Put to the test
Canada’s greenest house measures up
PETERBOROUGH— It was a year of living green to the extreme. And now Chris Magwood can say, with confidence, that he and his team have created Canada’s greenest home.
That was their goal when Magwood’s small, not-for-profit building school set out to design and construct a two-storey, self-sustaining house that would be healthy, energyefficient and planet-friendly.
But the proof was in the pudding — in this case, the living.
So four people made the house their home, monitoring and measuring its performance for a year. The results, tabulated last fall, show that it surpassed more conventional homes on several fronts, including indoor air quality, construction waste, carbon footprint and locally sourced, natural products.
Solar panels, straw bale walls and composting toilets all went into the mix to help reduce energy and water use by 70 per cent over comparable homes, according to Magwood, a founding director and instructor at the Endeavour Centre for Innova- tive Building, Learning and Living.
They even test-drove most of the LED lights on the market to find the best ones, says the self-confessed “bulb addict,” who blogged about the 20-month construction project’s progress on the school’s website, endeavourcentre.org.
“We’ve reached a very high level of energy performance with all healthy, low-carbon, local materials,” says Magwood, who shares the home with three adults. They also made more than $2,000 from the sale of power generated by the photovoltaic system over the 12 months.
And there’s more good news: anyone can build this type of home, he notes: “Every material and system used was an off-the-shelf item avail- able to any builder.”
The team of eight students from the school’s sustainable new construction program had to research every product to ensure they contained no toxic or questionable chemicals for the three-bedroom, 2,300-squarefoot house on an urban infill lot in southeast Peterborough.
With a shopping list that covered everything from clay and lime paints to durable countertops made from recycled paper fibres, they managed to find 90 per cent of materials within a 250-kilometre radius.
“I feel really good knowing there’s no off-gassing stuff, no toxic anything in the building, just a constant influx of fresh, dust-free air that’s definitely noticeable.”
Every room is “very comfortable, no drafts, no cold areas. It has a really, really even temperature,” he says, crediting the air-source heat pump. With 23 triple-glazed windows, the home is also awash in natural light.
Other homes may perform as well with energy savings, he says, but the Endeavour house goes above and beyond by covering all the bases. For example, materials such as the prefab straw bale wall panels and recycled cellulose insulation were chosen for having the lowest possible impact on the environment.
The crew was also successful in eliminating nearly 90 per cent of the waste generated by a typical home construction site. By reusing, recycling and sorting their leftovers, they took only 385 kilograms — mostly floor sweepings — to landfill, according to Magwood’s blog. The average home produces about 4,535 kilograms.
The cost of the Endeavour house, which is expected to receive LEED platinum certification any day now, worked out to $185 per square foot for labour and materials. But leaving out a few add-ons, such as composting toilets, rainwater harvesting and solar hot water, would knock $20 per square foot off the price tag with little effect on performance, says Magwood, hoping others will be inspired to follow their example.
With the legwork already done, he maintains the home would be easy to replicate in single-family dwellings or multi-unit buildings. “With minor adjustments, it can be delivered as affordable housing,” he says, adding any builder can hit the same performance standard. The house at 136 1⁄ James St. was
2 shown off to the public in May 2013, but the team wanted to prove it measured up to their claims through occupancy before putting it on the market, with a mid-$500,000s price tag, this summer. Note to new owners: must love green.