Choosing Materials

The green building movement makes a big deal about choosing the right materials to ensure a product can be reused or returned to the raw material market at the end of the life-cycle.  The end goal is of course to reduce the embodied energy of the project.

While this is a lofty ideal and worth pursuing, a reality check often shows that while a material is technically recyclable, there often (usually) not programs in place to actually process the used material.  During the deconstruction of my house, I ran into two good examples.

My kitchen floor was pure linoleum tiles (essentially linseed oil).  This is a product that can be composted or used as fuel for large scale heating boilers.  But in my region, there was no program set up to process the product and I ended up taking it to the landfill (I did not have the facilities to grind up and compost myself).

The second product I failed to recycle was all of the plastic pipe I salvaged from below grade.  This included PVC drainage pipe, PVC irrigation pipe, and ABS sewer pipe.  For this commodity, there was a program in place to recycle the material, but only if it was VERY clean (think like new).  The process available could not handle pipe with any dirt or other sediment on it.  SO in the end, it too had to go to the landfill.

Misc Pipe and Plastic that was not accepted at recycling facility.

While we should endeavour to reduce our footprint on the planet and choose materials with lower embodied energy, we should also ensure that the materials we do choose are the most suited to the application.

I see too many 'green' building designs that choose a 'green' product due to a promised carbon footprint as the primary focus, without ensuring the product will be durable long term in service. This often will result in the need to replace the product after a very short life cycles.  Even if the product can be returned back to the raw material supply chain, this still represents an increased burden on the planet compared to a competitive product that while being less 'green', is more durable in service.  And if the 'green' product cannot be returned to the supply chain, you are just that much further behind.

Instead, my focus is to start at the most durable end of the spectrum and then try to pick products with lower embodied energy characteristics from the high performance candidates, AND install the products per best practices to ensure they are as useful and durable as possible.

My long term hope is that the cost of new materials becomes so high that even the main stream players in the market see recycling as a no-brainer.  This would address the fact that right now, recycling often does not make sense from strictly a financial platform.  However part of the problem is also the technical challenges in recycling a product.

Fortunately, there is some visionaries that have been working for many years to solve some of these hurdles. Mike Biddle has been working on a system that can separate bulk shredded plastics into the different colours and materials solving one of the biggest stumbling blocks to mass recycling of plastics (read PopSci article for full storey).  The beauty of his system is that this is all done in N.A., saving the need to ship offshore, via an automated process (no high labour costs). By keeping the product on our shores, we reduce the pollution our society is creating within poorer countries.

Lets hope others are working on the myriad of other materials we as a society currently just discard.

Mike Biddle has developed an automated (IE cheap - labour free) method of allowing plastic materials to be ground up on mass and then separated into the individual colour and materials making up that mass.

Does PassiveHaus make sense?

Just a short update to showcase an article at Green Building Adviser that perfectly sums up the conclusions I made about the Passive House program and why I cancelled my plans to build to that standard.

The author of the article, found at www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/it-s-not-about-space-heating, tracked the actual energy use of several homes in Massachusetts and has determined that even a modest investment in insulation and air tightness (termed a pretty good house by Joe Lstiburek) is more than enough to reduce the heating and cooling loads to the point where it makes more sense to concentrate on plug and domestic hot water loads as is shown in the below graphic.


Extracted from http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/sites/default/files/images/Rosenbaum%20-%20Graph%20of%20Eliakims%20Way%20data%20copy.preview.jpg

The real world data monitoring has also shown that the assumptions made in the PHPP (the modelling system for PassiveHaus) are often wrong.  The author states, “PHPP assumes 6.6 gallons [25 liters] of hot water a day per person, but that’s not enough for normal Americans.”

I jumped on board the PassiveHaus train for about a year in the early design stages of my upcoming build.  It was easy to be swept up in the well polished program and fall in love with the projected savings.  But as I became better and better educated on building science, source energy, and embodied energy, I felt their were huge holes in the program.  The underlying principles of air tightness and thermal bridge free construction were sound, but in my view the chase for heating and cooling reductions bypassed the sweet spot where it made much more sense, from an embodied energy and a cost point of view, to look at on site production than further reduction. The biggest stumbling block was the claimed 10-15% added build cost to reach PH when in reality it is much closer to 200% on average when comparing to a code min house (which after all is what the majority of homes in North America are built to).

In the end I decided to build a "pretty good house" and will monitor energy loads once occupied and then model whether or not I reached the sweet spot between reduction and production.

Thanks for visiting.  For the current status of the build please visit http://www.theenclosure.ca/project-journal/

PS: For an excellent article on why  more insulation is not always better, read http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/building-science/diminishing-returns-adding-insulation

Variance Approved and Website Launched!

Wow, a lot has happened since my last update. 

For starters, we have moved.  You can read about the first few days of the move over on my journal at theEnclosure.ca It was a tiring and stressful time that I am very happy is behind me. Of course this was followed up by a week of sickness and a computer data loss that was the worst I have had ever experienced but fortunately I have been very lucky in this regard and so this was not crippling for me (just expensive - the whole affair cost over $1000 for data retrieval and the purchase of a second battery backup so both my Raid servers are protected).

The next piece of big news is that our Development Variance permit was approved last Monday night.  This was such a relieve after months of back and forth with the District.  They accepted my originally proposed upper to lower floor ratio of 87% (vs. the 75% required by the bylaw), but I had to redesign the roof so that I could lower it 12" and now only be 8" above the requirement of 26'.  This has resulted in the loss of my air barrier design utilizing a torch on membrane, so I will have to come up with a new game plan for creating a durable and effective air barrier at the ceiling location. Ideas anyone?

We have also been approved for our Construction Mortgage and I am thankful for the hard work put in by Tetyana Thomas at the Royal Bank.  They have really stepped up compared to most banks that would not loan to an owner builder. The challenge will now be to get to the first draw.  They will not advance funds until the foundation is complete.  This will cost well over $100K to get to with all of the permit and engineering costs built into this phase. I am still not sure where this money will all come from and we are going to need to do some MacGyving to get through this stage.  The ironic part is that they are then willing to advance 40% of the land value at the first draw which is ALL of the funds I will need to finish the project.  The appraised value for the finished structure is over $2M in today's market and they felt I should be spending over $800K to build.  I expect to spend less than half this due to my own sweat equity, salvaged materials, sponsorship, and a lower importance that both my wife and I share towards the 'lipstick' of a house.

Yesterday, I also received the final sealed drawings from the Structural Engineer and the GeoTech report.  This is the last part of the puzzle needed to apply for the Building Permit which I will do next week. Unfortunately the first appointment available was Thursday as I will be at a THERM training course all day Monday and Tuesday.

The gas/storm/sani/water services should all be disconnected next week and I will have Hydro swing the electrical service over to the new temp pole as soon as I finish installing it and call for inspection.  I hope to get this done this weekend.

But the greatest achievement was the launch of the project's website theEnclosure.ca I cannot thank Honeycomb Creative enough for their work on this site.  It is first rate just like all of the other work they have done for me.  I invite you to stop by and browse through the information that is available including a full copy of the plans, building assembly descriptions, and lets not forget the 'live' (actually snapshots updating every 3-5 seconds) video of the build site.

As I get caught up, I will post more information on the Varriance process for those that may need to go through a similar process.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Determining Lifespan - Updated to 50+ yrs

Back in June (previous post), I wrote about the need to determine the probable lifespan of a building in order to determine the backpack for energy efficiency upgrades and determining the embodied energy of the dwelling.

I wrote that unfortunately, I suspected that the life span for my new dwelling could be as little as 20 years and that I would use 25 years as my expected horizon.

Well I am pleased to advise that I have now significantly extended the time line based on conversations I have had with the outgoing and new District planners for my area.  The following factors weighed in on the discusion:

• The neighbourhood has limited vehicle access with two 'exits' for approximately 700 homes and as such would not be suitable for densification.
• The current owners in the neighborhood are VERY active and vocal and would not support the addition of multifamily into the neighbourhood.
• District is considering allowing for Lane Way and Carriage houses for our neighbourhood instead.
• The real estate values in our neighbourhood are just too high (lots start at $800K and quickly climb.  My lot, at just over 10K sqft, is assessed at over $1M for just the dirt).

So it appears I may have underestimated the 'bastion' mentality and reality of my neighbourhood, and it is going to stay pretty much as it is now for some time to come. I actually welcome this news, as it was a bit disheartening thinking the dwelling may be torn down in aas little as 20 years.

Is this revised time line going to change the way I build? Probably not, the reality is that determining the sweet spot for say insulation levels, requires modelling that I just do not have the experience, time, or money to do right now.  I am instead, going to go with my gut based on research I have done over the last 1-5 years, and on recommendations done by bodies like Building Science Corp.  Once the house is built, and I am able to determine energy use by actual consumption, and learn to use various modelling programs, I will then crunch the number and report back at how close I got to the sweet spot (the sweet spot for me is when the cost of adding site energy generation is cheaper than further reducing energy use).

Stay tuned!

Designing walls that are not vapour permeable - A good idea?

I have been having a discussion on a LinkedIn Passive House forum regarding the choices one can make in regards to insulation and the effects of these choices.

http://goo.gl/1vGTyI


The poster was asking for experiences within the building community with Wood Fiber vs. Cellulose insulation and I suggested that neither may be desirable depending on your climate conditions and instead suggested continuous exterior mineral wool fibre insulation.  This then morphed the conversation towards what constitutes a durable high performance wall.

I posted my thoughts on the perfect wall (which just happens to match my walls in my upcoming build) and other who are builders of PassivHaus (PH) structures posted their perfect wall details.  This led to a discusion about the merrits of designing a wall that is vapour open to the low pressure side, where one of the posters stated:

"I've been indoctrinated with the Bau-biology "Breathable Wall" idea with nearly 10 years now and spent many years preaching that gospel. But then I found the Spokane and Tsong studies where they opened the walls of 250 houses, that were built wrong in terms of 5:1 breathability but no decay was found.  The walls had no membranes, no decay was found, its the same for SIPs houses, ICF houses and most other construction methods, the walls don't breathe as per the 5:1 rule and the houses aren't falling down."

The two studies can be found here:
1) http://www.viking-house.ie/downloads/Tsong79.pdf
2) http://www.viking-house.ie/downloads/Spokane.pdf

I read the two studies the poster provided and was somewhat shocked at the jump in logic that is represented by the statement that we do not need to make walls permeable and that impermeable walls will not rot. This is such an important subject, I though I would reproduce my comments here to a larger readership.

The Tsong study is discussing the lack of VB, and not a wall that is vapour tight. A wall that does not have a VB is by definition VERY vapour open and in fact most of the assemblies studied were quite vapour open (poorly insulated wood frames).  It is also important to note that the study occurs in 1979 and the levels of insulation discussed are far below what we are talking about in today's high performance homes (the study does not state the R value but we are talking about poorly filled 2x4 walls, so probably an effective average of below R7). Therefore these walls all had a lot more drying potential due to thermal bridging than high performance homes of today and certainly a lot less drying potential compared to a PH. It is also important to note that these houses had an average ACH50 of 16.2, which is more than enough to also help dry the assembly when it was experiencing very high RH levels. I have been unable to locate the permeability of Urea Formaldehyde insulation so do not know how permeable those walls were if detailed perfectly – but per the study, these foam walls had a lot of air leakage due to foam shrinking and cracking. The average foam shrinkage was 8% and the report states that as a result of the shrinkage of this foam, there was a 70% increase in heat loss (heat loss dries walls, so even these walls could dry easily).

It should also be noted that areas of high moisture content were found at many locations on these homes where bulk water entry was occurring (in other words control layers regularly fail and you should design your assemblies for such to the extent possible).

What I do love about this study is their remark at how the mineral wool insulation had an ‘extremely low average moisture content’ when compared to the other insulation (in no case was the moisture content of the mineral wool above 2%). The study went on to say this is “probably attributable to the fact that mineral wool is not hygroscopic, whereas the cellulose and U-F foam both tend to retain moisture”. Go ROXUL!

I then went on to say that relying on this dated research to state that a wall should not be vapour permeable to the low pressure side is grossly flawed in my view, does not come close to lining up with the current recommendations of the building science community and their experience in repairing failed structures, and in my view also miss-interprets the studies results and compares conditions that are grossly miss-aligned with the high performance structures we are building today.

All this study can really claim is that there was no significant moisture damage associated with diffusion observed on any of the homes that generally had no or minimal insulation and high levels of thermal bridging. And as we know today, this results in assemblies with built in drying safety factors. The study was also was clear to specify that these results could not be related to colder climates.


The second study was by the same author but took place in a colder climate.  The same arguments above apply.  It should also be noted that colder climates generally have less problems with moisture damage to wall assemblies than milder climates.  In climates with cold winters and hot summers, the moisture typically exists as frost all winter and then quickly dries out in the late spring as the temps rise. In a location like the Pacific North West (3000 DD), moisture will stay in liquid form for months at a time as is able to cause a LOT more damage as the moulds take hold and flourish.

Can you build vapour tight assemblies that work in the Pacific North West?  Yes, but you then need to sweat the details.

An ICF IS a wall that works.  It is often quite vapour tight but because there is no air movement through it at any point in the structure, there is generally no opportunity for condensation to occur (I have heard of isolated events where condensation has occurred between the foam ICF and concrete core leading to mould build-up).  The typical foam materials of the ICF are also highly resistant to vapour diffusion, all but eliminating that risk as well. From a building science standpoint a typical foam ICF structure makes a lot of sense, but where it fails in my view is the very high embodied energy that it represents both in terms of the volume of concrete used in these homes and the foam used in the typical ICF blocks.

As far as SIP construction (structural insulated panels), which are typically fabricated with OSB sandwiched on each side of a foam block, I personally feel that the jury is still out.  There is a multitude of reports of SIPs failures across North America and once again, this style of construction represents a high embodied energy.

For me, I will stay true to my stick frame, plywood sheathed structure wrapped in a nice continuous warm blanket of highly vapour permeable and fire/rodent/bug proof Roxul mineral wool insulation thank you very much.

The Enclosure - Updated Exterior

I thought it might be time to provide an updated design photo showing the exterior of the dwelling as it is now modelled.  I will use the through cavity window sill and head flashing to create borders around the windows (and doors).  The infill will probably be simulated stucco cementitious panels.

Temporary Accommodation Road blocks!

As part of my desire to direct our budgeted monies toward a high performance home, I had always planned to request permission to live on site in a large vacation trailer (something like this).  Rent in my region is expensive, with 1 bedroom basement suites renting for $1100/month.  With an expected build time of 18 months, the avoidance of rent would allow $20k+ to be redirected to important components like windows and insulation. Instead, I could buy a trailer for $20k-$25K and then sell it when we were done for $5K less, resulting in a $5K living costs for the 18 months.

Two obstacles have been working against this plan from the beginning and it turns out both were insurmountable.

When I approached the District of North Vancouver in March, I was told this just was not done, with the manager citing safety concerns for the occupants of the trailer as well as the District services.  This lead to investigation with BC Safety Authority (advised no jurisdiction in North Van, but a pretty common situation in rural building lots) and WorkSafeBC (advised no concerns beyond siting trailer in area where debris could not fall of the dwelling under construction and onto the roof of the trailer.  The District manager had also sited concern for neighbour complaints, so I petitioned and received support for 4 of the 5 effected neighbours (three in writing) with no response from the 5th neighbour.  I went back recently to the District with all of this additional information only to now be told that "A zoning bylaw prohibition cannot be varied" which I am not sure I understand because many other aspects of the zoning bylaw like roof height, setbacks, etc, can be varied under special circumstances.  I tried to make a case for making this a test, because the District council are always looking for ways to make building more affordable in the District to allow those that have grown up here to stay here once they move out of the family house. I am also aware that the planning staff are soon to be proposing alteration of the neighbourhood zoning bylaw to allow lane-way carriage houses (which would further support a 'second' accommodation on the property).  The mistake I made was asking in the first place.  You see, there have been other owners in my neighbourhood that have lived in a trailer during their build.  The difference is that they did not ask and no one complained, so the District was not forced into action.  Because I did ask, in the end, it came down to one person with the authority to say no.  If I had more time and did not have the second obstacle, I would have pushed for a text amendment to the zoning bylaw.

My second obstacle was my wife.  She categorically refused to live in a holiday trailer even though it could be argued the accommodations would have been nicer than where we live now. She was making arrangements to stay with family.  My hope was that once the trailer was in place and she saw that it would not be that bad, she would soften and move back 'home'. But I fear, this was just a pipe dream on my part and was never going to happen despite how nice I could make the living conditions.

So with a source of accommodation dried up and with a build looming, I needed to find a place for us to live, and fast.  This is slightly complicated by the fact that my oldest cat is a resident of the neighbourhood FIRST! and our pet second.  You see, he has grown up in the neighbourhood and used to live about 300ft NW from where I live.  He is also an outside cat and just graces us with his presence at his direction. The requirement was to find an affordable place within his current 'stomping grounds' or fear an abandonment if we went someplace new (he did after-all abandon his first owners).  I also wanted to be close so I could go 'home' at lunch and keep tabs on the job site.  Fortunately, after I received the final correspondence from the District on Thursday, I went on line that night and checked the local Craigslist ads and lo and behold, the basement suite across the street was available as of Sept 1 (I had not even realized that the previous renter had left a month ago).  Today, the neighbour and I shook on a deal that would see us move in March 1 2014 and move out September 1 2015.  The two bedroom will set us back over $25K for the 19 months including a signing bonus so that he will hold it from now till we need it next March.

This will be a big hit to the budget (represents 8%) and I will need to cut costs or expend our budget accordingly,  but in the end will make my wife much happier and you know what they say.

Happy Wife - Happy Life!

Light House completes Pilot Project on Deconstruction

Light House Sustainable Building Centre Society completes pilot project analyzing the costs and time needed to deconstruct part of a single family residence before renovation.

Their report, published here, indicates there are some savings to be realized under some conditions, but that we have a long way to go before this can be common place.

As my time is 'free', I plan to spend up to a month deconstructing my house before starting construction on my upcoming build.  The items I plan to reuse, sell, salvage, give away, and recycle include:

• Studs and joists - Reuse/Donate/Recycle (They can be ground up and added as a soil conditioner - Clearview Grinding Ltd).
• Plywood - Reuse/Donate
• Ship lap - Recycle
• Shingles - Recycle (http://www.gemacosales.com)
• Exterior Concrete bricks - Reuse/Sell/Donate
• Cedar Siding - plane down to remove paint to reuse and sell.  The stuff is 1.75" at the narrow end.
• Wiring, metal piping, bathtub and sinks - Salvage (will need to strip insulation of wiring for best prices, a job that will be left till after construction).
• Drywall - Recycle
• Light & Plumbing Fixtures - Reuse/Donate
• Plastic Piping and other plastic products - Recycle (www.pacificmobiledepots.com takes any plastics that cannot go into the curb side blue box)
• Solid Wood flooring Reuse/Sell/Donate
• Bath and Kitchen Cabinets - Reuse (Shop)/Donate
• Stove and Dishwasher - Recycle (they are both beyond there service life and are being babied to last this last year)
• Fridge - ReUse (we just bought it a few years ago)
• Aluminum window frames - Salvage
• Window blinds/Shower Door/Boiler - Donate
• HWT - Reuse or dontate
• Laundry appliances - Reuse for while then donate
• Electrical Panel - Reuse as sub-panel (newer 200A panel)

Stuff that will probably go to the landfill:

• Interior and Exterior Doors
• Single Pane Glass
• Painted Wood
• Insulation (very old mineral wool and some fibreglass)
• Counter tops (laminate)
• Ceiling tiles (may be hazardous)

The last item is the concrete slab.  I would like to have it ground up and be able to use it as additional granular material for back-filling but at the very least I will find a place where it is needed as fill.

As you can see, my plans are ambitions and if successful, I would  divert over 90% by weight or volume away from the typical landfill process. Some of the effort like stripping the wiring or the paint of the siding will have to wait till after the build process. But with some planning and a little hard work, this should all be easily achievable, bring in some income or good karma and significally lower the carbon output of my demolition process.

Thanks for reading and as always, I encourage your comments.
 

May I present "The Enclosure"!

Well the days are ticking down and the stress level is rising, but I finally have a finished floor plan and reasonably advanced 3D model I can share with you. These are exciting times!

I have decided to call the project "The Enclosure" (sorry, no one won the $50 prize) to reflect my focus while designing.

I will use this blog and a new website that will launch in the months to come (www.TheEnclosure.ca) to promote what I feel are good decisions that encompass the below 9 guidelines. I also hope to include hourly construction photos during the entire build, live camera feed from two angles, manufacture’s technical information on the products I choose, and most important, real life figures as to cost and performance of the built dwelling, on this new website.

I hope to work with the utilities to provide live monitoring of site used energy and will also approach groups like HPO, BCIT, and the Building Envelope Engineering sector to design laboratory experiments that will provide real feedback, from the site, on the effectiveness and durability of different wall assembly structures.

To that end, I will design a 8ft high x 8ft long ‘opening’ on the north-top-floor-exterior-wall that will allow the installation of multiple ‘plug and play’ wall assemblies with instrumentation. This will allow the recording of wood moisture, relative humidity, temperatures, and heat flux through the various assemblies over time. The results, I hope, will allow calibration of computer models and determination by building officials as to appropriate assemblies to support in code changes for decades to come.

The instrument readings, I hope, would also be made available live on my website. In this way, the dwelling could have a real contribution to the scientific community and would help my goal of creating a legacy instead of a liability.

Now, if you read some of my earlier entries, you will see that this process started for me back in 1981 when I took my first drafting course in high school. Some of the concepts represented in a design I worked on through high school are still incorporated in my modern day design. Items like a low slopped roof, vaulted ceiling above the stairs and bedrooms, 'light wells', a ‘great room’, and a shop in the basement.

Other concepts are much more recent, like optimizing the floor space to be as compact as possible, incorporating SAFERhomes standards, generally following the principles of PassiveHaus, and most importantly - putting the building enclose much higher in the priorities list (with the larger portion of the budget to match).

I believe that in order to truly build a sustainable dwelling, you must follow these basic, but powerful, principles (placed in the order I believe is the most important) when laying out your design:


1) Build what society is probably going to want in terms of functionality for the upcoming decades (no sense building a small 750 square foot bungalow with 1 bedroom, that is just big enough for you, if as soon as you no longer choose to live there, it will be torn down).
2) Build as compact a floor plan as possible - Optimize your space and make only as large as needed. This does not mean that you have to feel cramped, just decide that having that 300 ft2 'master bath’, with room for a dining table in the middle of the floor, is probably not the best use of space (ours is only 118 ft2 and includes storage).
3) Limit the volume of the envelope by limiting the number of jogs in your wall design. This will reduce your overall heat loss and material use/cost. It will also make the dwelling a lot easier and cheaper to design and build in light of the new seismic requirements in British Columbia.
4) Build out of durable products that are appropriate for their intended purpose. Do not choose a ‘green’ product that does not last or protect the structure to an adequate level just because of its perceived "greenness".
5) Within the range of products available for each build element, chose ones with as little embodied energy as possible and that use as much renewable materials as possible (my focus will be to avoid as many oil based products possible).
6) Concentrate on energy reduction over site energy creation. This automatically dictates abiding by #2 and #3 above. It also dictates concentrating on the wall, roof, and floor slab assembly’s ability to resist thermal, water, and vapour flow over HVAC ‘conditioning. And in order to achieve your enclosure performance goals, you are going to have to ensure it gets a much larger slice of the budget pie, but you will be rewarded with smaller HVAC equipment sizing needs and reduced energy bills for decades to come.
7) Build Tight and Ventilate Right! YOU should decide where the ventilation air is coming from and not just leave it to chance. This gives you the opportunity to filter the air of pollen and other contaminates, and also to pre-warm/cool the air with stale air being exhausted from the dwelling. The controlled air exchange also keeps it out of the wall and roof assemblies where it can condense and ruin your day.
8) Size any required HVAC equipment to meet your reduced thermal loss or gain needs (remember parts of the continent actually need air conditioning). Oversized HVAC equipment is prevalent in the building industry, a practice that can often result in short run cycles that limit the equipment's ability to run efficiently and rid the dwelling of harmful pollutants or humidity.
9) Do everything possible to keep your partner happy in their design wishes. Yes this is still important, just at the bottom of the list and only accommodated up to the budgets constraints. So once you have paid for good windows, lots of insulation, and durable renewable products, there may not be a lot of money left for flashy but less useful features (from a future cost savings point of view), like granite counter tops in the washrooms, $50 a square foot Italian tile, $1000 shower heads (yes they exist), $30K kitchen cabinets, and the list goes on.

I will go into some of the design decisions with a lot more detail in future posting, but wanted to give you a quick overview of the design to date and some of the outstanding decisions and design tasks.

Tasks still to complete:

• Floor Truss Design
• Roof Truss Design
• Final Thermal Resistance Layer thicknesses for walls and roof assemblies.
• Window quality and U Values
• PHPP model to predict heating needs (PassiveHaus)
• Engineering of suspended garage slab
• ‘Approval’ of enclosure assemblies by my contacts in the building envelope community
• Plumbing Plan
• Electrical Plan
• HVAC equipment sizing and design (including choosing heating method – Forced Air/Hydronic/Air Source Heat Pump)
• Home Automation and low voltage design
• Site Survey
• Final Cladding design
• Final ceiling height decisions
• Layout drawings
• Permit Document Package
• Variance Application (for floor ratio*)

* My neighbourhood has its own zoning bylaw which has a requirement that upper floors can only be up to 75% of the main floor size. I am unsure of the purpose for this requirement, but it is at odds with keeping a dwelling as compact as possible (most efficient shape is a perfect square), and also runs against the new seismic requirements.

I will be asking for a relaxation of this requirement. I have made the upper floor as small as possible, but still fit in the desired 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The main floor I have also made as small as practical/desired to fit the rooms and functionality desired. This amounted to a split between the floors that is closer to an 85% ratio. I am trusting that the Municipal building department will concede to this logic and agree that this is an archaic requirement unfitting for our goal of an increasingly energy efficient building stock.

Design and Floor Plan Illustrations

Figure 1 NE Elevation

• You will see that the north wall is almost featureless. I am fortunate to have the right sighting to make this work as I have an equally un-featured wall on the house about 15ft to the north of me. This will also support the plug and play wall ‘lab’ modules I hope to have sponsored by the building science community.
• You will also see that except for the cut-out around the garage, the dwelling is relatively square and uses roof lines to create interest instead of multiple wall jogs. This reduces the overall envelope volume which reduces cost and most importantly – heat loss. 
• There is a full basement but no windows and only one north side-yard door access. The basement is dedicated to utility as you will see in the floor plans below. A future owner can create light wells and convert to a living suite if desired. This was not our focus (I have dreamed of a wood shop for decades and this was the only way I was going to get it on this property, due to zoning requirement) and a suite in the dwelling would have prevented an owner-build (dwellings with suites must use licensed contractors in my region). 

Figure 2 SE Elevation

• Generous overhangs will protect the wall penetrations from wind driven rain and on the south side will also be designed to completely shade the windows during the summer’s mid-day heat to prevent interior solar gain.
• The foundations rise 6” above grade to allow the foundation to breath and protect the wall's wood structures from moisture related damage , but I wanted flush pedestrian access at all doors with no thresholds (to meet the SAFERhomes objectives), and so have dropped the first floor to hang off the side of the foundation on ledger boards.
• Notice the shallower foundation below the garage. The garage will have a suspended engineered slab to allow for useful space below, but I only needed a 8ft ceiling in this space (rest of basement will have 9ft ceiling to allow for tall projects in the wood shop).
• I still have decisions to make on the type of cladding. I am leaning to a natural stone feature wall at front and lightly stained tongue and grooved cedar cladding for the rest of the dwelling. These wood cladded areas may be broken up by cementitious panels to provide some architecture interest (say above and below windows). 

Figure 3 NW Elevation

• Now before you all yell at me for the notch out, it is for good reason and not just ‘designed’ this way. One of the considerations when designing this house was three 125+ ft high cedars (see figure 5) on site that constrict the location and shape of the house’s outline (they have been there a lot longer than I have and have more right to the land than I). This notch is to accommodate the one cedar at the back of the house. 
• The width of the house was further constrained by two more cedars to the south.
• I also wanted as shallow a house as possible to preserve as much of the backyard as possible.
• The two lookout windows on the north wall will let in some natural light and may also allow a view of the local mountains over the neighbour’s house and nearby trees. 
• The square indicates the approximate location for the proposed lab ‘test panels’. 

Figure 4 SW Elevation

• The low slope roofs work well with the neighbouring dwellings with the higher roof plane on the north to match that neighbours two storey home and the lower plane on the south the allow the neighbour on that side, living in a single storey dwelling (not likely to change in the decades to come), to still have some view of the mountains. 
• The higher ratio of window glazing on the south will make good use of the solar gains that can be expected in the fall through spring, and then will be blocked out by the overhangs during the summer when the sun is high in the sky (will provide shading photos in a future blog).
• There is a chance that the living room, kitchen, and master bedroom will overheat in the summer based on the west glazing present. We will design for the addition of movable exterior solar shading on the west wall in case of this eventuality (because interior shading is hardly ever effective – heat is already on the wrong side of the envelope).
• The ‘look-out’ windows on top of the roof will provide natural light year round into the north side of the upper floor and solar heat gain from fall through spring.
• Before someone yells at me for the unsafe condition shown in the above photo, I still have to design a deck that will hang off the side of the structure, and be accessed through that French door on the second floor. Fortunately, the District has already agreed that as long as this is not supported by the ground below on posts, that it will not count towards my floor space (they typically only exempt the deck area if the structure is cantilevered out from the building which of course represents huge thermal bridging). 

Figure 5 Satellite photo of lot with both neighbour's lots also shown.

• Top of photo is North.
• Two storey dwelling to north and single level dwelling to south.
• Yellow square indicates build lot and outline is rough location of planned build.
• White circles indicate location and approx. trunk size of nearby cedars. 
• Notice a lack of shading for most of the south exposure. I will also have all 3 cedars de-limbed up to 30 ft and spiral pruned (you should never top a tree unless you are purposely consigning it to death). This will protect the roof surfaces from wind tossed branches and will provide full southern exposure to the lower fall and winter sun, but still provide great shading to about 30% of the summer days sun (9 AM through to about 11:45AM). 

Figure 6 First Floor

Design Considerations:

• Place as much of the ‘living’ space on the south exposure as possible to capture day-time solar gain during fall to spring months. Also allows natural lighting to dominate most daytime lighting needs. On the flip side, keep as much of the utility on the north side as possible.
• Design room layouts to provide for the natural flow of people with as little ‘intersection’ conflicts as possible.
• Meet the needs of a home based business.
• Allow 12ft ceiling height in garage to accommodate a hoist.
• Open Floor Concept (makes smaller spaces look bigger and substantially reduces materials and build time). Ensure this 'open' feeling starts at the front door.
• Isolation of bathroom from ‘Great Room’.
• Hide stair from living area and make the most convenient for the family entrance (also ensure it took the least amount of space possible so no incorporated landings and changes in direction).
• Accommodate the family entrance off the garage as the ‘Main Entrance’ with the most closet storage.
• We even have some consideration to Feng Shui best practices as to best room layout, etc.
• Door, Hall, Stairs, and all squeeze point widths to meet SAFERhomes standard.
• Accommodate newly required seismic bands (both exterior and interior). Bands dictate location of windows and doors (interior and exterior) 

Figure 7 - Second Floor

Design Considerations:

• All bedrooms on this floor.
• Ensure the number of bedrooms and bathrooms were suitable for what market in area expects. This is more than needed by my wife and I, but makes the house marketable when we no longer want to be here and reduces the likelihood that it will be torn down or significantly renovated for decades to come.
• Ensure guest bedroom is as far away from master bedroom as possible. This also holds true for the ‘TV’ room. 
• Ensure sufficient closet space in all rooms (including bathrooms).
• Minimize extent of hall (another area grossly out of proportion in many 'modern' dwellings).
• Make bathrooms big enough without wasting space. 
• Meet personal desire for more luxurious master bedroom located at the SW corner of the floor. Placing master bedroom in this location will allow that room to most benefit from solar gain in the shoulder months.
• Ensure walls are available for required seismic bands to line up with bands below.
• Meet my wife’s one and only requirement of a walk in closet in the master bedroom (yes I have it easy). 

Fig 8 - Basement

Design Considerations:

• Contain all HVAC equipment.
• Provide Laundry facility where noise will not be disturbance to occupants. Also reduces flood hazard by not having it on upper floors (Holmes would be proud!).
• Provide space for home gym (first hurtle, actually using it is the hardest). 
• Fulfill life long dream of a full wood shop.
• Provide Waste Vegetable Oil fuel processing station (upcoming blog entry).
• Provide for computer LAN vault.
• Provide for ample storage.
• Accommodate a Sauna.

So there you go,  we have made great progress and may actually get this off to an on-time start.  I would welcome any feedback you may have (good or bad) and look forward to providing more information in the near future.

Open Floor Truss Supplier?

Looking for a good open floor truss manufacturer for a project in the Greater Vancouver area (British Columbia).  Any ideas?

Finally Re-Started

I can proudly say, as of yesterday, I have finally restarted the design process for the floor layout with an effort this time to maximize the sun’s exposure for living areas (align living areas along the south side and utilities along the north) and minimize the floor area in general in order to lower costs and also fit within the District of North Vancouver’s floor space ratios (even with my thicker walls).  In a jet-lag-induced-stupor, I broke out AutoCAD (which I use for prototyping), blew away all the walls on my previous designs and started the process over. I have done this probably a dozen times over the last 10 -12 years and it always surprises me that the ‘next’ design is often substantially different than the last design.  As my priorities and goals change, so does the layout of our home.

For instance, when I intended for this to be a retirement home, I did not worry about what would make the design ‘marketable’, but only on what we as a couple needed and wanted.  This resulted in a 2-bedroom house with lots of extras like a gym, second laundry, office & study, theatre room, etc.  Then about 5 years ago, I came to a realization (my wife also to a lesser extent) during an annual stay at a vacation rental house on Chesterman Beach in Tofino, that I really did not want to live in North Vancouver for the rest of my life.  When I moved here 13 years ago, it was a drastically different place, and I intended to ride out the remainder of my life here.  But, in my view, the North Shore has deteriorated substantially since then.  Traffic is my number one concern.  Because the Upper Levels Highway has reached capacity, a lot of traffic now spills onto Marine Drive and through residential areas.  In my neighbourhood (which has not seen ANY increase in the density of homes), the flow of traffic at a nearby intersection has gone from 2400 vehicles a day in 2008 to over 5000 vehicles a day last March (this increase is generally vehicles cutting through the neighbourhood between the Upper Levels Highway and Marine Drive).  Marine Drive has now become choked for a large portion of the day and it can often take 15+ minutes to get to a nearby mall during the day (10 blocks) when the same trip at night only takes three minutes.  And now the District is supporting heavily increased densities along Marine Drive without any meaningful plan to address the traffic.  Until and unless the North Shore Communities demand that the Province upgrades the highway and bridges, the problem will only get worse.

But I digress. That is a conversation for a totally different blog.  The point is, I do not see that this will be a pleasant place to live for decades (if ever), and so the emphasis of my design will now be marketability as opposed to personalization.  In this region that means bedrooms, the more bedrooms the better.  It does not really matter on what size the bedrooms are and many are filled up with a queen sized bed.  If I were truly building to market demands, I would also add more bathrooms.  Many homes in my neighbourhood have a bathroom attached to each bedroom.  But in my books, this is just nuts.  My generation and my parent’s generation managed just fine with only one bathroom in the house.  Yes that’s right one bathroom!  Can you imagine?

Although I will be building with marketability in mind, I still believe that builders should be providing a legacy in the structures that they provide and not a liability.  So I will be trying to provide the ‘features’ that the current buying public want, but not at the expense of the building envelope and compactness of the home.  I will talk about this and my design process more in future posts.

For now though, I would like to leave you with some thoughts I have as a resident of the North Shore on my return from a holiday to Chicago, Scotland, and London.  I feel I am further up the curve of what I consider a sustainable path through life, just by the programs in place where I live when viewed in contrast to these recently visited regions.

Let me start with Chicago.  This is a LARGE city by Canadian standards (approximately 4-5 times bigger than Greater Vancouver) and there was a lot of waste produced and a lot of traffic.  What was not visible were recycling efforts or car pool/transit lanes.  

When I talked with our drivers, they did not think anything of the traffic, and felt it was acceptable to commute through communities in order to miss the back-up on the highways.  Really???  The City is looking at adding ‘green-wash items’ like bike lanes in the core, but what about the gridlock?  Why not reward drivers who carpool and take transit by allowing those drivers/passengers an expedited path through the gridlock.  This will help solve many of your problems including road capacity (encourages denser passenger ratios), pollution (less stop and go traffic), and less cars means less damage to road structure.

As a resident of Greater Vancouver, I was also shocked at the lack of recycling generally available in the City.  For any city in any part of the world, recycling just makes common sense.  Yes there is an expense to do so, but let’s consider the savings.  The pickup costs are largely offset by the reduction in garbage pickup volume.  Reduced garbage volume means less pressure on the landfills.  Much of what is normally recycled are often items that do not readily break down in landfills and can often leach all kinds of nasties into the surrounding soil and groundwater.  By recycling them we can reclaim many of the materials in the products we throw out.  This reduces costs to remediate dumps, reduces manufacturing costs (recycled material is by its nature pre-processed and so often easier to incorporate into a manufacturing process than raw material and usually much cheaper to purchase as well), and of course recapturing raw materials puts a lot less strain on the diminishing natural resources on this planet and reduces our need for their exploitation.

Scotland also lacked any visible recycling program, and I felt horrible, throwing away plastic, paper, and glass while there.  With a total population of just over 5 million (less than Chicago) and a land mass of 30K square miles compared to Chicago’s 1487 square miles, their logistics challenges for collection is understandable.  But I am sure that the Country could come up with some innovative methods if they put their heads to it.  For me, it felt almost barbaric,  like living with an attitude that stated - Not a problem – we have LOTS of room to just dump it.

The other surprising point for me in Scotland was the food.  It was generally heavy (meat and potatoes or seafood and potatoes), and often lacked the addition of fresh vegetables.  Salads were never a standard part of the meal in most locations we visited.  One server just could not understand that we wanted vegetables with our dinner and not chips. Near the end of our trip, I remarked on this to a Chef at an Inn in Gairlock, and the son of one of our neighbour’s.  He advised that the growing season in Scotland just does not support the production of produce.  Indeed in my travels, I did not drive by even one farm, lots of fields of grazing sheep, but no crops of any nature.  He advised that the vast majority of the Countries’ food is imported from the nearby European neighbours.  They apparently do not even eat a lot of lamb and instead export that product because it is generally too expensive for the ‘locals’.  Fortunately, he followed up our conversation with a large salad course to our meal that was a welcomed addition. 

This, however, got me thinking about the sustainability of that type of culture, and the need for innovative solutions.  If we can grow tomatoes in a greenhouse in the Vancouver region, why can’t others?  It made me realize that a lot of the things I take for granted back home are really very innovative and environmentally responsible, compared to the practices in many other parts of the world:

• We generally have car pool and transit lanes on many arterial routes into and out of the cities (still LOTS of room for improvement).  We provide special parking for small cars, electric cars, and co-op cars.
• We recycle a lot of our trash (the percentage is growing all the time – the District of North Vancouver recently introduced a food waste recycling program) and if our Municipalities are unable to provide recycling pick up or drop off, there are companies like Pacific Mobile that provide drop-off service for many non-compostable products that we as a society would otherwise throw out. 
• We have available to us locally grown and raised produce.  I can even go to a major chain and buy vegetables and fruit grown locally in BC (far less often as we should be able to, but it is a start).  And if I am willing to split my shopping trip up, I can buy fresh and often organic meat and vegetables from smaller stores or directly from the producers.
• We in BC enjoy one of the cleanest electricity grids in North America if not the world. 
• We in BC have much better building standards for insulation, soon to be air tightness, and requirements to keep water out compared with much of the world.

I leave you with this thought:  

WIKI describes “produce” as a description that is often implying that the products are fresh and generally (being made available) in the same (region) where they were harvested.  

Think about this the next time you pick up a bag of grapes, melons, or even snap peas at the local supermarket.  Look at the labels for where the ‘produce’ was grown.  I think you will be shocked.   

Now, think of all the actions required to get the product from where it is grown to the shelf that is now in front of you.  Think of the fuel burned in trucks, boats and planes to move that product. Think of what chemicals and pollutants the ‘produce’ may have been exposed to back in the growing country.

Ask yourself. “Are these sustainable practices?”  I know my answer!

My Ingredients for an Owner Built Home

Sorry for the delay in this posting.  The truth is, it is time for a confession - I am stuck!  I am also sorry in advance - this is a long one!

I have been in a hole I do not seem to be able to dig myself out of for many months now – 300 days to be exact.  You see, this was the day that I found out that the Municipality I lived in (District of North Vancouver - DNV) was not as ‘green’ as I had anticipated/hoped, and I was going to have a FSR (floor space ratio) issue with my fatter-better-insulated-walls.

But more on that in next month’s posting, I want to talk now about the ingredients I think are needed for an owner built home – some of which may surprise you (they did me). The basic ingredient list for your owner-build recipe might be something like:

•           Money

•           Skills or willingness/ability to learn

•           Component knowledge or willingness/ability to research

•           Health

Money – Obviously you are going to need a sizable quantity of cash or credit.  In my region this can be anywhere from $75/ft² at the extreme low end, $130-$150 as an average value, and $200-$300/ft² and up for a highly custom home with high end finishings.  These are the costs to have the home built 100% by others, any sweat equity that you put into the process can allow you to lower your costs or increase the quality of your finishings.  It is important to define a budget right at the beginning, as this will allow you to make decisions throughout the process as to how to best meet the budget and goals of your build and see, quite clearly, where it makes sense to put the money. We have an initial budget of $300K-$350K.

Skills – Sure, you have built a greenhouse or garden shed – but do you really have the skills needed to build your own house, including installing/constructing each of the components that make up a finished dwelling?  It is important to realize your limitations early in the process so that you can focus on what you do well at, pay others for what you really are poor at, and practice on what you probably know how to do but are not great at.  This will also allow you to get some training and practice in those areas to hone and polish your skills in these areas before you get to the ‘big tent’.

Knowledge – Skills are great, but if you do not know what you need to do, it really does not matter that you have the ability to do it. Knowledge can be gained in many ways and often at very little to no cost.  There is a vast array of free knowledge on the internet.  Building forums, manufacturers websites, and consumer review sites are just some of the resources available to you, at no or very little cost, on the net. There is then the local technical school courses available on most of the systems and components found within a home. These are often just a few hundred dollars for 6 or 12 weeks of instruction. They will give you a fundamental in the system of interest and show quickly areas where your knowledge may be weak.  One of my favourite sources of knowledge is to attend industry sponsored seminars.  The BC Building Envelope Council, Thermal Environmental Comfort Association, Home Protection Office, and the Electrical Inspectors Association of BC are my personal four favourite seminar sources.  You hear directly from industry experts what are the current challenges and solutions available in the marketplace.

Knowledge and skills are probably interchangeable as to which is more important in this list.  You really need both to proceed.  I personally listed skills as more important for me as this is probably the area I am weaker on and is harder to improve. You can of course have natural skills, but most skills are learned by watching others.  You usually need to physically see someone else doing it right to understand the steps to doing it right yourself. This, of course, is the fundamental element of ALL apprentice, articling, or residency type programs out there.  You Learn by Watching and then Practicing and Applying.

Knowledge can be read or researched.  It can be studied and reviewed.  This is for me fundamentally easier and more available than honing my skills. You can research on the internet, read books, take courses and, go to seminars. All of these will help you gain knowledge, but how do you gain skills?

I have found a few ways to do so. Courses that include hands on components are an excellent start.  The BCIT Building Envelope Lab is a great example of this type of course and has been invaluable to me. In it we have been physically practising the application and detailing of rain barriers, air barriers, flashing, window detailing, etc. It has reinforced that having knowledge alone without skills is not good enough. I was horrified when the window I thought I had so carefully detailed --- leaked! Another way to practice your skill is to volunteer at an organization like Habitat for Humanity. You can work on an actual site and be guided by pros in the various construction fields. I have also found that helping with neighbourhood projects has been a great benefit. You can learn from others or if you are at the top of the knowledge pole, can practice doing it right before tacking something much larger or more expensive.

Health – Obviously you need to be able to physically do the work.  While this is taken for granted for many, the requirement has delayed our build for years now.  We have had plans to ‘start’ at least 4 times over the last 6 years. Two lengthy illnesses (thyroid and back), each a year or more in duration, each 100% debilitating to the point that all normal life activities stopped during both, managed to derail all previous attempts to start. The back issue in particular, I had two bulged and torn discs, can haunt a person.  Is it going to hold out? Or will it fail part way through? I do not know the answer and instead will take a leap of faith and do everything I can to protect it during the build and strengthen it prior to the build. I have discussed this with my wife, who has a lot less confidence than I, and said, “I need to try and do this, if it fails we will just have to hire someone to finish the build”. This for me is probably the biggest wild card in the plans, and we just have to make an assumption that I will remain healthy or this project dies before it ever begins.

The above four ingredients were the ones I was expecting going into this process.  The next items were ones I did not anticipate needing in such large quantities:

            •           Organization

            •           Optimism

            •           Support

            •           Resolve

Organization – this has turned into the most needed skill of all. As I do not normally work in the construction industry, I needed to find ways to catalogue the huge volume of information I am amassing because I would not otherwise retain the information.  Whether it was a tip I saw on a TV show, an article I read, a product I saw on the way home one day, or an insight I gained at a seminar or class, this all needed to be stored in a way that was easily retrievable and in a format that was flexible for the different types of information I needed to store. I have gone through at least 6 iterations of this ‘knowledge database’.  I started with an Excel spreadsheet but that soon became unwieldy. I then transitioned to a Word document, but it became too difficult to navigate and add information. I started to build an Access database and realized quickly that it would be too rigid.

I was then exploring a new laptop I bought for my wife one day and came across a program from Microsoft called OneNote. My search was finally over!  This was a program that acted like a database, was searchable, infinitely flexible, had tabs along the top that I could use for all my major components groups (like plumbing, electrical, exterior, interior, …) and then each tab had ‘pages’ and ‘sub-pages’ down the side that would let me break up each major component into as many sub groups as I wanted. So for instance, I could take Exterior and break it up into Cladding (and break that up into main and feature sub-pages), Windows and Doors, Roof, Flashing, Water Resistant Barrier, Sealants, etc… Each page then allowed you to store pretty much anything you wanted in any format.  There was no structure, I could just click on any part of the page and start typing. I could embed videos, pictures, sketches, and hyperlinks - and of course text as well. I have been using it for over 6 months now and have not found a shortcoming for the type of data storage I need on this project.

Optimism – When everyone around you is telling you that “you are nuts”, you need to have a healthy dose of optimism to proceed down this path.  Most people I know are interested in the process and some of my professional colleagues actually support me. But those who know me the best doubt my ability to build this by myself.  I do plan on getting some extra hands at key stages where one set of hands just will not be able to lift something or hold it in place and secure it at the same time.  But for the vast majority of the build, I plan on performing the labour myself.  I will fully admit, many have tried and failed, but many have also tried and succeeded. So I need a very healthy helping of optimism to take me through this.

Support – This comes in many flavours.  Emotional support is something I crave and probably have the least amount of (and probably will not be able to increase as I do not have any one around who has the same ‘dream’ as I). As I stated above, most people in my close circle just think I am nuts. Technical support is also very important and an ingredient I feel I am blessed with. I have developed some great technical support relationships in the construction field, and feel well covered in terms of building envelope, building code, electrical, HVAC, general design, roofing, tile and brick, and interior layout. Many of my technical support networks could also most likely lead me to trades people should I ever get stuck (this allows me to have optimism that I have a chance of doing it myself).

Resolve – The last ingredient is probably the most important, and one I have not totally mastered yet. Because I have never attempted anything like this before, I do not have a good blue-print on how to proceed.  What needs to be done? When does it need to be done? How does it need to be done? How does one item tie into another? This list is endless and unless I break it down into one small chunk at a time, it is all-consuming and totally overwhelming! I need to figure this all out as I go, but the problem is, I am not one to jump into the deep end. I like to know where I am going before I start. I am known for endlessly researching a topic. I am having the most difficulty with this ingredient, and am stalled on making decisions and moving forward. I am always wanting to research just a little more, or consider one more alternative. Some of this is healthy and even required, but I guess I am so scared of screwing up, I am unable to start.

So I blame various setbacks (like the meeting I had with the district back in Sept 2011) on the delays in the design and engineering. I make excuses that the delay is actually a good thing because the codes are changing and I would have had to re-design the plans if I was already done at this stage. 

However, I think the real reason I find myself deep in a hole right now is because I am just too chicken to stick my head out and get moving!