losing sight of affordability.” “And we want to be leaders in the industry,” he adds. “Wewant other builders in our region to follow in our footsteps. We want to be the example. We want people to look at us and see what we’re doing and realize that, ‘yes, we can do this, we can build efficiently, and we do it a price point that makes sense – and we know for sure we can do it, because there’s a builder that’s doing it already.’ That’s our goal.” That goal is what inspired J. Zsiros Contracting to build Vancouver Island’s first Net Zero home. Jim remembers hearing about the first one in Canada being built in Victoria, but that was a build valued at more than $3.5 million. The other Net Zero homes that were coming out were also valued at over $1 million. Jim wanted to prove to clients – and to other builders – that you could achieve Net Zero while still on a budget. “We were fortunate to find some clients who believed in energy efficiency, who were interested ingreenbuilding, and who cared about more about emissions than they did about having a $100,000 kitchen,” Jim says. “That really excited us, because we wanted to build a house that was Net Zero but at a price point under $1 million. We wanted to prove that you didn’t need a million dollars to do this; you just needed to have the right priorities.” Initially, Jim recalls that even the client on that first home was skeptical they could achieve Net Zero within their budget. When Jim first asked if they had heard of the concept, they said they had, but that it was out of their price range. SEPTEMBER 2022
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