Green Edmonton

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... »

The Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA) is the most exciting thing to happen to Edmonton, sustainability-wise, in forever.

The alliance, composed mostly of churches and unions, has taken on local food and energy efficiency retrofits for existing houses as its two main initiatives.

They have produced some amazing results so far. Among other things,  they packed a city hall meeting with almost 700 people to help save some of Edmonton’s priceless agricultural land last year, and they also organized the very high-profile potato giveaway last summer.

Sustainable Works Launch on Wednesday

If you’ve wondered how to go about retrofitting of your older home, the Sustainable Works program is for you. GEA plans to help retrofit thousands (thousands!) of homes in Edmonton over the coming years. The big launch is on Wednesday . I’ll be there, and I hope that you’ll consider showing your support.

The Greater Edmonton Alliance (GEA) invites you to the launch of  read more... »

Urban Sprawl is the bane of Edmonton’s existence. I wrote a letter to my councillors and mayor on the subject. I invite you to do the same.

Mayor Stephen Mandel

City of Edmonton

November 14, 2009

Re: Municipal Development Plan

Dear Mayor Mandel,

I was disappointed to hear about the contents of the Municipal Development Plan as reported by Scott McKeen in the Edmonton Journal on November 13. Specifically, I am very much against city council’s plan to greatly increase urban sprawl by allowing 75 percent of future growth to occur in new subdivisions in and around the outer ring road (Henday Drive).

Urban sprawl is a net financial drag on a city in the long run, especially compared to that same development being conducted within the currently developed area of said city. Therefore, by allowing new sprawl, city council is wasting taxpayers’ money.

It is especially frustrating that this inefficient use of money creates neighbourhoods that do not enhance the city culturally or aesthetically, and lock people into long-term patterns of living that are unhealthy and environmentally unfriendly. Furthermore, every time council approves a new neighbourhood, it weakens mine and reduces the services that my community receives.

I believe that, instead of living in fear that outlying municipalities will attract new citizens who want to live in the suburbs, Edmonton should market itself as an efficient, livable, walkable city with excellent transit and infrastructure. If that kind of city isn’t worth living in for some people because it does not have a dozen new suburban neighbourhoods for them to choose from, by all means let them waste another city’s money. Let another city run empty buses through their neighbourhoods and try to finance the repair of its sprawled out infrastructure.

I strongly urge you to push for zero percent new sprawl in our city. Let us boldly embrace our city’s developed limits as they stand today. We have dozens of neighbourhoods with room for hundreds of thousands of new citizens within our currently developed boundaries.

These neighbourhoods will only be beautiful, attractive, properly-serviced, healthy places with well-kept infrastructure if we stop urban sprawl in Edmonton immediately.

Sincerely,

Conrad Nobert

CC: www.greenEdmonton.ca

Mill Creek NetZero Home Living Room - finally some autumn sunshine!

Have you ever noticed that as soon as you move in to a solar house the sun stops shining? It’s been overcast since the beginning of October here in Edmonton – since just after we moved into the Mill Creek NetZero Home – and the fact that Edmonton has as many hours of sunshine as Miami has seemed hard to believe at times. Finally we have the return of sunny days, and the house is great to be in right now.

So what have we learned so far?

• the transition to living on concrete floors has been painless for us. They are much warmer than I thought they would be, and since we were already in the habit of wearing Crocs around the house, I really haven’t noticed the different floor surface. We have been encouraging guests to put on a pair of Crocs from the box in the front entrance.
• the house makes us much more in tune with the solar cycle. The above picture was taken at around 1 o’clock. I enjoyed sitting in the sun for a while before lunch, but now that I’m using the computer the sunny areas of the house aren’t appropriate anymore. Solar houses should have non-sunny areas, and the occupants must be willing to flex with what is going on outside.

the library area on the second floor is bathed in sunlight on a sunny day – luxurious at times, and to be avoided at others  read more... »

The solar collectors on my house will not be parallel to the roof but will stand up at an angle of approximately 40 degrees.  With some of the recent wind storms around Edmonton and other places in Alberta I've been quite concerned about my house if one of those storms hits again after the collectors are up.  read more... »