Whitingdesign Green Building Blog

On the Importance of Public Art

2011-09-20T17:10:00.000-04:00

It has been an exceptional week. I've been privileged to be intensely involved with CAFK+A (Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener + Area), as an architect, carpenter, and guest. CAFKA has grown from a small, local showing of an eccentric and energetic group of artists to a three week show of international stature, featuring over 30 major installations and artists from around the world. I commend the visionaries and volunteers behind it. The show this year has affected me and those around me in a very positive way.

As a designer of public spaces, the daily tendency is to get mired in bureaucracies, codes, liabilities, and economics. We are creating real structures that need to keep people warm, dry, well lit, and functioning in whatever it is they do for a hundred years or more. It is scary to push the envelope, not only because of the aforementioned list of concerns, but because reputation is such a fine line. Cross that line in a positive manner, and the rewards can be exhilarating, being known as someone who is a creative, a trendsetter, a person with vision. Cross it too far, and words like reckless, expensive, and irresponsible leap to the foreground. Word of mouth is everything in this business, and nearly everyone can find a parallel in their own work: lines that you are instructed not to cross, but beg further exploration.

Public art, and contemporary art in particular, is the perfect forum for exploring and destroying architectural and cultural boundaries. Often time limited, most likely budget constrained, built by "amateurs", often using found or inexpensive or re-purposed materials, pieces of contemporary art are able to move quickly, to be much more reactive to culture and to establish the bleeding edge of our understanding of space, form, and light. The public nature of most contemporary art ensures that everyone is exposed to it, has to walk through and around it, and as a result is challenged to question what on earth this bizarre creation is, why it looks the way it does, and why it was done. Public art breaks-in our future best clients. It inspires all designers to look at the world differently, to break down common assumptions about materials, construction, aesthetics, and site.

Two weeks before the opening of CAFKA, I was approached by the organizers to help produce architectural drawings for two of the pieces, which the City had deemed large and complex enough to require building permits. The City of Kitchener reviewed and approved them within hours, showing exceptional support for the show. “The Green Room” by Water Van Broekhuizen and “Buttress” by Andrew Burton commenced construction almost immediately, with 5 days and counting before the show opened. I then spent a gorgeous day in Victoria Park helping to construct Green Room, working with Walter and 4 other volunteers to realize his vision. The result is a masterpiece. Walter has created a space for intense experience, surrounding a giant willow tree on the edge of the water. Inside the green room, the world is reduced to simple elements. The bark of the tree, the play of shadows from the branches and leaves across the white curved walls, and the falling leaves are the first impressions. Stay awhile, and you realize that the view through the small entrance is of rippling water, that sounds are muted, and that the wind swirls interestingly around the walls. Both my one year old and eight year old sons spent the better part of an hour inside: quiet, exploring, happy. Stay longer and the best experience emerges, the opportunity to watch as others enter, walk around, and leave. The attitudes range from disdain, through indifference, all the way to reverence. The reverent ones are potential future clients.

Too often art is pigeonholed in galleries, hung on walls, constrained to canvasses or computer screens. The kind of experience to be had in Green Room can't be done any other way, and would never be done if not for forums like CAFKA. And it is exactly that kind of experience which not only establishes new boundaries for buildings, but in this case in particular, reminds us of fundamental qualities of space, the importance of silence, and the quiet intensity of the natural world. Chances are this article is being read long after Green Room is gone. You will just have to do your part to encourage its successors.

Durability Follow Up

2011-03-24T10:34:00.004-04:00

Further to my complaint that repair seemed to be an endangered profession, I received some tips and stories on where to buy a second life for some of our most commonly disposed items of value, the shoe and the iPod:

"Matt Afrouzi runs Uptown Shoes & Repairs on Highland Road, just east of Belmont, in Kitchener. I have a pair of Raichle hiking boots I bought in Lake Placid, NY, about a hundred years ago (okay, maybe it was only 20), and just love them. One day the sole started flapping off ... I went to a lot of people, between Windsor and Kingston, before I found the guy who said, "YES, I can repair those!" That was Matt. A bit quirky, a tad expensive, but I can't replace the comfort and years I've worn them in, so it's worth it.

Pfeifer's Shoe Repair, over on Duke Street, Kitchener. The Record recently featured an article on him, here's a link: http://news.therecord.com/article/774807

Samantha, at BTI Solutions, on Queen Street South, across from Northern Thai (again, Kitchener). I took our iPod (at least 5 years old) there, and her technician can fix a broken wheel or hold button (and probably other stuff), but can't fix the damage from water or moisture, although they tried. You'd enjoy talking to Samantha -- she's got a similar mindset about our disposable society, and so they fix what they can there. (and refill ink for printers ... my jury is out on this one yet -- perhaps my cartridge is just getting too old -- at any rate, she gives great customer service). "

Thank you, Kim F., for the great sleuth work!

Durability and the Culture of New

2011-03-24T09:58:00.001-04:00

I lament our throw away culture. We buy automobiles that last 5 years, computers that last 3, cell phones that last one. Twenty five year warranties on roofs that really only last 15, one year warranties on almost any new home. How many time have you heard this one: “At that price, I can afford to throw it away and buy a brand new one!”

We have traded a long established culture of durability, maintenance and re-use for one of cheap, expendable, single use goods. Do you know where to find a cobbler? Mending shoes is obsolete. We wear them out (or most often the glued-on sole simply breaks away, or a seam bursts), we throw them away, we buy new ones. More often, we give or throw them away as they go out of style. Who in their right mind would mend a pair of socks? Darning is art of mending socks, a term which, like cobbler, is disappearing from our language. We think of these things as antiquated, not modern. This is a mindset that has been created, promoted, and sold relentlessly for decades. It's working.

When we enter the realm of buildings, we experience a great paradox. Buildings last a long time, and it's difficult to throw them away. Individual components fail, but in order to continue to successfully shelter their occupants, they typically get repaired. You've undoubtedly heard of a house having “good bones”, this is used in reference to houses from the early part of the 20th century or earlier, when the culture of durability still existed. Fast forward 75 years, and we enter the age of the great suburban experiment. Houses have become a mass produced commodity. The greatest benefit went to the builders who could build fast, cheap, and in quantity. The entire social experiment of the seventies through today, was bent on delivering houses of the minimum quality permitted by law, bigger and faster than the competition. We use inventions like drywall, chip board, asphalt shingles, fibreglass insulation, particle board, melamine, MDF, plastic vapour barriers. Thin, cheap to manufacture, lightweight, easy to install, petrochemical based, clean and new on day one, tired and worn within 10 years, if you're lucky. These became the assumed materials from which most homes and small buildings were constructed. Suggesting anything otherwise to most builders just gets you lots of head scratching, or guffaws at the naivety of considering such an expense. Brick, stone, timber, slate, copper, steel, cedar, materials that have inherent durability, have become expensive and available only to the well to do. Similarly, you can still buy a high quality, stitched leather pair of boots with repairable soles. The only problem is you'll have to go to an overpriced boutique in a big city, with upper class clientèle and exclusive pricing. And you still haven't found that cobbler to fix them if it ever comes to that.

An entire lifestyle has evolved around this. The typical home owning couple will move an average of 5 times in their adult lives: starter home, family home, larger family home, downsized home, retirement home. “Flip that house” has become a catch phrase, and a plot line for numerous insipid yet oddly entertaining TV shows (misery loves company). This has turned the concept of investment and durability on its ear. Why on earth would we put a 50 year roof on a house we're not going to live there for more than 15? Give me the cheapest shingle you've got, with a 20 year warranty. Let the new owners worry about it.

The foremost strategy for sustainable building is durability. This is also the great paradox of building green. There are serious environmentalists who preach that every human made thing on this planet should spontaneously compost itself. I am not one of those. We humans make pretty lousy animals, and as a result we need fairly sophisticated shelters to make us happy, healthy, and comfy enough to afford the luxury to sit back and type interesting bits into our blogs. There is a fine balance between using materials which are naturally derived, and ending up with a building which is more mushroom food than healthy shelter. But if we look a little deeper, we find that the most durable materials are those which the planet has provided us, used in an intelligent, designed manner. It is a great misconception that plastics “last for thousands of years”. Anyone who has left a children's toy out in the yard for a season or two knows that water and UV are powerful forces of entropy. Plastic may take centuries to break down biochemically, but its functional lifetime as an effective skin against the elements is surprisingly short. Clay, on the other hand, when fired into a brick, literally does last centuries, even millenia (witness ancient Rome – built largely of brick). Leave an un-fired brick directly exposed to rain and it will disappear in years. Fire the brick, creating a hardened skin on it, and protect it with a roof and overhangs, and you've done a great thing. Clay has an incredible capacity to store moisture and dry out again indefinitely. Though if we keep it wet for too long, like through the winter, and ice will form inside it causing it to explode. Materials need to be used intelligently.

Glass is an interesting conundrum as well. Look at any modern city and you will be met with towering walls of seemingly nothing but glass. Derived from sand and silicates, it is naturally sourced, very durable, and magically transparent. It is fragile, but strong enough to withstand the majority of day to day stresses (hurricane-hurled objects being an obvious exception). But I can't help but wonder what will happen to all those glass skinned towers as the price of energy rises, and that great view quickly seems like a silly trade off for maintaining your vital body heat. Glass is a great material, renewable, durable, and used wisely in a well designed passive solar building, a net benefit for a long long time. Used for its aesthetic properties without a long view to the future, it could be an incredible waste. Many civilizations for centuries after the fall of Rome mined its cities for stone, iron and marble, perhaps we will eventually dismantle the glass towers of Toronto and use those panes for sensibly sizes, South facing windows in our own modest shelters. Steel has similar properties; incredibly durable until exposed to continual cycles of wetting and drying in combination with salt. Infinitely recyclable, but only as long as it can be effectively and cleanly removed from an assembly, and isn't coated with toxic paints.

The great suburban experiment is already slowing, albeit imperceptibly in some parts of our world. Let's hope that the last two decades are the last “housing boom”. We need to work towards intensifying our urban cores with sensible, well designed, durable buildings and stop the madness of planting plastic disposable boxes all over our prime food producing land. We should also look to moving out of this culture of disposal on all levels. Try to repair something that you would typically throw away and if you can't, ask yourself why this came to be. My own recent exercise in this was an attempt to replace the battery in an iPod. The realization that most of these pocket electronics are simply battery draining devices, and that the real profit is in the inherent obsolescence of the battery itself, is incredibly frustrating. It was less expensive to throw the whole thing away and buy new. It makes me wonder about electric cars, and if buying a very large, toxic expensive bank of limited life span batteries on wheels is really that much better than fossil fuel use.

If you find that cobbler, send me an email. graham@whitingdesign.ca Now if I could only find a pair of boots worth repairing.

CCGG : I’ve changed my mind. | RQ Magazine

2010-08-25T13:45:00.001-04:00

CCGG : I’ve changed my mind. | RQ Magazine

A great call to arms for the Canadian Clay and Glass gallery, and its public, to step up and prove to us its worth, locally and nationally. We can't keep pouring money into this building only to see it disappear into very quiet, low profile management and more status quo. Thanks, RQ!

Jolt for the Volt

2010-08-09T12:56:00.004-04:00

http://www.chevroletvoltage.com/

Am I the only one that thinks the new Chevy volt should cost half as much? We're talking about a fairly run-of-the-mill sedan in every sense other than its cargo of lithium. At $41,000, it's the third most expensive vehicle in the Chevy line-up. Only the Suburban 3/4 ton and the Tahoe Hybrid are more, and these are GIANTS.

I bought a Volkswagen Jetta TDI seven years ago for $23,000. It gets 5L / 100km (56mpg for those of you still using imperial). It still gets this mileage with 180,000k on the odometer. The Volt runs on electricity for the first 40k, then switches over to a 50mpg gas engine.

Stop me if I'm out of line here, but if we could easily build conventional engines that acheived almost 60mpg almost EIGHT YEARS AGO, how is this Chevy, which costs TWICE AS MUCH, any better?

Wordle Keyword Art

2010-08-03T16:08:00.004-04:00

Great internet tool that creates a mosaic of the most commonly occurring words in a blog. Reveal your obsessions in a single click!

New Look

2010-06-18T15:07:00.002-04:00

I'm celebrating my 3.7th anniversary with a fresh coat of VOC free paint and a new font or two. xo

Getting Real about Sustainable Energy

2010-06-01T12:33:00.005-04:00

The Sun. A great boiling ball of gas, nuclear fusion, massive, distant; it is the source of all energy on Earth. Sort of. But no, you say, there are many sources of energy which are not “solar”. What about hydroelectricity? The sun evaporates water, which forms clouds, which rain on uplands, which flow to lowlands, and pass over a turbine to generate power. Oil? The sun feeds photosynthesis (and pumps rain, again), to create plants, which are eaten by dinosaurs, which fall into mud pits, get buried by millennial layers of candy wrappers and banana peels, and decompose into oil. Carbon is simply stored solar energy. Wind? Temperature differences across continents and oceans, heated by the sun, generate air flow, as warm moves to cold. With the rare exception of nuclear, and the type of deep earth geothermal that feeds volcanoes and Iceland and a few unusual places on earth, all energy is from the sun. Then why is it not all sustainable?

Sustainability is all about rate. All energy sources are sustainable; it is our rate of consumption that is not, necessarily. Consumed a drop at a time, we could ostensibly consume oil at a rate slower than which it is replaced within the earth’s crust; a very, very slow process. The daily solar radiation which falls on this earth is free, infinite in the context of human existence, and at this time of year seemingly relentless. Does it not seem like a bit of a no-brainer to concentrate on capturing this daily abundance? Yet we continue to drill offshore in wildly unpredictable oceans, pump salt water into Saudi oil fields, and hydraulically fracture shale beds to extract less and less oil and natural gas. The recent British Petroleum atrocity in the Gulf is simply a concentrated example of the widespread risks associated with continuing to pursue fossil energy sources.

Photovoltaics (PV) are a 20 year old concept with a hot new reputation. Solar cells convert the sun’s radiation into electricity, harnessing between 12-18% of the potential. The map above indicates the amount of the Earth’s surface that would need to be covered with solar panels to generate all our current energy needs. Seem like it’s too easy? Put into real numbers, enough solar PV panels to supply the entire City of Toronto would cost about $400 billion dollars. Considering our entire “economic stimulus package” of the past two years totaled about $7 billion, that’s a bit of a stretch. Our provincial government, however, has made it financially possible for an individual to invest in PV through the Ontario Green Energy Act. This provides a guaranteed rate at which the electric utility will buy power from anyone generating electricity using PV panels, on a 20 year contract. Current math puts the payback on such a system at around 7 – 10 years, after which it would be a source of income. Many home and business owners are jumping on this opportunity, and we have two new solar panel manufacturers springing up in this region alone to supply the demand. Complications arise with mature trees creating shade, and rooftops which lack a good South orientation. And of course the best investment is in reducing the rate of consumption, not supplying more energy sources.

Solar hot water panels have been around for decades, and recent advances have made them even more efficient and user friendly. An average rooftop system will cost around $5-6000, and can easily supply the majority of your hot water needs, as well as part of your space heating needs. In Ontario, with our long winters, the majority our energy needs are for heat. It seems to make sense that this relatively low tech method of solar capture could be widely adopted if the price came down. As it stands, a typical solar hot water system has a payback of between 10-15 years. Recent examples have proven that a very efficient house could have up to 80% of its heating needs supplied by solar hot water. There are some complications, like what to do with all that heat in the summer time, and what to do for heat when the sun disappears for a week or more in January. But if we ignore our current government manipulated market imbalance, solar hot water is the simplest, most cost effective investment in sustainable solar energy we can make.

Wind power requires moving air, and lots of it. In urban areas, it is nearly impossible to capture enough consistent, strong wind to power even the smallest turbines. Are you living out in a field, on a shoreline, or at the top of a hill? Then wind power could be your best option. A quick online check of the Ontario Wind Resource Atlas will tell you whether it’s worth considering. And considering that you need to be about 30 metres above the ground (about 3 times the height of the average house) to catch enough wind, it’s all about the tower. If you have wind, and land, and friendly or preferably no neighbours, then there are some fantastic turbines out there that can provide sustainable energy for decades.

And lastly, let’s not forget the magic of photosynthesis, and the fantastic ability of plants to convert solar energy into food. Calories fuel us every day, and the two primary ingredients in these are water (delivered by the sun) and sunlight. Think about this when you eat, and strive to eat food which contains only these simple, free energy inputs.

Our resources are all we have, and the false energy abundance of the past century is due for a dramatic overhaul in coming years. We can talk about hybrid automobiles, ban pesticides, water our lawns on alternate days, fill our blue boxes, and cover our homes with recycled siding and bamboo floors, but ultimately the hard decisions remain, and they all converge on energy. We need to be using dramatically less, and we need to get serious about harnessing the abundance that falls on every square inch of earth every day.

A few resources to check out and learn more:
http://roofray.com/calculators – trace an aerial map of your home to find solar potential
http://www.crewzone.ca/ - Community Renewable Energy Waterloo – local info
http://www.solarcooking.org/plans/ - build your own solar oven. They really work!
http://www.merlynpower.ca/ - local solar electric and solar hot water providers

Kunstler Strikes Again

2010-03-09T10:24:00.004-05:00

A poignant excerpt from JHK's blog this morning:

" Whatever else one thinks of how we live these days, it's hard to not see it as temporary, historically anomalous, a peculiar blip in human experience. I've spent my whole life riding around in cars, never questioning whether the makings of tomorrow's supper would be there waiting on the supermarket shelves, never doubting when I entered a room that the lights would go on at the flick of a switch, never worrying about my personal safety. And now hardly a moment goes by when I don't feel tremors of massive change in these things, as though all life's comforts and structural certainties rested on a groaning fault line."

Every once in a while one of the peak oilers drags me back into this looming question. Is our current societal spasm of 100 years at all sustainable? Are we on a slow slide back to small scale family farming, kerosene lamps, and horse powered transport? Somewhere between the two lies the truth, I suspect. It is a very hard question, that of true sustainable society. Where is the balance, wherein we can all live meaningful lives with minimal suffering, and not burn the bed we lie in?

The Eco Tenant Act

2010-03-09T09:22:00.007-05:00

I had the pleasure of attending a remarkable event last week, called SEE (Social Entrepreneur Exchange) Innovation. Hosted by the Children's Museum in Kitchener, Ontario, it was a call to arms / networking event for people with ideas about social change, entrepreneurship, and enterprise. Each $20 entry fee is converted into two $10 chips, which participants are required to give away over the course of the evening to causes, ideas, and organizations that they wish to support. We also received one Two Hour time chip, also meant to be given away.

Participants are asked to present a 'pitch', for either an organization they are working with / starting, or an idea that they would like to see implemented. Admittedly, I was reluctant to pitch, being more of the wallflower type at these events. But an idea that has been swimming around in my subconscious for over a year now suddenly rapped on the back of my frontal lobe and wanted to be heard. Hence the birth of the Eco Tenant Act.

The pitch at "See" was a maximum of 60 seconds. I'll try my best to scribe it here (no doubt enhanced by selective memory ;)

"I am an architect, living and working in Waterloo Region, who specializes in green building and energy efficiency retrofits. Most of my clients are homeowners, and all of them are people with money, people who own their homes. It is great work, but it fails to address over 30% of our housing stock, the rentals. Programs like EcoEnergy have been amazing in addressing single family owned homes, but for the most part leave behind rental housing. Landlords have little incentive to invest in energy upgrades, since tenants most often pay the utility bills. The IPCC has identified building retrofits as the most cost effective way to reduce CO2 emissions.

I propose a micro credit or micro grant fund, accessible to tenants, to address energy efficiency retrofits and repairs. Replacing a broken window or door, insulating a wall, servicing or replacing a furnace, are all quick and simple jobs that could be done by local contractors, who would be paid directly out of the fund. Local utilities and municipalities who are looking for incentives with measurable results could fund based on real energy bills, and measure success of the program based on kilowatt hours and Btu's saved."

The response was unexpectedly enthusiastic, and my little box was heavy with poker chips by the end of the night. Whether I've ended up with a small army of 2 hour volunteers, or a hundred bucks to launch a whole new career, is still a mystery, but it is amazing what a galvanizing effect this can have on a vague concept of social enterprise. I think the phrase goes something like: "light a fire under your ass".

I'll keep you posted!

Living Without Oil Part Three - Food and Water

2009-11-09T16:50:00.003-05:00

The harvest is in. The colours of the season have changed dramatically, verdant greens and bright reds of summer give way to yellow, orange, rust. Our backyard plots are tall and weedy, pumpkins ripened and carved, onions and apples on the market stalls. Falling leaves and risk of frost remind us that it will be many months before fresh local food is back in season.

Our relationship with food is a joyous one in summer, here in Southern Ontario. We live in the middle of a rich swath of some of the world’s best farm land, rich loam formed by millennia of well watered forests. The past century has seen a near total transformation of the landscape. Large open fields, a network of roads, and sprawling urban areas have replaced the network of rail connected towns, separated by vast forests that characterized 19^th century Ontario.

This wholesale shift has been driven by our most primal needs: food and water. Whether it is the need for level, well drained and tilled soil for crops, open grazing for cattle, or dams and pipes to bring natural water sources into irrigation or municipal systems, we have converted the large majority of our land to sustain human nutritional needs. A steady influx of hungry people (Toronto at the turn of the 20^th century was home to 200,000 people, now it’s closing in on 5 million. Kitchener was a village of less than 8,000) drove the need for more farms, more yield per acre, and distribution and storage systems to feed and water an increasingly urban population. The availability of inexpensive fossil fuels has made all this possible. Try to imagine bringing food and water into your home every day without easy, cheap access to:

a full tank of fuel in your car
plastic bags and packaging
transport trucks, ships, and diesel locomotives
chemical fertilizers
fossil fuel supplied electricity to run pumps, lighting, communications, refrigeration, fans, computers, etc.
asphalt and gravel
pipes
tractor fuel
just about every manufactured product you can imagine, produced using energy from oil, if not the oil itself.

In truth, Southern Ontario farmers supply only a fraction of its people’s caloric needs. The average distance an item of food travels to our table is over 2500 km, roughly the distance between here and Cancun, Mexico. That’s the average, as anyone who has ever eaten a South African apple, New Zealand lamb chop, or Chilean grape should know. The tractor is more than likely the least energy intensive part of the process. By the time you consider the transportation and refrigeration necessary to move fresh food, and the manufacturing and packaging of processed food, it takes an average of 7 to 10 calories of input energy to bring a single calorie into useful contact with your digestive system. That moves upward to 40 calories of input for some foods like grain fed beef. It's easy to imagine that this is not a very sustainable equation. Add to that the fact that almost all synthetic fertilizers are made using natural gas, at a rate of about 20 litres per acre per year. Without inexpensive fossil fuels, we simply could not feed all these people.

Remove fossil fuels from the picture, or even reduce their availability significantly, and the most immediately noticeable effect (aside from your daily car commute) will be what happens to the food supply chain. It is primarily a question of land use. Reduce the radius of food procurement to 150km (aka. The Hundred Mile Diet), and everything changes. But how can we make such a fundamental transition?

Relocalizing is a term coined to describe moving back to an economic and land use model more familiar to those living a century ago: small towns and cities, surrounded by farmland, with a reliable source of water and enough storage capacity to carry them through the long non-growing seasons. This is not so different from where we live today, and as mentioned, we in K-W are quite fortunate compared to those in the GTA or the greater Los Angeles area. Our primary failing has been the conversion of much of that prime farm belt, the land closest to the city centre, to low density suburbs. The toxic fallout from decades of suburban sprawl is difficult to quantify, but one only need consider the mortgage meltdown in America to realize that the vicious cycle of cheap resource consumption, consumerism and debt that has fueled the suburbs is not sustainable for much longer. The main casualty of this massive planning error looks to be the economy, the lasting legacy will be what has happened to our food and water.

How can we change? Thankfully, things are already happening. The local food movement is strong and gaining momentum every year. I doubt any of us has not heard of either the Slow Food movement or the 100 Mile Diet. Closer to home, the Buy Local Buy Fresh campaign, 100 Mile Challenge, Bailey's food buying club, local food chalkboards outside many restaurants, and places like Seven Shores Café are leading the drive to positive change. The Region of Waterloo has implemented many water conservation measures, begun public education about the perils of bottled water, and continues to advocate and plan for denser, less sprawling development. Considering that in the urbanized desert called Los Angeles there are still millions of people watering their lawns, we are at least moving in the right direction when it comes to planning for resource scarcity. Still, there are endless complaints about not having the right to dump thousands of litres of clean drinking water onto our lawns.

What can you do in your daily life? Foremost would be to educate yourself about where your food and water comes from, and how pervasive our use of oil is in everything we do. Consider any product in your cupboard at home, and try to imagine the system that brougt it there. To take a more active role, support the transition to local economic resilience. Think about preserving food without refrigeration, buying food without driving, using water sources that do not come from a magical chlorinated pipe in the ground. Support initiatives, governments, and local business that choose to move towards sustainable practices, and practice what they preach. In your own home, try to buy and eat in season, try your hand at preserving fresh food through the long winter, and try to reduce your fossil fuel dependence, whether it be through driving less, using less disposable packaging, storing food without a dependence on electricity, or using rainwater and compost to grow your own vegetables. The results? A healthier you, a stronger local economy, and a transition to a world which might just survive the next century.

Living Without Oil Part 2 - Shelter

2009-07-13T11:14:00.004-04:00

Times are good. Besides the occasional rain, we are all reveling in the outdoors, soaking up the sun, watching the world bloom and grow. These are the kind of days that make me feel like a true citizen of the planet, when I could just walk out my door and live for weeks on end in the great wide open. Well, maybe equipped with a decent tent. And a small stove (with gas supply). Sleeping pad and bag would also be nice, maybe a flashlight... matches...

Shelter is a simple concept, which quickly becomes complex. Few of us have ever done anything more than play at being homeless (called camping). And we take an astounding number of very complicated things for granted, like the clean drinking water, electricity, and the very flammable gas that magically appear in our houses through pipes. In North America, the house has become a symbol more powerful than the car. At the base of nearly every personal and family economy, it represents all the wealth most of us have in this world. But how stable is our home base, really?

The ongoing theme of these articles is transition: how can we move away from a dependence on fossil fuels and the oil economy, and build resilience to the change which is already transforming our world. The role of a home in this transition is vital, as it provides a place to stay warm and dry, to rest, eat; and gather one's resources and wits in order to be able to forge once again out into the great wide unknown. But as economics shift and energy prices climb inexorably upwards, it can become a great burden as well. Whether it's taxes, heating bills, or mortgage payments, the financial support many homes require consumes on average over 60% of our wages. Most recommendations, including those of many banks, are more in the 30% range as a sustainable level. And recent experience has proven even this simple rule of thumb is easily overlooked, particularly by many of those same banks. Rather than working the rest of our lives for the privilege of rightfully calling our home ours, let's look at a few strategies for increasing your resilience, wealth, and reducing dependence on the oil and credit economy.

Get out of Debt

We place an enormous amount of trust in our banks. Through mortgages, it has become standard practice, even an expectation, to leverage our cash wealth into debts often ten times as large. In an infinitely inflating real estate market, in which we all keep our jobs, this works. Like I said, times are good. But many have taken the unprecedented boom of the last two decades as an opportunity to 'super-size' their lives, getting into much larger debts than a less robust economy can support. As shown in the illustration, our average house size has more than doubled in the past half century, with proportionately fewer people in each house. Decades of bottomless Saudi oil have created a false prosperity; it has literally made things too cheap. Now is the time to shed these millstones. You've heard the admonitions to live within your means, why not take it a step further and live below them. Take advantage of the lingering prosperity we have in the region, cash out of that McMansion, and move to a home that meets your needs, nothing more. You may be surprised at the abundance of forgotten things that begin to enrich your life when you are able to reduce your debt and work less hours as a result.

Reduce Your Demand

That aforementioned McMansion, no matter how strictly it follows today's codes, is an energy pig. Similarly, there are hundreds of thousands of much older homes with no insulation in their walls whatsoever, with similarly disastrous effects on the monthly bills. Now is the time to look at insulating and air sealing your home. Current grant programs such as EcoEnergy will contribute up to $10,000 for home energy retrofits, and numerous tax incentives as well as “stimulus” based programs exist to encourage us to get it done. Most payback calculations come out in the range of 4-8 years for most energy retrofits, and that is calculated at today's energy prices. Compared to a “market return” on investment, that is like earning upwards of 20% on the dollars invested. Most older homes should be able to decrease their heating, cooling, and electrical bills by 50% or better with an investment of 20-30,000 dollars. Rather than following in the footsteps of many Americans, who bought plasma televisions and jet skis with their “re-fi” lines of credit, take the opportunity to invest in your own economic resilience.

Want to know the much more difficult way to reduce your energy consumption by 50%? Don't use it. That means not leaving on all your lights at night because the house seems dark. Try keeping your thermostat at 16 degrees and wearing a wool sweater or three. Live in a smaller home. Lifestyle is a very difficult thing to change, but try it in baby steps and see how liberating it is to actually make do with less. You'll be thankful when you are no longer doing it by choice.

Go Homegrown

Says James Howard Kunstler in his book The Long Emergency, “...there are few signs the taxpayer dependents of today have any of the self-reliance skills that saw the hardy Great Depression generation through the tough times.“ One of the greatest poverties of our times is that we have grown accustomed to paying for just about everything, from clothing and food to raising our own children. Why mend a sock when you can replace it for $1.99? Cheap energy has allowed us to become complacent, and dependent, with very few of the basic skills which were considered universal and indispensable a mere 80 years ago (which is when your grandparents were born.) Many people, including many of my clients, can simply not afford to improve their homes, because the costs of renovating and retrofitting have grown proportionately to the booming oil economy and are often available only to the affluent. A surprising number of people now turn to their grandparents for knowledge of how to replace a roof, fix a leaky toilet, build some shelves, or knit a sweater. Most turn to the yellow pages. Shelter used to be something you made for yourself. It has evolved into a mass market product, heavily standardized and fundamentally flawed as a result.

Build Your Community

Not comfortable with a hammer and nails? Then develop another sustainable skill and trade it to someone who is. Nobody is an island, and the only true path to sustainability is to pool our resources. There are parables about fishes and loaves, truisms about many hands and light work, for a very good reason. Shared resources go further. The primary problem is that they have gone too far, where the average piece of food travels almost 2500km from farm to mouth, and our recycled plastic bags travel to China and back before reappearing in our homes as fabrics and toys. Without cheap oil for transportation, everything we need will have to come from close at hand. Build your community by supporting local farmers, manufacturers, professionals and homemakers. The ultimate form of shelter is the economic resilience, support and compassion of those around you.

Look for the rest of this 4 part series in Living Well for 2009. Further reading on the oil economy, living sustainably, and transition:

www.sharonastyk.com

http://transitionculture.org

http://www.communitysolution.org/

http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

Chispito Redux

2009-05-11T10:58:00.006-04:00

A while ago I posted an article about the ultimate do-it-yourself wind generator, made from a salvaged electrical motor and a length of PVC pipe. Since then, the idea has been refined, reviewed, and expanded by many honourable Makers out there in the blogosphere.

Make magazine (and TV), if you haven't seen it, is an amazing and entertaining resource for the incurable inventor and do-it-yourselfer. Here is a video link to their take on the Chispito...

http://vimeo.com/3193267

A Predator on the Phone

2009-04-14T20:04:00.003-04:00

Today, my usually happy experience with TD Canada Trust was blasted out of the water, with a simple, innocent telemarketing call. The caller was eloquent, friendly, patient, and gave me his spiel. Given that they ARE my bank, they may well have been calling with something important, and he was honest sounding, I listened.

Now let's take a step back and set some context for today's conversation. Here are some of TODAY's headlines from the news outlets of the Western world:

Reuters: 2009 Sees Surge in First-Time Delinquent Income Taxpayers

Wall Street Journal: More Small Businesses Go to War with Big Banks

Bloomberg: U.S. Retail Sales Unexpectedly Drop as Jobs Evaporate

Time Magazine: Rising Risks in Muni Bonds Cause Investors to Worry

Washington Post: Strip Mall Landlords Hit by Soaring Vacancy Rates

NY Times: High End Hotels Forced Into Bankruptcy and Foreclosure

NY Times: Unemployment Rate Surging in Germany's Richest Region

Daily Mail: Record Numbers of Middle Class Desperate to Sell Homes

Financial Times: Economic Crisis Will Send UK Oil Production Plunging

Fortune Magazine: Citibank on FDIC's list of "Failures and Assisance"

Business Insider: Moody's Has Downgraded the Entire United States

UK Telegraph: Gold to Break $1,000 as People Sell Jewellery for Cash

Getting the picture? We've been so inundated with similar news that it has become the new normal. World financial collapse? Meh.

So now back to our caller. I am as risk adverse as just about anyone, but decided to take advantage of the substantial grants associated with RESPs, and put away some money for my kids' educational future. So this guy, with access to my accounts and information, is calling to tell me that they "have a new fund which is doing very well", and that I should "consider moving my investments" out of the relatively safe bonds that it is invested in. I ask: is this fund invested in stocks? He doesn't answer the question, merely says something about it being "very safe". I ask again: "Is there an equity component to the fund you are suggesting?" He replies, again not answering the question, "There are many funds available sir, I am referring to more than one." I ask him, "As a financial adviser and salesperson, do you think this is a good time to be investing in equities, considering the complete meltdown of the global financial system?" He doesn't answer. He then tells me again that the fund he is suggesting is "very safe, and is doing very well." I politely excuse myself.

I resist screaming, 'cause I don't want to wake up the kids.

Living Without Oil Part 1: Transportation Transition

2009-02-26T11:56:00.010-05:00

“America has always risen to great challenges, and our dependence on oil is one of the greatest we have ever faced. It's a threat to our national security, or planet, and our economy.”
- first two lines of then Senator Obama's election speech on energy, March 8, 2008.

Let's just assume for the length of this article that Obama and Hubbert are correct. If you recognize the second name, chances are you've already been down the rabbit hole of peak oil discourse. If you don't, I'd suggest doing a quick web search for "Hubbert" and "Peak Oil" and educate yourself. If Hubbert is right, we are in for quite a wild ride, economically, socially, and politically. Feel like you've already boarded the rollercoaster? Me too. For the purposes of the next few Living Well articles, I'm going to skip right over the doom and gloom scenarios and talk about the concept of Transition, or how we can move away from the oil based economy and into something genuinely sustainable. If we all end up on the rollercoaster, then you will thank yourself for any steps you've taken towards a sustainable home and lifestyle. Keep your head in the sand, and maybe, just maybe, you will still be able to sustain the two cars, giant television, 4000 square foot house, and job in Toronto ten years from now. Oil supplies will continue to dwindle, greenhouse gases will continue to build up in the atmosphere, and we can all go down in a blaze of carbon glory. Disclaimer: I drive an automobile, live in a gas heated house, spend summer weekends at distant cottages, and fly to travel. I am also a bit of a conspiracy nut. So it goes.

The key to breaking our oil habit is to start with understanding how pervasive it is in our lives. The more we are aware of this influence, the better equipped we are to seek alternatives and wean ourselves from an increasingly costly resource. Even if it doesn't end up being economically necessary to stop using oil, it certainly won't hurt to make it an ethical priority.

Starting with the simplest topic, our transportation, I'm guessing that if you know anyone without a personal automobile they are a rare exception. The radicals in this area are those who drive hybrids, which still depend on oil. The real radicals tend to be either on the low end of the economic ladder, or Mennonites (and yes, there are notable and laudable exceptions to every gross generalization). How would your life change without an automobile or city bus at hand? Are you within walking or biking distance of a grocery store, hardware store, library? Can you actually walk or bike that far? Trips to the cottage are absolutely out of the question, but how about trips to your friend's house in the same city or province? Gaging your dependence on oil powered transportation is the first and most critical measure of the sustainability of your life. Become aware of how oil enables your job and food supply, your social connections, your sense of community and well being. If you have the opportunity, try relocating to a place where you can fill these needs without a car, a system of highways, and transport truck deliveries. If you don't have the luxury of choosing your location, look at the networks around you, the availability of alternate modes of transportation, food sources, community resources, which you may have overlooked on the way out to Wal Mart. Many food share or box programs are organized by neighborhoods, with local pick up of locally grown produce and meats. Car shares and transit pool transportation resources rather than taking an everyone for themselves approach. And walk / bike ability is the ultimate economic failsafe. Can you get everything you need to survive and thrive within a walking radius of your home? Draw a 2km circle (walking) and a 5km one (biking) on a city map and see where it takes you. Then try actually living for a week without a car.

Automobile based commuting is a modern luxury, and an unfortunate necessity for most people. What this effectively does is take your labour, intellectual contribution, whatever economic skills you have, to another city. Take this a step further if the fruits of your labour end up as profits for a non-local company, siphoned away to enrich something other than the community outside your door. As commuting becomes too expensive for the individual to sustain, employers will have to either invest in bringing the people to them through mass transit and tele-commuting, or move themselves into the communities which supply the labour. On the other side of this picture, on both a macro and a local scale, we've seen the effects of a recent spike in the price of oil on the auto and manufacturing industry. The cost of energy and production eroded the profits of many manufacturers very quickly, the immediate effect of this is a mass reduction of the workforce. In transitioning to a less oil dependent job, people should look not only to stay within their community (if not neighbourhood), but to seek work in fields which are not so dependent on cheap oil. Goods and services that are created and consumed locally are far less likely to suffer when the costs of transportation (of both the labourers and the goods) get unreasonable. Car ownership is generally considered to cost between $5000 and $8000 per year. How many of your after tax dollars are being spent just to afford the means to get to work?

Some municipalities are ahead of the curve on transportation issues. The City of Waterloo has recently created a whole new category of high density residential zones, in an effort to bring people closer to the core and limit suburban sprawl. The plans for light rail rapid transit are forging ahead, making the distinct possibility of fast and accessible transit through our region in the next 5-10 years. Local industry and investment is strong, and perhaps as well insulated from the current financial meltdown as any area of North America. But we continue to be a fundamentally oil dependent community, choosing to export a large portion of our workforce, and import the majority of our manufactured goods and foods in oil powered cars, trucks, planes, and ships. As soon as oil prices return to the $140 / barrel level and above, it will become very clear which parts of our transportation infrastructure are sustainable, and which aren't. Your personal dependence on that system is an important lens through which to view your lifestyle, and a great opportunity for change.

Further reading on the oil economy, living sustainably, and transition:

www.theoildrum.com
transitiontowns.org
1greengeneration.elementsintime.com

The Green Kitchen Reno

2009-01-16T11:16:00.002-05:00

The kitchen is the heart and soul of the home. Used intensively at least three times a day, it tends to be the main gathering place as well. If you are feeling short on space, or frustrated by awkward daily routines, chances are you’re going to feel it in your kitchen first.

From a design perspective, it is the most complex and energy intensive room in the house. Cabinetry, counter tops, specialized lighting, readily cleanable high traffic surfaces, appliances, safety and hygiene concerns, air exhaust, natural light, and connection and flow to the rest of the house; the list of ingredients that make a successful kitchen is long. Then you decide to go green!

Luckily the marketplace is evolving to meet our expansive demand for sustainable choices. And the path to a new, efficient, and healthy kitchen starts with the following eight principles:

1/ Reduce, Re-use. The primary consideration should always be, “Can I make the space I already have work for us?” Adding on is always an attractive option, but using your existing building shell means no new foundations or need for heavy equipment, no additional energy costs, and less house to clean and maintain. What is the most efficient and livable use of the space you already own? Can the kitchen expand and open into other less valuable space?

2/ Opportunity. Look at your project as a piece of the house you ultimately want to live it. If you’re tearing out the existing cabinets and finishes, look beyond the wall surface and think about insulating. With the new soya and water based spray foams on the market, insulating and air sealing older walls has never been easier or healthier. There’s also no point in burying old cast iron pipes or outdated wiring; do it right once. Is this the time to put in the hydronic radiant floors you’ve always wanted?

3/ Buy local. Consider your choices in materials and contractors in the same way you buy your food. If your kitchen comes to you on container ships and diesel trucks from the four corners of the planet, it detracts from the green qualities of the product itself. Ask building supply stores for local products. You may get blank stares in return, but the more people that ask, the more we’ll get them thinking there is a demand.

4/ Read the ingredients. Though it’s not easy to find out what goes into making various building products, it can generally be said that if they don’t want to tell you, you don’t want to know. An alarming number of products, particularly particle boards and plastics, still contain formaldehyde, and VOCs. Green products will tend to list their ingredients, and be proud of them. You wouldn’t put petrochemicals in your cooking, so why put it in your kitchen? Most brands of paint and sealants now come in zero off gassing formulas (like Benjamin Moore’s Ecospec line), and have the same paintable qualities as older, more toxic products.

5/ Cooking odour or cooking aroma? The piece de resistance of a modern kitchen is the gleaming range hood, proclaiming to the world that you are the next undiscovered Emeril. But think before you buy one, and flip it on. Are you taking valuable hot, humid air and sending it straight outdoors in the cold, dry winter? Are you missing an opportunity to send it straight outside in summer, thus reducing your house cooling needs significantly. With a gas range, a mechanical exhaust should be used at all times, so think about your choice of cooking heat source as well. And never forget the value of one or preferably two operable windows, to create natural cross ventilation and fresh air.

6/ Drawers, more drawers, and racks. Being efficient in your space also means being able to find all your stuff. Making do with less is much easier if you consider using drawers and pull out rack systems for all your lower cabinets. Full extension drawer slides are the highest value small upgrade to consider. Many new racking systems, including ones that solve the dreaded buried corner, will allow easy access to cooking oils and spices, cleaning supplies, and frequently used ingredients brought out from the dark depths. Yes, those cans you put away for Y2K are still luring back there.

7/ Cabinets and counters. You may have heard, and I’ll confirm, that this is where you blow the budget. Often more than half of a total kitchen reno cost, cabinets are where dollars and green ethics go head to head. Custom cabinetry, using formaldehyde free, FSC certified wood for instance, can cost double to triple that of off the shelf melamine and particle board units. Consider re-using older cabinet bodies, with new eco friendly faces, and look at some of the newer countertop alternatives instead of the usual plastic laminates, like bamboo, Richlite, Paperstone, Hanstone, recycled glass terrazzo, and concrete. IKEA is a great compromise, as their large European market means that most of their products meet very stringent German standards for low toxicity and recycled / certified content. And if you’re getting rid of your old cabinets, the Habitat for Humanity ReStore will happily accept them.

8/ Lighting. Think about where you need lighting, and how you use it. Generally a kitchen needs bright, focused light when meal preparation is underway, and softer, more diffuse light to take your attention away from the not-yet-spotless counter and pile of dishes while you and your guests relax after a fantastic meal. Use dimmer switches. Dimming a halogen or xenon type bulb only 10% is nearly invisible to the human eye, but cuts energy use in half and quadruples bulb life. CFL (the spiral bulbs) save a lot of energy, but they are not dimmable, and the mercury, plastic, and ballasts they contain are creating a major toxic landfill issue.

It will take some concerted homework to find the green options available to you, particularly in cabinetry. The world wide web is a wonderful if not somewhat daunting resource, as are local contractors and designers with a specialty in sustainability. If you've decided to tear out the heart of your home and re-make it in your image, good luck, be brave, and don't be afraid to demand something you'll still be happy with twenty years from now.

Money To Burn

2008-12-13T18:41:00.005-05:00

where to put your money in turbulent times...

Nobody needs to be reminded about the economy. You can barely blink without hearing another mind numbing statistic: 700 billion dollar bailouts, Iceland and GM on the brink of insolvency, retirement savings evaporating faster than an Arctic ice floe. Sorry. Now rather than add fuel to this media bonfire, I’d rather propose a simpler approach to investment, securing your future, and maybe helping out the rest of us while you’re at it.

Conventional wisdom will soberly advise that stock market returns typically exceed 10%. Whether you believe that investing in the stock market is little better than legalized gambling, or the cornerstone of a healthy free market economy, is immaterial. Let’s just look at a simple annual return on investment, and use that 10% pitch as a baseline. How are your mutual funds looking for 2008? Sorry, there I go reminding again. How would that money look if it was invested a bit closer to home, say, in your home? When looking at home retrofits, we look at a few factors. Does the investment improve your happiness and well being? Does it improve the value of your home? And does it increase your energy efficiency, initiating a process called payback, or return on investment?

The simplest choices for easy payback are commonly called the “low hanging fruit” of home retrofits. A $20 investment in some decent weather stripping, a tube of caulking, plus an hour or two of your time, will easily save $20 in heating costs over one year. In one year, your evening weather stripping job begins to bear fruit, and more every subsequent year as the price of heating fuel increases. After a mere 5 years you have made a guaranteed 300% return, or 60% annually. Sound like a no-brainer? Do you need to call your financial advisor, the one that sold you those nice safe mutual funds?

Replacing ten incandescent bulbs with energy efficient ones will cost you around $36. You will save about $24 per year, at current rates, and be $108 richer at the end of the bulb’s life span. Your return is 13.5%, still outperforming those zany markets.

Going deeper, let’s look at another simple choice, a furnace upgrade. If you still have one of those gas or oil dinosaurs lurking in the basement (say older than 20 years), send it to recycling heaven along with your Lincoln Continental and look at some of its slimmer offspring. A new gas fired furnace runs at 94% efficiency or better; your dinosaur belches out maybe 60%. A $1500 annual heating bill would be reduced to $990, for a $510 annual savings. The new furnace will cost around $5000 installed. In 20 years it may be time to look at a new one, but over that period your $5000 will have grown to over $10,000 in savings, without accounting for ANY inflation in gas prices. That’s an annual 5% return. Better than a GIC. A handy little side benefit is that that you’ve just reduced your carbon emissions by over a tonne every year. Insulating your home will generally yield around 10 – 15% in perpetuity, as will investing in Energy Star replacement appliances. Window and door replacements are more complicated, and though they are seen as a common efficiency upgrade, will seldom outperform the other improvements I’ve mentioned. These, as well as alternative energy systems, require more comprehensive energy modeling and costing to understand the true benefits, and are good second choices once you’ve plucked the easy fruit.

Now all the above scenarios have been straight cash transactions at current prices. Energy prices will and do increase, sometimes quite steeply, which only decreases your payback time. That’s good insurance. Government grant programs sweeten the pot even further. Through the EcoEnergy program, the federal and provincial governments will contribute upwards of $8000 towards your home energy retrofits, proportional to the increased performance of your home (Google EcoEnergy, or REEP, to learn more). The $2000 grant you can earn towards a simple furnace upgrade improves your 5% return on investment from the above scenario to a 6.5, which will pay your line of credit interest and then some if you happened to borrow money to buy that furnace. If we factor in a 5% annual increase in the price of gas, we’re back up to that magic 10%.

That’s enough math. The short answer is simple; even the hardest fiscal conservative can see the wisdom in a guaranteed 10-60% return. But most if not all those dollars have just been reinvested in your local economy, given to hardware stores and contractors, not foreign automotive behemoths or oil conglomerates. Chances are many of those dollars will find their way back to you. Your house is now more comfortable, welcoming, less drafty, and worth more. You’ve effectively reduced your greenhouse gas emissions by a ton or three, and eased the strain on local utilities and resources. Your monthly expenses have dropped, allowing you to pay down a mortgage faster.

Further reading:
If you’re keen to get into renewable energy, look into wind farm cooperatives, some of whom offer very competitive returns (windshare.ca is currently promising 7.2%) Life Co-op is (lifecoop.ca) is our local group, based in Baden. And if your main concern is greenhouse gases, look up the University of Waterloo’s Carbon Footprint Calculator, a very handy tool and a sobering look at your personal environmental impact.

Go Small or Go Home

2008-11-03T13:21:00.003-05:00

The average North American house of today is 2,350 square feet. Seems normal, right? What if I told you that the same census data gives us an average home size of 1,400 square feet for 1970. In 1950, that number drops to 1,100. We’ve more than doubled our expectations in the past 50 years. What happened?

Now before I come across as a holier-than-thou advocate of simple living, I have a confession to make. We bought a house for our family of three a few years ago, a cozy 980sf century home with a single garage. Since then I’ve come fairly close to doubling that; our soon to be family of four will be living in a whopping 1780sf of beautiful, mostly sustainable space (ahem). I’ve felt the occasional pang of guilt when I think of the families that lived happily in this “tiny” house for decades until my megalomania took it over. But more often I’ve cursed our still tiny kitchen, wished for a bit more room behind my chair when I bang the dining room wall, and wondered why one can never have enough storage space, even with a garage and full basement.

Are we having bigger families? Exactly the opposite is true. An average of 4.2 people occupied a home in 1950, today that number has dropped to 2.4. That means each person occupied 262sf in 1950, today we each demand 980.

Here is a scenario I tend to repeat a few times every year. I start designing with new client, who is interested in reducing their impact on the planet, going green, healthy, and all that. They’ve read the book, they’ve seen the documentary, they are ready to make the hard decisions, spend a bit more, do the right thing. We dive into designing their space. Three bedrooms with queen sized beds, two walk-in closets, ensuite bathroom, mudroom, dining room plus eat-in kitchen, and a home office later, we’re up well over 2,400 square feet and counting. This is a house for two to three people! What happened? I think you can answer this one.

Various green building rating systems do take size into account. But loopholes in the ratings can end up giving top marks to so called green mansions, upwards of 10,000sf (Al Gore’s house comes to mind – Google it).

Our idea of what is modest, and what is necessary, has been inflated by decades of cheap ore, lumber and oil. Now, with the economy reeling and peak oil going for over a hundred bucks a barrel, maybe it’s time to make the hardest decision of all – living in less. But how can we do this?

Open space, which serves multiple functions, is a key element. Nearly everyone wants to eliminate the small, confining rooms of their older homes, for good reason (chair / wall bumping included). Rooms which allow a family to spread out, but still hang out, are simple, open, bright, and include kitchens, tables, desks, and lounging space all in one. Think of something between a camper van and a hotel suite, and you’re getting the idea.

Break free from your stuff. A big home full of clutter will seem much smaller and less inviting than a clean, simple space. Be hard on yourself, in getting rid of those things that you don’t use, as well as evaluating everything new that you bring through your door. Those same cheap resources which have allowed us to build huge shelters also tend to fill our homes with inexpensive piles of ill-considered purchases.

Share rooms. In 1950, 90% of children were in a shared bedroom, often with 3 or more siblings. Why not eat your breakfast, lunch and Sunday dinner at the same table? And do you really need three or more washrooms in your house? What exactly is it with our combined obsessions with convenience and privacy that have led to this standard?

Most importantly, we have to live outside our homes. Regardless of the season, the ultimate cure for cabin fever is to get out into the community, see friends, connect with neighbors, breathe something other than your own exhaled air for a while. Live where you can walk to your groceries, schools, restaurants, and places to play. Buy locally and help your community thrive. Inviting the world to you also helps enliven your space, small as it may seem.

The payoff? Smaller spaces are proportionately less expensive to heat, cool, maintain, and pay mortgages and taxes on. With the thousands of dollars your small home saves every year, take a vacation or three, host a few slow food dinner parties, and go to the spa and theatre outside your cabin, for goodness sake.

If you’re interested in diving further into the subject, check out:

- Susan Susanka’s book: “The Not So Big House” and subsequent series

- Christina del Valle: “Compact Houses”, Universe Publishing

- www.slowhome.com

- www.tumbleweedhouses.com

- www.materialicious.com

- www.littlediggs.com

Apartment in a Box

2008-03-20T09:22:00.006-04:00

One of the true fundamentals of living green is doing more with less. I keep coming back to this subject, particularly since it presents such a pure design challenge. How do we move away from the destructive paradigm of the sprawling suburban home? In my own city we are seeing many new developments selling 600sf condo apartments. At first glance this seems unreasonably constricted compared to what most of us are used to. But why not take this as a challenge, to live comfortably, with style, and not feel continually inconvenienced by your small space?

Enter the Casulo, a room in a box, designed by Marcel Krings & Sebastian Mühlhäuser. A small 31″x47″ (80 cm x 120 cm) box contains all the furniture a typical apartment bedroom, or student room requires. About 10 minutes of tool free assembly which even uses the box itself (note to manufacturers - NO WASTEFUL PACKAGING!), and you are good to go. Visit the site here to read more about this design gem.

REEP House for Sustainable Living

2008-02-05T14:30:00.000-05:00

Whiting Design is proud to announce its selection as the designer for the REEP House for Sustainable Living. The Residential Energy Efficiency Project is a local organization which provides energy audits of homes, and makes recommendations on renovations to improve energy efficiency.
Two houses at 20-24 Mill St., Kitchener (at Queen) have been provided by the Region of Waterloo, to house the offices of REEP, and to serve as a demonstration home for energy efficient renovations, technology, and sustainability. The focus will be on energy and water use, but a green approach will be used in the entire design, which will include non-toxic materials, low embodied energy, locally sourced components, waste reduction, indoor air quality, among many other criteria. The demonstration home will also pursue certification under the upcoming LEED for homes program, as well as aim for a net zero energy model.

Construction on the office is anticipated to be completed in Fall 2008, with the demonstration home opening to the public in 2009.

Al and the Merchant of Death

2007-12-11T13:38:00.001-05:00

Today Al Gore accepted his Nobel Prize, and gave one of the most eloquent speeches ever heard from the global environmental movement.

On the other side of the world, Canadian representatives from the Reform, oops, I mean Conservative Party, winked to their oil patch cronies and shamed us all at the Bali summit.

"...too many of the world’s leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler’s threat: “They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided..."

George Bush and Stephen Harper will be written into history not as tyrants, but as insipid, uninspired, destructive children. Lester B. Pearson has rolled himself clear out of his tomb.

For the full transcript of Gore's speech:
http://thinkprogress.org/gore-nobel-speech

Spray, Blow, or Batt? Insulation.

2007-12-10T13:51:00.000-05:00

Perhaps the most commonly asked question of older home owners, which becomes much more frequent after the mercury creeps below zero, is "How do we insulate our home?" Just to complicate matters, I'm going to add "... and not poison ourselves in the process?"

The first thing that needs to be resolved is opportunity. If you are renovating, you should always take the time to strip off the inside of the exterior walls, and get some insulation between you and the brick, which is as effective an insulator as a piece of cheesecloth. Hopefully you have some studs with spaces between them, but many double brick homes are just that, with no stud cavity. If you have studs, you can add insulation between them. If you don't, you can add studs, but lose some room width. In any case, you really should try to achieve R20 or better, which requires a 2 x 6 inch depth stud with batt insulation between. If you can't rip your walls apart, you are limited to a product that can be poured or sprayed in to small holes, and expand in place.

Attics and rafters are a different story. As a rule of thumb, you should put at least twice the thickness of insulation on any roof section as you would put in the walls. But you need to keep it away from the underside of your roof sheathing (the wood directly under the shingles) by at least 1 1/2". In a typical older home with 2 x 4 rafters, this leaves only 2 1/2" inches to insulate between the unexposed portions of rafters.

Stepping in to solve this conundrum comes the magical spray foam. Great product for air seal and R-value per inch (about 6, for the record). Kind of nasty if you happen to be an organism that breathes. HERE is the safety literature on a typical polyurethane foam product. Here is the list of what it becomes as it decomposes: Carbon monoxide; acetaldehyde, acrylonitrile, TDI, polymer fragments, oxides of nitrogen and hydrogen cyanide. Fire retardant foams may generate emissions of hydrogen chloride, hydrogen bromide, hydrogen fluoride or phosphoric acid. Yikes!

Fear not. The green building wave which is sweeping America has brought us two new sustainable options. The first is a soya based version of spray foam, with all the positive properties of polyurethane, and none of the brain melting ones. Heatlok Soya is a good example, and most conventional spray foam contractors should be familiar with some form of this product. Another alternative is Icynene, which has less R-value but is more flexible in its range of installation methods, and doesn't have the destructive tendencies of some of the denser expanding foams. And it's made in Canada!

Insulating is a complicated process and no one solution is perfect for each situation. But it's time we moved on from fiberglass and plastics, towards a healthier, more energy efficient way to seal our shelters.

Build Small

2007-11-13T16:04:00.001-05:00

How much space do you really need? A typical client of mine will come to me with a wish list of rooms. Regardless of the green mindedness of said client, by the time they add up all these rooms in the sizes they are expecting, we have yet another 2500sf monster. And no, I'm not talking about the truly monstrous homes out there. Just average. For argument's sake lets say you can live with half that size.

Now in our area, a base figure for custom home construction is $140 per square foot. What do you get? A 2500sf cavern, with too many rooms, which uses twice the taxes, heat, cooling, electricity, maintenance, and furnishings. Cost: $350,000. Plus furniture. Plus land, servicing, etc. Oh, and did I mention that $140 is getting you more or less "suburban standard" as far as style goes? It can be done, and look good, but you're spending all your money on volume, not quantity.

Let's look at half the house. 1200sf. Two floors plus a basement. The main floor is an open plan, with a big kitchen, large living space, and a two piece washroom. Second floor has two bedrooms with big closets, and a 4 piece washroom. Store your extraneous stuff in the basement (and have you ever met anyone who doesn't say they have too much stuff? Get rid of it!). Let's bump up the quality a bit, so we're talking concrete counters, not plastic. And maybe some cool goodies like radiant floors. Floor to ceiling windows. Stainless steel, energy efficient appliances. A steel roof. All for say... $180 / sf. Total cost: $216,000. Whether you take that extra $134,000 and buy another house, or some kickin' furnishings, landscaping, or just maybe not have a mortgage... up to you. Did I fail to mention the extra $8000 or so you won't have to spend every year just to pay the bills? If you are really serious about reducing your ecological footprint, how about just living smaller? Here's a radical thought... you may even have to work less.

Exquisite Green Yoga Retreat

2007-09-20T12:41:00.000-04:00

In a brilliant translation of spirituality into practice, this yoga studio brings the principles of grounded-ness, stillness, movement, and peace into real form. In Clark County, Virginia (near Washington DC), this small sized structure is packed with large ideas, pushing green building principles to new heights. Structural insulated panels, geothermal heating and cooling, passive solar, locally-sourced materials, green roof, and LED lighting complement an innovative multi-purpose design which serves as studio, living space, and bunkhouse to complement the owners residence on the same property. The project achieved LEED gold certification in 2007. Designed by Carter + Burton Architecture

Design for the Other 90%

2007-09-14T08:05:00.000-04:00

Other90

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”

Design for the Other 90% is a revolutionary organization which has taken root throughout the world, fostering such brilliantly simple, inexpensive, and environment enhancing designs as the Lifestraw, a cigar-sized water purifier which is simply a personal straw, which removes harmful pathogens before they reach the user's lips. Or the Q-Drum, (pictured above), which reinvents the wheel as a simple water transport device for populations with distant access to clean water sources. I invite you to browse the rest of the site and marvel at the ingenuity which is solving massive problems with the simplest of gestures around the world.

Paint yourself into a healing corner.

2007-09-13T15:53:00.000-04:00

This one is just too fun to not show you.

The AFM Safecoat company, a pioneer in non-toxic environmentally friendly paints and sealants, has come up with an interactive interior design tool. Using the principles of Ayurvedic medicine, they have developed three colour ranges which are based on the three main principles or body types: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha.
Being a Vata myself, I have great fun colouring my walls and pretending I'm a slim blonde girl with a big black dog. Did I just admit that?

HERE is the link to their healing colour scheme room selector. The paint, and all their products, are for real, and are difficult to find in Canada, but this approach to marketing is just great.

FIrst Zero Emissions Home in England

2007-06-19T15:14:00.001-04:00

The "Lighthouse" by Sheppard Robson is the first "zero carbon emissions" house built in England. More significantly, this is in response to the new mandate that all homes in the country be emission free by 2016.

Can you imagine our current Canadian Conservative government, or their Liberal predecessors, every having the b***s to pass a bill like this? In eight and a half years, every new house built in England will be emissions free. In Canada, we don't even have legislation in place to meet our current Kyoto commitments, which are a mere fraction of what people in the EU have already put into practice.

This home has its own drawbacks, like bedrooms in the basement (fine from a thermodynamic perspective, but not practical in a winter climate or from a social perspective), fairly hands - on HVAC management that may not be without its inherent maintenance issues, but it significance as a prototype which will soon be a nation wide movement cannot be understated.

Sheppard Robson Website (follow the "news" link for the article on the Lighthouse)

Passive Cooling

2007-05-24T13:29:00.000-04:00

The heat is on. Here in Southern Ontario, the mercury has hit 33 degrees for two days running now, the normal high for late May is 20. Whether or not you believe Mr. Al Gore, having a few home cooling strategies under your belt may not be a bad idea. So before you dash for the thermostat and flip it into CFC ozone depleting mode, consider using some of the following techniques for cooling down your abode.

1/ Don't let it in. It seems counter intuitive, but if it is cool inside, and hot outside, don't open all your windows and doors. Houses are not designed only to keep heat in, the opposite works just as well. Close doors, windows, and particularly any blinds and drapes during the hot hours of the day, and save all the nice cool night air that your house may already contain.

2/ If your house is hot and stuffy and you just have to crack a window, take advantage of passive cooling. Your house has at least 4 sides (apologies to dome dwellers), and at any particular time of day at least two of those sides will be in the shade. Try to open up equal sized or equal numbers of windows on opposite sides of the house, and even without a breeze the air will want to take this short cut from the hot to the cool side of the house. Any air movement you can create will help cool your body by speeding up evaporation from your skin.

3/ Plants absorb heat. Deciduous trees and shrubs in particular, through their constant evapotranspiration, create cool areas around your home, and shade if they are tall enough.

4/ If you are building or renovating your home, consider adding or extending overhangs to shade any South or West facing windows. Keeping the direct rays of the sun out of your home will prevent your own mini global warming model from proving Mr. Gore correct yet again.

An intermediate step between the passive approach and full on air conditioning is to use a fan. Remember that you don't necessarily have to cool your entire home, just the bodies in it. Table, floor or ceiling fans aimed at you can go a long way to increasing your comfort levels just enough to tolerate the heat. The more heat tolerant you can be indoors, the less of a shock it will be when you have to step out into the great wide open.

One last trick which is a favourite of mine is a cold foot bath. Try it, especially just before bed. Works wonders.

Zip to Work

2007-04-02T11:41:00.000-04:00

I am a bike enthusiast (understatement). In most every city I've lived in, and most every job, I've taken two self powered wheels to work, for a multitude of reasons. It's a slippery slope to being judgemental of the automobile inclined, as there are just as many reasons why most people can't take the cleaner way to commute.

But Schwinn has just taken away one of those reasons. The I-Zip (seems if you want to brand your self as cool you have to be "I-something"), is a very accessibly priced electric assist bike. So those of you who don't quite have the leg power to make it the extra mile, or up a particular hill, can use the battery powered motor to help you take one more car off the road, help clean up our air, and get healthy. With a 30km range, it could help quite a few people reduce their ecological impact. Another cool new product in the seeming avalanche of corporations scrambling to paint themselves green. While you're at it, check out Canadian Tire's new line of green products. Like anything, there are some questionable items, but kudos to them for heading in the right direction.

Safe Mold Control

2007-03-22T16:21:00.000-04:00

Concrobium Mold Control

Got some suspicious blooms on the washroom ceiling? That new old house you moved into smell a bit 'off'? Did that attic leak you didn't quite get around to fixing last year cause some suspicious black stains on the rafters?

Mold is tenacious, can be dangerous, and can be quite difficult to remove. Conventional wisdom has most people doing the bleach scrub, which barely works, and fills your house with a whole new toxin as a bonus. Short of straight removal, which is seldom an option if the mold has penetrated at all into the material in question (particularly if that material happens to be holding up part of your house), the only other options are to try to kill it. Concrobium has come up with a non-toxic, biological product, which by all accounts actually works. Their FAQ section has some excellent resources on mold, why it grows, and how to deal with it, and I recommend it highly. Understand your problem, then solve it.

Micro Wind Power

2007-03-22T16:12:00.000-04:00

Well, its been a while. Apologies to anyone out there who was looking for more, but "real" work tends to get in the way of blogging!

In any case... a lot has happened. Seems the world has woken up to the green message, for starters. Mr. Gore has really shaken a few assumtions out there... with Walmart and Canadian Tire jumping on the bandwagon, who knows what's possible? Big box saves the world?

Here is a nice little tidbit for urbanites who live in poor wind conditions, but are determined to crank out some watts. I love wind power, and this is a true innovation, as opposed to a reiteration of the same old turbine. The Motorwind turbine is not beautiful, but it professes to generate power from little winds. Zephyrs. And particularly, the kinds of fickle, shifty winds which are found in most urban areas. Inexpensive and easy to install, what more could a green gadget head want?

Home Wind Power

2007-01-09T09:52:00.000-05:00

As the antithesis to the do-it-yourself wind generator I posted a couple of months ago, here is the Lexus version. The Skystream is not inexpensive, but promises to provide roughly ninety percent of your household electricity from a single turbine, paying for itself in 4-10 years, depending on your local utility rates and usage. Best of all, it has an inverter built in, so it does not need additional indoor electrical work required by PV and other small wind systems. The main drawbacks seem to be that it requires at least .5 acres for installation (not sure if this is due to cable requirements, or a need for clear open space for wind movement...), and is a bit steep for a one time capital cost. It must also shut itself down in the event of a power outage, which is disappointing, but is for the safety of hydro personnel. The world is changing. Too little, too slow, but it is changing.

Christmas, Plastic, and the People's Republic

2007-01-02T10:56:00.000-05:00

The new year is here and most of our houses are a hundred pounds heavier. A good quarter of that is turkey leftovers, the remainder is a pile of plastic crap brought to you courtesy of the People's Republic of China, via your local retailer.

As a 'green' household, we strive to buy local, natural, and non-toxic whenever possible. But we also cave in to the attraction of shiny brightly coloured baubles for only a dollar, and know the temptation is hard to resist. And an alarming number of the toys and gifts that made their way into our home over the past two weeks bear the ubiquitous "Made in China" tag.

Let's try to measure the human cost of that cute squeezy whale bath toy we played with last night. It was made in China. Even if you're willing to overlook the willful destruction of Tibet, consider the following:

It is made of vinyl. HERE is what the EPA has to say about the toxicity of vinyl. No matter how you take it (by nose, mouth, or through the skin), it is undoubtedly carcinogenic, particularly to the liver. As long as a plastic remains soft, it is off gassing and breaking down.

It is made of a petrochemical derivative. I'm not going to begin to describe what oil is doing to our world. This oil probably came from outside China, through a pipeline or on a tanker. How many litres of oil did it take to drive the vinyl to the factory in China?

It cost less than a dollar. A Canadian dollar.

It was shipped across the Pacific Ocean, to a port, where it most likely got on a diesel powered truck, which was driven to a central distribution facility, where it was moved to another truck, then driven to its retail location, which we drove to to buy this 69 cent item. Round trip. Did I mention our car is highly fuel efficient? ;)

It is cute and yellow (his favourite colour) and squirts water out it's blowhole. It makes us both laugh, and scares me a little bit.

Do I throw away the whale? Can you even buy a non-toxic, locally made squeezy bath whale? At what point did life get so darn complicated?

Happy new year! It seems I've bottled up my Grinch for after the holidays.

Paint. Simply Green.

2006-12-08T05:23:00.000-05:00

What is the first thing you do when moving into your new apartment, rental house, resale house, or parent's rec room? There's nothing like a fresh coat of paint to make it your own. It is by far the most accessible of the DIY renovations, the most common finish, and until recently, one of the most toxic additions to your new space.

Paints traditionally contain a mad scientist's cocktail of ingredients. The four main components of pigments, solvents, binders, and driers often include formaldehyde, arsenic, toluene, xylene, alkyl phenols, alkyds, acrylics, vinyls, and VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds, which among other effects are ozone depleting). If you have your doubts about the safety of any of these, consult the American EPA IRIS Database, which many consider to understate the risks: http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/index.html
My favourite catchphrase is "decreased survival", one of the potential side effects of xylene. Nearly all of these volatile ingredients make life worse for asthma sufferers, contribute to "sick building syndrome", and give professional painters a 40% greater risk of lung cancer (from World Health Organization stats).

The solution to all this is, ironically, very simple. There are numerous paints on the market which range from much safer to completely toxin-free, and most can be bought off the shelf in your local community. They were developed for hospital settings. Please start using them. Demand strengthens the market.

Here is a list from the Green Seal organization, of paints which have earned their certification. I personally use Benjamin Moore's Ecospec, which has the beautiful qualities of other BM paints, is water based, and is completely VOC, solvent, and odour free, and is the SAME PRICE as their regular paints.

Ikea and Your Healthy Home

2006-11-28T14:56:00.000-05:00

Who would have thought? Corporate giant and benevolent world citizen are seldom found on the same resume, but Ikea has just made a great leap forward in my books.

Prompted by a question on Debra Lynn Dadd's website, I sent an email to Ikea about the toxicity and safety of their bedding products. My son has a host of respiratory issues, so we are continually in the process of purging our house of harmful products which off-gas, harbour dust and molds, and generally foul our air. Bedding is the most important element in furnishing a healthy home, for obvious reasons (unless you spend more time sleeping on the couch!)

Their reply surprised me. Pleasantly. Now if they could only do something about all that plastic laminated particle board that seems to make up everything else in the store. Not perfect, certainly, but a whole lot better than the average corporate environmental policy out there. (click on the 'reply' link to read their letter)

The Star Trek World View

2006-11-28T10:33:00.000-05:00

A friend once used this phrase on me, in the context of a conversation where I was showing some optimism for technology's ability to bail us out of environmental crises. "You obviously subscribe to the Star Trek world view... you know, that one day all our problems will be solved by technology, and we will have nothing better to do than explore the universe and meddle with other civilizations!"

I will admit that this optimism still lives, as part of a balanced approach. Two projects in particular have hit the news recently, both of which have the potential to transform our world, and wean us off this ridiculous addiction to fossil fuels. Scientists are working on "it", it's our responsibility to make sure that they still have an ecosystem to save once they've figured it out.
And vote for the governments that have vision enough to fund these scientists.

HERE is an article about a breakthrough in photovoltaic cell technology. The "quantum dot" has the potential to double the efficiency of a solar cell, thus pushing it past that awkward state where it takes more energy to produce than it will ever give back to the grid.

THIS is the home site for the ITER project, a group working to develop a functioning fusion reactor, which was announced on Nov. 21st. Yes, fusion. Sounds kind of Star Trek. But when the USA, Russia, EU, China, India, Japan, and Korea can agree to work together, doesn't this give you just a tiny glimmer of hope? (ITER is Latin for "the way") Of course, nuclear fission power was the great hope of the past generation. Time will tell.

A Garden over my Head

2006-11-14T20:32:00.000-05:00

as exciting as...(a link to the City of Waterloo green roof webcam...woohoo!)

Of all the elements people consider to be part of a green building, the one I get the most questions about is the "green roof". Most have moved beyond thinking it's a colour choice, usually to a position where they are ready to start shoveling topsoil onto their asphalt shingles this weekend. Here in North America the green roof is really still in its infancy, the Europeans and Germans in particular are already light years ahead. Not above borrowing a good idea, the people at greenroofs.org have put together a very concise "why" page which answers most of the common questions. Yes, they do cost more. Yes, they do last longer. Yes, they reduce energy consumption, clean the air, reduce urban heat island effect, and look lovely. No, they are not at all easy to maintain. (just click "About Green Roofs" on the sidebar once you get there)
When considering a green roof, ask one simple question first. Are you willing to have a flat roof on your building? I for one think a sloped roof is a grand idea, since water obeys Newton's laws quite religiously. Soil likes to follow the water, on anything higher than a very shallow grade. That said, there have been thousands of successful green roofs installed, and the pace is accelerating. So hold off on the topsoil for a spell, and sit down to a good read.
Where's the leak? I think it's over there near the oregano...

Bright product for a grey day

2006-11-07T14:26:00.000-05:00

Take a pair of decades-old inventions, the photovoltaic cell, and the LED, and combine them into a form that's been around for a few millenia. Who says being green isn't fun? Sure, the embodied energy in making one of these things will never be offset by its energy savings, but...
The Sun Brick, how cool is that!? Thanks to the folks at Inhabitat for bringing this to my attention.
(links removed as they are outdated)

The Pioneer Spirit

2006-11-03T11:19:00.000-05:00

The green movement of today owes its origins almost entirely to a new generation of pioneers. By willingly getting off the modern convenience bandwagon, and using their wits, imagination, and perseverance, many individuals in the latter 20th century have reinvigorated the founding spirit of North America. Homesteaders, inventors, back-to-the-land hippies, and backyard engineers have made terms like "off the grid" and "sustainable" commonplace, through a living demonstration.

For the most part, these efforts went unnoticed outside their immediate community. Then came the internet. Now, a deskbound urbanite like myself can delve into their world, glean their hard won knowledge, learn from it, and pass it on. And so I pass to you the Chispito Wind Generator. Brilliantly simple, this design uses common hardware store or salvaged parts to create a small, efficient, and beautiful device. The instructions are well thought out, and freely given in the true spirit of the internet. Something about this little beauty spinning away on my rooftop, creating light or powering my computer, makes me feel like someday everything might be ok. Guess I should build one.

Durability

2006-11-02T10:46:00.000-05:00

The foremost strategy for building green has to be durability. This is also the great paradox of building green. There are those environmentalists who preach that every human made thing on this planet should spontaneously compost itself. I am not one of those. We humans make pretty lousy animals, and as a result we need fairly sophisticated shelters to make us happy, healthy, and comfy enough to sit back and type interesting bits into our blogs. As a simple and profound introduction to building durability, I give you "Joe's Top Ten Rules of Wood Durability". (the same applies to most other materials) Thanks to the Building Science Corporation for this and countless other insights into building well.

In the beginning...

2006-11-02T09:38:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the Sagedaddy Green Building Blog, your source for innovative, resourceful, and sometimes sagelike information on environmentally sound buildings and healthy homes. Please visit my main website at www.whitingdesign.ca for information related to my design and consulting practice.