April 19, 2010
Peter Gorrie
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Imagine the shock! Four years ago, Donna Bullard and Andrew
Pease hired a contractor to remove a wooden side porch from their
east-end home. The work was part of extensive renovations planned
for the 80-year-old frame house they’d bought in 2002.
Bullard, on maternity leave from her job as an investigative
researcher for Navigant Consulting, was in the kitchen when she
heard the dreaded, “You’d better come and see
this.”
“This” was a rotted mess of wood and concrete at
the base of the wall. Further investigation revealed extensive
weakness in the entire foundation. The concrete had been poured
directly against bare earth. Likely because of that and because
it had been made with unclean sand, it was disintegrating.
“Literally, the house was crumbling. It was a scary
moment,” says Bullard, now an RBC intelligence analyst.
“You ask, ‘What do we do next?’ ”
The couple considered a new foundation, but — given the
condition of the rest of the house, and the cost — they
quickly realized it would be better to start over, from the
ground up.
The wisdom of the decision was confirmed when a demolition
crew discovered that the second storey, a later addition to the
original bungalow, was barely attached to the structure.
Nine months of planning and 10 months of construction turned
the apparent disaster into triumph — an attractive,
light-filled, three-bedroom home about 2,000 sq. ft. in size.
It’s among the city’s greenest, full of energy-saving
ideas that grew out of discussions with architect Martin
Liefhebber.
“We decided, if we’re going to do it, let’s
do it,” Bullard says. “Let’s have a really cool
house that people will look at.”
Some of the green features are beyond what most homeowners
could consider. The cost of building this home was more than
$500,000. But many others could be adopted.
All point the way to rethinking how we live in our homes.
After all, houses are among Canada’s biggest consumers
of electricity and fossil fuels.
This article offers 10 steps to make your home more
sustainable.
First, here’s what Bullard and Pease have done.
The house is heated by warm water flowing through plastic
pipes embedded in concrete floors. Because the floors are bare,
they heat up relatively quickly and the system doesn’t need
to be on all the time, as it would be with wood or tile over the
concrete.
An on-demand heater, fired by natural gas, warms the water for
the floors. It needn’t be above 40C. “When the system
is working well, the floor isn’t cozy warm; it’s just
not cold,” says Pease, who is an IT manager at Telus.
Solar-heating panels on the roof produce domestic hot water.
They heat a glycol solution in pipes that run through a tank in
the basement, where the warmth is transferred to water for baths,
showers and washing dishes or clothes. If the water isn’t
hot enough, the on-demand heater, which operates at 97 per cent
efficiency, can boost it a few degrees more.
A heat-exchanger pipe transfers 40 per cent of the warmth from
shower and other washing wastewater to the fresh supply entering
the tank, thereby reducing the energy required to get it hot
enough for use.
High-efficiency windows have fibreglass frames, low-emitting
glass and, most important, exterior awnings angled to block
sunlight in summer, but allow it into the house in winter.
The house is as draft-free as possible. The exterior walls and
ceiling were sprayed with 10 centimetres of soy-based closed-cell
foam. Outside, under the siding, is five centimetres of rigid
foam insulation.
There’s no air-conditioning. But a window at the top of
the house — in a raised section of roof called a
“belvedere” — vents warm air on hot days. Cool
air can be piped from along the foundation into the master
bedroom and 4-year-old Ashton’s room.
The belvedere contains skylights, which flood the house with
natural light, but are angled and coated to reduce heat gain from
the sun
The front yard is a vegetable garden. Rainwater from the roof
is collected in a cistern and hand-pumped to the plants.
“I’m on the five-metre diet,” Bullard
jokes.
The house was constructed to support a 740-square-foot green
roof. That and a backyard garden with fruit trees are likely the
next projects.
The cupboards were built locally; the appliances and most
lighting are high-efficiency, and the toilets are low-flush.
The home’s central space has a wood staircase and
floors. That material is local; the support beams are compressed
and made of glued strands of poplar, willow and other
fast-growing trees.
An “Energy Detective” power-monitor informs
Bullard and Pease how much electricity the house is consuming at
any instant. Among the results: The pot lights, which draw a lot
of power, but don’t yet have good energy-efficient
replacements, are only on for special occasions. The couple put
more thought into the use of the stove. And Bullard has cut the
use of her hair-dryer.
Their utility bills have dropped a little, although the new
house is one-third bigger than the one it replaced and prices
have risen.
“We consider our home greener, not green,” Bullard
says.
Tips
Energy-saving choices
- Seal leaks with foam tape, caulking and insulating pads that
fit behind electrical outlets on exterior walls. ``It’s
monotonous and tedious, but it makes a huge
difference,’’ Pease says. If you open walls or
ceilings, insulate and draft-proof them as much as possible.
Without drafts, less heat is lost to the outside world and the
house is comfortable at a lower temperature.
- Change light bulbs. At the Bullard-Pease home, the
power-monitor reading jumps nearly 600 watts when pot lights are
turned on, but LED bulbs barely register.
- Put awnings on south- and west-facing windows. Getting the
right angle for summer shade and winter sun is easy, Pease says.
Awnings are especially important in summer. ``If there’s no
heat gain, there’s no heat to get rid of.’’ If
you don’t mind a darker house, you can get a similar effect
for free by closing window blinds or drapes on summer days and
opening them when the sun shines in winter.
- Install a system to recover heat from wastewater. Pease says
his version, which is longer than average, cost $2,000, but cuts
the water-heating bill by about $800 a year.
- If you have a garden, recover rainwater for it. It’s
better for the plants, saves you money and eases the load on
water-treatment systems. A cistern and pump work well, but you
can get a rain barrel from the City of Toronto.
- Install a power monitor. With Ontario’s new Smart
Meters, monitors must be wired into the breaker panel, which
requires an electrician. But the device ``makes you very aware of
what uses a lot of power,’’ Bullard says. ``It
reminds you to turn things off.’’
- Use local products as much as possible for renovations, and
avoid exotic woods, which must be transported long distances and
whose harvesting often causes environmental damage.
- If possible, switch to tankless on-demand water heating. It
costs more to buy or rent, but rebates are available and it cuts
natural gas or electricity consumption by about 40 per cent.
Since conventional water-heating accounts for about one-quarter
of a typical home’s energy use, the savings are
substantial.
- Do as much free stuff as possible. Wear slippers and a
sweater. Dry laundry on an indoor or outdoor line. Let sunlight
in on winter days and keep it out in summer. Turn off lights, TVs
and computers when you don’t need them.
- If you’re renovating, take good advice from Pease and
Bullard, who spent extra on the heating system, insulation and
other permanent items that would improve comfort and efficiency,
but scrimped on furnishings. ``Put money into things you
don’t want to change,’’ Bullard says.
Source: Peter Gorrie
Andrew Pease explains that a flash gas boiler heats water on demand and stores the heat in the tank. Seven pumps on the wall send warmed water through pipes to the floors of the house.
DAVID COOPER/TORONTO STAR
Pensive Thoughts
Libby: I have always wanted to put one of these in. Maybe in Belwood, but it would rarely be dry I suspect :) (09/03/11)
PM: Well, it is actually designed to hold water, mostly, and let it drain away from the house and (hopefully) into to connected blue plastic barrels that I buried under the river bed. The landscape cloth actually is good enough that if I pour a bucket of water at the top, it drains down to the end, and you never see it trickle through the stones. (09/03/11)
Grondzilla: Noice. (09/13/11)
Grondzilla: Noice. (09/13/11)