Frequently Asked Questions

A primary focus of our principal over the past twenty years has been to improve the comfort, health & safety of Canadian homes. Over the years that focus expanded along with the scope of activity until he found himself at the heart of the sustainable homebuilding industry, helping to design and deliver green building programs. BEC Consulting inherited our principal’s focus, and we continue our principal’s work to improve Canada’s housing stocks, one home, one builder and one community at a time.

Exemplary performance requires discipline in the areas of both design and construction, and as a consequence our services have undergone a natural evolution until they are now divided into design support activities on the one hand, and compliance verification activities such as performance testing & inspection on the other. Our dual role as allows us to help manage projects from concept to completion. One business division ensures that the designs we help originate represent the best of green building science while the other division works to ensure that homes based on those designs are constructed in compliance with the design intent.

Our clients come from the both new homebuildng and renovation industries, and are primarily building professionals such as architects, designers, builders, and renovation contractors, but they also include a healthy measure of individual homeowners.

Yes, BEC Consulting is licensed by Natural Resources Canada to deliver the ecoENERGY Retrofit-Homes program. However, we are NOT a typical ‘grant mill’ out to provide the lowest cost assessment or just to qualify homeowners for rebates. The ecoENERGY Retrofit-Homes program is just one of four energy efficient housing programs BEC Consulting is licensed by Natural Resources Canada to deliver.

BEC Consulting is also proud to have had our outstanding abilities and proven record of supporting builders in the construction of high performance, sustainable homes recognized by the Canada Green Building Council with our selection as a LEED Canada for Homes provider.

The level of knowledge and training of our staff exceed that typical of other service organizations and energy advisors. Our primary clients are building professionals such as architects, designers, builders, and renovation contractors. Our primary existing houses clients are homeowners who are planning additions or major ‘gut’ retrofits measures designed to deliver exemplary home performance. If you think you already know exactly what improvements are best for your home, or if you are looking for the lowest cost evaluation then we are likely not the service organization for you.

Contrary to popular belief, when it comes to energy efficiency assessments, the number of years delivering the service does not translate into providing better service. When it comes to energy efficiency programs it is definitely a matter of quality over quantity. There are many service organizations whose business is founded on the principle of providing the minimum service acceptable to as many homeowners as possible; some of those companies remain in business for many years, but we wouldn't recommend them.

Fortunately, BEC is NOT one of those companies. We have both years of experience and have a proven record of providing exemplary service and advice to homeowners and industry professionals alike.

Our principal has began managing the delivering thousands of existing home energy assessments in 2004 under the EnerGuide for Houses program. Subsequently our principal went on to manage the EnerGuide for New Houses, ENERGY STAR for New Homes and R-2000 programs in Ontario, overseeing the delivery of thousands of new houses energy assessments, prior to his departure in 2008 to found BEC Consulting. Since 20008, our principal has been BEC’s primary trainer of Certified Energy Advisors ensuring that our Energy Advisors not only possess the requisite technical knowledge, but also that our Energy Advisor’s evaluation services adhere to the industry best practices for performing energy assessments.

In short, BEC Consulting is among the very best of the companies delivering ecoENERGY Retrofit-Homes evaluations. As a provider of a comprehensive range of design and evaluation solutions, our business model does not rely on Government subsidies, grants or rebates, therefore our clients can count on our services being available long after Government incentives have been discontinued and many of our current competitors have closed their doors.

BEC Consulting has both salaried and commissioned energy advisors, and we acknowledge that as a client, you deserve the assurance that advice you receive as part of your energy evaluation service is impartial. A clear and verifiable impartiality policy is a much better indicator of the impartiality of the service than the manner in which the energy advisor is compensated for the service. Therefore we have enacted a strict policy requiring all of our salaried and commissioned staff to exercise their duties with integrity, fairness and impartiality so you may be assured of their impartiality.

BEC Consulting prohibit our advisors of accepting any form of compensation for endorsing any company, product or service during the delivery of the energy evaluation services. Additionally it is important that a service organization themselves do not have a bias imparted by such acts as acting as a product representative, distributor, or vendor or accepting sponsorships or other funding that would prohibit the service organization and their energy advisors from being impartial in the delivery of their services. How impartial can an energy advisor be when recommending heating system upgrades when his parent company sells heating equipment? How can you know whether or not the advisor will receive a commission for helping sell higher cost equipment?

Despite receiving numerous requests to do so, BEC Consulting will not act as a product representative, distributor, or vendor, nor do we solicit or accept sponsorships from product manufacturers, distributors, or vendors as it is our belief that such funding that would prohibit our staff from being impartial in the delivery of our services. As a potential client seeking an energy evaluation this is the real question you should be asking of energy advisors and service organizations

One final word on our impartiality policy, we require our staff to base all statements made in the context of ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes, ENERGY STAR for New Homes and EnerGuide Rating System on facts supported by the energy efficiency evaluation or by research performed by a recognized professional source such as the National Research Council, the Canadian Centres for Housing Technologies, and the Canadian Construction Materials Centre.

When it comes to energy efficiency evaluations, it is definitely a matter of quality over quantity. There are service organizations operating whose business is founded the principle of providing the bare minimum service acceptable; these ‘grant mills’ strive to complete as many assessments a day as possible, often bragging that their advisors complete 4 or more evaluations in a single day. This may be so, but those evaluations definitely lack service quality which will be readily apparent in the evaluation report.

An experienced certified energy advisor should take about 2 hours to complete a thorough energy assessment of the average home; larger or more complex geometry homes, or opting for additional diagnostic services such as duct leakage testing or thermal imaging should take even longer.

Consider the simplest scenario, an advisor has a territory comprised entirely of similar brick bungalows. They may tell you that because of this they can provide faster service. In reality each homeowner is completely different. Each homeowner likely has a different set of expectations, and differing level of knowledge of potential home improvements. Or they may have heard conflicting claims from products sales reps and want expert guidance to help them make a truly informed choice. As part of the assessment an advisor must ascertain a homeowner’s knowledge level as well as their expectations, and communicate their findings and possible solutions to the homeowner as the assessment progresses. Finally the advisor must summarize the upgrade recommendations that will likely be in their final report, as well as address the homeowner’s questions and concerns prior to leaving the home.

In short, beware of short visits. Assessments are neither simple nor clear cut, and that means they take time to do right.

No. In fact, unlike some other service organizations, we are not affiliated with a larger organization that sells energy efficiency products, and while we do offer some other services they are typically provided on a business to business basis to our housing industry clientele. You may rest assured that in no case will our advisor solicit or try to sell you products or services.

Speaking of recommendations… where advisors do make product recommendations they always recommend that our clients ask for and verify references, and compare pricing by obtaining at least 3 quotes for any product or service. We do not advocate that you purchase the lowest price product or service, but rather that you receive a competitive price from a reputable and reliable vendor.

Absolutely. In fact we require that reports be completed the same day as the assessment to assure that the advisors first hand experiences in the home are foremost in their mind as they write their reports.

The reason for this is simple, the advisor is the person with the first hand knowledge of your home. While our assessment process, photo documentation and data collection forms have been professionally developed and are effective tools, advisors must still rely a great deal on industry shorthand, and paraphrased notes in addition to these other tools. They still rely a great deal on that first hand experience within the home and their conversations with the homeowner.

Utilizing a centralized report writing process is a cost saving measure typical of ‘grant mills’. These companies also cut costs by sending less skilled advisors to your home in the first place. When a different individual writes the report much of the data that advisors rely on to write the report is lost. The end result is a cookie cutter report with generic recommendations. That may be okay if all you care about is a one time grant… but if you are seeking to maximize the comfort, health and safety of your home while lowering your energy costs, such reports may be of little value.

BEC assists our professional clients to employ emerging technologies on a daily basis. They rely heavily on our professional knowledge and experience to help them make informed choices. Even though many of our staff has design or engineering backgrounds, BEC Consulting is committed to a continuing education program. In addition to meeting the continuing education requirements for the many accreditations our staff hold, BEC requires our staff members to obtain a minimum number of continuing education credits from external industry sources as well as to obtain continuing education credits by completing our own internal training program which includes workshops in advanced mechanical systems, renewable energy systems and moisture management to name but a few of our workshops.

On a personal level, our staff doesn’t just preach energy efficiency and a green lifestyle, they live it. Given their experience developing energy efficiency optimization strategies this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Among our staff members’ homes conservation practices, power monitors, and ENERGY STAR appliances and CFL lighting are ubiquitous. So too are ultra high efficiency heating and domestic hot water systems – including drain water heat recovery, and both condensing instantaneous and storage type water heaters. Both solar thermal water heating and photovoltaic systems are also present in several of their homes… the list goes on.

Now we are the first to admit that for some staff it comes down to the economic benefit more than just helping to support the environment. Just as with many of our builder clients, many of our staff adopt green practices because it makes good economic and business sense rather than for the environmental benefit.

On a corporate level our commitment to the environment runs deep. Our work extends far beyond providing simple energy assessments, at its core our work with production homebuilders is designed to increase the efficiency with which their homes use resources — energy, water, and materials — to reduce their homes’ impacts on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle.

As part of our corporate stewardship BEC Consulting donates professional services to Ontario Habitat for Humanity affiliates to help them achieve their vision for sustainable communities in Canada. We also support the activities of Ontario Stewardship Councils. Stewardship Councils provide a framework for action for the conservation, enhancement and wise use of natural resources.