13 years ago, Paul McLauchlin and his wife Melinda were looking to add 2,000-square-feet of office space to their existing property and took to an innovative and creative design to do so – using beer cans.

The husband and wife duo are president of the Rural Municipalities Association and Reeve of Ponoka County, and in addition, run environmental consulting companies.

“We built this office on our farm and we said, ‘you know, it’s not going to be occupied all the time so let’s build the greenest building we possibly can,’” McLauchlin said.

“It’s actually net positive. So this building creates more power than it consumes.”

Alongside solar and wind power, quality walls and windows designed to get the most sun possible when they need it, the contraption most likely to raise an eyebrow is the building’s primary heater, made out of empty beer cans.

The concept is relatively simple. The aluminum cans have both of their ends cut off and are fashioned into a series of long metal tubes, painted black. With a fan at one end, and some fins cut into the tubes slowing down the airflow, the metal is positioned in a way to get heated by the sun as the warm air is pulled into the building.

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