If a building department has asked you for an “EEDS,” an “SB-12 compliance package,” or “energy efficiency documentation,” you’ve hit the least-explained corner of the Ontario permit set. SB-12 is the Building Code’s energy-efficiency supplementary standard for houses — it defines how your home must meet the energy requirements. The Energy Efficiency Design Summary (EEDS) is the form that documents which path you chose and proves the design meets it. No EEDS, no permit — same as the heat loss calculation.
This guide explains the two compliance paths, what the EEDS form actually contains, who is allowed to prepare it, and how it fits with the other three documents your permit needs: the CSA F280, the MVDS, and the Schedule 1 declaration.
SB-12 publishes packages of building specs — insulation values, window performance, equipment efficiency — organized by climate zone and fuel type. Build to every line of one package and you comply. Simple, and what most production builds use. The EEDS records which package you picked and the specs that prove it.
Instead of matching a package line-for-line, an energy model shows your design performs as well as the reference house. This buys design freedom — trade extra insulation against bigger windows, for example — and it’s how custom homes with big glazing usually comply. The documentation burden is higher.
The compliance path, climate zone, heating fuel, envelope values (attic, walls, basement, windows and doors), equipment efficiencies, and the HRV/ERV specification — signed by the designer taking responsibility. Reviewers cross-check it against your drawings and your MVDS; inconsistencies between forms are a classic deficiency.
Ontario’s 2024 Building Code (in force since January 1, 2025) updated the energy-efficiency requirements, and municipalities are transitioning their checklists. The safe practice — and ours — is to prepare energy compliance to the edition and packages your specific municipality is enforcing on your application date, and to confirm it with the building department rather than assume. The form family and the logic above stay the same either way.
A complete Ontario residential mechanical/energy submission is really four documents telling one consistent story. Reviewers check that they agree with each other.
The F280 heat loss must be calculated with the same envelope values the EEDS declares. An EEDS claiming R-60 attics while the F280 assumed R-40 is a deficiency waiting to be found.
The HRV/ERV on the MVDS must match the ventilation equipment and efficiency the EEDS claims. Two forms, one machine — they have to agree.
The designer declaration puts a registered person’s BCIN behind the design documents. Unsigned or missing, the package is returned before anyone reads the rest.
Every new house needs one. Renovations and additions trigger energy compliance documentation when the scope touches the envelope or mechanical systems in ways the Code captures — an addition usually does, a like-for-like furnace swap usually doesn’t. Your municipality’s checklist is the final word, and we confirm it per project.
Someone qualified to take design responsibility for it — in practice a BCIN-registered designer (or an architect/engineer) working from the actual envelope and equipment specs. A form filled from guesses is how the F280/EEDS mismatch deficiencies happen.
SB-12 is the standard — the rulebook of compliance packages and performance criteria. The EEDS is the form — the summary document proving your design meets the rulebook. Building departments ask for “SB-12 compliance” and receive it as a completed EEDS.
Energy compliance documentation is available with our full HVAC design package — coordinated with the F280 and MVDS so all the numbers agree, which is precisely what reviewers check. Tell us your municipality and project when you request a quote.
Four documents, one consistent story. We coordinate the F280, MVDS, Schedule 1 and energy compliance so nothing contradicts anything — BCIN-stamped, 48 hours.
Get Free Quote →Upload your plans and tell us your municipality. We produce the permit documents as one coordinated package — the same envelope values across every form, the same equipment on every page, BCIN-stamped throughout — formatted for your building department’s checklist and portal.