Spray Foam Insulation in Bentley, AB.

74.4% of Bentley's dwellings are single-detached. Old and freestanding, in a village small enough that 271 pre-1980 houses is most of the built environment rather than a segment of it.

At this scale the failure modes are uniform and the arithmetic is unforgiving. There is no institutional building stock to average against, no new subdivision quietly improving the town's overall performance. Whatever the standard practice was when these houses were framed — batt between studs, loose fill over the ceiling, a rim joist packed rather than sealed — is still the standard in most of the buildings here, and a village-scale heating bill is paid one house at a time.

Bentley's winter figures are borrowed from RED DEER REGIONAL A (climate ID 3025480), about 40 km southeast: 5,619 heating degree days at an 18 °C base, an average January daily minimum of -17.6 °C and a recorded extreme of -43.8 °C. There is no station at Bentley or on Gull Lake, and the ledger does not substitute one.

Bentley sits near Gull Lake, and the lakeside market beside it is a genuinely different building type from the village. Sandy Point Resort is an 800-acre gated resort community with 4.5 km of natural Gull Lake shoreline just outside town (albertatownandcountry.com), and the Medicine Lodge Ski Area — 13 runs, roughly 500 vertical feet — is 11 km west (Travel Alberta).

Resort and recreation buildings are the ones most likely to be heated intermittently, and intermittent heating in an Alberta winter puts the pressure on air and vapour control at rim joists, crawl spaces and vaulted ceilings rather than on attic depth.