Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

Late in the summer we were about to pull the trigger on a significant part of our home that was to be completed by a relatively new supplier to the building market — DaroTopp. They had a new product that perfectly suited our needs and price point. We were told by them that the product we needed was used extensively in Europe but had not been done in our area so seeing it in place wasn’t possible – so presumably there were no references from builders or home owners.

A week prior to the deadline to our decision, we received an email through our website from Lorie Boucher of Ottawa who is also building a sustainable home with very similar features and had engaged this supplier. She offered a big warning in a very professional manner by explaining in detail what had transpired for her and a second owner in Kingston Ontario to unsatisfactory results – as they put it – disastrous and costly. They pointed out at that time that their homes were yet completed and so they were hoping the supplier would rectify.

With stories in hand I approached Daro in one of our meetings and asked their perspective. The supplier’s retort was that they had not installed the product and that the installers were to blame in both cases. While I listened to this defense, I recalled that Lorie had said that the president of the company did the install himself…

So lesson 1 and 2. One, look for and check references and two, confront any negative references to see how the supplier handles it.

In the end the supplier failed to repair the substandard jobs and as a result the home owners are unhappy with the product and will have to find means to redo or rectify on their own at their own costs.

As a result of this experience we are glad to have moved on to another supplier. Now, one more thing that comes out of this – the power of the web to connect and protect consumers from the false claims, poor workmanship and less than quality products that seem to be prolific in the building industry. By being vocal and looking out for each other, we can create an environment where it is next to impossible to sell consumers down the river.

We’re now currently in the later part of the build of our home that is aiming for LEED Platinum in the Canadian LEED for Home Pilot Program. As designer and eventual home owner I’ve played a large role in sourcing qualified sustainable materials and technologies for the home and have made an effort to compare costs with legacy materials and services along the way.

Though the top of mind costs do appear to be significantly higher from the invoice – 10% to 25% for LEED qualified materials and technologies, my observation and experience is that in general these solutions are also significantly better – quality + performance + longevity — and I believe this is worth weighing.

What has kept the costs per LEED point down however has been the design. Instead of looking at sustainability as something we can buy our way through using LEED as a structure, designers should first review the power of good, simple and logical thinking as a first go to solution. To the credit of the LEED program in recognizing this, many points can be gained by utilizing intelligent design solutions in the home in lieu of tech to reduce everything from excess materials dependency, energy waste, material redundancy and material waste – all equating to less costs at end of build and over time.

With this in mind I feel the cost of build for LEED is and can be lower than often quoted. If anyone is considering a LEED build, I believe it’s worth the extra costs for LEED certification because if you are building for a sustainable goal independent of LEED, the $2+K for process is essentially the only additional cost, and for some, possibly well worth the label that defines the result.

Let’s get complicated for a minute. Insulation. What’s complicated about insulation – throw some in the walls and ceilings to meet code, seal it up and you’re good to go right. Wait. Firstly, insulation may be one of the most important components or systems in the home but unfortunately it is behind the walls so you don’t get to stare at it when the house is done, nor do you get to see how it was done…

There are lots of useful website resources to explain insulation types and applications but there are some important concepts that are sadly missed or difficult to locate. Starting with the current and legacy system of insulation in the market – typical pink fiberglass batt and the R-Value.

Idea 1 – R value
Current code in our area requires at least R20 walls and R40 ceilings that will be exposed to the exterior. Traditionally insulation was measured with an R value – the result of a test where a sealed box without studs is lined with insulation and tested to see how long it takes for the temperature inside to change to a warmer or colder exterior temperature. Simple.

The problems with this system as it relates to the use of insulation are many but here are a few main that make the test useless when gauging insulation performance in a practical context; the box doesn’t account for air movement caused by wind or air pressure differences between in and out, introduction of lesser R-value materials like wall studs, leaks or openings in the box envelope to the exterior such as around windows and doors or the biggy, insulation settling over time. It just looks at insulation in a perfect and isolated context.

Idea 2 – Application
Like many materials, the issues with performance can come down to the details of installation and use. That doesn’t apologize for the material in this case however because in reality – this material is designed to fail because it’s a terribly outdated system. During install, the format standards associated with the product have it fit into the gap between studs as we all know – and this fit is relatively snug, enough to support the material most times but the flexibility of the material and lightness means it doesn’t really hand on and is to some degree supporting itself like a post using whatever tensile strength it has. The ends are cut by the installer and are sometime short or long – they are working fast. In the end the batts go in nearly even and almost the right length but there are gaps, lots and lots of gaps. Remember your R Value was 20 in a perfect sealed box – what do you think you have now.

Next remember that the insulation is trapped between studs that are approximately 2” thick and depending on construction method, 6” deep and extend all the way to touch the uninsulated external wall’s interior surface. This means that these studs will be making a conductive connection to the outside world. Studs when measured for R value are said to be approximately R 4 though I’ve seen estimates as high as R 7. None the less, when you add up the amount of studs per square foot, as well as account for all the gaps – between studs and around windows and doors – you end up on average with R 10. What? R 10? Yep.

Idea 3 – Settling and performance
So the vapour barrier goes on and next the drywall and you move in. Over the next few years, the insulation settles. You may have done a reno or two in your life and have seen this big gap at the ceiling when you ripped the drywall off the walls. Yes, a big 12” gap where the insulation sagged from it’s own weight and shrank to reduce the coverage in the wall by as much as 1/8th on an 8’ wall. But does this mean this reduces the performance of the insulation by 1/8th? No, a 1/2” hole in a 10” balloon doesn’t reduce it’s effectiveness proportionately – it fails badly and lets all the air out. And this is what happens to your house – the balloon lets out all the heat from where heat rises – to the ceiling where the walls intersect the ceiling.

Idea 4 – Health
Why is this always last – why does health not have an ROI? Well for us it does and this is why. Once fiberglass insulation starts sagging and air starts passing through the envelope in both directions due to warm air trying to get out or external air being sucked in to replace air whipping out your ceiling or out your hood fan – dirt, dust and organics move through the insulation in both directions – trapping these organic particles not to mention pulling free glass particles into your breathing air. Eventually tears and gaps in your semi permeable vapour barrier (clear poly) allow moisture to enter and get trapped, condensing in cooler areas and when mixed with your dust and organics, creates mold and lots of it. Next, you breath the mold spores which leads to one of the largest interior air quality issues of homes today.

So, not so simple after all. And worth considering. There is a great solution and that’s blown foam. Now nothing is without disadvantages but that’s for another post. Concentrating on only the advantages – blown closed cell foam solves all those issues. In brief the R Value is measured the same but in reality it can be measured using a performance value as a percentage of R. to illustrate, pink insulation has a performance of 40% – it sagged, installed poorly, was porous, had gaps and arrived at less than half of the rated R value. Blown foam is rigid and stays inert for the life of the home while also sticking to and filling all gaps, expanding into any place a vapour of the insulation can get to before expanding. The subsequent finished performance is 95+%, for good. What this means is that if you believe R 20 is an acceptable value to achieve an R 10 in practicality – than in foam the equivalent R 20 depth of insulation will have and R 40 practical relative performance rating. It’s twice as good.

Following that, the foam is a vapour barrier once hardened if not scraped so once a 6mil poly is applied on top, there is very little moisture passing in either direction. Also, since the foam makes a mostly air tight seal, little to no air moves reducing the chance of organics contacting your drywall and creating mold situations – foam cannot support mold growth.

Other benefits are the high acoustical insulative properties that make a home simply the quietest on the block improving your enjoyment and sleep – oh, and did I mention you’ll save a lot of energy. The no VOC after curing, inertness of the material and high energy rating also make it qualify for LEED points.

For our home we chose to go with closed cell blown expanding foam – R 28 in the walls and R 40 in the ceilings. The application is now almost complete and we’re ready for careful vapour barrier application and drywall next week.

Supplier – Jarvis Insulation
The Jarvis team has operated in our area for a couple of generations and has a solid reputation for all types of applications in commercial and residential. Though they would be primarily using traditional insulation, Dave Jarvis has studied insulation methods and materials extensively and tries hard to convince customers that blown foam is where it’s at for all the reasons above. He admits that the price is a barrier of entry for a lot of people but that more and more are making the informed switch. While evaluating contracts from various suppliers, we heard more than a few times that Jarvis was the most knowledgeable and qualified to blow foam in our high performance house and would provide the best guidance and value. This has indeed been our experience.

Recently part of our water collection and grey water re-use scheme was installed. Bushman Canada supplied our 2 x 1980 gallon cisterns that will collect our rain water from the home as well as shower greywater, post filtering and treatment from the greywater recycling unit, from the house. The water collected in the cisterns will be used around the home; irrigation of young plantings and trees, washing cars, topping up the pool and various maintenance needs.

Not only is collecting rain water for reuse a cost saver as you pay for both municipal water in and out, it is also an environment saver. Rain water that runs off a property to the street via hard surfaces and drain pipes simply fills storm sewers and heads to the lake, taking with it a broth of chemicals and particulate that chokes the aquatic ecosystem. Collecting the water and using it for irrigation slowly and responsibly means it gets used by vegetation – converted into natural air cleaning and air conditioning. Furthermore it is slowly released into the water table after being filtered by the soil and plants.

The installation, though seemingly invasive for the massive holes you require for such large tanks, was quick and painless with minimal disturbance of the site. The only downside following the install are the protruding vents and man covers that are necessary for maintenance of the units. With a little planning – which was not entirely afforded to us by surprise – you can do a lot to hide what can’t be avoided. We’ll simply extend the rear patio to cover what we can while building a box/bench to cover the remainder.

Next, the greywater recovery unit will be installed in the house. This unit will filter, treat and temporarily store shower water making it available for our low flush volume toilets and laundry machine. Overflow from the system will head to the cisterns. Eventually, once municipalities come to grips with ecological technologies, we will be allowed to cycle the cistern water back into the house for non potable household needs like laundry.

Following the roof membrane, the next stage has been windows. Over the last couple of weeks, Pella has been carefully installing all of the glazing with only a few more to go. We’re loving this stage, the quality of the product is excellent, beautiful to look at and they have really done a lot to frame the building and bring it into proportion a little more.

If there is consideration for the next time we do something like this, we’ll review the size of the smaller windows and make them a little larger. By proportion, the reducing effect of the window frame and trim on the overall window glazing opening is more apparent on the smaller windows than the larger one. Small windows get really small – large windows just a little smaller.

Following a few weeks of freakish weather – heat, cool, daily rainstorms, hail like I’ve never seen in my life – the roofing contractors finally we’re able to install the TPO Roof Membrane! And beautifully. This means the interior work can now begin safely!

TPO stands for Thermoplastic Olefin or Polyolefin, a roll sheet material that is unrolled, and in our case glued to the roof deck and hot seamed using special irons to ensure a pool liner like continuous membrane. For flat roof applications like ours, it doesn’t get much better for the cost. Of course there is arguably better performance with some other technologies like “Liquid Plastic” but when compared to cost vs. minimal improvements, this is the stuff.

Aside from great leak protection, the TPO provides:

+ great UV resistance
+ excellent puncture resistance, but it’s not a dance floor
+ long term puncture repair-ability
+ responsible light reflectance
+ reasonable “green” factor when compared to other roof technologies
+ effective root membrane for living (green) roofs

In a practical sense the TPO roof was chosen for many reasons that can’t be understated. Firstly the white colour simply doesn’t collect heat in the summer. That means a cooler roof above and below the surface. Recently Toyota Canada installed this surface on one of their plants and saw an 8ºC performance increase in their cooling. That’s huge when you consider the goal is a 24º setting equating to essentially 30%. While showing the roof to a friend, we stood on the 2nd floor deck at noon when the sun was blaring. Though the air temp was just 20ºC, a regular black roof would have been unbearable, but this surface was still feeling like 20º though we needed serious sunglasses. The nice thing was that just inside the house, there was absolutely no warm air blowing in from the surface.

Secondly the white roof colour reflects light (not heat) into the house through the clearstory windows and illuminates the rooms. It’s really spectacular. Have a look at the two ceiling shots and see how well they are lit up considering the shots were taken at 7pm. This should equate to a major reduction in our need for artificial lighting during the day and evening.

Lastly we hope to install a living roof in some sections which with most surfaces would require a special root membrane of inorganic material to resist the plants from breaking down the surface and causing leaks. The TPO is an excellent root membrane so with the additional load capacity we’ve design into the structure, we can freely add to the green roof as we need to.

Maintenance on the roof is simple – keep it clear of debris and give it a wash once and a while if you don’t like the gradual staining due to our dirty cities and blown organic material.

There are a number of passive cooling and heating methods our house will utilize to reduce the need to mechanically condition the living space. One main passive system is the breeze maker or lungs of the home.

The center main floor of the house is flanked front and back with sliding patio doors that can be opened on nice days when interior temperatures are higher than exterior. In most homes, exhausting this warm air quickly can be a problem. With the design of high ceilings throughout the breeze zone combined with clerestory windows at the 14′ ceiling height on three walls, the rising hot air is allowed to escape which in turn does two things. Firstly the rising air creates a low pressure zone on the cool mass floor, pulling air along the floor from other areas of the house as well as any open doors. Secondly the rising and escaping air creates an interior low pressure that should pull in large volumes or exterior air from the patio doors. Depending on the primary wind direction and which doors are opened relative to time of day and shade, we can create a breeze of cooler incoming air.

Since air movement changes the relative feeling of temperature, we should stay comfortable longer with just cool mass floors and exterior air temperature.

Not every decision we make can be related to sustainability but this one is easy. In our last home we used sinks and a shower base from WetStyle out of Montreal that we discovered at a design show and have been hooked on ever since. Beautifully quiet styling that is an instant classic. Oh yah, the sustainable part:

+ timeless design and quality means enduring
+ wear resistant and repairable surfaces provide longevity
+ truly recyclable or cross-cyclable material – WETMAR
+ domestically made

Our experience with the product is that it holds heat well – it’s warm to the touch like a wood rather than porcelain or metal surfaces making it a very comfortable. Apparently WetStyle claims the material is a great insulator and holds water to temperature longer than other materials.

An important factor in the decision for us is the domestic story. This product was designed and developed in Canada and is still manufactured here. This means not only 2 weeks delivery from a close locality – it means a sustainable industry that supports our economy, maintaining a sound and responsible relationship with domestic labour at dollars that are relative to our standard of living. Idealistic understanding our dependency on foreign imports of style but a great start at regaining control over our economy.

Our builders, Branthaven Homes and Mike Leyer, have been working with suppliers to source as much FSC Lumber materials as possible. Much of the framing and sheathing comes from FSC mixed sources while other materials are made primarily of recycled chip. Rona, Canada’s largest Canadian distributer, has been a large source for this material and the local store has been paying special attention to the build.

See more on FSC materials at the Canadian site or our post on FSC.

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.