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Comment by dleslie | Hacker News Reader

In Pemberton, no less. An outdoor pool, _very_ large windows, open/not-enclosed outdoor patios, etc etc. They've basically planned to heat the outdoors when it is below 0C a few months out of the year; and most of the year it's below 18C. And all that exposed, non-insulated concrete. The thermal mass they have to heat is practically unbounded. Bonkers.

They're going to have a hell of the time with the weathering on that siding and roof in 10y, too.

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Single-glazed windows, by the look of it. I was expecting triple.

... Yuuup.

I knew a person who tried to put in triple-glaze, in New Westminster, BC, and it took a special lien on the property along with special approval from the Province because they weren't allowed by the building codes at the time.

That was ~10y ago, so maybe it's changed now.

Edit: I saw someone else building a cabin with similar windows recently. They are double pane, they are just some sort of frameless unit, held together by the strip of black material around the edge. Whether they work probably comes down to how well the installer seals around the edge of the window.

And while the sliding glass doors look like they are single paned, look at the quadruple reflection. Isn't that usually caused by multiple sheets of glass in close proximity?

The external framing is also 2x6, so someone was thinking about insulation. I think it's just that after declaring victory on a well insulated house they then decided to heat the outdoors anyway by directly heating things that are out of doors.

Yes, I'm sure those are at least double pane. Modern windows (especially high end) can be both energy efficient and nice looking. Same goes for their concrete walls--its quite likely that they have insulation in wall cavities or embedded directly in the concrete itself. That being said--I'm sure it still costs a pretty penny to heat in the winter. Its just probably not as bad as you might think.

> Modern windows (especially high end) can be both energy efficient

Yes, compared to other windows. Compared to a well-insulated wall with external insulation and 6" of interior insulation, they're not great.

Good windows are an R5. A well-insulated wall cavity can easily be an R30.

That's the 'value engineering'.

Only if it doesn't burn down first in a forest fire.

Are there forest fires as far north as Vancouver? It gets wet & cold up there. I though forest fires was mostly a California problem.

Oh yes, yes there are.

Millions of hectares burn down every year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_British_Columbia_wildfire...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_British_Columbia_wildfire...

Last year an entire town disappeared:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-sept-7-2...

Dang, what makes the west coast so prone to burning? I've lived on the east coast all my life and have never encountered a wild fire. The biggest fires we get are ~1000 acres[1], and easily contained.

[1] https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/2021/05/17/larg...

The west coast has large tracts of unoccupied, I maintained forest land, and a more Mediterranean climate (wet then much drier).

The two combine into large, periodic forest Fires.

The east coast has much fewer unbroken tracts of forest, and where it does have them they are more heavily managed and stewarded for a number of reasons.

The east coast was developed and property subdivided/allocated long before the tendency towards large national parks, monuments, etc.

It isn’t that these national parks or forests cause all these problems (though many of them DO feature prominently in these huge fires), they are also a sign of the very different nature of land allocation during the settling of the area.

You can see this pretty clearly if you pull up maps of federal land (national forests, national parks, blm land, etc). Several western states have more land owned by the federal government than anyone else.

They are all out west.

We have two seasons in BC, Avalanche[0] and Wildfire[1] - other than that, it's the "Best Place on Earth"

[0]https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-an...

[1]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/f0ac328d88c74d07aa2ee...

Oregon was on fire most of 2020.

And the pine beetles are doing a number on BC. It's only a matter of time before those catch on fire.

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