Lunacy of 'Green Building' Design

I just finished reading the humorous, direct, and in my opinion - very accurate assessment by Dr. Joseph Lstiburek of the dysfunctional separation of good building science and the current state of building design.

You can always count on Dr. Lstiburek to tell it the way it is and this article tells it straight.  Having recently completed both the BuildGreen and LEED AP training courses, I cannot agree more with Joe's points of view.  When things like 'day-lighting' are given more points and priority in a building design than ensuring a bullet proof and energy efficient building envelop, then the system has somehow been turned on its head and all the change is falling out of the pockets in terms of heat loss or gain through a poorly performing envelope.

Part of my journey through the 'sustainable neighbourhood' has been down flashy roads that promise all manner of wonderful things for me if I just use this particular flooring, or use ground up glass for my counter-tops.  Oh and how healthy I will be if I can just design a dwelling where I can see every leaf on every tree from every spot within that dwelling.

Now do not get me wrong, these are all important aspects of a good and sustainable building design.  But on scale of importance they are nearer the bottom.  If the basics like shedding water, keeping heat in or out, and ensuring the transfer of air is only through the holes YOU want, are not thought out and well executed, then what have you really achieved? You end up with a building that is much more expensive to build (putting in all the premium non-VOC finishing products, huge volumes of glazing, LED lighting, etc.) but will not pay you back with substantial and measurable energy savings.  And unless you are reducing your energy needs you are not fixing the planet no matter how many gallons of Volo paint you use on your project.

I have now realized that the roads I should travel on in the 'sustainable neighbourhood' are the narrow, darker lanes that talk about building science, continuous insulation, air barrier strategies, glazing ratios, building compactness, dew-point potentials, drying potentials, ...  While these roads are not as flashy as the others, they do provide the promise of a payback of my investment and the ability to make a real change to my impact on the planet.  The vendors along these roads all provide real-word methods for measuring their products performance and therefore payback.

I have come to see the beauty of these lanes.  They are narrow because that allows the most efficient use of land.  They are darker because they are conserving electricity and do not have flashy neon signs.  Just billboards providing defendable promises.  I recently had a discussion with a colleague over the aesthetics of a particular roof design on a high-rise we were driving past.  He has more of an artistic aptitude than I and was trying to get me to see the nice lines of the design and how it 'flowed' and was different than the traditional box look.  All I could see was that it had a butterfly design that would not adequately shed water and to me that was 'ugly'.

I believe this is the point that Dr. Lstiburek is is trying to make; until the design community, and population as a whole, start seeing bad building envelope design as ugly, we will all just be standing on our heads with the money pouring out of our pockets!

Time to Realize a Dream

So what started all of this?  What is our need?  Why do I need to change anything?

Well, our 1954 bungalow has been showing its age for as long as we have owned it.  My wife and I have struggled with the appropriate way to move forward for years.   Do we renovate the existing structure, add on, or start from scratch?

Yes, we could just renovate the existing structure to make it ‘pretty’ for us and generally satisfy our ‘needs’, but this would not address the fact that many of the systems within the home are reaching the end of their service life.  So the renovation would need to be much more extensive and would have to include new domestic water supply and waste drains, new windows, insulating all exterior walls and increasing the insulation in the attic, replacement of the hydronic radiant piping going to the wall registers (which means replacement of all of the flooring).  If this amount of work is being done, I would be foolish to not also re-wire while I had the chance.  This would most likely set us back somewhere around $100K in today’s construction costs with me providing most of the labour.

But then we would still be left with a 1500 ft² 2 bedroom dwelling that does not represent the ‘highest and best use’ of the generous 73’ x 146’ property in an urban area where most buyers are young families needing 3-5 bedrooms.  As a result, whatever we did to the existing dwelling would likely not save it from the wrecking ball if we sold it.  I have a problem with sinking a sizable pot of money and resources into something that would still be thrown away if we ever sold.  It does not, to me, feel like a wise use of limited resources (both ours and the planets).

Aside form the ability to sell the dwelling; I also feel it is inappropriate to create a house that would only be sized for two people.  I have reviewed some of the concepts of architect Frank Lloyd Wright who did encourage homes to be built “just big enough” for the current occupants and “expandable” for an increase in occupant load.  However, when you look at the details, this does not seem to be practical method in my view.  It is very difficult (close to impossible and very expensive) to build an ‘expandable’ home and still meet best practices when it comes to building a bullet proof building enclosure not to mention a properly laid out and sized space and domestic heating system.  Unless the house is enlarged at the same time periods the existing mechanicals were worn out, I would be removing components that had life left and wasting the embodied energy that went into making those products.  I feel instead that multi-family dwellings are much more appropriate to build for 1 or 2 occupants and will easily fill this need in our society.

It is more appropriate, in my view, to design a single family dwelling that looks to the future to predict possible uses and is then built with as much flexibility as possible to meet those needs for the next 50 to100 years.  If this kind of structure is then designed in a durable and highly energy efficient design, I believe you have now achieved the lowest overall carbon footprint for not only your use of that dwelling, but also that of its future occupants.  You would have designed and built a legacy instead of a liability.

So, I need to build a new or heavily modified dwelling.  Now what?  Well, if I am going to build a home, then why not built it to incorporate the best of all of the various ‘sustainable’ programs currently available. Build it with foresight; looking at the ‘operating costs’ when making build decisions and not the short term ‘build costs’.  What are the operating paybacks to putting in better windows or higher levels of insulation? It is all fine and dandy to say I want an energy-efficient, low-carbon footprint, durable and sustainable home, but if I cannot afford to build it, it is not going to happen. 

We have a limited budget for building, and my wife does not completely share my passion for all things ‘sustainable’.  So throughout this process, I will need to make hard decisions on where the biggest bang for our buck will occur.  I will focus on making the long term components (the foresight I was talking about) of the home the best they can be (structure & building envelope) and only install ‘affordable’ short term components (plumbing & electrical fixtures, appliances, and furnishings).  These are all items that are renewed several times throughout a dwelling’s life and so can be upgraded at a later date as desired and as affordable. For the mid term components like the heating systems, I will try to design as efficient a system as possible that can be modified in the future to be even more efficient (like including solar capturing or solid fuel burning systems).

So it appears an exiting new chapter in my life is starting to unfold.  A realization of a dream that started 40+ years ago.  As I start down this road, I have realized my need for learning will never be quenched and that unless I analyze and challenge the decisions I make on a day-to-day basis, I will not be able to ensure that I make the right ones.

I would like to charge you, readers of this blog, to provide words of encouragement, advice, and even critique.  And in the meantime, I hope that each of you enjoys taking this ride with me as I document my personal journey in the realization of this amazing dream.

Tell the Senate to stop silencing environmental groups.

Please sign this petition today.

If we have any chance of repairing our environment we need to take serious steps now to reduce our carbon output.  We need to make the smart and hard choices.  We cannot continue to always choose the economy over protecting our planet or we will find that we run out of time (if we have not already) to make a meaningful difference. 

The oil sands are not a resource that we should be developing.  It is not about the horrible destruction this development is doing to the Alberta habitat.  It is not about how inefficient the process is or how wasteful this industry is to a precious resource - water.  

It is about the fact that this planet cannot handle the carbon that would be released if the oil reserve in these sands is burned in combustion engines.  Just because it is there does not mean it is right that we harvest it. 

We instead need to switch over to renewable energy now on a grand scale.  We need to stop subsidizing the petroleum industry and instead focus this vast volume of funds to developing new technologies and implementing those technologies already available.

Unless we take these steps and take them now, we stand little chance of healing our environment.

A New Education

We are finally getting closer to finding out what it is that I am trying to achieve in my re-build and why.  As you have read, this has been a process that has been building since childhood (excuse the pun) for me and has taken many roads to get to where I am today.  But it has been during the last 4+ years, as a home inspector, that I have finally started to focus on sustainable and durable dwellings in a more serious fashion.  In my work, I am seeing first hand the results of buildings that are poor at shedding water or have high air leakage rates; I am seeing buildings with rot, mould, and high energy bills.

Unlike my attitude out of high school, where I felt all learning was behind me, I was now a sponge looking to expand my knowledge of all things related to making a durable and efficient building.  And the more I learned, the more I realize I do not know.  My training has become particularly focused on the building envelope (or building enclosure as it is properly known). 

As I started pouring over internet articles and various industry seminars, I was learning how this one component, the building enclosure, was so entirely responsible for how a dwelling will perform long term.  It dictates the size of the heating system, the life span of the structure, the indoor air quality, maintenance and utility costs, and the health and happiness of the occupants.

I became a member of the BC Building Envelope Council and started to regularly attend their monthly lunch-and-learn seminars. I also became a member of Thermal Energy Comfort Association and have been attending their monthly dinner seminars which has helped me tie in the design of a heating system back to the building enclosure.

I then made an excellent decision and leapfrogged my learning forward by enrolling in the BCIT Building Envelope Performance course taught by Graham Finch of RDH (whom I consider to be one of the best building envelope gurus out there).  Between Graham’s scientific brilliance and James Bourget’s (also of RDH and Graham’s assistant in class) ‘ya but, this is how we do it in the real world”, I was finally able to connect all the dots (OK, at least most of them) and make sense of the information I had been amassing for the last 25 years.

Make sure the envelope is right and the rest will take care of itself.

This course reinforced that it was the introduction and advancement of insulation and NOT too much air-tightness that has led to many of the problems plaguing our dwellings today.  In class we were reminded that because air leakage is still occurring at a high rate in most structures built even today, and because the sheathing in the wall (or roof) assembly is now so much colder than it was in yesteryear, due to the ever increasing levels of insulation, we have created the perfect storm.  We have built in large cold condensing plates within the wall assembly (the exterior wall sheathing) and regularly introduce warm moist interior air into these assemblies by means of air leakage. And we are surprised that the wall and roof assemblies fail? Have you ever taken an ice-cold can of Coke and put in on the table? What forms on the outside surface of the can? Is the can leaking? Of course not, the surface of the can is below the dew-point temperature of the air inside the room and so the moisture has now condensed into a liquid on the side of the can. 

And then to add insult to injury, we still have the fact that we ignore that it rains in the Lower Mainland and have done very little until recently to keep bulk water out of our wall assemblies.   

_{Soapbox On.}

To all the architects out there, DESIGN YOUR BUILDING WITH OVERHANGS!!!  To all the Municipalities out there, DON’T PENALIZE ARCHITECTS THAT DESIGN THEIR BUILDINGS WITH OVERHANGS!!!

_{Soapbox off.}

I also started attending the Home Protection Office seminars, prepared and presented by Murray Frank (a passionate and very knowledgeable builder and educator who is always entertaining – hint, turn off your cell phone in his seminar or you owe him a beer!).  Murray starting showing us a grand new way to build; a method that was energy-efficient, durable, and straightforward to build.  This new building method focused on increasing thermal resistance to heat loss while at the same time concentrating on reducing dew point potentials within the wall cavities.  This building method is, of course, exterior-insulated wall assemblies. 

By placing the insulation outboard of the structural sheathing (or at least the vast majority), you allow the inboard face of the sheathing to remain at a consistent temperature with the interior of the dwelling, which then reduces the condensation potential.  You are also then able to place it in a way that reduces thermal bridging because you do not have a stick-frame interrupting the insulation every 16”.  This type of wall construction is prevalent in commercial and some multi-family dwellings but has never quite caught on in single-family dwellings.  But as the code was now going to require even higher levels of insulation in our dwelling assemblies, we were reaching a critical mass where if we continued to build by stuffing an ever-widening stick frame with pink batts, we were going to make it almost impossible to build a wall assembly that would not suffer from moisture-related issues.

I then enrolled in the week-long Canadian Passive House course which was another excellent course and my first official introduction to ‘Green Building’.  Passive House, or more appropriately Passivhaus, is a building method that concentrates ALL of its efforts on the Building Enclosure.  No ‘Green Washing', just a bullet-proof and air-tight building envelope.  In order to be certified, the energy requirements must be lowered to a tenth of what is built in North America today.  How would you like heating and electrical bills that are 10% of what you pay today?  I know I would.  The program achieves this by building very thick wall, floor, and roof assemblies with a large volume of insulation installed to prevent thermal bridging (can you say continuous insulation), and then installing very highly performing windows of the proper size and placement based on the elevation of the dwelling, in order to welcome free heat from the sun when we want it and to block it when we don’t (lots of windows on the South, fewer on the East, even fewer on the West and very few on the North).  This strategy is then complemented by a well designed ventilation system to provide the required air exchange for the occupants.  These 3 steps form the majority of the program.

The program has met with much resistance and even at times ridicule in North America.  Everyone laughs at the statement that these homes can be heated with a candle.  But I do know first hand, that of all the programs I have studied (more on a later blog), this is the only program that puts the building envelope in the forefront of the program and achieves significant (90%) reductions in energy use and greenhouse gas production.

Does the program go too far?  Many people that I respect say it does, and part of this journey for me is to determine and decide for myself if it does, and to what extent I may achieve a middle ground.

Name our House

I could use your help.  I would like to name the house/property we hope to build on.  One reason is because it seems all projects that are in some way different from the norm are named in this day and age.  But the main reason is because the property I grew up on was named.  It was called Gananakwa, which at the time I was told meant "Singing Waters" in some form of Native Indian dialect.  Now upon resent research, I have determined that this was probably a made up name, but I would like to name our new project with a similar theme.

So let me tell you a few features of the  property that may help:

• There will most likely be running water features at the front and back of the dwelling.
• The property is surrounded by 8 120ft+ tall cedars (fortunately they are generally to the North West to block the evening summer sun that would otherwise overheat the house)
• The house will be built to a Passivhaus theme (ie. very well insulated and air tight with high performing windows)
• We will have a very low slop roof (almost flat)
• The theme of the design will be 'Modern West Coast' and will involve a lot of natural woods.
• We are located in North Vancouver near the Capilano River but do not have a view (except will have partial view of mountains - Grouse - once we have a second floor.
• The rear (west) and south side of the dwelling will be flower gardens, vegetable and fruit gardens, paths, arbours, waterfall, man made stream, pond, bridge, etc.  No lawns.
• The property is flat.

I would appreciate any suggestions that you may all have and will provide a $50 gift certificate to the person that comes up with a name that we choose. There is no guarantee that we will choose any but if a suggestion helps us choose a name, then I will also pay out.  If you would like more info on the project to help in your selection, please contact me.  The name does not have to be in English as long as it is reasonably pronounceable by someone not speaking the language of the name.

I reserve the name "Singing Waters" and would love to hear your take on this choice.

I look forward to your input.

It is time for a change!

Working at a desk was never what I dreamed of doing and after a lengthy medical leave in 2006 I decided life was too short to spend it doing something I was not passionate about.  After 17+ years in a rut I had decided enough is enough, I needed a change and was going to finally make it happen. 

 

Even though I had been in an office environment for all of my adult life, I still dreamed of building a house one day and regularly dabbled in various construction-related projects I came across.  During my high school years, I had worked as a helper in my neighbour’s brick and stone laying business. In the early 1990’s I had renovated my Condo (full bare stud gut) in the City of Vancouver. Since moving to North Van in 1998, I have been a part of many of the neighbourhood construction projects on the block.   

I felt comfortable working in most of the trades (not some – who really likes drywall filling and sanding anyway?) but knew that I did not want to do any of the trades on a full time basis.  I knew I wanted to work for myself (Corporate Life had reinforced this characteristic first developed in high school) and I knew I liked working directly with the end client.

Being a Property Appraiser, my neighbour one day mentioned an interaction with a home inspector and the light simultaneously went on for both of us.  That was the perfect outlet for my interests and skills.  The next month, I was enrolled in the 5 course program at BCIT (local technical college) and went to my first inspection association meeting not that many weeks later.

By spring of 2007 I had completed the required schooling for my new inspection career.  That summer, I convinced my employer to let me quit and provide overflow services under contract for the next 12 months, but this time with me working from home.  This perfect arrangement provided flexible work schedule, regular income, and provided the time I needed to set up a new home inspection business. By March of 2008, I had also completed my required field training and finally set out my shingle and have never looked back since.

So, I had done it!  I was no longer chained to a desk and was finally working in an industry that complimented my personal interests.  An industry I had passion for.  I had expanded my knowledge of buildings and was now able to help my clients make informed purchasing decisions and then provide ongoing guidance on making their homes more durable, comfortable and in the end – economic!

Insulation R Value compared with IQ

I was reviewing my notes from BC Building Envelope Council's last AGM meeting on September 21, 2011 and wanted to share this quote from John Straube of Building Science Corporation.

While speaking to insulation values in current construction he stated: "R values are like IQ, if speaking in single digits, you are an idiot!"

I am reminded of this quote every time I look at the towers in the downtown core of Vancouver, which collectively represents a thermal resistance of R2 with all the glazing present.  If this represents modern architecture, it might be time to have somebody, other than the architects, start making the important design decisions we need if we are going to start building in a sustainable fashion.