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The Plywood Dilemma

Jun 17, 2012 | Canada's Greenest Home, Natural building materials and techniques

Among the many perplexing choices facing a sustainable builder, appropriate sourcing of wood ranks high. A lot of wood goes into most buildings, even those that are “straw bale” or feature other alternative building materials. For the purposes of the Living Building...

Prefabricated Straw Bale Walls for Canada’s Greenest Home

Jun 11, 2012 | Canada's Greenest Home, Natural building materials and techniques, Straw bale building

This week the Endeavour class spent a day at the facilities of NatureBuilt Wall Systems, where we assisted with the construction of some of the S-SIP walls that will be used in Canada’s Greenest Home. The S-SIPs are largely identical to the load-bearing straw bale...

A Finished Durisol block foundation

Jun 11, 2012 | Canada's Greenest Home, Natural building materials and techniques

The Endeavour class has completed the foundation for Canada’s Greenest Home. The crawlspace foundation is made with Durisol blocks (now called Nexcem). Durisol is an insulated concrete form (ICF) that uses waste wood chips in a cement slurry to form large blocks...