Heat wave prompts unusual demand to retrofit buildings with air conditioning

Old buildings need retrofitting to deal with heat Many buildings in Metro Vancouver aren't equipped to handle extreme heat – which can be a major problem in those that house vulnerable seniors.

VANCOUVER — Apparently, it wasn’t hot enough over the past few days at Linden Tree Place in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood. Instead of fresh cool air filling the hallways, there was a hot blast of air coming out of the hallway ventilation system that residents say increased the temperatures to between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius.

“It was terrible,” said Terry LeBlanc.

LeBlanc is in a wheelchair with a spinal cord injury and says his body has difficulty cooling off.

Evelyn Legault has multiple sclerosis and a spinal injury too.

“It’s not been very good at all,” she said.

Ann Wight struggled as well.

“I took lots of cold showers actually,” Wight said.

And Catherine Stafford, whose apartment sits right across from one of the heat blasting vents, couldn’t even stay in her unit. Someone paid her to go to a hotel.

“Very difficult. It’s been really hard,” Stafford explained.

BC Housing and the Association of Neighborhood Houses BC run the building.

Stafford said it took some pressure to get any action at all. At first, she says the property manager told her to put a wet towel in front of the hallway vent outside her door to cool the air.

She says it dried out in two minutes. There was air conditioning in the building but it was in the locked common room, which was off limits because of COVID-19.

“We broke in,” Stafford joked. However, they did get a key.

“We don’t care we’re not supposed to be in here, we need to save ourselves,” she said.

The building is full of residents over 55 years of age who need care and are the most vulnerable to heat.

“It was by far the worst I’ve seen it and I’ve been here 10 years,” said LeBlanc.

The hallway pressurization system, which fills the halls with fresh air, pulls the air from the rooftop, the hottest place in the building.

On Wednesday, the folks managing the building sent an air conditioning specialist to assess the situation and while there, they replaced the air filters. They appeared ripped and torn and the date on the filters was December 2019, indicating they hadn’t been replaced in years.

CTV News reached out to the non-profit and BC Housing for comment.

Liz Lougheed, CEO of the Association of Neighborhood Houses BC wrote in an email, “We agree that this is an important issue. We’re working on getting some information to you as quickly as possible.”

Heating and cooling specialists are bombarded with requests for retrofit buildings with air conditioning.

Sam Paxton is a sales engineer for Airstream Heating and Air Conditioning in Burnaby. The company installs residential and commercial systems, and Paxton said over the last few days the workload has sharply increased with technicians working around the clock.

Paxton has been fielding requests from property managers, building owners and strata organizations looking to retrofit with cooling systems before the next heat wave hits us.

“It can be done but just the sheer demand we’ve been dealing with has just made it an incredible challenge, to be honest, we’ve never faced before.”

In addition, it can be costly, especially for subsidized housing and non-profit organizations but the residents at Linden Tree Place say it cannot wait.

“They send men to the moon so they can certainly get air conditioning in here,” said Wight.

“We’re lucky somebody didn’t die here,” added Stafford. “It’s just going to get worse.

BC Housing is looking at the bigger issuing writing in an email to CTV News,"BC Housing is working closely with the non-profit operator, Association of Neighbourhood Houses of British Columbia, to ensure temporary and long-term solutions are in place that will keep residents safe during the heatwave.nto talk about the bigger issue and the cost of retrofitting buildings housing elderly and disabled seniors."

The agency says retrofitting existing buildings is not always feasible, however BC Housing will discuss long-term options with the operator.