Paperstone countertops at Canada’s Greenest Home
We spent a lot of time considering our countertop choices for Canada’s Greenest Home. It’s an area with many options, and many factors to weigh when trying to make an environmentally sound choice. Ideally, the countertop material must be durable,...
Framing systems for teachers’ union office
Wood framing is a conventional building practice that we use quite frequently at Endeavour. For the teachers’ union project, we are using wood framing for both the floor system and the exterior walls. The walls and floors may not look very different from...
Earthbag foundation for floor system
In addition to the Durisol stem wall foundation, our project for the teachers’ union office includes two long sections of earthbag foundation to support the floor joist spans inside the building. The inherent insulation value of the Durisol blocks made them our...
Helical pier foundation
The timber frame portion of our project for the teachers’ union rests outside the walls of the building, requiring individual foundation piers for each of the 14 posts. Typically, these would be poured concrete piers each with its own wide footing, resulting in...
A Durisol stem wall foundation
Over the past few years, we have turned to Durisol (now Nexcem) insulated concrete forms (ICFs) several times. They offer an attractive blend of sustainable features with the convenience of conventional methodology. For the teachers’ union office project, we...