The funny thing is that, 12 years after it opened up in Duncan, people are still surprised to learn that Fenstür Windows and Doors even exists. “If someone is looking for a Passive House window or a net-zero window or a really nice solid wood door, they find us, eventually,” says John Mercer, Fenstür’s “sales guy.”
That might be about to change. Fenstür, you see, is North America’s first and likely still its only Passive House-certified maker of doors and windows. In November, it won an EcoStar Award in the category of “design and construction.” Now anyone interested in energy-efficient builds is taking notice.
Fenstür was established in 2013, but its history goes back much further. It’s a division of Wescon Cedar Products (also known as Wescon Doors), a family-owned business that has been operating in Duncan since it opened in 1985. “That’s one of our advantages,” Mercer says. “We get to take advantage of 40 years of innovation, technology and experience in the wood industry.”
It was one of Wescon’s engineers who pointed out the potential for energy-efficient doors and windows. Now Fenstür has grown from a basement startup to a 55,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that employs more than 40 skilled craftspeople and produces over 20,000 doors and windows a year. “No one else was doing it and we have the experience to do it,” Mercer says. “We built this from scratch. Nothing existed.”
Fenstür specializes in lift-and-slide doors and tilt-and-turn windows, mainly in solid wood with cork insulation, that are compliant with a wide range of certifications and up to Step 5 of the provincial building code. They are made on Vancouver Island from local tree species, and are designed both to be easy to maintain and to last for generations. Plus it takes a lot fewer fuel miles to ship these to customers across North America than the European products that would otherwise be their only alternative.
These doors and windows aren’t just functional and efficient. They are also beautiful. As Mercer says: “Wood is comfort. It’s lovely. It’s everything you want it to be.”
