Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

At our house we (I) like to say, “why do today what you can do tomorrow”. No, not complacency but a practical sensibility toward hiding that list of to do’s for a rainier day. Essentially this is why we (Canadians) are simply putting off some dirty housekeeping (green and sustainable change) for a rainier day too.If you are looking for some solid logic for getting around to the job, read David Elfstrom’s article on preparing for the rainy day of $500/barrel for oil. David Elfstrom is an Engineer specializing in the field of Sustainability and among many other things, a volunteer (non-voting attendee) for the CaGBC LEED-H administrative committee. Canadian Green Building Council.

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How to prepare for oil reaching $500/barrel

It’s coming. Or rather, it’s not going to continue coming any more. I’m
referring to the declining availability of natural gas and oil while facing
increasing demand. Add the possibility of an international political event
and we’re primed for an energy price shock.

How well prepared you are for these events can make the difference between
financial success and failure in the next several years.

Resource production peak is a fact of geology and physics. If we just had
the slow decline in global resources to deal with, we could manage.
Unfortunately it’s never so simple. Taxes on nonrenewable carbon-based fuels
are also on the horizon, further adding to cost as the supply dips below
global demand. And political events in countries far away can have a
dramatic impact on everyone in the blink of an eye – maybe this week, this
year, next year. Like a rumbling volcano, we don’t know for certain when it
will blow, but it’s highly likely it will soon erupt. The risk is real and
quantifiable.

History repeats itself

In the early 1970’s U.S. domestic oil production peaked, and America’s
imports of oil started to rise. Soon after, political events occurred that
tightened international supply, causing an oil shock. The gasoline pumps
went dry and the price skyrocketed. The U.S. could not produce enough to
meet its own demand.

Once the 70’s oil shocks were over and energy prices dropped, it became
business as usual to create a North American infrastructure that ignores the
finite limits of fossil fuels and the vulnerability of our supply lines.
Today we are reaching global peak oil production and the threat of political
interruptions to the oil supply are at the highest since the 1970’s. North
America imports more oil from overseas than ever before.

Even in Canada, where there is a net surplus of oil nationally, many people
are surprised to learn that Ontario imports over half its oil from the world
market, and Quebec imports 90%. There is no pipeline from Alberta large
enough to supply the thirsty marketplace. Here in Ontario we are in a
vulnerable position relative to the Western provinces.

It’s not just about oil however. Domestic natural gas production is also
peaking. Because we can’t import any substantial amount of natural gas,
supply will decrease and price increase. Homeowners will be paying multiples
more for heating bills, and industry will compete with households over use
of the remaining supply. In 2007 the Canadian plastic industry began a
campaign promoting the economic benefits of using of natural gas to produce
plastics rather than burning gas for heat.

Individuals and businesses that are not prepared will be highly vulnerable
to the coming energy crisis. Here’s a sample of some possibilities to
protect yourself.

Buy a highly energy efficient home now

Don’t repeat the mistake of American auto manufacturers. Asian manufacturers
foresaw the market shift from gas guzzlers toward hybrid vehicles and highly
efficient cars. It takes a long time to turn a large business around, and
American automobile manufacturers are still ill prepared. It’s time to buy a
“hybrid home” now so that when the next energy shock occurs you won’t be
left holding the bag with an unsellable house.

A hybrid home, like a hybrid car, uses 50% or less energy than a home
built to the current building code. Hybrid homes also make use of simpler
solar thermal systems to provide free domestic hot water to the home, or at
the very least are “solar ready”, featuring a conduit running from the
basement to the roof to accommodate future solar thermal and solar electric
installations.

New homes built with an ENERGY STAR label should be your minimum choice.
A home with a LEED certification is better, and is just beginning to
come to Canada. A LEED Gold certified home is usually a hybrid home
with added environmental features such as healthy indoor air quality and
water conservation.

For buyers of existing homes, make sure you look for homes that have had
an ecoENERGY audit with an EnerGuide rating. An EnerGuide rating of 78
should be your minimum, or be prepared to spend money to increase it
through renovations. ENERGY STAR and R-2000 homes come in around 80,
and a hybrid home is typically an 84 on the EnerGuide scale. One or two
points on the EnerGuide scale can represent a big difference in the home’s
relative energy consumption.

Seek out townhomes, row homes, and triplexes in urban areas

Picture this: The price of oil triples again and gasoline reaches $5/L, with
spikes up to $7/L. Lineups at the pumps abound. This could happen within the
time span of several months. Overnight that subdivision with an hour or
longer commute into the city by highway becomes a liability as the cost of
commuting becomes very high, if there aren’t outright shortages of gasoline.

Many home buyers may not want to live in a green condo high-rise, but would still
consider affordable compact low-rise developments closer to the city. These
denser forms of housing cost less to heat, becoming more attractive to
purchasers in the face of doubling or tripling heating bills.

Anyone not already living in a green building will be left with an
unsellable home. The question now isn’t “can I afford to buy green?” it is
“can I afford not to?”

David Elfstrom is an engineer in Toronto, specializing in energy
efficient home design and HVAC system design with integrated solar technologies.
Email: david@elfstrom.com

If anything was largely affected by LEED it was our preconceptions of our landscaping. It was our original intention to approach the landscape design in a logical and practical way with regard to conservative design, native planting, local availability, and elimination of thirsty water use. Our criteria didn’t impact the look of the design though as we still had idyllic pictures in our mind of wild meandering gardens using native species; as if the original Burlington ecosystem hadn’t been scrapped clean to make room for farms followed by subdivisions and our house simply shot up out of the wild kingdom without harming a thing.

Well of course this isn’t the case, the damage is done and we can’t restore our ecosystem in Burlington starting at our small portion of an acre. What we can do though is lesson the negative impact our manufactured landscape has on the ecology. Replacing a dynamic diverse landscape with a designed and manufactured one lacks diversity and creates the need for artificial sustenance – support at the cost of dollars, energy and ecology resulting from investment in non-native species that need assistance to survive outside their natural range; excessive watering, fertilizing and feeding and pesticides to support an artificial arrangement that wouldn’t survive together naturally. Therefore rethinking how we design the built environment has to be the number one objective.

So in giving the LEED points more thought, we arrived at a new outlook: modern restraint and a natural conservatism coupled with the idea that perhaps if we aren’t to replicate nature with a faux version, we can at least look at the landscape as a system in the same way we did with the house.

This is the shift in thinking from the landscape as being an aesthetic to being a mechanism for reducing impact of our built environment while also facilitating various functions for the home. LEED requirements are not restrictive or leading toward our solution, rather we are taking an approach that suits us while also providing LEED points.

So the objective is to create a landscape plan with the following goals:

Reduce
- eliminate municipal water consumption for landscape; plants and maintenance of hardscapes
- reduce negative impact of watershed from property; water run-off into municipal sewers and erosion
- eliminate introduction of non-native species of plants
- discourage undesirable plants from growing using sustainable techniques; eliminating the need for chemical treatments or excess labour to maintain
- reduce the need for unnecessary plantings of greenery for sake of aesthetic
- reduce the heating of landscape and hardscapes from the sun; lessoning the need for air conditioning or irrigation

Promote
+ encourage self sustaining landscape; plantings allowed to grow with little to no maintenance and landscape materials chosen to age gracefully without maintenance or replacement
+ welcome more trees to the lot; design the aesthetic in such a way that trees are an asset or necessity not a liability or problem
+ utilize the positive attributes of trees and greenery for the system where they are most useful – provide shade and natural cooling in summer and sunlight accessibility in the winter
+ encourage wildlife to do what they wish with the landscape; without creating scenarios where wildlife is positioned as a problem such as birds over cars, nests in undesirable places, bees becoming aggressive around nesting areas, squirrels digging up flower bulbs

With these goals and criteria in mind we’ve been working on a landscape plan. We enlisted the assistance of the good people at Terra Greenhouses with regard to material selections and helping locate information on native species. Since part of our logic was to ensure all plants were easily found locally as well as being native, we we’re pleased to find out that Terra, like other garden centres, tend to have a resource for such plants.

We were also pleasantly surprised that Terra not only new what we were looking for with regard to our goals but most importantly, they respected our interests and shared a common desire for responsible landscaping practices.

So now with a plan in hand and a good handle on plants, trees and landscape materials we can finalize the drawings to submit to Branthaven as well as to the LEED people. A final note about LEED points and landscape design. LEED awards points for engaging a certified landscape architect or the like. For obvious reasons this is a recommended option for people who are thinking of undertaking a LEED project or simply wanting to landscape in a sensible and sustainable manner. Like other professional services, Certified Landscape Architects provide a great deal of value and experience especially when considering changes in common thinking which they stay abreast of. More often than not, these professionals will save you money in one way or another and make their services worth while as well as add that extra intangible higher level of execution that turn a good project into an amazing project.

Plan to be posted soon.

We’ve been working through our LEED checklist with Branthaven Homes to ensure the points we project to receive are actually attainable, while also adjusting the design and planning to include some mandatory sustainable ideas to suit LEED.

LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is a quickly growing design and build standard that takes a holistic approach at creating a standard for the built environment, namely houses and commercial buildings. See our post or this link for more on LEED.

A few months ago we reviewed our plan with the LEED consultants and estimated our achievable points or score based on the LEED score card. Sustainable design is awarded points which can add up to various levels, LEED Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum. We did very well but there was some work still to do to reach Platinum, and why not reach for the top. Many of the forth coming posts will subject our work and attention that’s being dedicated to pursuing LEED titled “LEED, the way”.