The Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes, senior committee in a national consensus structure dedicated to the writing of model codes under the auspices of the National Research Council of Canada, is preparing a new Canadian energy efficiency code for new buildings, to replace the Measures for Energy Conservation in New Buildings, published in 1978 and 1983.
The Canadian Code for Energy Efficiency in New Houses will feature prescribed thermal characteristics of the envelope components of houses. These will be selected primarily on the basis of life cycle cost. A new method was developed to perform the life cycle cost evaluations of energy efficiency options for walls, roofs, windows and basement walls, based on their performance within the energy system of a house. Existing analytic techniques were adapted to perform the energy analysis and life cycle cost calculations.
Building codes that address radon control in residential buildings are a relatively new development in the larger trend toward increased efforts to understand and control indoor air quality. A residential radon construction standard has been developed in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. The Northwest Residential Radon Standard (NRRS) seeks to provide a measured public policy response that is commensurate with current knowledge of both the health risk and the state of building science.
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