to run it. Instead of a standard 40-gallon tank, perhaps 65 gallons or 80 gallons would suit your needs - enough for everyone who showers within a 2-hour window, the time for a heater to recharge. To knock down the total electrical consumption, you can take it one step further and install a hybrid heat pump water heater. The energy consumption to reheat the water and keep it hot is about 2/3 that of a traditional electric tank.

The last aspect of hot water tanks to consider is how much heat is being lost to the home. If the plumbing fixture (shower, washing machine, sink, etc.) is located far from the water heater, the entire length of piping radiates heat. Except in Passive House and sometimes Net Zero homes, these are not typically insulated. The hot water may leave the tank at 55°C but reach the fixture at 45-50°C; you're turning the hot water tap more to compensate. This translates to hot water running out about 10% sooner than it would if there was negligible drop with short, well-insulated pipe runs.

Myth #5 Electrification and Outage Vulnerability

Probably the second line item when discussing a home's climate resilience is how to survice power outages. The idea that an all-electric home becomes dead in the water during a power outage, while a gas-equipped home could continue to operate, is largely based on outdated assumptions of how these systems work.

This article is about electrification as an energy source, so I will only briefly mention that a Passive House home can remain comfortably warm for more than a day in the middle of winter with no power. It simply loses heat far more slowly. Similarly, a single-family house will heat up in the summer less quickly. But - onto the comparison with gas supply.

A typical forced-air gas furnace has an electronic ignition, control board, and blower fan. No electricity means no heat, full stop. What if you have a gas-fired hydronic heating system? Most modern gas boilers rely on pumps and controls. Without power, space heating hot water does not circulate, unlike your domestic hot water system which uses the city's water pressure to move.

Gas fireplaces sometimes still work without power, but only if they have a standing pilot and gravity venting. Many newer ones have electronic ignition or fans, so they fail too. Gas ranges are the main exception. Many can be lit manually, but that gives you a cooktop - not space heating or hot water. Is your refrigerator gas-fired? Of course not. Your iced cream's well-being still depends on BC Hydro's restoration crews.

Here's where I get excited - battery storage. Batteries have proven their worth as a power reserve. In South Australia, the Hornsdale Power Reserve reportedly knocked tens of millions of dollars off consumer costs within its first year and is earning the utility tens of millions of dollars in revenue from selling power.

You're not a power utility, but having power backup for your house can do several things. First, if you have solar panels, you can use the stored, free energy when you need it - offsetting how much you use from the power company. A net zero home typically has solar panels, so this storage extends the benefit of the PV investment. Second, batteries can charge overnight when rates are low and provide the power during peak rate times - or during a power outage. Third, if you've reduced your total electrical loads enough, then solar power could be enough for you not to have to pull any electricity from the grid at all. Some people who have a connection - because it's mandated - don't actually use any electricity from the grid. If the grid happens to have gone down, it doesn't matter to them.

Myth #6 Preference for Gas Cooking

The attachment to gas cooking is less about performance and more about familiarity or about prestige. Comparisons are made against outdated coil burner cooktops that no longer reflect current options. Disregarding the fact that gas appliances have been proven by EPA studies to be leaking contaminants even when turned off - and to produce more pollutants when operating - gas cooktops belong in history books.

Celebrity chefs and cooking TV shows have tapped into ancient humans' fascination with fire and romanticized the gas-fired cooktop, but the functional argument is "instant on, instant off". How many people are cooking enough dishes simultaneously and in rapid succession (as a restaurant chef would) that they need the responsiveness that a gas cooktop provides? A coil burner suffices for almost all the food that almost everyone cooks - you can fight me on that if you want.

Let's say you don't like the ugly coil burners, don't want to clean the drip pans, and don't like burner covers - even the ones without a scorch mark. Glass cooktops have been around for quite a while. They can be installed separately from an oven, giving you the same freedom as one has with gas cooktops.

If you believe yourself to be an Iron Chef and need immediate response from the cooktop, induction cooktops provide that. The only caveat is that they won't work with aluminum (why are you cooking with aluminum!?) or copper. Some stainless steel pots and pans may also not be suitable, but one does not need exotic cookware for an induction cooktop - just magnetic metal.

Advantages of 100% Electric Homes

Advantage #1 Eliminating Fossil Fuels – Health and Regulatory Stability

Run a gas cooktop in a closed kitchen, and the air starts to change. It is subtle, but it builds. Remove the fuel source, and that buildup is no longer occurring.

There is no combustion taking place inside the building, so there is nothing to vent, dilute, or manage after the fact. The indoor environment remains stable because it is not being altered in the first place.

The longer-term effect shows up in how the building carries cost. Gas consumption is being priced more aggressively each year, and equipment tied to that fuel is being regulated more tightly. An all-electric building steps around that path. In British Columbia, the grid is already low in carbon intensity, so the operating profile remains comparatively steady.

At a broader scale, reduced demand is working in the same direction. A tighter, better-insulated envelope lowers the total energy required, easing the load on generation and distribution. The building is drawing less, and less infrastructure is needed to support it.

Advantage #2 Electrification Enables Smarter Energy Use

A high-performance house loses heat slowly, which allows energy use to shift rather than occur immediately. The interior temperature drifts within a narrow range, and the system responds on its own timing instead of reacting to every loss.

Electrical systems take advantage of that flexibility. Heating and cooling can be occurring when demand is lower or when energy is available, while the space remains comfortable throughout the day.

At the panel, the difference becomes practical. Conventional design assumes multiple circuits running at full capacity at once, which leads to larger services. In reality, you don't have everything running at the same time. A number of things, sure, but still just a small fraction. A load management system measures demand and redistributes available power as conditions change.

If several large loads call at the same time, one is being delayed or reduced so the total stays within a defined limit. The capacity is used fully, but not all at once. This allows the incoming service to be smaller without limiting function.

In a multigenerational home, differing schedules reinforce that effect. Demand is spread a bit more over the course of a day, and control systems can do a better job of juggling the demands. Energy use becomes more coordinated and less cumulative.

Advantage #3 Cooling Changes the Equation

Once upon a time, one could open the windows if the house got too hot. Once upon a time, people lived in the countryside or in suburbs where there was a lot of space between homes and no laptops giving off heat. That time has passed, and the climate is shifting - hotter hots, colder cold - so active cooling is now a requirement in some jurisdictions in the Lower Mainland of BC. Even the Passive House standard has acknowledged this and instead of relying solely in "nighttime flushing" has incorporated a section to account for hotter weather in the future.

Again because I'm focusing on energy supply choice, I'll walk past the argument for improving the design to reduce the amount of active cooling required. Cooling equipment is sized for peak loads though. So is heating equipment. The electrical loads for your furnace or hydronic heating pump mentioned above are ADDED to the electrical loads from a standalone AC system despite the fact that obviously only one system or another will be used at a time.

If only there was a device that could do both heating and cooling... guess what? That magic heat pump I mentioned earlier can not only pump heat into a house but also pump heat out, giving you a stream of cooled air. For a house or multiplex, there are no gas-fired options. The side benefit is that you have half the equipment to maintain and eventually replace when it reaches the end of its life - one heat pump instead of a furnace and an AC system. At that point, electrification is no longer a compromise. The building has been adjusted so that an electric system can carry both heating and cooling without strain. If you want to know more about heat pumps, I go into more detail halfway through my article, "How Does A Heat Pump System Work?" (link).

I have been working on building performance for decades, and over the past ten years that work has been grounded in Passive House and its focus on efficiency. I focus on how buildings actually behave – where heat is lost, and where systems work against each other.

That orchestration carries through the design to optimize the systems. When the envelope is doing its job, the mechanical systems can be smaller. When loads are understood clearly, electrical demand can be managed instead of expanded. Each decision is connected, and the building is designed to perform as a whole.

These are long-term buildings, often shared across generations. They should be comfortable and reliable without relying on excess equipment. I approach performance as a way to simplify the building and make that outcome achievable and affordable. Imagine your home not having any gas or power bills but still feeling comfortable at night in the dead of winter and as comfortable during a summer heatwave. On top of that, you have fresh air circulating through your home instead of petrochemical vapours floating around.

Designing a building - house, multiplex, or any other - is a process; it's not just jotting down a floor plan and then revising it until it "feels right". Many people don't understand that, so I created a guide to the architectural design process. You can download your free copy using the button below.

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If you're not sure if you want to install a natural gas supply for your next home, you can book a free 30-minute call with me at this link:

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DISCLAIMER:

The information included in this article is to an extent generic and intended for educational and informational purposes only; it does not constitute legal or professional advice. Thorough efforts are made to ensure the accuracy of the article, but having read this article, you understand and agree that Daniel Clarke Architect Inc. disclaims any legal liability for actions that may arise from reliance on the information provided in this article. I am an architect in BC, but readers are recommended to consult with their own architect on their specific situations before making any decisions or exercising judgement base on information in the article.

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