Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

This might have been our most difficult decision – windows. Not just a means to look out, the windows are the je ne sais quoi of the building, the invisible home element that can elevate a simple room into a spectacular room, or frame a purposely austere interior into context.

But more importantly, the windows are holes in your house if not selected properly and positioned in logical places. Windows account for a serious loss in energy because of many factors but simply their materials – glass and wood – are not insulating to the levels your walls are. They are a means of thermal transfer where the warm energy in the home during winter conducts to the colder exterior air – like an electrical connection it zips out through the glass. Conversely in summer, exterior temperatures are sucked toward the cooler interior temperatures while also the summer sun penetrates the interior through the glass heating up interior surfaces.

Consequently you need a good technology to lesson this natural problem with glass. Most windows sandwich a gas between two or three pieces of glass which provides a thermal break, lessoning the thermal transfer – (Low E). In addition many companies also add any number of coatings or films to the glass to keep energy from transferring in both directions (Low U). The result are high energy efficient windows that are Energy Star rated – the minimal expectation for a performance LEED home. That means sourcing a quality manufactured window with excellent thermal properties measured in E’s and U’s. Low E and low U windows are offered by most window companies and certainly by all worth buying from.

Selecting a window by quality and energy rating are certainly the top of the list of factors but in our case, especially when there are apples to apples comparisons between companies, we had other considerations. Other factors we considered when choosing our windows were:

+ Responsibility: did the company participate in material conservation or stewardship initiatives like FSC or their own version of corporate responsibility

+ Materials: has the window company tried to minimize negative materials in their production — VOC producing or harmful to employees

+ Locality: where are they made and how far do they have to travel – supporting a local economy is a benefit where possible

+ Cost: every extra dollar we spend on one technology means less for another technology

+ Knowledge: Understanding or compatibility with the LEED process

In the end, there were 3 manufacturers that made the short list: Pollard from Burlington Ontario, Pella out of Iowa, and Loewen from Manitoba. Each company had it’s advantages; locality, perceived quality, style, energy efficiency and natural resource stewardship. In the end we chose Pella for the balance of the majority of our criteria.

As consumers or specifiers we all have the privilege of choice. Choice to consume, choice in what to consume, choice in with whom we’ll chose our products to consume. Consequently we have a lot of power with our dollar, much more than we realize. Over the decade there has been a quiet revolution – the consumer choice revolution. Consumers have been quietly expressing forms of idealism while shopping; sometimes called responsible or simply choosy they are directing their dollars towards products that resonate and make sense to them – green, responsible, philanthropic, community minded – these are the attributes consumers are using to make critical differentiating determinations between brands or manufacturers because we can. We have that luxury.

In a consumer perspective, one such responsible differentiator is FSC. Forestry Stewardship Council certifies companies within a chain of custody, following a tree from its managed forest, through the mill, to the manufacturer and finally to the retailer. This chain is managed, audited and always traceable to ensure that every stage maintained a responsible use of the material as well as responsible management of waste materials with the goal of achieving a very high rate of recycling. It really makes sense.

For LEED, sustainable or green homes, FSC is a key concept as it does the work for the purchaser, saving you the trouble of responsibility up the chain where you might have had little control in the past. On an earlier post we talked about the idea of upstream pressure when considering change and responsibility and FSC is precisely this idea at work. With FSC, the end user is empowered in their decision – to choose FSC or not.

Unfortunately FSC is still in its early years and consequently supply of materials are limited – a chicken and the egg scenario because consumers aren’t yet driving the FSC demand, and the FSC supply isn’t driving consumer demand. What can we do? Well a few years ago a local lumber supplier, Nicholson and Cates, decided to go down the road of certification because they felt it was the right thing to do. Nic Cates supplies retailers in Canada and the US so they considered that this would be a benefit to their customers, the retailers, as it could be a good differentiator between retailers among consumers. Now that they have their certification, they’re finding demand for FSC material slow to pick up and to make matters worse, the supply of FSC material from up the chain is more difficult to source than regular goods.

Nevertheless they insist that FSC is right for their industry and they will do what they can to educate their customers and supply anyone who wants the FSC material. We met with Nic Cates recently to review the possibilities for our home as we require framing and roof deck materials as well as exterior cedar. We wanted to know what retailers/resellers would be carrying these materials and they are going to act as a sourcing agent to direct us to available FSC materials at area retailers as well as work with a retailer of our choice to bring in specifically what we need. Hopefully we’ll be able to make FSC a practical requirement.

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.

One of the passive technologies we’ve designed into the house and hope to utilize is the passive fresh air vent. Airtight efficient homes require fresh air to supply not only a forced air heating system but simply fresh air to breath. If allergies to outside air is not an issue as in our case, there is no need to filter outside air before it enters the home, you need only acclimate that air so that you don’t have to waste energy to heat or cool it. This is done by pulling air from the outside close to the ground, through air intake tubes that run underground, then through your foundation and tie into your ventilation system. Tah dah!

Instead of using electric fans to pull the air, this system uses the natural high and low pressure zones that occur in the home when warm air rises to the ceiling. The low pressure on the floor is a vacuum which pulls for any air it can get. Instead of that air being yanked from wall sockets or under wall baseboards (you’ve all seen the black streaks on white carpet at the base of walls), the path of least resistance is through the tube.

The pulling of the air through the underground thermal mass acclimates it to roughly ground temperature (12ºC+-) in summer or winter before bringing it into your home. This is essentially what a component of a good HVAC system does. We’re guessing that with the right thinking we can tie this into the heat exchanger so that we bring the air to interior temperature even further and reduce humidity in the summer. This system is passive and replaces electronic methods that might have pulled air from the roof or soffit height wall vents. This passive vent is sometimes called the Earth Tube. More info at TheNaturalHome.com

We’ve been looking for a turf solution that suits our criteria – aside from no lawn which might be a possibility except we have 2 children that love to roll around on a natural, flat and shaggy surface. Fine fescue turf grasses might be the answer if the info on this suppliers website is correct.

This cold climate fescue mixture from Prairie Nursery grows to only a short species height, is resistant to drought requiring next to no water and absolutely no fertilizers, enjoys sun or partial shade and only needs mowing twice yearly! If anyone has had experience with such a mixture or the like, please let us know.