The professional body governing Saskatchewan engineers has awarded Regina-based firm MacPherson Engineering for its work in repurposing basement furnace heat to stop and reduce mould in homes with poor air circulation.

Using the firm’s radiant heat technology, company co-founders Murdoch and Aura Lee MacPherson installed it in two homes on the Star Blanket Cree Nation, near Lebret, about 90 kilometres northeast of Regina.

“Essentially we’re warming up the surface of the walls,” Murdoch said of the technology, called radiant link, which uses radiant heat from a high-temperature liquid piping system.

The project, for which they won the excellence in engineering award from the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Saskatchewan (APEGS), was called Blanket of Warmth. The MacPhersons learned of the award on April 30.

In a concrete-basement type setting, “the house’s furnace (is) a heat source, and it warms up glycol, which we then pump through piping within the (concrete) slab,” or in a Styrofoam-fastening frame mounted to the wall, Murdoch explained.

The generated, dispersed heat reduces condensation while eventually drying and killing mould on the walls.

The MacPhersons first started the project about two years ago, through Aura Lee’s work with First Nations in the Qu’Appelle Valley area; she introduced Murdoch to Wendel Starblanket, a member of the Star Blanket Cree Nation whose home sits on land the band acquired in Lebret.

Starblanket said he and Aura Lee decided on mould reduction after sharing concerns over the Canada-wide issue of mould-covered homes in First Nations; federal NDP MPs raised the issue in 2019 with the previous Liberal majority government.

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