build-building / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

I’m writing this during a heat wave in June 2021, as much of the US and Canada seem poised to experience yet another record-breaking hot summer. Those who are not climate geeks might ask if this warmer-than-average weather is caused by climate change. In fact, weather is not climate. Weather is what happens day-to-day,...

Can a greenhouse produce food all year in cold climates? Growing fruits and vegetables all year round in Canada or the colder parts of North America would be wonderful but, sadly, our climate limits us to a few growing months in the summer. And even that would be in the balmier areas of our country; at high altitudes a...

Design-build companies are as simple as the name suggests, they bring together the design and construction elements of homes under one umbrella. With design-build firms you deal with one project management company, so it keeps - for good or bad - all the responsibility and accountability in one set of hands.   The cons...

Are there LEED Certified builders? There are no LEED certified builders, only LEED certified buildings. To build a home to LEED certification is something that is accessible to anyone, no accreditation is required to undertake the process. It is simply a matter of registering your project and successfully completing th...

Slab-on-grade construction - technical guide   Deciding to build your home with a slab-on-grade foundation instead of a conventional basement or raised crawlspace foundation can greatly reduce your environmental impact during construction, and has the potential to offer significant financial savings as well. By replaci...

Proper planning is the key to successfully building a sustainable green home. An energy-efficient ‘eco home’ doesn’t necessarily need to cost a lot more than a code-built home because a lot of that depends on design, but choosing and finding green building materials can take a bit longer as they often need to be specia...

First, the background to this Passivhaus My partner and I are geeks. Our idea of a romantic dream was to build a house so well insulated you could heat it with a hairdryer. For added fun, we wanted to do this on a tight budget while raising a young child. The hairdryer part wasn’t a pipe dream – it’s a common way of de...

Building a Passive House that's also LEED certified This is an owner blog Ecohome posted following the personal experience of Sarah Cobb and William Murray of Rocket Construction Inc. as they built a home in Abercorn, Montérégie, Quebec. Setting the bar about as high as you can, they targeted both LEED certification an...

Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF Blocks); are they the best way to build a basement? For decades, the highest standard for building a basement was a formwork of wood or steel, which is then filled with poured concrete and is stronger and less prone to water leaks than a CMU or stone foundation wall that are found on earli...

OTTAWA, June 18, 2014 /CNW/ - The Canadian green building market is poised to see strong growth over the next three years, with surveyed Canadian firms expecting to grow their green practices from one third in 2014, to one half by 2017. These findings are part of a new report prepared by McGraw Hill Construction and co...

How much does a laneway home or multiplex cost in Vancouver 2025?  For homeowners in Vancouver, the number one question when considering a laneway home or multiplex is almost always about the total cost and financing options available. With the city encouraging increased density, building an Accessory Dwelling Unit (AD...