Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

Now that we’ve moved in, did I say we’ve moved in, we’ve had a number of weeks to experience living in the house.

Like any honeymoon, the first couple of weeks weeks felt like a dreamy holiday away — lounging, pacing around, staring blissfully out the windows and admiring the details — getting to know each other away from reality.

Following this, we moved in for real and began to unpack, post honeymoon. Then the stark reality of the things remaining to do, the real unpacking and the beginning of maintenance slowly set in.

Now, weeks beyond that, we are starting to get to know the systems and get really familiar with each other, the house and us. Hence our first product review, the toilets.

Being a green home, we made every effort to find the best, most accessible and local products for the money and in the case of the toilets, we decided on the Kohler Water Sense — San Raphael™ Comfort Height® Pressure Lite® 1.0 gpf one piece elongated toilet with the Sloan FlushMate power flush!

Basically, this is a great toilet, doing everything it should and looking stylish while doing it. However, being one of those purchases you make blind, or at least not from experiencing it in the show room, I think there are some details worth discussing.

First, when they said power flush, we had no idea. This toilet uses the municipal water pressure to charge up an inner vessel within the tank with a combination of water and compressed air (Flushmate). Then, when you press the handle, a mini jet fighter engine blows one gallon of afterburner at the problem and down the drain, in a  similarly aggressive fashion as the toilet on plane on your honeymoon (If you are one of those people who are used to sitting on the toilet while you flush, I don’t recommend it).

Along with the water savings listed, there should be a sones rating. Cool technology but really loud. The good thing is that it is only loud for a second, then while it charges for a few more seconds, it’s much quiter than a typical toilet. So the trade is even I guess. Now in most plushy homes, this may not be an issue, but in our hard surface and sparsely fixtured place, sound get’s around, and around.

The second comment on the toilet is it’s rather tall. You’ll notice it’s called Comfort Height but we’re not entirely sure why. Perhaps the name calls on the same sense of irony as “Pressure Lite”. I’m 5′-10-3/4″ and the toilet is uncomfortably high at times. My 5′-4″ house boss definitely finds herself with toes pointing to the floor and the kids don’t stand a chance. Apparently Kohler suggests that Comfort Height is the height of an average chair, making it easier to sit and stand up. Indeed, if I was dining on the toilet, ok, but for many a subtle squat position may make the experience more rewarding.

On the positive side, the toilet looks great and is as sustainable as they come. It’s of very high quality, made in the US and uses very little water compared to traditional flushers. It’s important to note that so far, the toilets are also doing fine in combination with our grey water reclamations system which is using recovered sink and shower water for use by the toilets.

A side note is the need for a change of habit. Like many, we have a tendency to use toilet tissue for noses and the toilet for the disposal of such. In the case of the Pressure Lite flushers, they blow the tissue to bits resulting in a pulp solution worthy of paper making that is difficult to flush in one go. So if you are at all itchy to have a completely clear bowl (just paper no solids) then you’ll need to change that habit. The toilet is not a garbage can kids.

However, despite the Kohler San Raphael’s little ironies, I’d have to say we’re getting along just fine.

Clover Valley Ironworks

Finding a company to custom fabricate and install stairs is surprisingly difficult. There are a lot of commodity stair manufacturers that service the production building markets as well as industrial suppliers, but if what you are looking for are architectural, high quality finished stairs to compliment your home and suit your needs, good luck.

We got lucky. We found Clover Valley Ironworks, a Burlington – Hamilton based manufacturer, while sourcing suppliers to fabricate custom metal work for signage and retail displays that we designed. Jon Luff of Clover Valley is a true multidisciplinary artist that can work in most materials and you name it in fabrication techniques.

His love however is stairs and certainly the art of the stair, in all its complexity of math and planning, suits him well. We provided Jon with a design on a napkin and together hashed out a plan that would work to suit our needs and style. Clover Valley is used to working from technical drawings as much as they are well versed in styles and designs to assist homeowners with magazine clippings. They also distribute a range of the very best imported prefabricated metal and wood modern stairs from Edelco, Ferone and Metal Concept if magazine predictability is what you need.

Clover Valley has a great portfolio online to see for yourself how versatile they are in all styles from modern stairs, like ours, to transitional retail fixtures and traditional iron fences and railings.

www.clovervalleyironworks.com

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.

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

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.