When Carol Anne and Gary Forsgren bought the Centennial Place building in the heart of Hampton, New Brunswick, they knew that they had a lot of work ahead of them to bring the building up to the high standard they wanted to offer tenants and their customers.  

Centennial Place includes the original 60 year-old building plus a 15 year-old addition, and a new addition the Forsgrens added while doing upgrades.  Today the facility is home to a fitness centre, dance studio, newspaper and printing press, and the Vintage Bistro and Lounge which the Forsgrens opened themselves, one year ago.

They started looking at how they could improve the energy efficiency and also the comfort level and air quality in the building.  “We’ve always been big believers in healthy living environments,” Gary said. 

Through her research Carol Anne learned about Efficiency NB’s Energy Smart Commercial Buildings Retrofit Program and contacted an engineering firm in New Brunswick to arrange for an energy audit.

The audit revealed that many parts of the building had not been insulated, the windows were old, there were water issues in the basement which caused dampness throughout the building and the old oil furnaces had seen better days.

A large part of the retrofit focused on upgrading the building envelope.  They added  rigid foam insulation on the outside of the building, insulated the crawlspace above the bistro, added blown-in fiberglass in the third floor attic, sealed a number of cracks in the foundation and sprayed foam insulation in the basement and floor header areas.  They also replaced most of the windows with ENERGY STAR windows with low-e, argon-filled glass and all of the lighting in the building with energy efficient lighting.

An upgrade to the heating system consisted of replacing the old furnaces with three air to air heat pumps, as well as an air exchange system which dramatically improved the air quality.  Heat and air conditioning is controlled by programmable thermostats which Gary has meticulously programmed to coincide with the various businesses’ needs and operating hours.

As a result of their renovations the Forsgrens are saving about $9600 a year on their energy bills, a 67% reduction,  and have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by almost 22 tonnes a year, the equivalent of taking four cars of the road.  The Centennial Place building was chosen as the winner in the Commercial Buildings Retrofit category because it had the largest decrease in energy use per square metre.