In light of the recent wildfire crisis in northern Alberta, it’s a good time to examine the fire-resilience of your home. Vancouver Island is no stranger to this type of disaster; a massive wildfire in 1938 produced heavy smoke enveloping nearly two-thirds of the Island. With drought conditions increasing in severity each summer, there’s no reason to believe that it can’t happen again. [Read more…]
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK, Part 3: The little things do add up
We’re always interested in achieving a more sustainable practice in our office. To this end, we’ve found a useful infographic that quantifies office-related emissions (viewable at the link below). This resource contains good suggestions for reducing your workplace impact. [Read more…]
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK: Adventures In Sustainability, Part Two
At our small office, the quest for carbon neutrality continues, and what a complex task it’s proving to be! We’d agreed that the first and most obvious step would be to calculate our current footprint. This would give us a baseline against which to measure our progress over the remainder of the year. Hiring a consulting firm to come in and do the job seemed costly, so we decided to do as much research as we could to come up with a baseline ourselves. This is proving to be easier said than done. [Read more…]
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK: The Road to Carbon Freedom, Part 1
Recently, in the wake of the COP21 meetings and the publication of the Paris Agreement on climate change, we posted a few ideas about reducing carbon impacts in this “post-Paris” era. At the top of that list was the suggestion to read “How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything” by Mike Berners-Lee. The book contains lots of excellent advice on how to contribute to the health of the planet. Freshly inspired by its message, my coworkers and I agreed to set out on a new adventure in sustainability: we would try to become a carbon-neutral workplace in 2016. [Read more…]
Canada’s EnerGuide: the energy cost of your home
What is the true energy cost of your home? How do you go about calculating it? If you’re trying to cut your carbon footprint in planning a building project, where do you find reliable information?
Whether you’re a prospective home buyer, planning a renovation, or work in the construction or realty sectors, here’s something you definitely should know about. Canada’s new EnerGuide system is a wide-reaching initiative by the federal government. It will provide the world’s most accurate system for determining the energy efficiency of a home. A report by a trained third-party inspector can now provide the total annual consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of any house. It’s high time that such considerations become integrated in a meaningful way to the construction and real estate industries. More info at:
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/en…/efficiency/housing/new-homes/5035
In Their Own Words: A Builder Speaks
For our second installment on the topic of the Client/Designer/Builder relationship, we asked our frequent collaborator Tavis Griffith of Griffith Homes to weigh in on the subject. Here’s a summary of the comments of Tavis and his administrator, Kim Rodriguez: [Read more…]
