Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

Mike Leyer and crew worked hard today to get the floor deck and walls in place to complete the first floor shell. Space is really starting to take shape and it is the first reality check to remind us that it’s a cozy, not palatial space.

It’s also a good reminder to us that we have designed a conservative floor plan in today’s standards but not in tomorrow’s standards. As energy will inevitably become more dear, if not scarce, space and our perception of it will be the visual sign of cause and effect. Like the energy crunch in the ’70s brought on smaller cars, this energy crunch will also bring on smaller, more efficient homes. As we’ve been hearing, homes and buildings are the largest source of greenhouse gas and consumption in our society — fuel to build, heat, operate and fill with consumables and fixturing – all related to square footage. So, our thoughts are that in order to be sustainable, marketable and relevant to the next generation, we should build somewhat conservatively now.

One of the ways we’ve chosen to relieve the feeling of tight space is by designing with taller ceilings and increased light access through ceiling level windows — tall and bright. This solves other issues by reducing the load on land and lessoning the need for artificial light. Also brighter spaces increase enjoyment and improve health of the interior environment.

The framing started today. Yes framing and not ICF, straw, or otherwise. These and other technologies all have their merits, as well as faults if only by lack of practicality to our situation. Our situation being that we are building a house in a market where sustainable suppliers are currently hard to locate and far and few in between compared to the suppliers lined up to provide legacy ideas. We’re lucky, we’ve found a sustainably sympathetic building partner but what about everyone else?

It’s worth commenting that sourcing green materials and sustainable products is still too difficult. Not because they aren’t available; literally thousands of options abound on the internet and in every consumer mag you pick up today. It’s that the end suppliers haven’t picked up those magazines yet – the trades, renovators, supply companies, builders, wholesalers – the supply chain – and it’s here where the greatest influence lays, with the expert and the ones you trust with your home and your wallet. They are undoubtedly aware, but like most industries it’s easy to dismiss impending change or the demand for change as, impractical, or not relevant to the existing consumer.

I’ve read a number of articles by suppliers and builders that say the average consumer doesn’t want to pay for green building – and they can’t afford to carry the burden for the consumer. Meanwhile the consumer is looking for these solutions in ever increasing numbers but meeting resistance. It sounds like there must be a lot of pressure in the middle somewhere. As a business owner I understand the pressures of change and change management is a major concern and investment in any business – but it’s just that. A responsible investment in your business is education toward change, change in processes and procedures. In the case of building, change will be mandatory and waiting until regulation comes means suicide for business and unfortunately the ecology.

So this disconnect is very hard to manage for consumers and sustainable minded people who wish to build responsibly. We received a note from a reader preparing to build in ‘09 who concurs – feeling that already the weight of responsibility to source materials and provide green ideas will rest on them. I hope they can manage to inspire their contractor to learn and change and go along for the ride with them, it will be worth it for everyone.

If you ever want to feel the meaning of footprint in all its emotional and physical impact – build a house. We have forms. With it we can see the beginning of the home take shape in terms of proportion and scale – an amazing feeling of reality and familiarity with a floor plan shape we’ve stared at for years on paper now sitting in the ground at hundreds of times larger than we’re used to seeing. Tomorrow, concrete.

You’d never think a hole in the ground was so exciting. Yes, it is. Foundation digging started today and should complete in another with forms arriving sometime day 9. As we expected from the Soil Engineer’s guestimate, there is water sitting on clay. Consequently we will be using a series of technologies to keep the basement dry. First under the slab we’ll use a system of water collection tubes to direct the flow away or toward the two sump pumps. See system plan by AMEC. Next, the walls will be sealed and insulated from cold and moisture using Tremco’s TUFF-N-DRI® Basement Waterproofing System. This system dissuades water from sitting against the absorbent concrete foundation wall and moves it down and under the floor slab into the tubes.

The foundation walls are also sealed with Watchdog Waterproofing making them impervious to moisture. The combined system apparently provides a thermal break of R12 from the grade down. This combination should guarantee the basement is dry for at least 10 years. What? Only 10 years? This is the sad state of basement guarantees – if you believe you’re about to get better, read the fine print.

Irony. Tear down an old house, weigh all the stuff that you toss, recycle what you can and then commend yourself for what you diverted from landfill. So let’s. Apparently we diverted over 80% of the demo from Landfill – and this is good. Really though, destruction aside, waste diversion, or avoidance, is a key to efficient construction and should be achieved in a number of different ways starting with building simply.

Complexity leads to waste, in odd cuts of materials, re-dos, or excess layers of finishes, veneers and hidden materials. Mike Leyer, our build foreman might have a alternate view on our “simple” house design however.

Next, use everything for something. Since we are all amazed at how much material could be recycled from the demolition, imagine how much easier it is to use the waste from new materials. The secret is to plan ahead — choosing materials that are recyclable (cut studs used as framing blocks or cabinet filler) or at least down-cyclable (off cut studs sent though the chipper as mulch). Next a waste plan is needed to ensure material waste is sorted when created, not later. Later means labour waste and labour waste is money burned and that means… (see Sustainable Costs)

Don’t invite waste. While working with a client on green initiatives, we looked at their waste problem and suggested something simple to us but apparently revolutionary to them. “Hey, don’t invite waste by allowing suppliers to bring more than they need and certainly no packaging”. What this means is every time an outsider from your site or company brings a coffee cup, lunch, packaging for their material or good, or excess beyond what’s ordered, you have to deal with it and it costs you and the environment. It’s easy. If they can’t bring it, they won’t. And if they can’t bring it they’ll change their policies to deal with their wasteful ways – perhaps by initiating methods for delivering goods sans package, or in re-suable containers. The dam of resistance forces pressure upstream.

Certainly if they are forced to take back packaging and incur the cost of waste, one of a few things will happen. They will reduce packaging to reduce costs. They will become efficient at recycling waste from packaging as an economies of scale will be achieved. They will begin to develop products that don’t require packaging or overages. And, they might even start carrying a travel mug.

Build with prefabricated materials. This is a way to combine two ideas – a supplier that plans, brings only what they require as per your design and doesn’t need packaging. Pre-fabricated house components are a growing trend in building with everything from radiant floor sections, walls (SIPs), foundation components (ICFs) and even entire house sections. The idea is that from plan, sections of the home are made off-site with precision in ideal conditions using labour achieving an economies of scale. The finished components are shipped to the site and installed in less time compared to building from scratch in less than ideal situations.

Our goal, and the goal of LEEDs, is to have very little, if any, material waste enter or leave the site. Except for those appliance boxes we’ll convert into condos for the kids.

Years of dreaming, planning, designing and preparation and we’re finally here. Demolition day – the beginning of a schedule to build our home. We watched the bullish efficiency of the demo and could only think – we’re committed now. Hopefully the remainder of the project will go with such apparent confidence and ease.