Spray Foam Insulation in Gull Lake, AB.

The full-time population is growing — 176 people in 2016, 226 in 2021, a change of 28.4% — and dwellings occupied by usual residents went from 79 to 95. Whenever a cottage does become somebody's year-round home, that is precisely the point where an envelope built for summer use stops being good enough.

A three-season cottage converted to full-time living usually needs the same things in the same order: an air-sealed ceiling before more depth goes into the attic, a floor or crawl space that is no longer open to the wind, and walls that were never meant to hold a 21 °C interior against a January night.

This page does not quote a pre-1980 share or a single-detached share for Gull Lake. The census sample here is about 100 households, and StatCan's rounding leaves those percentages too coarse to mean anything. They are omitted rather than published as if they were measurements.

There is no climate station at Gull Lake. The village is assigned RED DEER REGIONAL A (climate ID 3025480), about 31 km south: 5,619 heating degree days at an 18 °C base, a January daily minimum averaging -17.6 °C, and -43.8 °C at the recorded extreme. For a part-year building the extreme is the number that matters — it is what an unheated cottage sits through in January.