When you first begin your apartment search, air distribution may not be top of mind. But with remote work and home offices becoming more common, it’s likely that you’re spending more time at home. That can leave you to wonder, “just how clean is the air I’m breathing inside an apartment building full of other people?“

Clean air is fundamental to the design of our communities. Your home should be designed and built with uncompromising safety, quality, and performance. We breathe easier (no pun intended), knowing that your prospective home is built with unwavering standards.

In a Lépine apartment you’ll experience comfortable interior temperatures and excellent air quality year-round with advanced heating and cooling technology. Many older apartment buildings in Ottawa tend to pump fresh air into hallways where they hope it seeps under doorways and moves from unit to unit. While standard filters are able to trap dust, they aren’t designed to catch things like viruses or bacteria. That’s why each Lépine Apartment suite has its own fresh-air intake and why we vent used air directly to the exterior. No air is ever transferred from one unit to another. Ultimately, the air you breathe is your own.

Lépine properties follow strict regulatory requirements and are built with solid concrete and steel framing. The exterior materials, combined with extra-thick drywall provide durable, non-combustible protection against severe fire and smoke damage. Each building is equipped with reliable fire/smoke detection and alarm systems with state-of-the-art features like fire-suppression and audio visual capabilities to further enhance your safety. The use of concrete construction is a signature of Lépine. Concrete is a favourable material for a number of reasons. Not only does it extend a building's lifespan, potentially for centuries, but concrete is also fire-resistant, energy efficient, with excellent sound absorption and insulation qualities.

In any home, windows are naturally the weakest thermal barrier. The standard of 3mm windows in many older apartment homes can cause chilly drafts during the winter months. Your home at Lépine will have windows that are built with two 6mm pieces of glass, striking a balance between glazed surfaces and solid walls.

During warmer months, our buildings use an internal climate control system that uses refrigerants (with zero ozone depletion) and a dry-cooling chiller process that uses less water and fewer chemicals than alternative wet-cooling systems. HVAC water loops blend temperature levels and minimize the load on power plants. The building's slabs, beams, and columns all work as a thermal conductor, eliminating variations in temperature, and resulting in a comfortable interior climate year-round.

Like most of us, being disrupted by noise from fellow neighbours or worrying about disrupting others while you’re hosting friends and family isn’t ideal. The Ontario Building Code requires that a wall shared by two suites should have a minimum standard Sound Transmission Class rating of 50. However, we use two layers of acoustic insulation to reach a rating of 64. We go above and beyond the standard to provide you with a comfortable and quiet place to call home..

Finding a rental home that fits your lifestyle is an exciting but daunting task. At the end of the day, it's hard to know if you've considered everything before making a decision. Explore your options at Lépine apartments and speak to one of our leasing specialist about finding a home you can be confident was built with uncompromising safety, quality, and performance.