Kenora resident captures CMHC award.

• Author: GOULIQUER, DIANNE

Invention eliminates need for traditional utility services

A Kenora man has captured one of this year's five Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) Housing Awards for an invention that virtually eliminates the need for traditional utility services while sparing the environment.

Udo Staschik says his combined mechanical utilities container, dubbed the EcoNomad, is a self-contained unit that provides on-site heating, electrical and plumbing systems to any structure or building more efficiently than conventional methods.

"It's basically a shipping container that has all the utilities in it to run a single family house or a tourist lodge or a small commercial operation independent from any grid utility system," Staschik says. "That means the container has an entire wastewater management system in it, a potable water system and power generation, and all that is remotely controlled.

"Attach this EcoNomad unit to any house and you're totally unplugged from any grid and nothing else is required except fuel for the engine and getting potable water somehow - that can be rain water, lake water, trucked water. That's the only input required."

The EcoNomad, which earned the Technology and Production Award at the CMHC's Housing Awards Gala in Ottawa on Nov. 16, provides utility services to off-grid residential, small commercial or institutional buildings via a container that combines already proven technologies to create a complete micro-infrastructure.

Louise Dunn, the manager of research planning and liaison with CMHC's planning division, says Staschik's invention was selected for a CMHC award because it was among the entries that best addressed housing issues of the future.

"The projects had to improve housing quality and offer affordability and choice for Canadians," Dunn says of the contest's criteria. "It also had to be an on-the-ground innovation or practice. It couldn't just be a design or concept; it had to actually be implemented."

The CMHC Housing Awards are presented every two to three years to people with projects that best reflect the theme selected for the corresponding CMHC two-day forum. This year's theme was Tomorrow's Housing Today: Meeting the Housing Challenges of the New Millennium.

The November forum, Dunn says, offered Staschik, his four fellow housing award winners, and eight other finalists an opportunity to showcase their projects and network with key housing representatives from across the country.

The prize, Dunn says...