Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

One of the main features of our house, both aesthetically and functionally is the stone work. Consequently we spent a lot of time focusing on the style, source and construction of the stone. So when it came time to choose a stone mason, we were particular to find a company that could give us a more artisanal approach to their work than supplying the typical stone or composite veneer pattern that is prevalent today.

Diamond Masonry were chosen for their reputation, previous work and willingness to give it their all to achieve an old school artistic look – reminiscent of drystack ledgerock and rubble.

After sourcing the perfect mix of stone from various local quarries, John Greenis from Diamond experimented for a few weeks on how to achieve the right look while balancing a budget of difficulty and time on job. His solution is nothing short of beautiful – and exactly what we dreamed of.

It’s amazing the reaction from passers by – people who are captivated by the aesthetic beauty of natural stone assembled in a recognizably traditional and craftsman like method.

In the end, aesthetically the exterior and interior stone work will provide a sincere and relaxed elegance and contrast to the modern lines of the home – an old and new ideal. Functionally and as part of the sustainable features of the design, the stone in the interior will act as thermal mass, mitigating temperature change within the interior climate. In summer, the stone will collect night time temperatures and conversely assist in keeping the air temp cool by day. In winter, the stone mass walls will collect direct sun exposure energy as well as ambiant air temperature from the ground source (Geothermal) powered radiant floors by day, and slowly release that temperature through the night to keep the heating system working efficiently within ideal low output temperature ranges.

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.

The drilling for the geothermal or ground source heat pumps is nearing completion. We thought our back yard looked big until Underground Sonic Drilling showed up with some seriously dude-ified equipment. The plan; to drill 8 holes at 300 feet deep and run the ground source loop of tubes up and down throughout. Of course all the while avoiding the trees, buildings, grey water cisterns and my 3 year old’s toy diggers that he’d leave on site every evening.

After 1 week of work, rain and shine, the work is mostly complete – and without a single complaint from the neighbours – that we could hear anyway. In fact, the drilling was remarkably quiet considering what’s involved. The drilling unit itself creates some vibration and the site generator and pump creates most of the sound typical of such equipment which is negligible.

This rig isn’t your typical oil driller – though we did find some natural gas. This driller uses a spinning bit in combination with water and vibration at sonic levels equating to faster and quieter drilling.

What we liked was the minimal imposition and disturbance on the property. The rig was able to mozy into tight areas among our trees and structures so we didn’t have to cut tree branches or move barriers for root protection. The pivoting drill head rotates to cut down on repositioning of the rig and tracks – minimizing the movement minimizes the destruction and compaction on the ground; roots systems and underground services.

Next up, 4 Seasons Geothermal, the Ground Source Heat/Cooling contractor will be in the mud to hook up the loop to the equipment in the house and pool building.

We were recently introducing our house to some friends and the question of power source — or alternate power source — came up. When we explained that we had chosen Bullfrog Power over an “alternative” at site energy source they smiled patronizingly, adding that we should know that Bullfrog Power doesn’t provide clean power to your home when it comes via the grid silly.

I asked if we invested in an alternative power generation like photovoltaic roof panels or wind in our back yard, and generated in access of what we could use, what would happen to the over production? And if they considered that our power was arguably clean or carbon neutral, would it be possible that our neighbour might, if only for a moment, be using clean power from us? Hmm.

Well this is essentially what Bullfrog Power has to offer. We chose to use or invest in Bullfrog Power, if at least in the short term, as a alternative to investing in non renewable power generation supplied by Ontario Hydro and the local Burlington Hydro provider. Bullfrog Power invests in renewable and arguably clean energy sources, much of which in our area is wind, and channels it to the established grid.

Customers then chose their power provider to be Bullfrog Power and buy electricity from the grid. Bullfrog in turn invests profits back into supporting and creating more alternative and renewable energy production – in our back yard – so to speak.

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.

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.

At our house we (I) like to say, “why do today what you can do tomorrow”. No, not complacency but a practical sensibility toward hiding that list of to do’s for a rainier day. Essentially this is why we (Canadians) are simply putting off some dirty housekeeping (green and sustainable change) for a rainier day too.If you are looking for some solid logic for getting around to the job, read David Elfstrom’s article on preparing for the rainy day of $500/barrel for oil. David Elfstrom is an Engineer specializing in the field of Sustainability and among many other things, a volunteer (non-voting attendee) for the CaGBC LEED-H administrative committee. Canadian Green Building Council.

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How to prepare for oil reaching $500/barrel

It’s coming. Or rather, it’s not going to continue coming any more. I’m
referring to the declining availability of natural gas and oil while facing
increasing demand. Add the possibility of an international political event
and we’re primed for an energy price shock.

How well prepared you are for these events can make the difference between
financial success and failure in the next several years.

Resource production peak is a fact of geology and physics. If we just had
the slow decline in global resources to deal with, we could manage.
Unfortunately it’s never so simple. Taxes on nonrenewable carbon-based fuels
are also on the horizon, further adding to cost as the supply dips below
global demand. And political events in countries far away can have a
dramatic impact on everyone in the blink of an eye – maybe this week, this
year, next year. Like a rumbling volcano, we don’t know for certain when it
will blow, but it’s highly likely it will soon erupt. The risk is real and
quantifiable.

History repeats itself

In the early 1970’s U.S. domestic oil production peaked, and America’s
imports of oil started to rise. Soon after, political events occurred that
tightened international supply, causing an oil shock. The gasoline pumps
went dry and the price skyrocketed. The U.S. could not produce enough to
meet its own demand.

Once the 70’s oil shocks were over and energy prices dropped, it became
business as usual to create a North American infrastructure that ignores the
finite limits of fossil fuels and the vulnerability of our supply lines.
Today we are reaching global peak oil production and the threat of political
interruptions to the oil supply are at the highest since the 1970’s. North
America imports more oil from overseas than ever before.

Even in Canada, where there is a net surplus of oil nationally, many people
are surprised to learn that Ontario imports over half its oil from the world
market, and Quebec imports 90%. There is no pipeline from Alberta large
enough to supply the thirsty marketplace. Here in Ontario we are in a
vulnerable position relative to the Western provinces.

It’s not just about oil however. Domestic natural gas production is also
peaking. Because we can’t import any substantial amount of natural gas,
supply will decrease and price increase. Homeowners will be paying multiples
more for heating bills, and industry will compete with households over use
of the remaining supply. In 2007 the Canadian plastic industry began a
campaign promoting the economic benefits of using of natural gas to produce
plastics rather than burning gas for heat.

Individuals and businesses that are not prepared will be highly vulnerable
to the coming energy crisis. Here’s a sample of some possibilities to
protect yourself.

Buy a highly energy efficient home now

Don’t repeat the mistake of American auto manufacturers. Asian manufacturers
foresaw the market shift from gas guzzlers toward hybrid vehicles and highly
efficient cars. It takes a long time to turn a large business around, and
American automobile manufacturers are still ill prepared. It’s time to buy a
“hybrid home” now so that when the next energy shock occurs you won’t be
left holding the bag with an unsellable house.

A hybrid home, like a hybrid car, uses 50% or less energy than a home
built to the current building code. Hybrid homes also make use of simpler
solar thermal systems to provide free domestic hot water to the home, or at
the very least are “solar ready”, featuring a conduit running from the
basement to the roof to accommodate future solar thermal and solar electric
installations.

New homes built with an ENERGY STAR label should be your minimum choice.
A home with a LEED certification is better, and is just beginning to
come to Canada. A LEED Gold certified home is usually a hybrid home
with added environmental features such as healthy indoor air quality and
water conservation.

For buyers of existing homes, make sure you look for homes that have had
an ecoENERGY audit with an EnerGuide rating. An EnerGuide rating of 78
should be your minimum, or be prepared to spend money to increase it
through renovations. ENERGY STAR and R-2000 homes come in around 80,
and a hybrid home is typically an 84 on the EnerGuide scale. One or two
points on the EnerGuide scale can represent a big difference in the home’s
relative energy consumption.

Seek out townhomes, row homes, and triplexes in urban areas

Picture this: The price of oil triples again and gasoline reaches $5/L, with
spikes up to $7/L. Lineups at the pumps abound. This could happen within the
time span of several months. Overnight that subdivision with an hour or
longer commute into the city by highway becomes a liability as the cost of
commuting becomes very high, if there aren’t outright shortages of gasoline.

Many home buyers may not want to live in a green condo high-rise, but would still
consider affordable compact low-rise developments closer to the city. These
denser forms of housing cost less to heat, becoming more attractive to
purchasers in the face of doubling or tripling heating bills.

Anyone not already living in a green building will be left with an
unsellable home. The question now isn’t “can I afford to buy green?” it is
“can I afford not to?”

David Elfstrom is an engineer in Toronto, specializing in energy
efficient home design and HVAC system design with integrated solar technologies.
Email: david@elfstrom.com

If anything was largely affected by LEED it was our preconceptions of our landscaping. It was our original intention to approach the landscape design in a logical and practical way with regard to conservative design, native planting, local availability, and elimination of thirsty water use. Our criteria didn’t impact the look of the design though as we still had idyllic pictures in our mind of wild meandering gardens using native species; as if the original Burlington ecosystem hadn’t been scrapped clean to make room for farms followed by subdivisions and our house simply shot up out of the wild kingdom without harming a thing.

Well of course this isn’t the case, the damage is done and we can’t restore our ecosystem in Burlington starting at our small portion of an acre. What we can do though is lesson the negative impact our manufactured landscape has on the ecology. Replacing a dynamic diverse landscape with a designed and manufactured one lacks diversity and creates the need for artificial sustenance – support at the cost of dollars, energy and ecology resulting from investment in non-native species that need assistance to survive outside their natural range; excessive watering, fertilizing and feeding and pesticides to support an artificial arrangement that wouldn’t survive together naturally. Therefore rethinking how we design the built environment has to be the number one objective.

So in giving the LEED points more thought, we arrived at a new outlook: modern restraint and a natural conservatism coupled with the idea that perhaps if we aren’t to replicate nature with a faux version, we can at least look at the landscape as a system in the same way we did with the house.

This is the shift in thinking from the landscape as being an aesthetic to being a mechanism for reducing impact of our built environment while also facilitating various functions for the home. LEED requirements are not restrictive or leading toward our solution, rather we are taking an approach that suits us while also providing LEED points.

So the objective is to create a landscape plan with the following goals:

Reduce
- eliminate municipal water consumption for landscape; plants and maintenance of hardscapes
- reduce negative impact of watershed from property; water run-off into municipal sewers and erosion
- eliminate introduction of non-native species of plants
- discourage undesirable plants from growing using sustainable techniques; eliminating the need for chemical treatments or excess labour to maintain
- reduce the need for unnecessary plantings of greenery for sake of aesthetic
- reduce the heating of landscape and hardscapes from the sun; lessoning the need for air conditioning or irrigation

Promote
+ encourage self sustaining landscape; plantings allowed to grow with little to no maintenance and landscape materials chosen to age gracefully without maintenance or replacement
+ welcome more trees to the lot; design the aesthetic in such a way that trees are an asset or necessity not a liability or problem
+ utilize the positive attributes of trees and greenery for the system where they are most useful – provide shade and natural cooling in summer and sunlight accessibility in the winter
+ encourage wildlife to do what they wish with the landscape; without creating scenarios where wildlife is positioned as a problem such as birds over cars, nests in undesirable places, bees becoming aggressive around nesting areas, squirrels digging up flower bulbs

With these goals and criteria in mind we’ve been working on a landscape plan. We enlisted the assistance of the good people at Terra Greenhouses with regard to material selections and helping locate information on native species. Since part of our logic was to ensure all plants were easily found locally as well as being native, we we’re pleased to find out that Terra, like other garden centres, tend to have a resource for such plants.

We were also pleasantly surprised that Terra not only new what we were looking for with regard to our goals but most importantly, they respected our interests and shared a common desire for responsible landscaping practices.

So now with a plan in hand and a good handle on plants, trees and landscape materials we can finalize the drawings to submit to Branthaven as well as to the LEED people. A final note about LEED points and landscape design. LEED awards points for engaging a certified landscape architect or the like. For obvious reasons this is a recommended option for people who are thinking of undertaking a LEED project or simply wanting to landscape in a sensible and sustainable manner. Like other professional services, Certified Landscape Architects provide a great deal of value and experience especially when considering changes in common thinking which they stay abreast of. More often than not, these professionals will save you money in one way or another and make their services worth while as well as add that extra intangible higher level of execution that turn a good project into an amazing project.

Plan to be posted soon.