In recent months, we’ve encountered a few situations in which a client approved a preliminary design, only to find that estimated costs to build were greater than expected. In some cases, this entailed an overhaul of the design; in others, the project was put on hold or abandoned completely. This led us to assemble a few thoughts on how to build a new home in this time of escalating costs.
Let’s look at the reasons that costs are higher than they used to be. [Read more…]
Last week I attended a memorial service for an old friend in the Slocan Valley. As many of you know, I’ve maintained a strong anti-flying stance for years in order to minimize my CO2 footprint. As usual, I intended to drive to the service, thinking this to be the most carbon-responsible means of travel.
However, my curiosity got the better of me and I decided to test that assumption. [Read more…]
April is finally here! Now that we’re putting away our woolly scarves and getting back into the garden, many of us are preparing to turn off our furnaces and put our wood-burning stoves to bed until next fall. And as those stoves go dormant, it’s a great time to think about upgrading to an appliance that burns more efficiently.
Some pretty heated arguments (no pun intended) have been made for and against wood stoves in letters to the editor. Many people see wood as a cheap and renewable energy source — although it could be argued that firewood prices around here are gaspingly high (about double what’s charged in rural Quebec, for example). Some Valley residents are gasping for another reason: wood burning has a seriously detrimental effect on air quality, which in turn, threatens our well-being and impacts health care costs. [Read more…]
(CV Collective is a beautifully-produced magazine that features people and places around the Comox Valley — you can view it online at https://cvcollective.ca/. In their most recent issue, I got to share my personal journey toward a more sustainable life and work practice. The article below was published in Volume 11 of the magazine.)
Picture a small boy sitting on a tall drafting stool, drawing rocket ships, submarines, and houses – sculptural, impossible, fantastical houses. That was me almost 50 years ago, enjoying the drafting board that my architect father kept at home. In the cozy living room below, my parents entertained friends from all walks of life. Among them were folks who had moved from California to B.C. to experiment with living closer to the earth and each other. It was the end of the 1960s, a time of creativity and chaos, and a time of growing awareness of the fragility of the world and our social systems. My parents felt this, and bought a quarter section of land out of town as a place to go should things get out of hand. In me a seed was planted.
Having examined the ways that we’ve already saved energy in our workplace, we’ve come to the hard part – looking at our remaining carbon footprint. Calculating this hasn’t been easy. There have been frustrations along the way, and some lessons learned. [Read more…]
The data’s been crunched, and we’re nearly done summarizing our 2016 net-zero project. We reported previously that our office saves 1.41 metric tonnes (mT) of CO2e annually by going mostly paperless in our daily operations: sending and receiving electronic invoicing and correspondence, limiting paper subscriptions, eliminating paper consumables in the kitchen, etc. [Read more…]
