Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

All of our stone comes from local quarries in Wiarton and Owen Sound. Limberlost Stone supplied a lot of it as they have that perfect warm buff colour along with the charcoal and grey striated limestone available in most any shape, size and cut.

Picking stone isn’t like selecting carpet samples, it is a natural product that is endlessly different from day to day and layer to layer throughout a quarry. This means it’s recommended to either go pick it yourself and have it put aside or if you chose not to pick it, just be happy with the surprise nature offers.

www.limberloststone.com

The landscaping has begun. We had a run of beautiful warm days last week and knocked off the front yard with the assistance of a bobcat artist named Wayne.

The landscape plan we developed hopes to maintain our goal of energy conservatism and sustainability but as usual with a large degree of pragmaticism. To follow LEED landscaping to the letter, we would have had to be way more diligent with our plant and material selections than we could as DIY’ers as well as provide the signature of a landscape architect for full points. In our case, we’re happy to use native (central Canada and Ontario, not exclusively Southern Ontario) hardy and drought resistant plantings along with locally sourced stone, screenings and soil as well as recovered mulch from local saw mills and fallen trees.

In addition, we designed the landscape to coordinate with our roof water run-off and site drainage so as to avoid site storm water run-off into the city municipal sewer system. We integrated berms, plantings, kitchy catch basins and mini-creeks or French trenches to keep water moving away from the foundation but with the goal to have it absorbed by plantings and the natural water table. We filled the catch basins and trenches with drainage tubes and covered with river rock for filtering, evaporation and simple clean aesthetics.

The main thing we wanted was a natural easy unstructured feel of the yard to balance the purposely structured building. This unstructured format will also be forgiving of a more wild result when the grasses and native plants start to mature and get slightly unruly – allowing us the grace to not use too much energy in maintenance.

The check list we achieved
+ minimal costs for max results (cost means more money through the wasteful industrial engine)
+ native species of plantings (creating habitat for native wildlife & suit local conditions to avoid artificial support)
+ low energy and efficient use and distribution of site rain water (gravity waters our plants)
+ drought resistance (but the plants don’t need it)
+ low mechanical maintenance (no grass to mow or trim, no fertilizers, no watering from municipal)
+ encourage or restore water table (moist soil is more absorbent and adds to natural plant moisture evaporation cycle)
+ minimized hard surfaces on site (most of our hard surfaces are porous or have cracks for drainage into site)

In the end, we have a natural and pro looking landscape design that works in conjunction with the house and ecology in a practical and achievable way without breaking the bank — though it did my back.

Resources

Native Plant Species Planning — Jason Pepetone (email)

Native Plant material — www.connon.ca

Stone — www.limberloststone.com

Brian Miller of Creative Woodworks delivered our bar stools that he made for us the other day. Wow, what a beautiful job. These stools integrate into our island so that when we aren’t using them, my obsessive order personality won’t be urged to constantly arrange them.

The great thing about designing for working with artists and craftspeople like Brian is in the collaborative process. We design to our needs and esthetic and the artist uses their experience and guidance to make it work better. The collaborative result is greater than if you just asked someone to make something and follow specification to the letter. As long as the process involves open communication as to what will evolve and for what reason, there are no surprises except for how dam good it can be.

A little about the kitchen and stools. The cabinets are made from solid and veneered walnut harvested locally in Dundas. Many of the Walnut trees in that area are coming to the end of their lifespan and falling naturally where a number of mills are collecting and milling for lumber. The counter tops are both solid Walnut from Dundas and Maple — both protected with a natural oil except for the cooking countertop which is an Ontario granite called Kodiak (brushed). The cabinets are no VOC formaldehyde free veneered plywood and coated with a no VOC waterbase sealer.

Creative Woodworks (905.659.8888) www.creativewoodworks.ca

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Incidentally, some health conscious readers may wish to wade into the learning about Radon and its relation to Granite and new homes. Though we may opt to test our home for radon emissions, we’re not worried with the materials we’ve chosen including this Ontario Granite.Make sure you read the comments following the article as the article is a little leading and fluffy to base an opinion.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/07/28/granite-linked-to-high-levels-of-radon-gas-exposure/
http://www.nsraweb.com/forums/news-5/radon-granite-testing-9130.html

Most, if not all of the conversations we have about our home centres around the choice to go sustainable and inevitably the costs associated with this choice. How much extra does it cost to build sustainable or LEED?

Well, presuming those are both the same thing and I don’t believe they are entirely, you have to decide first on your philosophy around EXTRA cost. Oh no you say, here he goes. Wait. I’ll break the argument into multiple parts over a series of posts.

Part 1 – Quality vs. Sustainable

Really, this is a good question. I’ve known many people who’ve either had a custom home built for them or have purchased a new production home and have in all cases been at the helm of the selections of materials from the guts to the finishes. The burden of choice.

In all cases they had to come to terms with the level of perceived quality that they wished to balance — costs versus return of enjoyment. This can be apposing scales where you pay too little and there is product failure or you pay to much and there is buyer’s remorse. However, in most cases, they chose perceived quality and they paid. That said, and cynicism aside, was there a possibility that the products were actually of good quality? Of course. In any product is there a guarantee that it is of best quality? No. But chances are that the highest quality is also the most costly to produce and therefore the most costly in market. So if you combine perceived quality with price…

If anyone has been through the selections process, they’ll know that there is no shortage of choice out there. All choices come with differentiation; imported, efficient, trendy, inexpensive, beta, designer, sustainable etc. — all are attributes associated with the product or the buyer but not what defines its use. Sustainable is only an attribute in the end no matter how intrinsically important we may believe it is.

The long point I’m heading to is that one of the key features of a sustainable product is in its quality. Sure, measuring sustainability is a complex matrix that includes cost of manufacturing on the environment, human health, geographic location relative to build site, economic disparity and so on. But a big component is still quality in performance and longevity of use. So, if quality accounts for a large part of the cost of a product or material, how much of the cost of the material is locked up in the purely sustainable portion. As likely none as much as it may be all.

In all practicality, I’m guessing next to none. My guess and philosophy is that beyond quality, the cost impact on sustainable goods is being absorbed by the manufacturer and our economy for now, perhaps not purely altruistically but rather in a muddle of  R&D minus grants plus pollution controls less tax breaks plus worker safety and process reporting etc. minus cheap fuel and money. In the end, the most practical cost basis for pricing sustainable goods is cost of material in, plus, labour and overhead — the same as making any decent quality product in a domestic market.

So, to sum up, we believe that because our house is built of quality and long living products and materials first, with a focus on sustainable best practices as a decisive differentiator between a myriad of product choices, sustainability had little bearing on final cost. Choice and an open market based on competition regulates this naturally.

Leslie and I have been long time supporters of local — local organic food production, local manufacturing, local labour, local products – we live and work local. It isn’t always easy but typically, when you really look philisophically at the reason for any difficulty, it’s related to the desire for choice, perceived quality and price. I’m not about to yank the lid off this can of worms but local makes a lot of sense when you consider the cost of distance of goods travelled on the ecology, the erroding strength and depth of our economy, and our own health with regard to food. Regardless of good intent, many industries have found themselves reliant on distance for materials and manufacturing and this is an uncomfortable reality for them.

In any event, one industry that has thus far maintained a high level of local in its diet is home building. As a matter of cost, labour practicality and standards, the majority of a home is or can easily be quite local.

But, just how local does local have to be? For us consciously, we want to support our community first; hiring a Burlington builder with families in this town that use an extended team of local contractors was important. Materials are also often local too, at least in highlight, such as drywall from CGC Inc. of Oakville, lighting from Contrast, metal products from Bailey and KN Crowder, wood products from Goodfellow or Turkstra with local mills, concrete from local manufacturing and the list goes on. But as holes develop we begin expanding out from there so taking care of Canada makes sense to us. Canadian white cedar and other woods from Quebec, stone from local and northern Ontario quarries and so and so forth outward.

The issue is that to be sustainable, we need to encourage or support a local economy, design to consume conservatively and use restraint over the urge to pursue choice before common sense. Strangely though, to qualify for a category of LEEDs, the pinnacle of sustainable best practices, much of the materials we choose have to be sourced within a few hundred miles so as not to negatively effect the environment via a high carbon cost. The balance is tricky. It may be closer to source from a US firm in NY State than from a company in Ontario, and in fact, it is reported that sometimes less fuel is consumed in the transport of some foreign goods to our market by ship than via truck a province away. This adds complication to the decision for sure as it pulls us away from the Canadian community.

In the end though, with a little homework, a protractor and your concious you can make a good decision on what products and materials will best suit your sustainability philosophy – to be pramatic or dogmatic is up to you as long as the winner is a sustainable outcome that benefits the ecology and future generations.

Small irony in all this. We recently bid on a large interactive project for a leading Niagara home builder. In the end, we lost the job on cost, with the labour going to India. Apparently, much of the costing decisions home builders have to make these days is no different than other categories — downward cost pressure from consumers and their lack of awareness of the inherant benefit of supporting community is chasing even this last vestage of local, off shore.

What a difference clothing makes. The house now has it’s skin – the siding, soffit and fascia are now complete. The place looks hot. Now I better get off my butt and restore the vintage factory safety lights I recovered from an old barn a few years ago. These are going to be installed around the exterior.

If anyone can recommend a source for contemporary mailboxes, it would be much appreciated. A great source for new and recovered house items such as lighting and mailboxes, doors and hardware:

The Door Store on Castelfield Toronto
thedoorstore.ca

Remodelista Blog
remodelista.com

Recently the siding started to go up. Easily one of the most painful decisions to date, the clothing of the house – cladding. We chose a prefinished white cedar for a number of reasons: renewable if from well managed sources, long lasting, high quality look and a natural feel that synthetic finishes just can’t replace.

With a modern home shape, it would be easy to push the final appearance over the austere threshold with sleek materials. So we opted for a toned down but clean rustic feel — an effort to ease into the neighbouring landscape as best as we could while still appealing to our own aesthetic.

From the pace the siding installers are going, they should be completed in one more week.

We can’t seem to hang out enough in the house now that the drywall is up and finished (hard hats on of course John)— the rough shape and feel of the house is mostly complete which is very exciting. This week, our painter extraordinaire, Bonita Adamson of Bonic Design (905-466-1806), will begin the process of applying perfection to all the surfaces using waterbased, no VOC paints and sealers.

Bonic will be using paint from Sherwin Williams -Harmony is a range of no VOC and more sustainably manufactured paints that should do the trick and are available in Canada. Most other manufacturers now have products that meet or exceed LEED standards but availability can be limited in Canada for some reason – for example Benjamin Moore’s new Natura is just launching – better late than never I suppose.

http://www.sherwin-williams.com/pro/green/greensure_designation/index.jsp
http://www.sherwin-williams.com/greensure/

When choosing paint for no VOC toxicity and air quality, keep in mind that the volitile compounds are concentrated in the pigments with many paints. That means, the darker more saturated, the worse it gets. Keeping paint light is better for your health and better for the light reflectance and reduced heat load to save on the energy bill.

I don’t know what it is about the counter top. When asked about our home over cocktail chatter the polite conversation starts with questions about sustainability and the green features; geo-thermal, greywater reclamation and rainwater collection, radiant heat – yawn. But then with a strange pause like they are about to ask a very personal question they query, “what are you doing for counter tops?”. Counter tops.

It’s like counter tops are the tip of the iceberg, the Apple symbol in your car window or the tatoo peaking out of your sleeve that says there is more than you know or this commitment runs deep. If you can manage to go green counter top you must be hardcore.

So here goes – we’re in deep.

Counters are a challenge for sure. I’ve found a few suppliers of material that fit the bill but getting them to respond or react is strangely difficult. So I may go with a good standard that, though not Canadian, they do qualify for some LEED points for the materials stability, longevity and presumed recyclability. It is called:

http://www.caesarstone.com/.

Though I’m not convinced that it is entirely green/sustainable as it is derived from quartz, it is at least very durable and beautiful which in itself should outlast most products in both application and aesthetics — something that is worth considering when thinking about any product or material.

Other materials I sourced were of a recycled pulp/wood/paper that is fused together with other compounds to make a hard surface and are touted as Green by a number of resources. However they have been difficult to deal with and are also American:

http://www.paperstoneproducts.com/
http://www.kliptech.com/ecotop.html
These guys took forever to reply but say there will be a Toronto supplier up and running January to solve the communication gap. If they get their supply chain together, I’ll likely use this product.

The competitive product is:
http://www.richlite.com/countertop/

http://www.thehealthiesthome.com/products/kitchen_bathroom/cabinets_countertops.php
This Canadian company sells the above counter tops which may prove fruitful to call. I don’t remember if I followed this lead.

Icestone (http://www.icestone.biz/) and others sound great as they use recycled glass – an unfortunately abundant resource. I don’t know about you but I think the recycled glass is too busy – even ugly really. I wished they’d just crush it longer. We ruled this out too. I think the most eco counter may be the Paperstone / Kliptech.

A decent materials resource that is way too intoxicating is:

http://www.ecolect.net/

Say goodbye to 2 hours.

We were recently asked by a visitor to the site what has been the greatest challenge in the experience of the sustainable home build to date. Though there have been a few challenges that have caused delays, these things were typical so not top of mind as difficult.

What has been a lot of effort has been sourcing for a few reasons that simply shouldn’t be.

1. Communication
Ironically, finding suitable suppliers of sustainable goods and services is tricky when you have a criteria of sustainability. This criteria seems like it should have minimal effect on products; locally produced or sourced, energy efficient, eco-conscious, excellent quality, affordable and available but it is limiting by cutting down on the selection pool on suppliers.

Now the difficulty isn’t with locating the goods themselves. In fact, there are countless helpful resources for materials and suppliers, be it online or in print, that point you in the right direction toward piles of info to absorb and decisions to make in order to narrow the menu. However, once you’ve chosen the product or service, the hard part starts.

Getting the suppliers to react, to reply to emails, to quote or return phone calls, is often tiring. Basically, the service of sustainable goods and construction materials in general isn’t where it should be in our region.

Perhaps it’s a case of a good run in a busy economy, or because of shortages in availability, or because of limited technical ability behind technical online faces or pure lackadaisical attitudes but whatever the reason, this symptom of a greater problem makes the task of finding the right fits for our home the most time consuming task.

In the end, many suppliers of sustainable products are just too hard to deal with. No, not more than other suppliers but when you consider that their products can cost more and may have more limited availability, adding hard to deal with in the mix doesn’t make convincing the average altruistic but tentative consumer or builder that much easier.

2. Knowledge
The next experience from some suppliers once located is equally confusing but more easily explained. That is that some of the suppliers we’ve dealt with simply don’t fully understand what they are supplying or have an arms length understanding of sustainability and where their products fit into the criteria of the category. For them, it can be just another product in a supply chain and without personal or corporate sustainable beliefs and practices, it is just another product.

Furthermore  and almost more importantly, there is a general lack of relationship between the products they supply and other products that will cohabitate with theirs in the sustainable home. Essentially, their is a subtle lack of graciousness to acknowledge their roommates and to lead you in the right direction toward others. There is a general lack of time available to educate the consumer or builder as to the benefits of sustainability beyond the product, and certainly little time to share in the knowledge base of what other products may be available either in a competitive set or otherwise.

If sustainability is to be as successful as we need it to be in the short time we have to reach goals for our ecology, this frontier has to participate beyond selling a product. The pressure against them is a building industry that is hesitant to change and is looking for every reason to stick with status quo and worry about change and new suppliers the next time. And you can’t blame them, it isn’t easy to change sometimes.

In the end, we’ve managed to locate most everything we needed to suit our design and along the way we’ve dealt with many suppliers who stood out as being communicative, helpful and resourceful. Along with Branthaven, our builder, it’s these partners that have made the overall build successful — providing quality products and services and a positive learning experience while also creating an atmosphere of  sustainable community.

Some of these partner suppliers that come to mind so far:

+ Stüv Fireplaces – 80+% efficient wood stoves
+ Schreiber Roofing – TPO Roof system
+ Pella Windows – Energy Star FSC Windows and Doors
+ Jarvis Insulation – Closed Cell Foam Insulation
+ ALD – Energy efficient lighting calculations and design specifications