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Have you been present when an energy audit is being conducted on a home?

Even if you have a pretty good idea of where air leaks are occurring, there can be surprises and some simple cost-effective solutions.

While you hear messages to unplug the chargers responsible for ‘phantom loads’, it is even wiser to consider that there might be literally gaping holes in your home from which hard-earned money could be escaping!

I recently had our home inspected for an energy audit and discovered the air is changing nearly 4 times in an hour (air leakage at 50 Pa). That almost feels like someone is leaving a door open in the winter! The horror subsided when the inspector gave me some practical inexpensive solutions, as well as a range of mid and high priced remedies.

I called several local independent contractors and selected Green_Tech_Services

I was looking for a company with an auditor that would use a thermal imaging camera, since I wanted to “see” the air leaks! (That"s my interior design training!)

Thermal imaging is a visual display of the amount of heat radiated, reflected or transmitted from a surface or an object.  The camera allowed me to ‘see’ the temperature on a surface by converting the infrared spectrum to the visible spectrum.

Are electricity costs going through the roof? (David_Laing) wondered, so he analyzed 5 years of his home utility invoices.

If your electricity bill is anything like ours you’ll understand why this was a non-trivial task. Multiple lines of confusing and inconsistent charges make it difficult to compare and imply there might be something hidden or manipulated.

David said, "I duly entered each line item into an Excel spreadsheet, comparing the annualized numbers ending in September 2011 to the same period ending September 2006". Pleasant surprise – our average monthly bill actually dropped 26% from $152 in 2006 to $112 in 2011! Was this due to lower prices or reduced consumption? 

In an earlier article, Big_Impact_Energy_Decision Dayle described how the replacement of our aging chest freezer with a newer, smaller one plus a second fridge was projected to save us over $200/year. In addition, 4 years ago, we upgraded to a high efficiency furnace with a direct drive fan, and 2 years ago, we installed Energy Star efficient appliances when we remodelled the kitchen. Of course there was also the systematic replacement of incandescent light bulbs with LEDs and compact fluorescents. What was the impact of these changes to our electricity consumption?

I am David Laing. My friends call me DonX, short for Don Quixote. That’s because they say I exhibit characteristics similar to this mythical figure.

Like Don Quixote I am tall, relatively slim, no longer young and have spent much time recently reading information that has disturbed me. As a result I believe that humanity is facing its greatest challenge and I feel it is my duty, nay it is my privilege to fight what some believe to be the unbeatable foe. 

Distinctive from the real Don Quixote, rather than tilting at windmills, I instead tilt in support of them, as well as any other activities and programs that will help move our society towards living sustainably!  The unbeatable foe I have chosen to take on and thump is Climate Change. Yet I take on this challenge willingly, enthusiastically and with the help of many others!

I have chosen this path because, for 35 years I worked in the corporate world, rising to Senior Vice President, eventually becoming a Management Consultant. Much of my career was spent helping organizations become more efficient and effective. I became pretty experienced at designing and implementing change management programs that dramatically affected the daily working lives of employees and altered the organizations’ relationships with their customers and suppliers. 

Through this experience

Christine Heyman, Benjamin Moore & Dayle Laing at CaGBC SymposiumAs a LEED Accredited Professional, I am often asked the trends in beautiful sustainable interior design. I recently attended the Canada Green Building Council Symposium in Toronto to find out the latest, and discovered that old is new!

At the CaGBC conference last year in Vancouver (see links at bottom of this article to previous posts), I was once again struck by the genuine positive “can do” attitude that prevailed at this symposium. The professionals attending were all helpful, cooperative and the mood was uplifting.

The trend for reusing existing materials is one that would have gladdened the hearts of people like my father, who lived through the great depression of the early 20th century. He believed “you never know when you might need something”. We have attained a level of sophistication where valuable resources are preserved, bought, and sold, or donated. They are not stored to gather dust in the basement.

Mark Gorgolowski, Ryerson University professor presented some inspiring examples of “resource salvation”. For example, Mountain Equipment Coop tore down an old building in Ottawa, catalogued the materials, and then incorporated the components into the new design. He noted that the “Building reuse” credit is one that has not been well used in LEED certification, and added we need to overcome the perceived risk that “used is 2nd best”. Older components may be in fact of superior quality! Design fees may be higher and contractors may take extra time to become familiar with the materials, but materials are typically less expensive or may be free if already on site.

Congratulations, you’ve just purchased a new phone, flat screen TV or computer that replaces one that is ailing, slow or lacks the latest features. What happens now with the old equipment? Unfortunately, all too often it ends up in the local landfill instead of contributing to sustainable design.

I’m David Laing, LEED AP, the Environmental Consultant partner of Dayle Laing. Each year an estimated 50 million tons of e-waste (computers, TVs, cell phones and other discarded electronic items) are produced. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, over 80% of that material ends up in municipal garbage dumps. It is a huge problem because computers and monitors contain some very nasty substances including: lead, cadmium, beryllium, mercury, and brominated flame retardants. Up to 60 elements can be found in complex electronics, and it has been estimated that 70% of the heavy metals in US landfills comes from discarded electronics. Surely there must be a more economically and environmentally friendly solution for disposing of e-waste; and there is. All we need do is take advantage of it.

Recently, Dayle and I had the privilege of participating in a tour of 2 electronic recycling plants in Brampton & Mississauga, Ontario organized by Brad Zarnett of the Toronto Sustainability Speakers Series. The plants, operated by SIMS Recycling Solutions cover 85,000 and 290,000 square feet respectively and currently process 30 million pounds of electronic waste annually. SIMS Metal Management, the parent company is the largest electronics recycler in the world and these two local facilities handle recycling from Canada and the Northeast US. Half the recycled material comes from commercial equipment while the other half comes from consumer products.

I worked in the computer industry for many years and have had the opportunity to tour computer manufacturing plants. I have been impressed by the high technology automation, ingenuity and complexity that is employed to manufacture computer components. I can tell you from visiting the SIMS plant that it also takes a lot of high technology to pull those components apart; along with a bit of finesse and a fair amount of brute force.

The SIMS plants use a combination of

How would you feel if ¼ of your household electricity consumption walked out the door in the form of one appliance?

Hooray! That’s what I felt. Men from the “Great Refrigerator Roundup” program in my municipality picked up my old still-operating chest freezer and took it away for recycling.

It is time for us to identify the major energy culprits. A colleague of mine takes issue with our focus on tiny culprits like cell phone charger phantom loads, while we ignore the big energy-draw items!

I bake my own bread and purchase organic flour in bulk, which I stored in this 30 year old freezer. Lately, I noticed that the freezer compressor was running all the time!

One flush - 3 litres - waste gone! There is scepticism about how such a low volume toilet can possibly work with one flush. Personal experience shows it does work! When I realized that the flapper in my 5 year old constantly leaking toilet was disintegrating at the edges, likely from municipally chlorinated water, I knew I needed to make a change. I needed a toilet without a flapper and I remembered that I wrote an article mentioning the Proficiency toilet last year.

Proficiency toilets were installed in the Chapelview LEED Platinum affordable housing project in Brampton, Canada. At the Construct Canada trade show, I met Tom Lazarou of Water_Matrix distributor for Canadian designed Hennessy & Hinchcliffe’s Proficiency.

When does green building and designing stop being about merely saving energy, reducing our carbon footprint and start being about how comfortable we are and how few colds we catch?

The keynote speaker at the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) annual conference in Vancouver addressed these issues in her presentation, “Green Design for a Sustainable & Shared Quality of Life”. Vivian Loftness, FAIA, LEED AP, USGBC Board of Directors, Carnegie Mellon University Center for Building Performance & Diagnostics, is an internationally renowned researcher, author and educator with over 30 years experience in environmental design and sustainability.

As a LEED AP and member of the CaGBC, I had the pleasure of hearing Vivian speak about her research and have prepared this, my 4th article on the 2010 Vancouver conference. (If you missed the earlier articles, all are posted on my blog.) I found her research most valuable as I prepare and deliver interior design sustainability seminars.

We are not using energy for its highest and best purpose,

How to build or renovate homes to be green, save energy and money and reduce our carbon footprint. This is my 3rd article on information presented at the annual conference of the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) in Vancouver, in June, 2010.

(Check this blog, if you missed the 1st two articles and want to catch up.)

Derek Hikson from Minto_Homes and Allan Dobie from Canada Mortgage and Housing, presented “Incorporating LEED for Homes in Sustainable Communities”.  CMHC is currently assisting 13 housing projects across Canada with their EQuilbrium™ Housing Initiative, which “offers builders and developers across the country a unique opportunity to stand out as market leaders by building healthier homes and sustainable communities”.

Derek said that Minto believes it has a corporate responsibility, that there is a market for green building and that they can make a profit. They offer homes at different levels of certification with different price points. Most interesting is their calculation that shows mortgage + utility costs per month with expected pay back time for each option. (This is one area consumers and designers often overlook, in my opinion: the total lifecycle operating cost for a purchase decision.)

In the Minto projects, they claim the largest effect is achieved with a tight building envelope. They are orienting the homes and using overhanging roofs for solar gain, constructing double-studded walls with cellulose blown insulation totaling R-60, and using triple paned windows with low-E and argon fill. They focus on

Several people have asked what I learned about LEED for Homes at the annual conference of the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) in Vancouver, in June, 2010. What are the latest green building standards in residential housing?

There were several excellent presentations made on this program that has just celebrated its first anniversary in Canada and boasts of more than 500 homes registered. Commercial projects have had a head-start in building green. Since homes use relatively less power, we might conclude that our little efforts do not matter much. According to Stats Canada, we have a population of 34 million, so the volume of homes is significant, as it is in every developed country in the world. As the cost of fossil fuels mount in the future, those positioned with these new home building technologies will be the ones smiling.

In Canada, there have been several green building programs available over the last 20 years: EnerGuide, Energy Star, R2000, Built Green, and LEED® for Homes.

 

Have you ever wondered what you would have to give up to live off the grid?

Are you willing to live without some of your daily pleasures? Does this have to be ‘all’ or ‘nothing’, and can technology solve it all, so we don’t have to choose?

Freshly returned from my 7th annual sea kayaking adventure with my two sisters, I am pondering our experience of staying at an off-grid lodge on Read Island near the coast of British Columbia.

Nestled at the top of Evans Bay, surrounded by rugged coastline and rich sea life, and located several kilometers from the nearest post office at Surge Narrows, Coast_Mountain_Expeditions consists of a main lodge, several guest cabins and a family home. We were hosted graciously by Ralph and Lannie Keller and their grown son Albert, celebrating 24 years of sharing their wilderness adventure lifestyle.

Albert and Ralph provided expert guiding and instruction for our daily kayak trips. Emphasizing safety skills, they refined our techniques to make the paddling experience more efficient and enjoyable. We were blessed with perfect weather (nearby Campbell River on Vancouver Island logs almost 5 feet of precipitation per year). Ralph commented “you don’t appreciate sunshine until you’ve gone camping in the rain”.

Almost immediately, the wildlife sightings began.

What is the latest in green buildings for the future?

What was the focus of the presentations made at the annual conference of the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) in Vancouver, June 2010?

I had the pleasure of attending the 2010 National Conference as a member of CaGBC and as a LEED AP (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design Applied Professional). From my 30 pages of notes taken over 2½ days, here is a summary of the most interesting points made about the future for building green.

It was impressive to be in the company of 1300 motivated, passionate delegates. These people are not moaning that the sky is falling; they are making it their business to do something about it and make a difference with their actions. They are generously sharing what they have learned, making it easier for the next interior designer, architect, engineer, developer and contractor. There is a spirit of cooperation and mentorship that is gratifying and encourages me that each of us can make an important contribution as the momentum for green building and design increases.

To kick off the theme, Performance Matters: the next generation of buildings and communities, the Mayor of Vancouver, Gregor Robertson, said that by 2020, 176 municipal BC governments will participate in the ‘Climate Action Charter’ resulting in new buildings being carbon neutral. 20% of all existing buildings will be retrofitted to be green. All rezoning must be done to LEED® certification standards. There will be 20,000 new green jobs created in Vancouver. The 2010 Winter Olympics showcased green building in the city, including the new LEED Platinum conference centre, which has a living roof the size of 15 hockey rinks. He cited the New York example where all buildings greater than 50,000 square feet must not only be renovated green but also show a payback within 5 years (including the LEED Platinum Bank of America building). The city of Vancouver

"Using something warm to keep cool -- isn’t this mutually exclusive?" 

Since windows are frequently cited as the weakest links in the home building envelope, focusing on strategies to minimize/maximize seasonal heat loss/gain make sense for thermal comfort and energy savings. As energy costs mount, this will be even more critical. Some government programs have recognized the importance of improving energy use by providing grants for window replacement.

Dayle applied her LEED AP when she prepared and delivered a Window seminar to design professional guests of Londén Inc. She shared scientific knowlege to help designers use conduction, convection and radiation window physics for wise selection of windows and decorative window products, such as Londén’s Warmer Window insulated shading material.

Dayle explained the benefits of well-fitted and caulked operable casement windows with fibreglass or wood frames, double glazing with low-e coating, or triple glazing, and argon gas fill to make the most of our windows. She discussed enhancing daylighting by choosing the appropriate sized window openings to minimize use of electricity for lighting and maximize enjoyment of green views. Decorating with window treatments was presented as both a creative and highly functional option for improving window performance.

She spent hours compiling this alphabetical listing of sustainable window definitions which contains important terms for a good resource library.  One can look up the major certifications and logos found on window products to find out if they are independently third party certified, and what the ratings signify. This pdf download is available in the resources section of this website:

http://www.daylelaing.com/environmental-green-resources.html 

Dayle, thank you for an enjoyable, informative seminar.  You are extremely knowledgeable and a forerunner in the “Sustainable Living” movement.”

Mary Stanton, Toronto, ON

Other seminar participants made the following comments:

You might wonder what is the ‘Coolest Shade of Green’ for toilets going into a LEED Platinum certified building.

Maybe you have had an experience similar to mine, when I was designing a bathroom for a client a decade ago, who proclaimed loudly that he must have a “big flush” toilet. He claimed the newer lower-flush toilets just didn’t perform well and he was not impressed with having to flush twice. We have come a long way in toilet-technology in the last 10 years and even more since Thomas Crapper applied for patents to improve water closets in mid 19th century Britain.

Recently, I attended a seminar about the certification of Chapelview in Brampton, Canada. Martinway Contracting Ltd. is attempting 54 points, slating this to likely become the first LEED Platinum certified affordable housing project in the world. Green toilets are one of the products they considered to achieve this remarkable goal.

Are these familiar words to you?

Do you know how to apply them to your interiors to save money and make a meaningful contribution to lower the environmental footprint?

“Reduce Reuse Recycle” was a popular refrain begun the 1970’s (which coincidently is the decorating style of the currently revived decade too). It is no accident that this mantra is commonly expressed in the circular form of the Mobius loop, consistent with the circular nature of ecology. 

At the November 1969 Stanford University “Conference on Man and His Environment: a View Toward Survival”, Barry Commoner said, “Because they are fundamentally circular processes and subject to numerous feedback effects, ecosystems exhibit nonlinear responses to changes in the intensity of any single factor.” [1] What simpler way is there than to choose basics that avoid complicated consequences?

While studying for my LEED AP exam, ...

Lighting is one of the most challenging and important areas in the field of green interior design. Without good lighting, one cannot see a great design! One has only to stroll through the hardware store to see a confusing array of lighting products claiming different standards and ratings that are difficult to compare.

So what is the latest news in ‘green’ residential lighting? In the commercial field, contract lighting has been far ahead with a series of progressively higher standards for lowering energy consumption for buildings due to stringent building codes that are governed by IESNA standards (Illuminating Engineering Society of North America). LEED® (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) also awards credits for lowering energy consumption in all areas of the building, including lighting. Residential lighting has lagged behind due to the relatively low cost of energy that has kept the demand for ‘green’ low, due to more variability in home lighting requirements, and due to lack of suitable, affordable quality products on the market. Unsuccessful forays with compact fluorescents have further jaded the public about the value of ‘green’ lighting in general. Early LED products had low wattage but delivered very little light (lumens) and only a cool-white colour temperature.

This is now an impressive time for developments in ‘green’ lighting. The technology has been progressing rapidly and the cost is coming down. I wrote an article last year about my new kitchen countertop http://www.daylelaing.com/news/green-kitchen-countertop.html  and received several questions about the ‘green’ lighting I specified in the design.

Let’s take a look at some of the options I selected and why.

Just when we think our individual actions may not really matter,

that no one notices or even cares what we think or do, much less listens to us, something happens that reaffirms our faith. I am talking about the environment and what we can do.

In recent weeks we’ve seen both the US and Canadian bills on climate change stalled in their respective political systems, we’ve seen our parliamentarians waffling about our environmental commitments, we’ve seen Canada’s international reputation tarnished, and we’ve read about the so-called ‘Climategate’ scandal where the credibility of research data on global warming trends was seriously undermined. We wonder whether all the conflicting stories and political rhetoric we hear are even worth bothering about since the experts may not be sure.

Yet I feel very heartened...

What is LEED and how could it benefit me? LEED is a comprehensive standard for certifying and constructing green buildings.

Points are assigned for all different aspects of the building interior, exterior, and even landscaping.

Whether you are designing, building, or purchasing, these criteria benefit us all by raising the bar so that all construction standards will go up over time. LEED is meant to be a standard that rewards excellent performance and continues to evolve. When that excellent performance becomes the norm, LEED will raise its standard to be that much higher again. The program started with mainly commercial buildings and has expanded to certify homes and existing buildings. Run by the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) in my area, the program is adapted for different climates in 16 countries around the world, including the United States (which began the program with the UsGBC), Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

The results are...

On November 11th it is Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans Day in the US,

a time when we contemplate the many blessings we have. While researching a trade seminar I presented recently, I had the privilege of interviewing several local furniture manufacturers, who reminded me about the innovative people who live and work nearby.

What a fabulous story they told of successfully surviving our economic climate by manufacturing top quality products that are in demand throughout North America.  They have made their operations more efficient by reducing waste, lowering the amount of raw materials, energy and water consumed, cutting excess packaging and streamlining administration. This is not only great for business, but great for the environment as well. We all benefit from having wonderful and locally produced furniture and accessories.

For example, many of our furniture and flooring manufacturers ensure the hardwood they use comes from managed forests. Some use wood that is FSC certified. The Forestry Stewardship Council is an international certification program which tracks the tree from forest right to the consumer. Other manufacturers have programs to plant two trees for every one cut, or plant a tree for every piece of furniture purchased. These responsible activities help make our North American forests the continued envy of the world and an important part of the global ecosystem.

So, ask questions of your manufacturers and suppliers to determine how ‘green’ their products are. By purchasing from local industries when it works within the context of your design, you are subscribing to one of the key areas of sustainable design initiatives -- buying locally saves transportation energy!

I shot these photographs at...

Dayle Laing regaled a professional design audience of over 100 with her “De-Greying the Green” seminar on October 8, 2009 at SOFA, Source of Furniture + Accessories, in Mississauga, Canada. 

She explained the value of independent certification to assess the merits of green products, and used examples from over 30 of the SOFA showrooms and suppliers to illustrate her 7 green criteria for sustainability.

One of these criteron is 'Source Locally' which made so much sense, given excellent furniture manufacturing located regionally "in the backyard" of this group of showrooms.

Dayle really takes some dry facts and makes them interesting. I now have some openings for client and supplier conversations. She is upbeat and very easy to listen to. She is a leader in this field.”

 Joanne Watson, Oakville, ON

  Other attendees expressed their comments: