In response to this question by Kristina:

“We want to build just West of Edmonton and are having trouble finding someone with knowledge of passive solar and super insulated building practices. Any recommendations?”

I wanted to list the builders that I know who have a track record of building truly energy efficient houses. From what I’ve heard and experienced, any of the following companies could build a house that truly pushes the envelope in energy efficiency and general greenitude.

It’s well known that I’m very happy with my experience with this Habitat Studio and Workshop Ltd. No one has built a greener and more solarized house in Edmonton than these guys!

I’m going strictly from word of mouth on this one. Effect Home Builders is apparently building a net zero project in Belgravia.

My friend Myles built an R-2000 house with Kensington Master Builders, and he loves them. They really know what they’re doing, and they are very professional.

The House Company could build more, greener houses. They definitely know how to though, if the client pushes them on it.

Do you have a green builder to recommend to Green Edmonton readers?

Last year we took possession of a new home that surpassed an energy rating of Energuide 86. Because of that, Climate Change Central, an arms-length government organization, mailed us a $10,000 cheque.

What we really need is a carbon tax. Economists (the good kind) and environmentalists agree, putting a price on carbon is the simplest, most effective way of changing people’s earth-destroying ways. And I don’t buy the argument that Stephane Dion’s doomed election campaign proved that Canadians don’t want a carbon tax. The nerdiest, least competent Liberal leader in a generation lost that campaign for reasons other than his Green Shift idea.

Since a carbon tax is a political hot potato right now, one behaviour-changing alternative is the green subsidy. I have to give the Progressive Conservatives credit, this is no longer Ralph Klein’s Alberta. Stelmach’s government recently enacted an excellent net metering policy, and they also introduced the new home rebate policy.

With the right builder, we estimate that the incremental cost to building a house to meet Energuide 86, which would include excellent windows (triple-pane, low-e coating, insulating spaces, etc.), at least R40 walls, R60 in the ceiling, and a very tightly-sealed envelope, is $20,000-$25,000. With the $10,000 incentive, that cost is now ridiculously low.

Build a house that is extremely cheap to heat, much more comfortable in the winter, and cool in the summer. And get paid ten grand to do it - it’s a no-brainer.

Climate Change Central has another three years of funding in place (it may be extended beyond that time). Ask your builder to save you $10,000 today. If your builder can’t build an Energuide 86 house, find another one.

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... »

Editor’s Note: I’ve written about Rob Dumont in the past. He is one of the fathers of the green building movement, and I’m very pleased to have permission to reprint one of his columns here.

By Rob Dumont

Have there been any recent advances in the area of passive solar heating for residences?

Passive solar heating has been known since the time of Socrates. However, it is only slowly catching on in Canada. Improved windows have made the recent advances possible.

In the 1970s there developed two schools of thought regarding how best to reduce space heating bills in residences using passive means. One school was called the “mass and glass” school. With this approach, large south facing windows would be used along with concrete slabs and heavy construction such as adobe. This school had a lot of proponents coming out of the south-western United States. New Mexico was a hotbed. New Mexico has an especially favourable solar energy climate and relatively mild outdoor temperatures compared with most of Canada. A photo of the David Wright Home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is shown in Figure 1. In Figure 2 a cross section of the house is shown.

Figure 1. South exposure of the David Wright House in Santa Fe, New Mexico

(Photo Credit: Design for a Limited Planet, Skurka and Naar, 1976)

Figure 2. Cross Section of the David Wright Mass and Glass House

( Credit: Design for a Limited Planet, Skurka and Naar, 1976)  read more... »