greenspree.ca at The Sietch

In the summer of 2007 Laine and I will be building our first home in Emyvale, PEI on the Shire Lane. We both work in the architecture field and are both passionate about treading lightly on the earth and not living mortgage poor. We want to be able to build a house that is: aesthetically pleasing, energy efficient, incorporates healthy living, minimizes construction waste and embodied energy and can be mostly built by us.

Technologies to be used in our home:

Hybrid strawbale Construction:

The closest example of what we are going to be doing can be found here: http://heatkit.com/html/strawagb.htm
Note the 6th picture down from the top. We’ll be doing stud framing at 19.2″c/c with vertical bales notched and placed between the studs. The floor and roof joists will also be spaced on 19.2″c/c so as to efficiently transfer loads by having all structural elements aligned vertically. Some other useful info on all types of strawbale construction can be found here:

• Amazon Nails Straw Bale Building
• Ontario Straw Bale Building Coalition
• Camel’s Back Construction
• Straw Bale Vaulted Structures

Passive Solar Design:

Optimised south facing windows with high mass insulated slab for thermal storage.

Drainwater Heat Recovery System:

We’ll be reclaiming the heat from our second floor washroom and laundry areas with the use of a drainwater heat recovery system. This replaces a section of you drain piping with a section of heat exchanging water to water copper coil. There are a few systems available on the market including one local business:

• Power Pipe – the first example of drainwater heat recovery I found online.
  
• Retherm Energy Systems – local business, most likely who we’ll buy from. PEI also waives the PST on certain energy saving/producing devices including drainwater heat recovery.
  

Chest Style Refrigerator Modification:

Dual Flush Water saving Toilet:

“Dual flush” effect toilet using adjustable flapper kit (<$20) set to half a tank on a normal handle derpression and held down to empty tank completely.

Nonessential Outlet Disconnects (Ghost load elimination)

Future/Possible Technologies:

• Solar Hot Water Heating
• Wind Turbine Power Generation

Other Links:

• Shire Lane website created by the couple we bought our lots from (aka my in-laws!)

January 17, 2007:
The design process has been slow going but we recently had a breakthrough and have a nearly complete layout completed. We sent it to Laine’s father-in-law for some objective review and comments and hopefully can start getting the details hammered out very soon.

April 24, 2007:

After going through the timberframe design and costing process we quickly realized we were skirting closely into McMansion territory with a nearly 2000 sqft space + loft space.

We also realized the the cost of timberframing such a structure was beyond the original budget and would leave us house poor for years. We are now planning a 1 / 2 bedroom house under 1100 sf and using a cheaper stick frame infill hybrid system.

We scored some very expensive, very energy efficient triple glazed window units for free which will lower our costs as well. We are going to be using lots of reclaimed/salvaged items such as mismatched carpet tile samples and the like which would have been headed for the garbage otherwise.

The plans for greywater treatments and composting toilets have gone by the wayside as it seems you need a septic system on PEI to build anyways. We hope to still cut down on water usage and chemicals being released into the groundwater but using a conventional system.

We planted our first tree on the lot, a little spruce reclaimed from under the power lines that would have been cut down anyways, and we are going to layout our vegetable garden this week.

More updates, including plans will follow shortly and perhaps some photos of the staked out house and our new little tree!

July 20, 2007:

House plans! This SHOULD be the final iteration of our house plans, they are the final foot print anyways as we are pouring our foundation within the next two weeks!

We have had our shale driveway and building pad installed and are lining up the well, weptic, under slab piping andfoundation materials today.

We also got a second mortgage approval with a bank at a better rate than our broker was giving us.