greenspree.ca at The Sietch

One of the things I have realized when my wife and I found out we were going to have a baby this winter is how much I am still polluting the earth, even being as earth conscious as I think I am. I still buy lots of plastic and styrofoam products, disposable products, over packaged products, etc… We justify it to ourselves as saying there are no alternatives or at least no convenient alternatives and buy some of our food bulk but that’s about the extent of it.

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greenspree.ca » Blog Archive » Step Five – Stucco (Update)

We’ve made some progress on the stucco front!  Check out the details at greenspree.ca.

CBC News Compass did a story on our house last week.

http://www.cbc.ca/pei/media/video/pe-strawhouse.ram

We’re stars! 🙂

One of the things I hear a lot in my new position is that people want to build their new homes energy efficiently but think that they cannot afford to. Whenever I hear this I always say without hesitation “You can’t afford NOT to build you home energy efficiently!”. There are huge misconceptions out there about the costs, methods and effectiveness of building new homes efficiently. Most new home builders do not help the situation and will tell prospective customers that adding more insulation to their house, installing a geothermal or solar heating system or building to take advantage of passive solar gains will add an unreasonable amount of cost and time delay to the building process.

Fortunately there are free resources out there for anyone to dispel these myths. A free software package from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) can be downloaded called HOT2000 and it allows anyone to do energy modeling on their home and actually forecast what various changes will do to the energy consumption of there homes! It has a fairly shallow learning curve, with a windows interface, drop down menus and check boxes, and comes with a good help file and example files to build on.

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I figure it’s time for a status update on the straw bale home. It’s been a slow 3 or 4 months since the snow started back in November, other than the interior walls, the plumbing and electrical rough-ins and a few small items we haven’t done much on the house.

A few weeks ago we had the main ventilation shaft and fan installed and will now be able to go ahead with insulating the attic! We ordered the wood for the second story ceiling and the danish oil finish for it. Two weeks ago we spent the long weekend cleaning my father-in-law’s shop and laying out and pre-finishing the wood for the ceiling. The danish oil was a labour intensive finish for 2400lnft of 1×5 t&g pine but it was fantastic to be able to use this non toxic finish without wearing masks. We also completed a last few niggling attic chores like vents for the bathroom fan, dryer and fresh air intakes.

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Reducing your shower times by a mere 4 minutes, say from 15 to 11 minutes, will save a family of four heating with 11.5 cent KW/H electricity and using 2.5GPM shower heads $230 per year!  These savings will only grow as the cost of energy continues to rise!

How much (useful) energy can you derive from rain falling from your roof? How can you best capture wind energy with many small wind turbines? Are there other options for using solar energy besides PV’s and solar hot water heaters? What are some other small options anyone could use that have cumulative benefits and are easy and cheap to install?

It’s a thought I had the other day when considering energy production for our house in the future. While on the road for my job I passed by an off-grid (even though the grid was 100 feet away) 3000+sf home with solar hot water, solar PV panels and a 100′ tall 3 or 5 KW wind turbine. It was massive and made the property seem very out of place next to smallish 1400-1800sf bungalows all around it. I decided that one large scale device to provide all or nearly all of my energy needs was not a route I wanted to take. I started doing mental calculations and plans to incorporate many small unobtrusive energy production devices into our house and land. We have a hectare so we have some room to play with and it is a former farm field so can plan around future trees, wind rows, etc…

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Recently I began a new career with the Provincial Government of PEI. I had been with the Fire Marshal’s Office as a building inspector and quite enjoyed my job and coworkers. An opportunity came up to become part of the new Office or Energy Efficiency and I jumped at the chance! The position was Energy Programs Officer and the description of the job was:

The purpose of this position is to assist in the development and implementation of energy efficiency programs delivered to Island homeowners and businesses. The Energy Programs Officer will also provide information and advice on appropriate energy efficiency techniques and technologies utilized in the residential and commercial/institutional building sectors.

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The First Air Car to Hit the Market – Associated Content

While I am sure there will be questions about this technology, and the safety behind it, it sure does sound promising! If you can couple this car with green, clean, home energy generation (wind, solar, micro-hydro or perhaps even a small bio-diesel generator!) it would truly be emission free driving! And ranges of 500 miles and 68mph make it a true contender against internal combustion engined vehicles. Prices on average of $8000 don’t hurt either.

It also does away with the need for heavy, toxic and hard to dispose of batteries that are the weak spot on otherwise promising electric vehicles.

I am excited to see what the future brings for these affordable green cars!

Look! a water tank and electrical panel! We had the mechanical and electrical rough-in work started in December. The tiny “utility room” got tinier with the addition of actual equipment.

A look from the utility room into the future kitchen. Note the plumbing and wiring in the ceiling! The bathroom is just above the kitchen and we are going to install a drop ceiling in this area. Also note the exterior steel insulated door leaning up against the wall in the background, this is the back door out to the yard waiting to be installed.

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