In this interview, Curt Janzen of Beyond Group talks with Canadian senior national speed skater Hayden Mayer about his decision to leave the rental market in Calgary and build an off‑grid tiny home. Facing rising living costs and a limited athlete salary, Hayden and his partner Rose sought a more affordable, self‑sufficient lifestyle. After researching insulation options, they chose spray‑foam for its superior R‑value and cost‑effectiveness over traditional fiberglass. Beyond Group, with material support from Huntsman, partnered with Hayden to install the spray‑foam in a shed that houses the tiny home’s utilities, allowing for future propane heating and off‑grid power. Hayden praises the professionalism and community‑focused values of the installation team, highlighting how the project aligns with his own commitment to community support. The conversation covers motivations, technical decisions, partnership dynamics, installation experience, and the envisioned off‑grid living setup.
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With the increased cost of living, with mortgage rates going up, with utilities going up, it is really tough to get into a home. Now add on the complexity of being a national sport athlete on that salary. Well, that's a whole nother level. I want to introduce you to our friend named Hayden. Hayden's a speed skater that you're going to get to know very quickly. Hayden wanted to go and do something a little bit different, so he decided to build a home off-grid. He did a bunch of research and all that pointed that spray foam was the right product to put into this project. After a few short clicks, He filled out a form and he reached out to us to get some more information. And that's where the story gets fun.
Hayden Mayer.
Hayden Mayer.
My name's Hayden Mayer. I'm a member of the Canadian Senior National Long Track Speed Skating Team based here in Calgary, Alberta, and 26 years old and a 2-time World Championship medalist. You know, about 9 or 10 months ago, my girlfriend and I started talking about trying to move out of the rental market here in Calgary. It's gotten a little bit out of control and a little bit too costly. For what makes sense for the two of us right now. We ended up going down the road of taking a look at some options to move into a tiny home, which is pretty awesome. It's going to be a very big change from city living, but, you know, it's going to be our home for the first time in our lives. You know, we're going to have a place that's really just ours, and we're going to be fully off-grid, which is definitely going to be the biggest change of it all. We're excited to kind of embark on that journey, but Going solar and going, you know, off the grid for water and sewage is definitely going to be a steep learning curve, but it's one that we're ready to take on, and I think we're excited to see where this takes us.
This past night was our first night being tiny. Now, we figured instead of running heat trace around everything and praying that that was enough, we would kind of build out a shed to house everything inside of it. And then plug the tiny home into the shed as if it were our own private utility system so that Rose and I can live our lives, focus on, you know, her job working at the children's hospital, and myself, uh, you know, through the winter months I'm usually in competition and possibly even abroad, um, competing in World Cups or whatnot. We wanted to be worry-free, um, so naturally, uh, we, we chose to pursue the route of having the shed insulated so that we would later be able to put a small propane heater in if need be to keep that shed above zero. I started to do a little bit of research on insulation, you know, being on an athlete's budget, I wanted to try and keep things a little bit lower cost, but, you know, I took a peek at your standard, you know, pink cotton candy that you can buy at Home Depot, the fiberglass insulation and whatnot, and it's not like it's particularly cheap, you know, fiberglass insulation is still not a small bill at the end of the day, but the R-value is just Nothing really compared to what spray foam would be able to bring me. And because we didn't want to cut any corners, considering the, like, how critical keeping that shed above zero is, it became very obvious very quickly that spray foam was the one and only option. I started to look around Calgary to see who, you know, who was out there, what options there were. To get spray foam put in. And Beyond popped out pretty quickly for me. I think they were one of the first few companies that popped up when I Googled spray foam. And I reached out to Curt, who's one of the owners of Beyond Group, and started chatting. And I realized very quickly that a lot of the company's values aligned very closely with my personal values as an athlete and as a— just as a person.
My first communication with Hayden was a phone call where I reached out to him and we were able to talk about his off-grid tiny home project. And this is something I got super excited about coming alongside and being a part of his story. And with that, BEYOND becoming part of his story. After a little bit of correspondence, getting some blueprints from him, we were able to Work out a deal to help him out. Both us as Vyond coming in there and installing the product, and our friends at Huntsman who actually generously donated the material for it. With all this collaboration, we were able to go in, insulate his buildings, and make sure that he had an off-grid facility that was super efficient. In our research of Hayden after our first call, I realized that, man, this guy really likes his community and supports his community in lots of different ways. He also did research and realized that we support our community, which made it a great partnership to do something pretty amazing.
The, the team of installers that came out, uh, to do my shed a few weeks ago They were absolutely awesome guys, super nice. They obviously love their job. I could tell that right off the bat. They love what they do. I was most assured before the team even showed up that I was working with a, a good, reputable, caring company, and that proved to be true. Rose and I were kind of able to take a big exhale and just appreciate the fact that we're in a, in this fortunate position where we can We can be living on an open pasture just looking across a few thousand acres of grazing land. I mean, despite all the stressful ups and downs, building fence and stuff's exhausting outside of training full-time, but yeah, it's been an amazing process.
We have loved, uh, getting to know Hayden and being a part of his story, his journey, as he tries to do great things for his community and our country. It is our goal to create these warm spaces and happy people, and we can't wait for the next one to share with you. Please like and subscribe.
