Post

our houses are Made in Canada

Starting a construction products wish list for 🇨🇦gov (will probably be a thread): Get us a better pipeline for Knauf batt insulation (German) vs Owens Corning or Johnson-Manville. We can’t get Knauf Eco-Batt anymore.

But it would be great to have a list of made-in-canada building products...

We use a lot of James Hardie fire cement siding. CanCon options? klad.ca/portfolio/fi...

“Fibre cement” Other options include Nichiha (Japan) or Woodtone (Chilliwack BC), Finex (Kelwona BC)

Another challenge is Soprema (Ohio) maker of blue skin membranes and insulation. Euro Alternatives we use: Siga and Proclima

Many Canadian window manufacturers use glazing units from Cardinal Glass (MN). Euro windows often use Saint Gobain. Lite-Zone is Canadian. Other IGU mfr?

Rheem heat pump hot water tanks are based in Georgia. Sanden and Daikin are Japanese, though the complex mech stuff (like cars etc) will be too tangled to look at its origins simplistically.

Our framing lumber and plywood is domestic. Not sure about finish lumber like White Oak. Reclaimed material will be a small - but great - source that the province could support scaling.

Concrete is locally made. We’ll still have Sechelt Sand. Not sure where our rebar comes from, but assume most is US origin.

A lot of copper wire is coming from the US but there is also domestic production, and material from abroad. I’m not sure at what relative scale.

Reclaimed will never be more than a specialty product until we change our building methods. The cleaning and prep costs too much. I marketed and sold reclaimed for almost a decade... It's cheaper to grow a tree. But reclaimed does make fantastic finishing and feature materials.

Yes and no. It’s currently a boutique operation, and will always be niche, but deconstruction regs combined with de-fab, and automated denailing (as done by Urban Machine) could scale on a local franchise basis across the country.