Programs
Status as at 1 August 2026
Program 1 · continuous since 2012
Assembly Watch
The core of the Institute. One hundred and eighty-seven wall, roof and foundation assemblies in occupied
buildings, each carrying temperature, relative humidity and wood-moisture sensors at four depths, logged
hourly. Nothing is removed from the program early: the value is in the length of the record, and the two
oldest walls have now been reporting for fourteen winters.
- Outputs: an annual station report, cleaned hourly datasets, and the interface-temperature
series behind the ratio-rule work.
- Who can take part: owners and design teams with a new build or deep retrofit in zones 6–8.
Instrumentation and monitoring are provided at no cost; results are published.
- Commitment: minimum five years, sensor access during construction, annual site visit.
Program 2 · 2018–2027
Thermal Bridge Registry
A measured, openly licensed catalogue of linear transmittance values for the details Canadian design teams
actually draw — balcony slabs, parapets, window transitions, shelf angles, foundation junctions. Values come
from guarded hot-box testing and calibrated infrared survey, not from a manufacturer's modelled estimate.
Thirty-four details are published; sixty are targeted by 2027.
- Outputs: Ψ-value tables, dimensioned detail drawings in DWG and PDF, and the modelling
assumptions used for each case.
- Who can take part: firms may submit a detail for testing. Submissions are prioritised by
how often the detail appears in permit sets, not by who asks first.
Program 3 · 2021–2028
Retrofit Moisture Risk
Interior insulation of solid masonry is the highest-risk retrofit our advisory group is asked about, and the
one with the least Canadian field data. Twelve buildings in Winnipeg and Thompson were instrumented before
insulation was added and have been monitored through five winters, tracking moisture content at the
masonry–insulation interface and the drying rate after each spring thaw.
- Outputs: Technical Report 41, a decision checklist for heritage owners, and a freeze–thaw
exposure screening method.
- Who can take part: owners of pre-1940 masonry buildings planning an interior retrofit.
Program 4 · continuous since 2012
Airtightness Benchmarks
A running dataset of whole-building airtightness results for Part 3 buildings in zones 6 to 8, contributed by
Institute crews and by testing firms across the country under a common reporting template. It exists so that a
design team can compare a target against what comparable buildings actually achieved, rather than against a
code minimum.
Figure 2. Median measured air leakage by completion period. The improvement is real,
but the spread within each period is wider than the difference between periods — the full distribution is in
the dataset, and it is the more useful number when setting a project target.