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Many of the Safer Living design standards are imported from the US-based Institute for Business and Home Safety (813-286-3400 www.ibhs.org).Safer Living Homes designed for prairie locations, for instance, include landscaping features that reduce the risks posed by grass fires. West coast variations include engineering to reduce the impact of earthquakes.
All this sounds great, but how much more does it cost? The Safer Living Home built by The Co-operators in PEI cost 20% more than if ordinary construction methods had been used. And given what you get, that seems pretty reasonable to me, but it gets better.
A good part of the added costs come because specialty materials and fittings had to be found. The 190 km/h windows installed in the PEI home, for instance, aren’t readily available in Canada, though they were manufactured in nearby New Brunswick. Code-surpassing disaster-resistant housing is currently being built right now in the US for just 5% to 10% over standard designs now that material supply channels have been identified and opened up down there. The same cost reduces will happen here in Canada.
There will always be those pundits who pooh-pooh new ideas out of habit. That’s just the way some people live, and you’ve got to feel sorry for them. But the reason today’s new homes are so much better than they were 30 years ago is because other people saw the trends and reacted. The Safer Living design is based on the idea that it’s better to have a fence at the top of the cliff instead of an ambulance at the bottom. And who can argue with that?
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