Green Edmonton

Saturday, March 20

• Seminar: 10am to 12:30pm
• Tours: 2pm to 4pm

Seminar: Designing and Owning a NetZero Energy Home

• Grant MacEwan University, CN Theatre Rm. 5-142, 105 St. Building at 105 St. and 105 Ave
• Peter Amerongen (builder), Gordon Howell, P.Eng. (solar engineer), Conrad Nobert (Mill Creek homeowner)
• Seminar and tours: No need to register. Cost: free

Open House Tours - see ideas you can use on your own house

• energy- and water-efficient construction and appliances reduce space heat by 65%, hot water by 75%, and
  electricity use by 50% for upgrade cost of less than $20,000. All electric. No need for natural gas line.
• air and water heat recovery, LED lighting, rainwater harvesting, passive solar, active solar, solar electricity
• sustainable materials, healthy indoor air quality, eco-landscaping, net zero emissions

Myles Kitagawa is my favourite Edmonton-based environmentalist. He articulates an intelligent, realistic vision for where we need to go as a society.

Myles works full-time, for very little money, to improve Alberta’s environment and to mitigate the impacts of humanity’s destructive activities. Watch the above video to get a feel for how well Myles understands the issues, and how much sense his approach to solving our problems makes.

Myles is the executive director of the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta, a livejournal blogger, and an occasional contributor to this website.

My family and I will be showing our support for local food tonight at City Hall (6 o’clock). Council will be discussing a plan for future land use. The Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA) has influenced the plan so that it includes provisions to protect high quality farmland that is within city limits.

I hope that GEA is also arguing against the plan’s ridiculous idea that 75% of future growth should occur as urban sprawl (discussed more here). Anyone who has witnessed the many vacant lots and underutilized spaces in the city’s core can tell that there is plenty of room for growth/revitalization without ANY more urban sprawl.

Anyway, GEA has it right on local food. That’s why we’ll be joining a few hundred other concerned citizens to pack city hall tonight.

The Bricor Hand-Held Showerhead only uses 4.2 litres (1.11 gallons) per minute

I've never needed a reason to conserve water. Simply knowing that half of the world’s population lives without easy access to it is enough to make me grateful for my easy life.

Other than gratitude, the reasons to conserve water are excellent:

• Carbon Dioxide: Saving 1000 litres (one cubic metre) of water averts the emission of 1.75 kg of carbon dioxide (source).
• Cost: Water costs me about $2.64 per 1000 litres to deliver and treat.
• Cost Again: Water is very expensive to heat.
• Contamination: When I use water in my house, it returns to the North Saskatchewan river more contaminated than if I had left it there.
• Water Security: Our glaciers are melting. We may one day be water insecure, so having infrastructure in place to reduce its use is a good thing.

Toilets account for roughly 1/3 of our water use. In the Mill Creek Net Zero Home we installed dual-flush toilets.

Our Toto Dual-Max toilets “get the job done” while keeping water use to a minimum.

We decided on Toto Aquia Dual-Max toilets because they reportedly worked well, and our plumbing supply company stocked them. So far, so good.  read more... »

Earths General Store has reopened at 9605 – Whyte Avenue (across from the Humpty’s), its new, bigger and better location. EGS was the flagship of the Edmonton environmental scene in the early 1990s. It remains the main hub of conscious green living in Edmonton. If you want to get connected to Edmonton’s environmental community, EGS is the place to be.

In its new location, the store has expanded from its role as retailer, coffee roaster, bookstore, and information provider to included groceries and an expanded line of offerings.

EGS now sells food!

One of the things I’ve always loved about the store is that Michael and his staff have done “the research” for me. At most other stores, you have to constantly be on the lookout for green washing and gouging. At EGS, you can relax and trust that whatever you’re buying is truly the greenest, healthiest choice.

I’m thrilled that EGS has stepped into the role of green grocer. Stop in and check it out. Here are some more pictures of the new space:  read more... »

The temptation has always been there for eco-house builders. It’s those damn windows; they are just so useless once the sun goes down. There must be some way to insulate them once they no longer need to be seen through, right?

Moisture

The answer is yes, but not cheaply. The biggest problem is moisture. If you insulate a window from the inside without a perfect air seal between the heated space and the cavity between the window covering and the window, moisture-laden air will flow into said cavity. When that happens, the moisture will condense on the window. Take it from green building pioneer Rob Dumont:

Back in the 70s I had a small house with lots of south windows. I experimented with interior rigid insulation on the windows. Some observations:

You need a very tight air and vapour barrier on the warm side of the insulation. I did not have either, and condensation would readily form on the window. I used a 2 inch thick piece of beadboard as the insulation. The windows were double glazed sealed units with an R value of about R2. Even more condensation would form on the window when the insulation was removed, as the warm, moist air could then, unimpeded, hit the window.  The condensation would run onto the sill. I actually got quite sick from the mould that grew on the lower corners of the windows. Never again.

R Value

We felt compelled to buy window coverings as soon as we moved into the Mill Creek NetZero Home  read more... »

Mill Creek NetZero Home, December 15, 2009, 14:00.

As we approach the winter solstice and the three-month anniversary of our moving in, we continue to learn about our new house. These observations are mostly qualitative, because we don’t have the rest of our solar modules up, and we haven’t set up monitoring equipment yet. We are tentatively planning to remove the door of our wood stove on July 1st, 2010  and then monitor the house’s energy use for a year.  read more... »

Mill Creek NetZero Home Heat Recovery Ventilator

I heard a story once about a man who built a house using insulated concrete forms (ICFs). While I don't advocate their use in general, ICFs have some distinct advantages (certainly over conventional construction). The primary of these advantages is supreme air tightness. ICF homes (those that are built with ICFs from top to bottom) can achieve hourly air change rates of 0.2. In contrast, the Mill Creek NetZero Home has an airtightness measurement of 0.36 ACH, which is really amazing for a wood-framed house.

So back to this guy who built the ICF house. He apparently wasn't aware of how air tight his house was, or at least the consequence of that air tightness. Six months after he moved in, he had to rip all of the drywall out because it had rotted. He had built a house as tight as a plastic bag, and forgotten a critical aspect: ventilation.  read more... »

In October of last year we bought our first house in Edmonton--and we've been renovating ever since.  Sound familiar?

Our initial attraction to the property was it's three-fold potential:

•  Potential to make this old house (1942) into a energy-efficient family home (hopefully for many years to come);

•  Potential to make this huge double lot (8000+ square feet) into a more environmentally sensitive/edible landscape (we love growing our own food); and finally,

•  The potential (and challenge) of being good neighbors/citizens in an older and struggling North Edmonton community (Build better communities, stop urban-sprawl, "improve, don't move", etc.).

Idealistic? Yes, whatever...

One of the biggest challenges to renovations and landscaping we are constantly up against is cost. Not making a lot of money, the cost of creating a space we can enjoy without guilt has called for some genuine creative thinking... and I hope some of the ideas we've come up with will be of interest to readers who can relate.  read more... »

The best way that I can think of to add a large amount (20+ tonnes) of thermal mass to a solar home is by adding concrete floors. By doing this, one can get two uses, thermal storage and a finished floor,  out of the same investment. Furthermore, since the mass of a concrete floor is so spread out around the home, thereby giving it a large surface area with which to absorb and release heat, it really is the ideal thermal storage medium for a house with large solar gains.

So we added a 2.5 inch topcoat of concrete over the subfloor. In order to support the extra weight we had to add (recycled!) beams that run the length of the house (north to south).  After it was poured, the concrete was simply trowelled as a preliminary finish.

pouring concrete floors over a regular subfloors (the walls had to be made 2.5 inches higher to compensate for the depth of the floors)

a freshly trowelled concrete floor

For the final finish, we were partial to an acid-stain because we've seen some gorgeous stained finishes. Peter Amerongen convinced us to go for a water-based dye for environmental reasons. Man those green types can get in the way sometimes!

A talented man named Skip from Desco Coatings did the final finish. Peter describes the finish as such:
”We sealed the concrete with lithium silicate, then dyed it with water-based dye. The final coat was an epoxy coating, 2-part , 100% solids (so no offgassing because the soldis do not evaporate)."

The finished product is wonderful – a bit different at first, with an organic, charactery type of feel to it (yes, I just made up the word charactery).

The floor has been growing on me by the day.

we love the saw cuts in this floor  read more... »