Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

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

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.

As part of being enrolled in the LEED Home Canada Pilot, our builder and perhaps us, home owners, will be asked to comment on the sustainable build process as well as the practicality of LEED in Canada. In general, most of the comments are straight forward but there is one big thing which I believe the industry has overlooked, or, overlooks on purpose.

The issue is that when building a sustainable home, rather than conventional, the sustainable model is upside down in the order and cost of the build process. Really, it is. I don’t mean that you put the roof on before the walls but I do mean that all materials and systems have been stepped up in quality and complexity, require more attention and a particular order of completion that is somewhat different than typical.

Take heating for example – and I’m over simplifying for sake of argument. In a typical house the order is the foundation followed followed by walls, sub floors, roof deck, electrical, insulation, roof shingles, drywall starts, venting and ducts, drywall finishing and painting, flooring and lastly don’t forget to pick up a furnace on your way home honey. Done.

Now take a sustainable home – like in our case a high performance one. The first thing is to plan the heating, followed by foundation, followed by heating dig/drill, followed by walls and sub floors, finished roof system (no temporary), install heating GSHP units and HRVs, ducts, electrical, insulation, radiant floor system embedded in concrete finished floor, drywall and finishing and paint.

Subtle difference I know and in some cases this can be adjusted but the big thing is it’s different and the weight of the costs are in those few items that got loaded up front. So big deal – what’s the problem. Well the problem is:

1. Trades are used to the traditional order of things so a floor that goes in early get’s damaged – so you have to cover the floor with costly plywood coverings – wasteful too

2. Banks are used to the traditional order for their financing draws on a point system so a cost weighted toward the beginning leaves everyone scrambling to pay for the heavy upfront outlay before the bank catches up on the paperwork

3. Many systems are attached to each other determining installation order, or require trades working in isolation without overlap in the home so adjusting the order is complex or impossible – ie. insulation is a vapour until expanded so nobody but the installer is in the house – means more time, or radiant floor that will be embedded in cement requires testing during install to the subfloor and prior to concrete pour therefore the whole Geothermal (GSHP) system must be operational – not thrown down there at the last minute after the house is done when you find one on sale

In the end the outcome is a highly efficient home that looks like all the rest – it’s in the order of build and restrictions of install that can cost more due to timing and damage from trades not used to working with the new sequence.

Now that the stone work has completed outside and in, and beautifully I might add, the quicker bulk work can commence. Insulation has zipped along and is now mostly complete with only a few hours of touch-up to do. Following this is the task of carefully applying a 6mil poly vapour barrier on all walls. The vapour barrier keeps water vapour and dust from passing back and forth between the outside, the inside of the wall and the interior air volume of the home. In order for this to work, the poly has to be applied carefully to avoid tears and gaps – taping all seams.

Following this, the drywall is scheduled to commence next week and will require approximately a months work before we can get to the next big ticket items; radiant floor and poured concrete with topping. Info to come.

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.

The solution to save thousands of megawatts and carbon output for Canada is at our fingertips, and in our minds, already. It’s simple – change our perspective on comfort. There’s a reason why Canada and the US consume considerably more energy than the rest of the world and it’s not climate. It’s that we’ve developed an overly keen awareness to comfort — we are far more particular than other cultures. We like it warm in the winter and cool in the summer like everyone but consider the energy necessary to keep a house artificially cooled at 24ºC as compared to 26ºC. It doesn’t sound like it should be much but it usually takes a system a couple of hours to shift 2 degrees throughout the home and that accounts for a lot of energy.

But what if we just decided that 26º or even 28º was perfect in summer and 19º in the winter. That’s it. Then for most of the summer or winter the house would only require venthillation and little conditioning. Then also the system in summer could run the condensor on a low fan speed to remove humidity to make the air feel cooler in a relative sense. Nation wide this would be a major savings.

Using this perspective how would we judge other mechanical systems that require energy? Say lighting? Well we could consider a slightly darker room romantic, especially if we used accent and task lighting instead of a center of the room high wattage bulb trying to do too much. And then there’s our thirst for cold water compared to room temperature – image if we just unplugged all water coolers concluding that room temperature water was just as refreshing.

In the end we pay, as does the environment, for our desire for perceived comfort – for our perspective that’s unrelated to need, health or even average human comfort.

That being said, how will we change or relate our comfort consumption to cost especially when it’s an individual, house by house case scenario. I believe the start is knowing what the real cost is and that’s with a Power Monitor. Over the next year you will be hearing a lot about these devices and ideas. More.

Our feeling is if you’re going to do it, do it well. So when we decided to maintain a romantic throwback to a less efficient era of home, the wood burning fireplace, we agreed to look for the best of both worlds. The criteria was beauty combined with quality and of course efficiency. Beauty and quality are subjective and relative to one’s current condition but efficiency is a standard that is quantifiable.

We found Stüv a few years ago and fell in love. The short list of benefits are:

+ high end of efficiency at 80+% (measured by energy converted from material burned)
+ air tight – for a long hot burn that doesn’t suck your heated home air out the chimney or cause your HRV to cycle to keep up with pressure loss
+ fresh air intake – ported from an outside intake, the combustion air is brought in from the exterior, burned and exhausted through the chimney
+ air to air heating – the interior air is pulled (optionally from the cooler basement) into a heating chamber (not combustion) and blown back out optionally into your ductwork or into the room without pressure or energy loss to your home

The North American distributer, Stüv America is in Montreal which is a plus when dealing with import furniture like this – a Canadian distributer has a smaller market and is often more approachable and inspired by love of the product. Stüv America are great to deal with and delivery is quick with a variety of models in stock. Depending on your area they have set-up a number of dealer installers so check the site. And it has a BBQ on some models but don’t tell the code officials. Recently reviewed on Treehugger.

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.