Our summer job with Nova Scotia Youth Conservation Corps started with a three-day training camp at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS. At this training camp, we received Emergency First Aid certification, had an overview of OH&S and WHMIS. The event was a lot of fun and involved all kinds of team building exercises.  We also had a presentation from Lil MacPherson, owner of the local organic restaurant The Wooden Monkey, on Climate Change. She was very passionate about this issue and spoke lots on how local and organic food and supporting your local farmer is helping reduce Climate Change. We also had the chance to meet other NSYCC crew members working on interesting environmental projects across Nova Scotia. One group is documenting the construction of the Pilikan building, a green building in Middleton, NS, so we hope to collaborate with them and feature the building on our website.

After training camp was our first day in the ThermalWise office. The two NSYCC crew members that worked on the Green Building Website last summer were very organized in documenting their files, which was convenient for us! So far we have been reviewing the database to update information so that it is current. We finished going through the green buildings products so far. We have also brainstormed about some ideas to add to the website.

Jordan has been teaching us about LEED as we go and this job has been very educational so far. LEED is the only national 3rd party certification for homes and is fast becoming the standard for new commercial buildings.

Over the course of the summer, we will be performing site visits to green buildings. We plan to improve the project profiles section on the website with videos featuring an interview with the project manager, pictures from the site and an audio walking tour of the building. We would like to find green residential buildings to showcase, which is more applicable and realistic to homeowners looking to build green than green commercial buildings.  We would also like to add more project profiles from all the Atlantic Provinces and not just Nova Scotia. This task may be challenging but we do have a ThermalWise co-worker in Newfoundland that will be able to conduct interviews in that province. We developed a preliminary list of buildings we would like to profile, and will be contacting them by telephone initially. We are looking forward to this summer with ThermalWise and contributing to improving the green building website!
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Fin & Laura

Things have been busy lately but you won’t know it by looking at our blog. Below are a few quick updates on some projects of note… More later, we promise.

In other news, BuildGreen Atlantic is shaping up to be an excellent event. Peter Yost from BuildingGreen.com and GreenBuildingAdvisor.com will be headlining the Residential Stream of the conference. ThermalWise will also be presenting on how LEED for Homes applies to larger residential projects; we’ll be using a multi-unit affordable housing project in Fredericton as a case-study. Visit the website to learn more.

Last but not least, congratulations to Sara Jellicoe for being accepted into Dalhousie University’s Architecture Program! Sara was a NSYCC crew member last summer at ThermalWise.

Project Updates
We’ve finished pre-drywall inspections on two residential projects that are targeting LEED for Homes certification: an Interhabs-built private residence in Baddeck, NS, and the Sustainable Cabin Project currently at Holland College in Slemon Park, PEI, but destined for North Granville, PEI.

Here are a few photos of the projects and a video (thanks to UPEI) about the Sustainable Cabin Project :

A private residence in Baddeck, NS being built by Interhabs.

Carpentry students at Holland College in Slemon Park, PEI, learn the fine art of cedar shingling.

Carpentry students at Holland College putting the finishing touches on a beautiful cedar shingle roof.

ThermalWise has been busy this weekend at the Real Home Show in Halifax, NS. At the show we’ve had a lot of interested people ask about LEED Canada for Homes and what the benefits of the certification are. Unfortunately, sometimes we just don’t have enough time with people to tell them about all the benefits and the certification process.

In short, LEED Canada for Homes is a rating system that promotes the design and construction of high-performance green homes. LEED Canada for Homes is the only national 3rd party certification for green, energy efficient homes. A LEED certified home uses less energy, water and natural resources; creates less waste; and is healthier and more comfortable for the occupants. Owners of LEED certified homes enjoy the benefits of lower energy and water bills; reduced greenhouse gas emissions; and less exposure to mold, mildew and other indoor toxins.

Those interested in a more comprehensive overview of the rating system may be enjoy the following short video. While this video was produced by the US Green Building Council to educate people about the American version of LEED for Homes, it still provides an excellent overview of what it means to live in a LEED certified home. LEED Canada for Homes shares many similarities with the American version of the rating system but it has been adapted to our climate and building practices.

It is hard to believe that we are already at our last day of work at ThermalWise. It has been a lot of fun working here for the past two months, and we have learned a lot! We learned about what techniques to use to make a building more environmentally friendly. We learned about what businesses in Atlantic Canada are environmentally conscious. It is easy now to recognize names of businesses on signs and advertisements around Halifax. We also learned the technical aspects about how a website is created.

Working with NSYCC was a great experience because we got to learn about other environmental projects that are happening across Nova Scotia, and it’s cool to know that we’re part of a larger initiative to green our province.

We believe that the development of the Atlantic Green Building Website was a great success. Only time will tell whether its journey from here will be equally successful. Hopefully it will serve as a useful tool for budding builders and environmentalists. We hope the case studies provide inspiring examples and the rebates section provides financial incentive to motivate those who might not otherwise pursue green building. The site will continue to be maintained by ThermalWise, with updates of products and services, and monitoring of the forum for interesting questions to answer.
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Justin & Sara

The Atlantic Green Building website is almost ready to launch! This week we uploaded products and services to the website from our well organized Excel sheets. We checked the contact information provided for companies, measured their products against our listing criteria and made sure to be consistent with formatting. We also continued adding further products and services, which we found linked from ones we had already listed. The database is definitely taking shape. From here on out it will constantly be evolving, as products change and as new ones are developed.

Other pages on the site include our completed glossary, a forum for public discussion, an FAQ section and of course our collection of project profiles. This week we finished up the profiles of the Berwick Fire Department, the Ecology Action Centre and the Joggins Fossil Centre. Although homeowners may not have the time or money to travel all around Nova Scotia and learn about these amazing buildings, they can virtually experience what we did through the “Green Building Tour”, an interactive map on the site. For example, clicking on the location of the Centre of the Built Environment in Dartmouth takes viewers to a page with many photographs we took on site, and a detailed description of the project.
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Sara & Justin

After a solid week of working on items for the website, on Friday we went on another site visit. We went to the Berwick & District Volunteer Fire Department and took a tour of the new fire hall, courtesy of Deputy Fire Chief, Steve McMahon. It will be an excellent addition to our series of case studies. The property, conservation land and a watershed, was once used for agricultural purposes as a beet farm. The fertilizers and pesticides needed for this purpose were ending up in the water supply. Because of this, the community was not hesitant to allow the fire hall to be built on conservation land.

The building is separated into three individually insulated areas: the fire hall, the intermediate area for administration purposes, and a community hall. The fire hall has thirty-four south-facing solar thermal panels separated into three banks, each bank with it’s own photovoltaic cell. There are no north-facing windows to minimize heat loss. All windows and doors are low e, argon-filled double-glazed windows, and do not open which helps maintain a controlled climate indoors and minimizes air leakage. Separate heat pumps are used in different areas of the building.

Motion sensors operate the heating and air conditioning systems in the community hall. Once a couple of minutes of continuous activity is recorded, the hall is heated to 20-25 °C from 15 °C, which is kept constant by the in-floor heating. Lighting in the community and administration areas are also run by motion sensors to make sure they aren’t used when they aren’t needed. Insulation in the building was doubled at a cost of $60 000, which is only 2.5% of the $2 500 000 building. The ceiling boasts an excellent R60 insulation, whereas the walls are R40 and the floors are R20. The average newly built house, for comparison, is approximately R24.

Steve McMahon personally invested a lot of his time into this project and it was clear to us that he went above and beyond the call of duty to make sure that the fire hall was built efficiently, with the needs of the firefighters and community in mind, and making sure that no detail was too small to leave out.
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Justin & Sara

This past week I worked on contacting people regarding our case study research. I organized a meeting with Maggy Burns at the Ecology Action Centre, and we were able to go to the centre and take a tour and some photographs of their building. I spent some time putting together drafts of case studies of the EAC and the other buildings that we have visited. And our work with the EAC is not done. Next week we are hoping to make a quick presentation to the Built Environment Committee at the EAC to talk about the website.

Although learning about the EAC was very cool, the highlight of my week was definitely the creation of drawings for each of the categories in our database. Not only did it allow me to make use of my artistic ability, but also we were able to avoid addressing copyright issues!
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Sara

This week I finished the definitions for the glossary, which contains well over one hundred and fifty words. When they were finished, I had to upload them onto the website. Unfortunately they had to be added one by one which is quite tedious, but I’m glad that it’s finally done and I feel pride looking at the glossary knowing it’s “my baby”!

I’ve also started refining the products that we have researched, and finalizing the products that will be listed on the website. We have developed a set of criteria for each category and sub-category, and it’s now my job to see what fields each product satisfies and whether it should be listed or not. This requires a lot of follow-ups as lots of companies are lacking vital information about their products online!
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Justin

On Tuesday we went on a fun field trip to Tatamagouche to take a tour of a house Rob McLean is building. He gave us a tour of the straw bale home, which is still under construction. The main highlight of course was the straw walls. Straw walls are very easy and quick to build, are a rapidly renewable resource and provide great insulation when straw is applied in large amounts.

Since it is so well insulated, Rob’s house will not need a lot of heating, but when it does, a flat plate solar panel provides hot water heating and some in-floor radiant heating. The home also has an energy efficient fireplace. Other features included a rainwater collection system and highly insulated windows.

The great thing about research is you can find things you do not expect. The day before heading off to Tatamagouche, we came across a green retrofit in Truro at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College called the TREEhouse (Technology for the Responsible use of Energy and the Environment). We emailed the project manager and he agreed to give us a quick peek at the house on our way back from Tatamagouche.

This project, started because of a need for new office space, has evolved into a plan to foster research and showcase passive solar design, a green roof, sophisticated monitoring technology, lots of insulation and a compositing toilet. Since our site visits we have been compiling drafts of our case studies and also researching other buildings to potentially profile.

This past Wednesday, we went with Jordan on a site visit to the Centre for the Built Environment (CBE) on the NSCC Waterfront campus in Dartmouth. There, we met with two NSYCC crewmembers working at the CBE for the summer and our fantastic tour guide, Don Jardine. We were taken on an hour-long tour of the CBE and were very impressed by all of the different features implemented in the centre. We are really looking forward to creating a case study of their project.

The centre is opening to classes in September, but since it is currently still a construction site, we were outfitted in full safety gear with helmets and toecaps. We saw three biowalls, including two interior hydroponic biowalls. These walls provide local ventilation and purification. The soil-based exterior biowall will soon also become a natural habitat. The exterior biowall is the first of its kind east of Vancouver. Three underground rainwater cisterns store water to irrigate the exterior biowall, as well as some other parts of the centre’s landscaping.

Probably the most exciting part was when we went out onto the roof. A green roof covers part of the roof, where blueberries and Echinacea and other local plants are being grown. The uncovered roof is white, which reduces the heat island effect (localized warm temperatures, due to the absorption of light by dark surfaces). It also unfortunately reflects a lot of light, which makes it hard to see! The roof contained various solar technologies, including flat plates, evacuated tubes, regular photovoltaic panels, and bifacial photovoltaic panels that collect sunlight as well as light reflected off the white roof. All technologies were bolted to steel gridding on top of the roof as opposed to directly into the roof. This helps “future proof” the roof, making it much simpler to replace technology as more are discovered. From the roof we were also able to see some of the wind turbines on the ground and lower area of the roof, with vertical and horizontal turbines represented, from different companies and different energy capacities.

What Don really emphasized was the importance of integrating environmental design with the educational and research agenda of the college. Hopefully we will be able to be just as successfully integrating a great website design with education about green building!
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Justin & Sara

Recently I’ve been focusing on the rebates that are available to homeowners that are either constructing new houses with green features, or retrofitting their existing houses to be more energy efficient. We will be compiling a page on the webpage with rebates available to Nova Scotians. It seems the government is putting some decent funding into these programs, with a few thousands of dollars in rebates available from some of the Atlantic provinces, and qualification for zero-interest loans. These are great incentives for homeowners because many energy efficient features present high up-front cost, with payback periods spanning over a few years. This way, as homeowners begin benefitting from cheaper energy and water bills, they are able to put this money back towards their loans. This makes installing energy efficient features much more affordable to homeowners. Extra monetary support is also available to those in low- to modest-income houses.
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Justin

In my second week in the ThermalWise office I am still learning about a huge variety of really cool green building products available in Nova Scotia, from green roofs and rainwater harvesting to low flow showerheads and bamboo flooring. Although continuing this research, we have also started on another aspect of our summer project: case studies.

I spent some time creating questions to ask project planners. For example, we would like to know how they have increased water efficiency, and what was done to improve indoor air quality. In addition to informational content, Justin and I also spent some time this week brainstorming on the visual layouts of the finished case studies. On Monday I am really looking forward to our site visit to a home in a development in Dartmouth. This development will have the first LEED certified homes in HRM.
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Sara