
Our complete list of workshops for 2018 is now online. It’s an exciting line-up of old favourites and new offerings.
You can access the full workshop list HERE…
Our complete list of workshops for 2018 is now online. It’s an exciting line-up of old favourites and new offerings.
You can access the full workshop list HERE…
If you’ve ever wanted to be a bad-ass builder, our Construction Skills for Women workshop is your chance! This workshop involves you in all the steps of framing and finishing a small building. You’ll measure, mark, cut and assemble floors, roofs, walls, doors, windows and siding… all in a supportive atmosphere with two experienced women carpenters to lead and direct you.
May 7 – September 28
Endeavour’s Sustainable Renovations course is a unique, full time, hands-on sustainable building program that will put you at the forefront of the green renovations field.
You will find yourself at the centre of a renovation project that achieves the highest goals of green building:
– Zero net energy use
– Zero embodied carbon
– Zero toxins
– Zero construction waste
You will work with teachers and practitioners who are leaders in the field and work with fellow participants who are motivated and enthusiastic.
It is a unique experience unlike any other construction program in the world!
There is no universal definition of “natural building” but Wikipedia does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of natural building. If you want to be inspired by lots of great photos of natural building around the world, Talking Natural Homes is a great place to start.
Here at Endeavour, our full time Sustainable New Construction and Sustainable Renovations programs focus on the use of natural materials in the context of high-performance, code-approved buildings where the natural materials palette is combined with responsibly manufactured products and high-tech mechanical systems. The natural building intensive focuses exclusively on the use of natural materials and simple, home-made systems.
This is one in a series of blog posts about the materials we’ve chosen to build our Zero House project…
What are BiPVco Flextron solar modules? BiPVco specializes in the manufacturing of building integrated photovoltaics, that is, solar modules that are a part of the building, rather than “add-ons” that must be fastened over or onto the building.
Where are BiPVco Flextron solar modules used in Zero House? The standing seam metal roof on the south side of the building receives 32 modules that each produce 120 watts of power, for a total of 3,840 watts (3.84 kW). We use a company that does sheet metal fabrication Texas. These parts are hand delivered to us.
How do BiPVco Flextron solar modules help achieve the Zero House goals?
Other reasons for using BiPVco solar modules:
Any drawbacks to using BiPVco solar modules?
This is one in a series of blog posts about the materials we’ve chosen to build our Zero House project…
What is 475 High Performance Building Supply? 475 High Performance Building Supply provides essential building knowledge and components to building professionals, focusing on materials that provide the best air tightness, ventilation and durability.
Where are 475 products used in Zero House? There are 475 High Performance Building Supply products used throughout the Zero House building, including:
How do 475 products help achieve the Zero House goals?
Other reasons for using 475 High Performance Building Supply products:
Any drawbacks to using 475 High Performance Building Supply products:
Air sealing materials from 475 High Performance Building Supply are a key part of the high performance and energy efficiency of our projects at Endeavour. It is our hope that more builders will turn to these top-notch products in the move toward more energy efficient buildings.
This is one unlimited web hosting reviews about the materials we’ve chosen to build our Zero House project…
What are Inline Fiberglass windows? Inline is a Toronto-based manufacturer of high quality, energy efficient windows that use fiberglass frames, rather than the more typical vinyl or wooden frames.
Where are Inline Fiberglass products used in Zero House? All of our windows and doors are manufactured by Inline, including casement windows, fixed windows, sliding glass doors and entry door with locks. To give you good quality glass products for your house or building you can visit Glass Replacement Visalia.
Range of plantation shutters have wide compound louvers that fit into a window frame and are controlled by way of a wooden rod running up the middle. When not needed, they swing away on hinges in the same way traditional shutters do, except on the inside.
How do Inline Fiberglass products help achieve the Zero House goals?
Other reasons for using Inline Fiberglass Windows:
Any drawbacks to using Inline Windows?
We will definitely be using Inline Windows on future projects. When you want your house and windows painted, just hire house painting santa monica ca services.
The making (and renovating) of buildings generates vast amounts of waste. The purchaser of a new home doesn’t typically see the mess that’s made, but it is huge… and largely unnecessary.
In the US, about 6.56 million tons of construction waste goes to landfill each year, about 11% of annual landfill volume (EPA-530-R-98-010), and the US National Association of Homebuilders study shows that the construction of just one typical 2,000 square foot home generates about 8,000 pounds of landfill waste (EPA-530-K-04-005).
While we’re not completely finished with Zero House yet, our volume of landfill waste is four bags, totalling about 18 pounds.
We achieved this be focusing on several strategies.
Not every project is likely to put the time and effort into waste reduction that we have. But we don’t need every building to reduce to 0.002% of the average like we did to make a big change in the amount of material going to waste. We encourage all builders to aim to reduce by at least 50%, which should be easy to do and would make a real difference.
The toxicity of buildings is a subject that is not much discussed, but it is definitely one worth thinking about. Most homeowners seem to assume that some form of government regulation is at work to make sure the building products in their homes are not toxic, but this is not the case. In fact, there are really no standards or regulations applied to the toxicity or chemical content of building materials/products (except in the cases of well-documented pollutants like asbestos and lead).
The US Environmental Protection Agency claims that the indoor air of the average American home is five times more polluted than the outdoor air, and they rate breathing inside a building as one of the top five environmental risks to public health! People have to maintain their healthy lifestyle and not only in their home, but even outside. People should eat healthy and maybe even teach their kids about exercise and they can even take them on jogs on a joovy zoom ultralight jogging stroller. (EPA 402-K-93-007)
Our goal for Zero House was very simple: ensure that there are no toxins or chemicals of concern in any of the materials that would affect the indoor air of the building. This sounds simple and like it should be easy to do, but the information can be difficult to find and interpret, and a large number of common materials and products cannot be used once we start to examine what they contain.
A good place to start when seeking to eliminate toxins from the indoor environment is the Living Future Institute’s Red List Chemicals. This list includes a range of chemicals that have known and proven effects on humans. A building that can eliminate these toxins will have seriously improved health impacts for building occupants:
This list can be a lot to absorb, but practically speaking it means that we have to eliminate nearly all foam insulation materials, manufactured wood products, all vinyl windows, most brands of paint (even those that claim to be no-VOC), most typical caulking and adhesives, floor finishes… the list goes on. And this is only the Red List of the worst, most-proven health risks. If we take the “Precautionary Principle” and also eliminate chemicals that pose serious risks but do not yet have full scientific certainty regarding their negative effects, then the list of excluded materials gets even longer.
We can research this in several ways. We ask companies directly if their products are Red List free (this information can be found for some products on the Declare website). We also use the Pharos Building Product Library (a paid subscription service) to check chemical content. CARB and CARB2 compliant products also meet our criteria. All products also must have a Material Safety Datasheet (MSDS), and we will look at these carefully.
Take a relatively innocuous and widely used building material like drywall compound (drywall “mud”)… here’s a sample MSDS sheet:
We have to look up each chemical on the MSDS sheet individually, and find that all three of these have significant human health impacts, as does crystalline silica if inhaled. All of this in a product that is used in large quantities in our homes, and is sanded into a fine dust that can pervasive and difficult to clean completely.
The good news is: We can trade out materials with Red List and/or questionable chemical content for cleaner, healthier options almost everywhere in the building. Among the many examples of cleaner materials:
It takes a lot of effort to research and verify all the materials that go into a house, and while commercially-available healthy replacements can always be found, they often aren’t available through conventional building supply outlets. Keeping a building clean takes time, effort and coordination. But once we realize that building codes and government regulations are doing nothing to keep the insides of our buildings safe and healthy, the effort seems worthwhile.
This is one in a series of blog posts about the materials we’ve chosen to build our Zero House project…
What are GRK Fasteners? GRK makes a range of screw fasteners, including several lines of structural screws. Normal screws can’t be used in many building applications because they do not have the shear strength or the pull strength to be used for structural purposes. GRK Fasteners are strong enough to be used throughout a building, and feature a recessed star drive that doesn’t strip. They also have a ZIP-TIP and cutting pockets so they drive quickly and don’t require pre-drilling.
Where are GRK Fasteners used in Zero House? The prefabricated panels used to build Zero House rely on GRK fasteners in many locations:
How do GRK Fasteners help achieve the Zero House goals?
Other reasons for using GRK Fasteners:
Any drawbacks to using GRK Fasteners?
GRK Fasteners will definitely be used on further projects at Endeavour Centre.
This is one in a series of blog posts about the materials we’ve chosen to build our Zero House project…
What is Applegate Cellulose Insulation? Cellulose insulation is a high performance blown-in insulation for wall, roof and floor cavities that is made from recycled newsprint paper.
Where is Applegate Cellulose Insulation used in Zero House? Most of our prefabricated wall panels and all of our prefabricated floor and roof panels use Applegate cellulose insulation to pack the cavities.
How does Applegate Cellulose Insulation help achieve the Zero House goals?
Other reasons for using Applegate Cellulose Insulation:
Any drawbacks to using Applegate Cellulose Insulation?
Applegate Cellulose Insulation is a material that will definitely be used on further projects at Endeavour Centre.
Key among the goals for Zero House are a pair of interconnected ideas: zero utility costs for the homeowner and net zero energy use for the building over its lifespan.
This building is not alone in the pursuit of this goal. Building code authorities and governments across North America are beginning to set ambitious targets for Net Zero Energy buildings, including Ontario and California. Climate change is the motivation for these moves to create buildings that generate as much energy as they consume on an annual basis. On related topic about home,if you’re house is having problems with locks or you want to make your house more secure, you can ask professional locksmith nyc for help.
What are we trying to achieve?
There is a lot to “unpack” when thinking about these goals. If climate change is the problem to be solved, the source of energy for a building is just as important as its energy efficiency. A building with poor energy efficiency that is powered with 100% renewable/clean energy is less of a climate change problem than a more energy efficient building powered with carbon-intensive energy sources such as coal, oil or natural gas. However, if low or zero utility costs for the building owner is the issue, then energy efficiency and the price of the source energy become the key issues.
We want a zero carbon footprint
Chief among the goals for Zero House is to have little or no carbon footprint over the lifespan of the building. This means pursuing a couple of key strategies:
We want very low operating costs
Homes that are affordable to operate should be the norm, but they aren’t. Zero House will be, thanks to these strategies:
Using energy modelling to achieve our goals
By creating a computer energy model for Zero House, we are able to predict the amount of energy required for heating and cooling the building as well as the amount of energy that will be generated by the rooftop solar electricity generation. We can also simulate the energy use for appliances, lighting and hot water. Achieving net zero energy use is a matter of ensuring that the energy being generated by the rooftop solar is equal to the energy being used in the building.
Hey, those figures don’t match!
As you can see in the graph above, the 4,487 kilowatt hours generated by the rooftop solar more than covers the expected loads for heating (460 kilowatt hours) and cooling (311 kilowatt hours). In fact, it will only take about 18% of the output from the rooftop solar to supply all the heating and cooling needs for the building. The remaining loads in the graph represent average North American consumption figures for hot water (1,799 kWh), appliances (2,792 kWh) and lighting (718 kWh), and assumes a family of three in the home. If the occupants use energy at the rate of a typical European family, the building will fall well inside the net zero energy requirements. This means that we’ve done all we can to make the building as energy efficient as possible, including low flow shower heads, LED lighting and the most efficient appliances available. It will be up to the owner to use these in a reasonable manner to be truly net zero. I would love to learn how does organ donation work so that I can buy this service myself.
Manual attendance marking and estimation leads to the expenditure of time and cost of the organizations Here. Human errors, buddy punching and fraudulent time keeping are additional hidden expenses which directly affects the productivity of any organizations. Variation in attendance policies from one company to another makes it extremely challenging to capture time-attendance data and automate them. Therefore, a fully automated time-attendance management software is paramount for enhancing productivity of any organization.
The future is net zero
We applaud the efforts of governments and organizations (such as the Net Zero Energy Coalition) who are promoting the next generation of buildings that will produce as much energy as they use. We think it’s equally important to achieve this goal in conjunction with low embodied carbon and low toxicity, to create Zero buildings that minimize all harm to occupants and the ecosystem.
This is one in a series of blog posts about the materials we’ve chosen to build our Zero House project…
What is SonoClimat Eco4? SonoClimat is an insulating sheathing board made from 81% recycled waste wood fibers. It comes in 1/2-inch and 1-1/2-inch thicknesses.
Where is SonoClimat Eco4 used in Zero House? The 1-1/2-inch version is used as exterior sheathing on all of the prefabricated wall and roof panels for Zero House.
How does SonoClimat Eco4 help achieve the Zero House goals?
Other reasons for using SonoClimat Eco4:
Any drawbacks to using SonoClimat Eco4?
SonoClimat Eco4 is a material that will definitely be used on further projects at Endeavour Centre. For the type of prefabricated panels used on this building, it is an ideal option, combining low cost, easy workability, structural and insulative properties with vapor permeability.
This is one in a series of blog posts about the materials we’ve chosen to build our Zero House project…
What is ReWall EssentialBoard? ReWall is a sheathing board made from recycled, compressed drinking cartons. It can be used for interior and/or exterior sheathing over frame walls.
Where is ReWall used in Zero House? All of our prefabricated wall and roof panels use ReWall EssentialBoard as the interior sheathing.
How does ReWall help achieve the Zero House goals?
Other reasons for using ReWall EssentialBoard:
Any drawbacks to using EssentialBoard?
ReWall EssentialBoard is a material that will definitely be used on further projects at Endeavour Centre. Hopefully the product will start to receive wider distribution and will become available in more regions.
Every year, a wonderful and eclectic team comes together at Endeavour, and the team that is building Zero House is certainly that! Here is a quick snapshot of the students of Sustainable New Construction 2017:
Britta Anderson hails from the other side of the Great Lakes in Minneapolis MN. She is an artist, activist, youthworker, and herbalist. In 2014 she began to work in the field of conservation maintaining trails in the National forests of the US. After re-connecting with her love of the outdoors and doing hands on work she has been seeking ways to incorporate that into her life more intentionally. In 2015 she took a short building course at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN. This sparked her interest in the building arts and alternative learning environments. That same year she started a group in Minneapolis called Tools Not Tools to teach Women/Trans/Femme folks basic skills in the use power tools. In 2016 she worked as crew leader for a youth conservation corps serving underprivileged youth in the Twin Cities area. During this time she also completed an apprenticeship in western herbalism. She aspires to integrate her love of plants, building, and people into a practice that can be shared with her home community. In her free time she enjoys plotting her life around the wild seasonal harvests of her bioregion, riding her motorcycle, camping, making food and plenty of daydreaming with friends.
Hello! My name is Olivia, I have always had a great fascination with the building and design world. We are living in a time where almost anything is possible and it’s very exciting to witness and be a part of the active change.
I think it’s so important to live in a healthy & reliable home and incorporate more intention and beauty within that.
I grew up on Salt Spring Island where I was exposed to a no “norm” style of building. Very inspired by the unique practices of building led me to finding this course. My goal is to build and be a part of the design phase in a house of my own someday. I think there is nothing more rewarding than being able to live somewhere you have influenced and feel good about its impact as well.
Mateo has been fascinated by sustainable construction since working on a straw bale cottage in the Laurentian Mountains in Quebec in 2009. He is stoked to be participating in the program in order to learn some of the cutting edge techniques employed by the Endeavour crew. Mateo has a particular fondness for tree houses, and is excited to bring his highly creative approach to the task of building a better world.
Michele Deluca drove with her friend Natasha all the way across the country in a little red car to participate in the Endeavour program. She grew up in Nelson, BC, surrounded by mountains, clear lakes, and good people. She graduated from the University of Victoria with a BSc in geography, and was following that path until she started reading about natural building and got SO excited she had to find out what it was all about! Michele followed her excitement to Endeavour, which has introduced her to so many amazing people and ways of thinking. She is looking forward to a lifelong journey of continually discovering and learning sustainable building and design practices. In her free time, she can usually be found hiking, camping, cooking, playing music or dumpster diving with Natasha.
Hey, speaking of dumpster, Tri-State Disposal currently provides 10, 15, 20, and 30-yard dumpster rental throughout the City of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Whether you are a contractor working on a long term project or a homeowner just cleaning out your garage, you can count on their expertise to help provide you with the right size dumpster for the project.
Bill thought about building houses as a teenager – but it remained just a thought.
Decades later, Bill took the plunge. At The Endeavour Centre, Bill is not only learning the skills to build a Net Zero house from modules, he’s thrilled to learn design basics.
Since global warming has emerged as a prominent issue, Bill’s vision is to introduce Net Zero houses made from natural materials into the suburban market.
Hey I’m Ella, I’m from the West Coast of Canada. I love to dance, sing, travel, dress-up and be silly. I came to Sustainable Building out a love of working with my hands, living in alignment with nature and a desire for resilience in my own life and my community. After a few years growing organic veggies and selling them at the local market, I realized learning about renewable energy and green building was the next step for me. So far, Endeavour has been blowing my mind with all the current and innovative technologies we’re getting to experiment with. It is awesome to be exposed to the crossover of traditional carpentry and sustainable building and I can’t wait to see what’s next!
The Zero House project has three key goals: zero net energy use, zero toxins and zero carbon footprint. This blog will look at the notion of zero carbon footprint, and we’ll explore how Zero House will in fact far surpass this goal through carbon sequestration in building materials.
The notion of the embodied carbon footprint of buildings has not received much attention in the past. Even now, it’s not a consideration within any of the major green building rating systems and is not a key goal in very many sustainable building projects. But if climate change is a concern, addressing the embodied carbon within building materials may be the most important issue a designer or builder can address.
During the harvesting, processing and manufacturing of building materials, there are always greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with these activities. Fuel is consumed, chemical processes unleashed and resources expended to create any building material. However, some materials have very high GHG emissions and others are very low. Typically, materials processed using a lot of heat and/or electrical energy will have higher embodied carbon than those with less intensive processing requirements. Good examples of this can be found in the open-source database called Inventory of Carbon and Energy Version 2.0, which provides amalgamated data for a wide range of building materials. Companies are also starting to produce Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) that are third party analyses of a range of environmental impacts of particular products, including embodied carbon.
Calculating a building’s carbon footprint involves figuring out the weight of each material and then applying the appropriate embodied carbon factor. This will result in a tally of all the carbon emissions associated with a building. By this reckoning, Zero House has an embodied carbon footprint of 6.991 metric tons of CO2-e (which includes carbon dioxide emissions and other types of emissions expressed as units of CO2) emissions for this 1,000 square foot (92.9 m2) building. This is about 75.25 kg of emissions per square meter. This compares very favourably with the same house built to typical code standards, which would emit 134.8 kg per square meter. That’s a 56 percent reduction, which alone would be worthy of notice.
However, there is another side to carbon emissions and buildings. If a building uses plant-based materials in its construction (wood, straw, hemp, cork, bamboo, mycelium and recycled fibres of all kinds), those materials are partially made of carbon that has been taken from atmospheric CO2 and converted by the plant into its cellular makeup. Usually, the carbon in plants is released back to the atmosphere when the plant decomposes (or burns). But if we contain that plant fibre in a building for a long time, we sequester that carbon in the building. It’s the simplest form of carbon capture and storage (CCS); the plants do all the work of pulling CO2 out of the air, and we put them into buildings for a long time.
Zero House uses a wide range of carbon sequestering materials. In fact, the shell of the house only uses three materials that do not sequester carbon. We can tally up the amount of carbon sequestered in materials by calculating the weight of each material, factoring in the average carbon content (the Phyllis database is a good source for this). Most plants contain 40-50% carbon by weight. When this carbon is released to the atmosphere as CO2, two oxygen molecules are added to each carbon molecule, so we multiply the weight of the carbon by 3.67 to find the weight of CO2 that is being sequestered.
As the table shows, the Zero House sequesters a lot of carbon: 32.26 metric tons of CO2 are effectively bundled up in this building! This offsets the embodied carbon footprint and we end up with a net sequestration of 25.26 metric tons. While a lot of this sequestration is in wooden materials, about half of what’s sequestered is in the form of “waste” fibres (straw, recycled wood fiber, recycled drink cartons, recycled newsprint, cork) that would have otherwise cycled directly back into atmospheric CO2.
This approach has great potential to help the building industry fight climate change. If all residential buildings were to take this approach, the 200,000-ish houses we build in Canada every year (at an average size of about 2,200 square feet) we’d be sequestering around 1.1 million metric tons of CO2-e per year. Add other building types (commercial and industrial) into the mix, and the construction industry could lead Canada in carbon sequestration.
With a “negative” carbon footprint from inception, Zero House also takes a zero net energy approach that will ensure that it has a tiny amount of operational carbon footprint over its lifetime. We’ll examine that in our next look at the Zero House goals…