Heathwood Homes, – one of the leading builders of new homes in the Greater Toronto Area – are months away from announcing the grand opening of its new Green Home Program at The Reserve in Richmond Hill.

The industry-first Green Home is scheduled to open to the public by mid march, and will serve as an educational tool until 2012. Once the home is sold, the home will be monitored for both its energy consumption, as well as its efficiency against industry standard homes.

“We worked in conjunction with the city of Richmond Hill to build a model home that would incorporate not only energy star compliance, but a whole host of environmental options”, said Bob Finnigan, COO of Heathwood Homes

Built using Heathwood’s popular four bedroom Oakdale floorplan, the home will instantly detail specific use of energy through visible screens.

It will feature energy-efficient construction standards, the latest green features, and energy-saving technologies and systems.

As part of this innovative program, which will be a first for Richmond Hill, Heathwood will also build a second, Energy Star-Certified home of the same model design as part of its neighbouring Forest Brook community. It will also be monitored over the same time period under actual living conditions with results compared to the Green Home.

“The beauty of it is we will be working with Ryerson University to report just how efficient home like this would be in comparison to an Energy Star home. We have 50 solar panels on the roof for energy. We have 2 other solar panels that we have on the roof that will be used for water.  We have a grey water recovery system in the house, so all the water that is used in the shower and wash will be funned to the recovery tank, where the water will be reused in the toilets. That alone should see a 30-40 percent reduction in the water that we use.”

The Green house will be open to the public in Mid March of 2010.