Commonworks Energy, British Columbia

Your building’s heat, hot water and cooling. One monthly fee. No levy.

Commonworks installs, owns and operates the plant inside BC condo, co-op and rental buildings. No special levy.

Request a no-cost building assessment

The boiler room

Most apartment buildings in British Columbia are heated from one room in the basement. In that room sits a boiler, the machine that heats water for the radiators and the taps. Yours has probably outlasted several councils.

Everyone on your council knows it is old. Parts take longer to find each year. The decision gets deferred to the next council, and then to the one after that, because the plant is still running this morning.

Three different companies have a hand in that plant. An engineer designed it. A contractor installed it and left. A service company visits under a service contract. When the plant runs badly, each one has a reason it is not their file.

Cross-section of a mid-rise building showing the plant room, risers and suites Commonworks owns,operates and maintainseverything inside thedashed line. ROOF SUITE 401, FAN COIL SUITE 301, RADIATOR SUITE 201, RADIATOR HEATING RISER, TYP. DHW RISER, TYP. PLANT ROOM CONTROLS PANEL GAS METER EXPANSION TANK CIRCULATING PUMPS BOILER No. 1 1998 BOILER No. 2 1998 DHW TANK 2009 Heating riser,your repair Controls,your contractor Expansion tank,yours to replace Pumps, yourservice contract Boiler, 1998,yours to replace DHW tank,yours to replace Gas meter,your account 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PARKADE COMMONWORKS ENERGY TYPICAL MID-RISE PLANT ILLUSTRATIVE, NOT A DESIGN SHEET 1
  1. 1Roof
  2. 2Suite 401, fan coil
  3. 3Suite 301, radiator
  4. 4Suite 201, radiator
  5. 5Heating riser, typical
  6. 6Domestic hot water riser, typical
  7. 7Plant room
  8. 8Controls panel
  9. 9Gas meter
  10. 10Expansion tank
  11. 11Circulating pumps
  12. 12Boiler No. 1, 1998
  13. 13Boiler No. 2, 1998
  14. 14Domestic hot water tank, 2009
A mid-rise heating plant as most BC buildings still have it, drawn from the plant room up through the risers to the suites.

The levy or the loan

The quotes arrive and they do not agree. Three firms price three different scopes, and the spread runs from $400,000 to $700,000. Nothing in the three documents lets a council compare them line for line.

Paying for it means a special levy, a one-time bill sent to every owner. A levy divided the standard way needs a three-quarter vote at a general meeting. Someone has to stand up and defend the number.

Some owners cannot pay it. An owner on a fixed income and a buyer who closed last spring both receive the same notice, and a new owner can find $12,000 due inside ninety days. They are not being difficult. They simply do not have it.

The alternative is a strata loan, repaid out of strata fees for years. It removes the single large bill and leaves a debt on the corporation that a future buyer’s lawyer may ask about.

Meanwhile the plant is still the plant. Boilers fail in January, not in July. A failure in January means temporary boilers in the parkade at emergency rates, and a repair bill nobody voted on.

Every year the decision waits, the plant is a year older.

The dashed line.

Cross-section of a mid-rise building showing the plant room, risers and suites Commonworks owns,operates and maintainseverything inside thedashed line. ROOF SUITE 401, FAN COIL SUITE 301, RADIATOR SUITE 201, RADIATOR HEATING RISER, TYP. DHW RISER, TYP. PLANT ROOM CONTROLS PANEL GAS METER EXPANSION TANK CIRCULATING PUMPS BOILER No. 1 1998 BOILER No. 2 1998 DHW TANK 2009 Heating riser,our maintenance Controls,our monitoring Expansion tank,ours to replace Pumps,our maintenance Plant, new,ours to run DHW plant,ours to run Meter, our reading,energy at cost 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 PARKADE COMMONWORKS ENERGY TYPICAL MID-RISE PLANT ILLUSTRATIVE, NOT A DESIGN SHEET 1
  1. 1Heating riser, our maintenance
  2. 2Controls, our monitoring
  3. 3Expansion tank, ours to replace
  4. 4Pumps, our maintenance
  5. 5Plant, new, ours to run
  6. 6DHW plant, ours to run
  7. 7Meter, our reading, energy at cost

We pay for the plant. We own it for the term.

The plant becomes our asset and our responsibility. Your building buys warmth, cooling and hot water, the way it buys electricity.

Three lines leave your depreciation report and do not come back.

Your depreciation report

  • Roof
  • Building envelope
  • Windows
  • Parkade membrane

Commonworks

  • Boiler plant
  • Annual service contract
  • Replacement at year 20

The four lines above them do not move. They stay your building’s, and your reserve fund is left to fund them.

How it works, and who is behind it

How it works

01

Assessment.

We visit the plant room, measure what is there, review the risers and read the fuel bills. A riser is the vertical pipe that carries heat up through the building. The assessment costs your building nothing, and where the building qualifies we apply CleanBC study funding to the work.

02

Design and proposal.

We design a plant for your building and price it. The proposal carries one number on the front page: the fixed monthly capacity charge, held for the term. That is the flat monthly fee for having the plant installed and running, whatever the weather. It carries the 25-year comparison for your building with every assumption printed.

03

We install, at our cost.

We pay for the equipment and the installation. The work is phased, so part of the building stays in service while another part changes over. Where a changeover would otherwise leave anyone without heat or hot water, we bring in temporary heat and hot water. If your old plant fails after you sign and before the new one is running, temporary heat and hot water are our cost. No cold days. The typical construction window is eight to fourteen weeks.

04

We own, operate and maintain.

The plant is ours, and we pay for every repair and every part. We monitor it remotely and service it on schedule. One number is answered at any hour, every day of the year, and our response times are written into the agreement : a technician on site within four hours for loss of heat or hot water, and within one business day for loss of cooling.

05

One monthly statement.

Each month you receive one statement with two lines on it. At the end of the term your council chooses one of three things. It can renew the agreement, buy the plant at the price written in the agreement, or have us remove it.

One company, start to finish

In most plant replacements the work is split three ways. An engineer designs it, a contractor installs it, and a service company maintains it. When the plant underperforms, each one points at the other two, and the building pays for the argument.

We design, build, own and operate the plant under one agreement. There is one phone number and one party answerable for how the plant performs, for the whole term. We cannot hand the problem anywhere else, because there is nowhere else to hand it.

Three British Columbia firms stand behind that agreement: an engineering practice that designs mechanical systems for buildings, a mechanical contractor that builds and services them, and a firm that does the energy and financial analysis. Commonworks is the name for the three of them working as one company.

This is not an equipment rental

  • No buyout schedule that climbs every year. The price to buy the plant is set in the agreement before your council votes.
  • No automatic renewal you did not vote for. At the end of the term your council decides what happens next.
  • No security registered against any owner’s strata lot without disclosure. If we register anything to protect equipment we own, it is written into the agreement and explained to your council before the vote.
  • No escalator in the fine print. The capacity charge is fixed for the term, and anything that could ever change it sits on one page you can read.
  • No equipment removed to force payment. We do not interrupt heat, cooling or hot water over a billing dispute.
  • No door-to-door sales. Your council calls us, or your property manager does.

The agreement is written to be read by a strata council. We walk your council through every clause before a vote.

How we make money

We earn a return on the capital we put into your building and a margin inside the fixed capacity charge. We do not mark up energy. We earn nothing from repairs, because repairs are our cost. We do not sell your data or your contract, and if the agreement is ever assigned its terms do not change.

Illustrative sample.

Sample monthly statement

Commonworks Energy, British Columbia

Monthly statement

Sample Strata Corporation

1234 Example Street, [City], BC

Service month: January [Year]

Statement date: [Date]

Capacity charge (fixed for the term)
$10,900.00
Energy pass-through (metered, at our cost, no markup)
$7,200.00
Total due
$18,100.00

Questions about this statement: service@commonworks.ca

The capacity charge is the fixed monthly amount for having the plant installed, running and maintained, and it does not move with the weather or with your energy use. The energy line is what the building actually used that month, measured at the meter and billed at what we paid for it. A colder month costs more and a warmer month costs less.

What leaves your plate

  • The plant comes off your depreciation report and out of your contingency reserve planning.
  • No special levy, so there is nothing to disclose on a Form B, the information certificate a seller gives a buyer, when an owner sells.
  • Technical Safety BC permits and inspections, gas permits and boiler operating requirements are ours.
  • Emissions and energy rules for existing buildings are arriving in BC municipalities, and when the rules change the plant is our problem, not your levy.
  • Boiler and machinery insurance on the plant is ours, and we work with your broker on what that means.
  • Hot water and temperature complaints come to us, and the plant is monitored so faults can be caught early.

Cooling, and what it costs over 25 years

Cooling, in the same project

Buildings put up in British Columbia before 2000 were built to be warm. A radiator can heat a room and it cannot cool one, so most of this stock has no cooling at all. After the heat dome of 2021, owners stopped treating that as a comfort question.

Councils rarely get to fix it on their own. A cooling levy needs a three-quarter vote, it rarely passes, and it arrives on top of the boiler bill that is already coming. The request goes to the bottom of the list, year after year.

We pay for the plant, so the arithmetic changes. The new plant runs on heat pumps, and a heat pump is one machine that moves heat: into the building in winter, out of it in summer. Heating and cooling come through the same system, in the same project, for the same monthly fee, with in-suite control where your piping allows it.

Owners ask about cooling now, and so do the people buying their units.

What it costs over 25 years

We pay for the plant, so there is no levy and no loan. In exchange the building pays a fixed monthly capacity charge for the term and pays for the energy it uses at our cost, with no markup on that line. The term is set for your building, between 15 and 25 years, to match the service life of the equipment we install. The example below assumes 25 years.

If the building does it itself

  • Special levy or strata loan.
  • Annual service contract.
  • Emergency repairs at after-hours rates.
  • Efficiency loss as maintenance slips.
  • Replacement again in fifteen to twenty years, depending on maintenance and use.
  • Council and manager time.
  • No cooling.

With Commonworks

  • One fixed monthly capacity charge for the term.
  • Energy at our cost, no markup.
  • Maintenance, monitoring, repairs and replacement included.
  • 24/7 response.
  • Cooling included.
  • One statement.
Illustrative example: 120-unit building, 25 years

Assumptions
  New boiler plant, installed, no cooling                   $600,000
  Strata loan                                               6.5% over 15 years
  Annual service contract                                   $20,000 per year
  Emergency repairs at after-hours rates                    $10,000 per year
  Efficiency loss as maintenance slips                      1.0% per year
  Energy, year 1, boiler plant                              $50,000
  Energy price growth                                       3.0% per year
  Second plant, year 18, paid by levy                       $1,200,000 today, grown at 3.0% per year
    (a heat pump plant; a new gas boiler plant may not be permitted by then)
  Commonworks capacity charge                               $10,900 per month, fixed for 25 years
  Energy, year 1, heat pump plant, at our cost              $48,000

If the building does it itself
  Loan payments on the first plant                          $940,796
  Service contracts                                         $500,000
  Emergency repairs                                         $250,000
  Energy, with efficiency loss                              $1,944,556
  Second plant, year 18                                     $1,983,417
  Council and manager time                                  not priced
  Cooling                                                   not included
  Total over 25 years                                       $5,618,770
  Average per month                                         $18,729

With Commonworks
  Capacity charge, fixed                                    $3,270,000
  Energy at our cost                                        $1,750,045
  Cooling                                                   included
  Total over 25 years                                       $5,020,045
  Average per month                                         $16,733

  Difference over 25 years                                  $598,725 less with Commonworks

The example shows a total for each path and what each total buys, on one set of printed assumptions. Change one assumption and both totals move, which is why the version we hand your council is built on your building’s own numbers.

Every building is different. Before your council votes, we show you both columns for your building, with our assumptions, and you keep the numbers whether or not you proceed.

The assessment

The assessment is a site visit and an engineering review. We look at the boilers, the domestic hot water plant, the pumps, the controls, the risers and the electrical service. We read two years of fuel bills to find what the building actually uses. We spend about half a day on site.

We need three things from your council: access to the plant room, the fuel bills, and any mechanical drawings the building still holds. If you have a current depreciation report, that shortens the work. The assessment takes four to six weeks from the first call to the written report.

It costs your building nothing. Where the building qualifies, we apply CleanBC study funding to the work.

You keep what it produces. The engineering report and the two-column 25-year comparison are yours, in writing, whatever you decide. You can hand both to any contractor and run the project yourself.

Who this is not for

  • Buildings heated by electric baseboards, with no central plant. There is no plant for us to replace.
  • Buildings planning redevelopment within ten years. A 25-year agreement on a building that is coming down helps nobody.
  • Buildings below 40 units, where the numbers do not work. The capacity charge would take too large a share of the budget to justify.

We will tell you at the assessment if this is you.

Request a no-cost building assessment.

Tell us about your building. We will reply and arrange a visit.

Please enter your name.
Please choose your role.
Please enter the building name.
Please enter the address.
Please enter the number of units as a whole number.
Please choose one.
Please enter an approximate age.
Please add a note.

A person reads this, not a machine. We reply within two business days, and we do not add you to a mailing list.

Email service@commonworks.ca