My green home renovation

But most of us live in traditional housing ‘stock’ that is ten, twenty or a hundred or more years old.  And the majority of us don’t have a few million dollars on hand to design something completely new and improved.
Enter the green renovation that is practical, affordable and achievable.  We have to make do with the structure we have and modify it to the best that our personal budget, government incentives and green intent allow.
My 1913 semi-detached home in Toronto’s north end was never extensively renovated and certainly not well insulated.  Drafts around windows, cold walls and uneven heating were common.  Frost would form on the floor by the front door in winter.  For years I dreamed of greening the entire home, not just for energy conservation, but to address household water footprint and material consumption, like wood and paints, too.
On a global basis, Canadians’ environmental footprint ranks in the top ten worst per capita, as measured in WWF’s Living Planet Report.  Our buildings and other infrastructure last 50 to 100 years or more, so there’s a long lifetime to our capital stock before these structures can be replaced with something much greener.
A story in Sustainable Builder (flip the magazine viewer to pages 32-35) recounts our renovation.  We gutted the house to the brick walls, insulated tightly and installed wooden floors, stairs, trim and cabinetry from well-managed, FSC-certified forests.
For water, besides the increasingly common low-flow showerheads and dual-flush toilets, we’re capturing shower water in a greywater tank and feeding that back to the toilets – who needs to flush with drinking water when slightly soapy water is right there?
Then there was a startling surprise.  As we dug up the back lawn to install an 800-gallon cistern to capture roof water drainage for garden watering, what did we discover but a concrete cistern installed by the farm family that built the home a century ago!  I assume they captured lawn or field water for clothes washing in the basement.
In the environmental world, everything old is new again.
In the same vein, reused brick built a fireplace, reclaimed roof joists were reborn as a mantle, peninsula top and book shelves.  All closet and bedroom doors were kept from the old house, character and all.  And a small addition was topped with a green roof, where we now grow herbs and spices.
Hard work yes, satisfying even more so.  Better for the planet?  Let’s hope so.
Many thanks to contractor Craig Mahood and project manager and designer Roger Algie of Just Homes.  And to Chris Thompson of Project Innovations for help with the Brac greywater system.
 
* FSC — The Mark of Responsible Forestry
FSC® – CAN – 34
www.fsccanada.org