Waste reduction – Hammond Forever House

UBC, BCIT, Light House and Us

[UPDATE MARCH 2016: since this post was written, Leanne and I have entered into a contract dispute with Ridgewater Homes. For more details, click here.]

We can’t do this alone.

There has to be people who know how to take an existing home and make it energy efficient without tearing it down and wasting all that energy and resources. It’s not rocket science.

With the climate changing and everyone aware of why and even what we have to do about it, why do most contractors still stare at you blankly when you say you want to insulate beyond what is required by the building code?

These are questions I asked myself when we started to plan the renovation and retrofit of our house.

I took this quote from DesmogCanada:

“Frankly, we need an army of carpenters, electricians and contractors going out to plug leaky buildings,” federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May said during the August 6 leaders debate. “Thirty per cent of carbon pollution comes from the energy we waste and the money we waste heating the outdoors in the winter and cooling it in the summer.”

and she is 100% right except that we needed it 30 years ago.

However, if you take a few years to work up to your renovation and you connect with people like Lorraine Gauthier of the Now House Project and Monte Paulsen of City Green Energy Solutions, you start to not only meet people who know how to do this, but a few who are willing to help you do it.

I told you about our relationship with the BCIT Building Sciences Centre of Excellence who put sensors in the house for a year to analyze the indoor air quality. One student wrote a report using three months of the data which you can read in a series of Hammond Forever House posts here.

I also told you about the design charrette we held in Maple Ridge to hash out a plan for a community home energy retrofit project (hey, if our government won’t do it, I guess we have to). With insufficient support, the project has been shelved pending the completion of our own retrofit which I hope will set an example.

One of the participants at the charrette, Light House Sustainable Building Centre, has made it possible for more students to get involved in our humble little Forever House. These ones are 4th-year Environmental Science Students at the University of British Columbia who will put what they have been studying to practical use.

With UBC involved, BCIT has agreed to help with the post-retrofit air quality analysis so that students will be able to study the practical effect of the water and energy saving measures we are able to implement. I love this idea because, although the techniques are not new, we need more people out there who know them and we need to get the word out about what is possible for ordinary homes.

Here is the synopsis that Light House put together. They are taking the lead.

Hammond Forever House: Carbon Neutral Retrofit
UBC Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences
ENVR 400 2015/2016 Community Partner Project
Date: July 27, 2015

PROJECT SCOPE OUTLINE

Project Concept:
Retrofit a 1923 Part 9 residential building, Hammond Forever House, with heritage designation in Maple Ridge, BC to near net zero or carbon neutral. Conduct pre and post-retrofit analysis, which will include on-site testing & insulation installation:
• Energy consumption
• Water consumption
• Airtightness
• Temperature
• Humidity
• CO2 concentrations

Compile a case study describing Hammond Forever House’s pre and post-retrofit conditions, regulatory, financial and logistical barriers to carbon neutral retrofits, successful project outcomes and resources for other homeowners wishing to retrofit their homes. Case study appendices should include construction photographs and copies of all reports and associated analysis. The final case study will be provided to the homeowner, published on the Light House website and distributed via a webinar and at conferences, as opportunities arise.

Project Background:
In BC, residential buildings represent 40% of total greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs); in Vancouver, the figure is 55%1. In response to climate impacts, federal and provincial governments have identified GHG emission reduction targets for BC building stock, including the following:
• Energy Efficiency Act: 17% reduction in GHGs below 2005 levels by 2020.
• BC Climate Action Plan: 33% GHG reduction below 2007 levels by 202 and 80% by 2050.
• BC Energy Efficient Building Strategy: Average 20% energy demand reduction per home by 2020.
• BC Climate Action Charter: Carbon neutral corporate operations by 2012.

In August 2015 Light House released the results of a multi-year, multi-stakeholder engagement process with industry, government and utilities titled: Towards Carbon Neutral & Near Net Zero Energy Residential Buildings, a Roadmap for British Columbia. Our Roadmap identifies major actions which can move existing residential buildings towards retrofits which result in carbon neutrality. We recognize the significant impact of carbon neutral pilot projects across a wide range of home sizes, ages and regions, and are therefore pleased to partner with this homeowner to deliver a carbon neutral pilot project in Maple Ridge, BC.

One of the key things that interests me is the inclusion of “regulatory, financial and logistical barriers to carbon neutral retrofits” in the study. This speaks to the fact that we have the technology and expertise necessary to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of our existing buildings, we just have to work together and do it. It was Now House who helped me understand that it is not a technical problem, it is a social engineering problem. [For more details on their involvement in Maple Ridge, check out the news page on the Now House website.]

It is my hope that by telling our story, warts and all, we can be part of the shift of our economy from doomed to renewable by getting the word out.

And that’s why I’m very happy with the snazzy new sign outside celebrating our key partners.

It turns out that our contractor, Ridgewater Homes, is very talented at making signs. As part of our heritage agreement, we are required to post a sign explaining that this is a Heritage Site and the fine for any vandalism, etc. Ridgewater was able to add the logos of some of our supporters and even leave room for a few more, if any suppliers would like to sponsor the project and attach their name to it.

The portable toilet is not designated heritage.

The Jolly Jumper

[UPDATE MARCH 2016: since this post was written, Leanne and I have entered into a contract dispute with Ridgewater Homes. For more details, click here.]

“What Nickel Brothers wants, Nickel Brothers gets.” That’s how Chuck, our Construction Manager from Ridgewater Homes explained it to one of his crew the other day.

Nickel Brothers are in charge of lifting our house, keeping it in the air for the thirty days or so it will take us to pour a new foundation and let it dry, and then putting it back down.

They asked for six holes, six feet by six feet, to be dug in the basement where their cribbing, the blocks which will take the weight of the house, will go. That means breaking the concrete floor and digging.

While we were discussing this with Adam from Nickel Bros. Chuck looked over at me and asked if the digging was something I would like to do, or should Ridgewater provide a crew to do it. Chuck knows that we are trying to do as much of the work ourselves to save money.

I looked at Dave, my father-in-law who has a wealth of experience, and asked, “ever used a jack hammer before?” He laughed and said, “let them do it”.

Chuck said, “Okay, I’ll find someone to get on the jolly jumper.”

Here is what that looked like:

If you’re wondering why we broke up the basement stairs, it was purely to make it possible to get a wheel-barrow loaded with broken concrete out of the basement. The stairs will be gone soon, anyway.

A word to the wise about disposing of concrete. When you contract with a disposal company such as Disposal King who Chuck called in, you are asking them to drop off a rock bin, take it away when it is full, and dispose of it at a licensed disposal facility.

This means you pay a tipping fee of $250 for 4 yards (whatever a yard is).

The system and the tipping fee is no problem unless you wanted to save money by giving the load to a friend or neighour. Disposal does not mean hauling. Once the bin is full, you have no choice but to pay for the company to dispose of it.

I’m going to find out if we can hire a hauling company for the rest of the basement concrete. There is going to be a lot. I don’t know if I can find anyone who wants that much concrete fill, but if I can make it work, we’ll save a tonne–literally!

Returning to the Jolly Jumper. Ridgewater rented the jack hammer by the day and obviously they wanted to make good use of it. The last hole to be dug will be the one right by the basement door. That is going to mean the wall between the hallway and the old pump room would have to go.

Mark, who was head of the crew, said afterwards the concrete in that wall was as tough as he has ever encountered. They worked on it for an hour or two.

Poor guys. There but for the grace of Dave, go I.

The Basement BEFORE

When your contractor shows up at your house with an excavator and starts digging holes and then suggests we clean out the basement ASAP, you know he means it.

James,

To do list: Clean out the basement. I’ll bring over nickel bros, we will figure out where the cribbing needs to go and mark the floor. So when we are ready to go all the prep work is done.

Apparently Nickel Bros., the house lifters everyone agrees are the best (and when you’re lifting you house, you want the best, don’t you?) tend to get busy, so we want to book them early. To do that, Daryl and Chuck from Ridgewater need to meet them in our basement and decide how the lifting is going to be done. They’ll mark out where the supports will go and stuff.

They can’t do that with all our crap in there.

I’m sure many of you will say you have a lot of crap in your house, too. Well here’s what we started with. I took this 1 minute video on July 10th, 2014.

Everything has to go–including the oil furnace and oil tank and ducting. (Interested?)

Chuck said he hopes to meet with Nickel Bros. around April 22 or 23.

That’s next week YIKES!

Student Assignment

As I mentioned, one of my reasons for cleaning out the office was that two classes of landed immigrant ESL students were coming for a visit. These are students of the Canadian Language Instruction for New Immigrants (LINC) program and I teach one of the classes.

I was pretty nervous about their visit. I knew they may have very different priorities at their houses. For example, many of them are probably clean and tidy. Most of our students probably clean their floors at least once a month!

The tour went well and everyone was very polite about the mess.

This post is part of a writing assignment for my students. They must read it and give me some advice. The higher level students must offer to help! (They don’t really have to help, just practice offering.)

Dear Abby,

One day, the kids and I came home after being gone overnight. The three cats and the 4 guppies (fish) had been left alone for 12 hours. When I opened the door, I thought Leanne must be home because I heard water running. I was surprised because she was not due back for a few hours.

I quickly realised that something was wrong because, in addition to the running water, I heard water splashing and a cat meowing. It was coming from the bathroom. I rushed into the house, through the living room and through the kitchen and opened the bathroom door. What I saw there did not make sense to me.

Othello, the black cat, was on the window sill meowing loudly for help. Across the room from him, the tap was gushing water into the sink. The sink was overflowing all over the cabinet below. The floor was covered with water.

Othello, soaking wet himself, ran out of the room.

I turned off the water.

The kids and I tried to figure out what had happened.

I believe now that, first, Othello had entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Unable to get out, he had climbed onto the cabinet and stepped on the tap handle which turned the water on. The drain in the sink must have been a little slow and the water overflowed the sink. As the water began to flood, Othello must have tried to escape out the closed window.

Poor Othello! We wrapped him in a towel and dried him off.

I have already told you that one of the problems with the bathroom is that water seeps through the floor into the basement below. I went downstairs to look and here is what I saw.

Later I noticed worms in the puddle on the floor. How did worms get there? Ew!

The sink drain from below. Water damage!

Back in the bathroom, after I mopped up the water from the floor, I noticed the water damage to the cabinet. It is an IKEA cabinet that is made out of particle board. As you might expect, it sucked up the water like a sponge.

Alright, I need your advice, students. Should I buy a new cabinet?

We like the sink. The cabinet still works. We are planning to renovate the bathroom soon. Replacing the cabinet would cost a little money and take some time. However, the cabinet is uglier than ever and it would be nice to have a new one. What do you think?

Soggy in the Bathroom

The Office

I use the word sustainability a lot because it covers a lot of ground.

Is our reliance on fossil fuels sustainable? No.

Is the rate at which we consume and discard stuff sustainable? No.

What about how we spend our time? Is the pace of our lives sustainable?

Leanne and I each work part-time. We make less money than we could because we believe it is important to spend time at home in our community and especially with our kids who are 6 and 8 years old.

I know many people work full-time and I don’t know how they do it. Even with less rigorous work schedules, we still end up with junk piles accumulating in our house. We have a long history of creating a “room of doom”. We don’t mean to, it just happens.

I was so happy when we created an office out of the old pantry. I thought it would be a highly efficient workspace. There are cupboards to store office stuff as well as food and kitchen stuff. There is a linoleum covered countertop.

Unfortunately, it was also out of the way, so if there was anything that we needed to get out of the way, it would be stacked carefully in the office. It would stay stacked for about 20 minutes and then one of the cats would climb on it and knock it over. Then it would be spread all over the floor.

To clean this mess up, it takes a special occasion. Last week I had three: 1) two classes of students, all new immigrants to Canada interested in learning about Canadian houses, living, heritage, etc., were coming to tour the house, 2) the neighbourhood was having a give-away-your-stuff weekend called Hammond Treasure Days, and 3) I really want to find some information for the blog that is buried in there.

I had a small window of time. I attacked it with enthusiasm. My goal was nothing less than a clean, clear, mopped floor. As I worked I had a vision of a new layout where I could actually use the desk. After months of sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop, I am typing at the desk in the office with the window to the backyard in front of my face.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

This is awesome!

Wasted Fruit

Okay, so I hang our clothes out to dry and I made an iMac cat bed and I write a blog.

Some of you are wondering where I find the time and how you could possibly be expected to fit this kind of stuff into your schedule, climate change or no.

Well, I have my limits.

One of these tubs of fruit is in the compost now.

Hammond Forever House came with several fruit trees. Right now the pears are ready for picking and the apples are almost ready.

My in-laws, Dave and Julie have taught us that the pears should be picked when they are still a little green, because they ripen afterwards. If you collect them after they have fallen, they are often bruised and you have to do something with them quickly before they rot.

Sometimes Dave and Julie pick them for us and take a few boxes home with them.

I am not passionate about this fruit. We have not put the time in to help them overcome the worms and spots that plague them. Once you cut them up, they are delicious and great for canning, but it’s a lot of work, and I would rather be hanging up washing.

It fell to me this year to take care of the fruit. Most of the apples are still on the tree, but I climbed up into the pear tree and got most of them. When they are green, they don’t bruise so badly when they hit the ground so I dropped them from the ladder.

Picking up the fruit from the ground with the kids, I was left with deciding which fruit to keep and which to compost. Look at the two tubs of fruit above. Which do you think we kept and which did we compost? Here is a closer look.

It’s not easy to tell, is it?

My point is that I am composting a lot of perfectly good fruit.

Why?

Because I don’t have the time to cut it up and use it for something. It is even more tragic if a whole bucket of fruit rots after I have picked it. If the pear is too small or has too little good flesh on it, it’s not worth my time. Often the difference is completely arbitrary.

I have to pick up the fruit from the ground because if I don’t, we have a huge wasp and hornet problem.

I’m sure there are people who would be glad to take this fruit off our hands, but I would have to take the time to research it, connect with someone and work out the terms.

As easy as it would be, I did not even post a photo on Hammond Neighbours so see if someone in our community could have picked them up. Nope, it was all part of a busy day and into the compost they went.

Odette the cat is also too busy to pick apples

How many resources are wasted just because we don’t have time in our days to make use of them?

Time becomes a huge factor in our struggle to shift to a more sustainable lifestyle. When we start to feel uncomfortable in our home and we consistently run out of time to take care it, we are encouraged, in this consumer culture, to ‘simply’ find another house and ‘upgrade’.

Then we work harder to make the money we need to pay for an even bigger mortgage, and we have even less time to take care of our new house.

Rinse. Repeat.

What would happen if we could create the time in our lives to re-imagine our current residence into the home we would love to live in now and forever?

That’s what I’m trying to find out with Hammond Forever House.

Why not tear down Hammond?

Thanks to the BC Archives for the image!

Port Hammond Junction, as our town was originally named, sits at a historical junction right now.

Gentrification is looming.

As property values rise, it is assumed that our older, smaller homes–many built to house workers at the mill–will fall and be replaced with new, large and more energy efficient ones.

Most of us don’t like this trend, but subconsciously it seems inevitable. It is the natural order of things.

Progress.

Well-maintained but...doomed? — Well-maintained but…doomed?

Older homes become neglected because the owners assume that sooner or later they will sell them and they will be torn down. If a house is a rental property it is even less likely the owner/landlord will invest in maintaining it, let alone retrofitting it.

In the meantime, while owners wait for the right time to sell or replace them, these houses remain badly insulated and uncomfortable (by modern standards). Cheap fossil fuels and electricity continue to heat them, pumping carbon dioxide into the air and heat into the neighbourhood.

The snow melts off the roof in a few hours and beautiful icicles drip from the corners.

Pretty icicles mean a badly insulated roof

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation tells us that 46% of the housing stock in Canada is

5o years old.

Natural Resources Canada tells us that the maximum efficiency of a house built before 1970 is

50%

If our solution to this problem is to replace them all with more efficient houses well, there are a few problems with that idea.

We can’t afford it

and

it would take 65 years

and

all the reasons I mentioned last week.

Sorry to end on a downer, but what are we going to do? “As Sir Henry Baskerville said to Dr. Watson, “We need a plan! Think, man!”

Mark Carter as Watson and James Rowley as Sir. Henry in The Hound of The Baskervilles, 2013

Postscript: I do have some ideas about what we can do and so does Now House who put together those statistics.

Solar-heated, reclaimed hot tub

We didn't have champagne on hand so we shared a glass of wine to toast the tub — We didn’t have champagne on hand so we shared a glass of wine to toast the tub

I told you about Dave the Father-in-Law. Well, I also call him Miracle Worker. He has a few hundred projects in his head at any given time and many of them seem impossible until he finishes them and they seem like the most natural things in the world.

Today was one of those days.

A few years ago he obtained a free hot tub. He told us where he wanted to put it and we would joke about what number it was on his to do list.

Every so often he would give us an update or we would help with some small aspect. Julie the Mother-In-Law gave herself tendinitis helping mix and pour the concrete for the quite large pad on which it sits.

Last week there appeared a large solar hot water heating pad on the front deck and water was running from the well, through it, and into the tub. We wondered how much Dave would have to supplement the solar heat with the tub’s built-in water heater.

The hot tub hut is taking shape off the side of the sundeck. The sun is behind the trees now, but the water remains hot.

No problem. When we dipped our toes into it for the first time after dinner last night, the thermometer read 43 degrees Celsius (110 degrees Fahrenheit). Lowering myself in reminded me immediately of the Japanese onsens Leanne and I remember fondly. It took a while for the kids to get used to the heat and they didn’t stay in long. Hot! It felt great for my lower back pain.

This was one of the hottest days of the year and the sun had been beating down on those solar units for a few similar days as the water was circulating. It is pretty awesome to witness.

Dave pointed out that there was nothing to stop the sun from boiling the water in the tub except covering the panels.

The hot tub was free. The solar heater was free but needed repair so Dave bought some parts and patched it up. He and Julie built the pad. Once the shelter is finished he will have a the ultimate affordable and sustainable hot tub.

Miracle Worker!

Oh, and what about those winter months when the sun is not so hot? Aside from the built-in water heater (so conventional and unsustainable) Dave has a plan to build a wood-burning water heater.

Well, when your backyard is a forest, why not? The in-laws take their role as forest stewards seriously and sometimes that means removing trees that have fallen or are going to fall. Lots of free wood.

With these inspiring people in out lives, how can we plan a renovation without taking advantage of all the technologies available to reduce our home’s environmental footprint?

Dave plans to put the water heater panels on the roof under the photovoltaic panels

The Myth of the Kids’ Foam Soap

I told you about my Big Jug o’ Hand Soap but never explained about the Myth of the Kids’ Hand Soap.

If you don’t have kids you may not have noticed that there are products that parents can buy now that make life much easier for kids today than in the past. They make life easier for parents, too.

Strawberry-flavoured toothpaste, antiseptic cream that doesn’t sting, and yes, brightly coloured, fun-smelling hand soap that dispenses into your hand in a beautiful foamy dollop.

Most parents are wise to the marketing. We understand that we are buying yet another kind of soap when the bar that adults use is perfectly fine for kids. We bought this foamy joy because we thought if they wash their hands more often, develop the habit and get fewer colds, it’s worth it.

Environmentalist parents hate the plastic packaging and the dilute liquid soap makes us suspect it is mostly water. It is small comfort that you can buy a refill container instead of a whole new dispenser.

It has been at least a year since my kids finished the soap in the dispensers in the above picture. They are now helping me use up the generic hand soap dispensed from the Body Shop dispenser (see previous post). I am only keeping these because I believe I could find a new parent to whom I could hand them down instead of recycling them.

Tonight, however, in a flash of genius, I learned the truth.

I took that green Kandoo foam soap dispenser and poured about half a centimetre of generic hand soap into it. Then I filled it with water to the fill line. Then I pumped.

You know what happened, don’t you? Soap came out. What a shocker.

At first, admittedly, it was thick and a little hard to pump. That was due, of course, to the fact the thick hand soap was being pumped from the bottom. I shook it up to mix it and here is what I got:

The only things that this foam doesn’t have that Kandoo’s does are the scent and the colour. Oh, and the Kandoo product, of course, is designed for kids so it is less irritating than my generic soap.

[I haven’t looked up Kandoo’s ingredients except for the first one, cocamidopropyl betaine which is a sufficant or, that is to say, soap.]

Nevertheless, I am very happy to be able to reuse my foam soap dispensers which will make it easier for the kids to wash their hands more frequently and faster for me to use up my jug o’ hand soap.

In conclusion, we know that if we want to reduce waste, we should reduce packaging. One of the easiest ways to do that is buying more concentrated products.

So don’t buy the super watered down soap just because it has the right brand name on its plastic bottle; instead, water down your own thicker liquid hand soap.

Wait… don’t buy liquid hand soap in a plastic bottle at all; instead, add your own water to a bar of good old-fashioned soap.

When we finally finish all these liquid soaps in the house, I’m gonna go out and get me some nice soap wrapped in a piece of wax paper.

Now that’s living, baby!

Don't worry, it's not a real turtle — Don’t worry, it’s not a real turtle

Next week: more about the house, retrofitting, energy and all that stuff–I promise!

The Good Life – The Green Life

This film is gently revolutionary. It was an honour to be chosen to participate and such a pleasure to be part of the team.

You can watch it here: The Good Life – The Green Life or click on the link under “Friends” on the home page.

We heard about it from Jenny Rustemeyer who inspired us so much with The Clean Bin Project. For that film, she and her partner, Grant Baldwin, competed for one year to see who could produce the least waste.

Now they have a new film out, about the food we waste, called Just Eat It. Anything Jen and Grant tell us about we take a close look at.

We’re faced with these facts about Climate Change and we know we had better do something about it. Then we look around and it seems like nobody is talking about it. Everyone is too busy or the problem is too enormous or maybe we’re just being too polite. We begin to doubt that this is really a thing. If it were a thing, wouldn’t other people be doing something? Wouldn’t the governments be doing something? They wouldn’t mislead us, would they?

If I’m the only one doing anything, well, that won’t be enough, will it? Then I will have changed my life for nothing. We are uncomfortable with change and our assumption is that change will be bad. We will have to give up things we like and do things we don’t like.

As part of this project we met seven other people who are awake to the reality of human-caused climate change and are willing to do something. We discovered that there are a lot of us out there and that felt awesome.

Leanne and I love recycling and, in planning the renovation of our house, I’ve been pushing the idea of a community-scale project to retrofit existing houses to save energy, money and the planet. I certainly went in to this film project hoping to get the word out. I was surprised that was not the most valuable thing I took away.

The film gave Leanne and I some time with these inspiring people to discuss the future and what we can do to impact it. That feeling I had of isolation and futility is gone forever. The sense that we are on the right side of history, that a gentle revolution is fully underway and that the wise are on our side was much more valuable than any amount of publicity for my pet project. That knowledge of solidarity will power me through a lot of setbacks and frustrations that may lie ahead.

I hope that people watching can experience the same hope I felt and choose to take some action, any action, no matter how small.

Look for a screening of The Good Life – The Green Life at the Rio Theatre (at Commercial and Broadway in East Vancouver) in July along with another film about climate change. Details to follow…

Share this: