Greening Guelph

“They say the greenest home is the one you don’t have to build,” says David Brix, president of Terra View Homes, a developer and home builder in Guelph, Ontario. This may seem like an odd sentiment coming from a guy who builds green homes for a living, but when you understand Brix’s design approach, it starts to make a little more sense.

“When I design a house, I try to design around adaptability,” he says. “If you can possibly meet a family’s needs over decades, they never have to move again.” By incorporating countless green principles and technologies into every one of Terra View’s projects, Brix has helped the firm raise the bar for green home builders across Ontario.

Andrew Lambden is the founder of Terra View Homes and is a seasoned entrepreneur. He’s also Brix’s best friend from high school. When Brix, with a degree in science and a diploma in architectural design, found himself in the market for a job, Terra View was a perfect fit.

Brix has been with the firm for 16 years, the last five of which Terra View has been pushing green building. This focus began when Lambden and Brix attended the first annual West Coast Green conference in the Bay Area, back in 2006. “The people who attended … were all pumped!” Brix says. “We were all talking about how to build better and smarter, using less resources.”

Upon returning to Ontario, Brix and Lambden decided they wanted to focus on green building, which had yet to find much of a footing in Guelph’s residential sector. Terra View joined the Energy Star pilot program, and since then, every one of its homes has been built to Energy Star standards or higher. But even though Brix and Lambden were growing increasingly fired up about green building, public awareness was still lagging behind.

Fortunately, in 2009, Rotary International gave Terra View a chance to close that gap a little. For the annual Dream Home raffle, Terra View was invited to design and build that year’s home, and the firm took the opportunity to showcase the advantages of not only the Energy Star program but also the LEED Platinum and Green House certifications. The house was on display for almost four months, giving Terra View an invaluable opportunity to educate the local community. But when a winner was drawn for the house, Terra View lost its model—so it built another one.

Opened recently, Terra View’s new model home incorporates some new technologies and has added a fourth certification, Built Green Platinum, to the original three. Labels throughout the home detail the benefits of each feature in terms of savings, water conservation, air quality, energy efficiency, overall sustainability, and more. “It’s a fantastic tool for us,” Brix says. The home gives people the chance to see green technologies at work and gives them a real-world sense for each of the different green-building standards.

But no matter what standard is used or the certification pursued, the bottom line for Terra View is building homes that are as good for the homeowner as they are for the planet. “We do things in our houses that we feel the homeowner would benefit from and that are smart to do, whether they’re required or not,” Brix says.