city / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

...city Green lifestyle in the in the suburbs Moving to the country - rural lifestyle  Choosing a home location: Being close to the services you need. Grocery stores, banks, pharmacies, place of work and even places of recreation. In terms of ‘going green’, all your efforts to reduce the ecological footprint of your hom...

1. Life without a car. One of the nice things about living in the city is public transportation and proximity to services, which makes it possible to live without a car. Or at the very least, it can reduce the amount of driving you have to do. When choosing a place to live, check the walking distances from buses or sub...

First published in SAB magazine. Kim Barnsley Is a senior architect at the Vancouver office of Perkins+Will. The way we live is changing. As both an architect and a resident of Vancouver, I am regularly confronted with how our cities are changing through urban densification and shifting demographics, to accessibility a...

...city will also be installing 70 electric vehicle charging stations throughout the city, to help those who need cars ease off on their gasoline consumption. Vancouver bike lanes © Paul Krueger At present, the city has separated bike lanes running from the eastern part of the city, through downtown and to the west part...

The BRE Innovation Park (Building Research Establishment) that lies 15km north of Toronto will soon build a new series of houses in which emerging building products and technologies can be researched and enhanced. The Sustainable Technologies Evaluation Program (STEP) is run out of The Living City Campus at Kortright, ...

...city staff: The city has hired Passive House Canada (PHC) to train more than a hundred City of Vancouver staff (plan checkers, rezoning planners, development planners, inspectors, etc). There are also two city building inspectors who are Passive House Certified tradespersons and will work with all new Passive House pro...

...city to pump heat energy from the place it isn't wanted to where it doesn't matter. Run it backwards and it pumps heat, more efficiently than using the electricity directly using a multiplying factor that is generally expressed as the COP rating (coefficient of performance). So, what we are looking into here is definit...

...city street lights.  The  city of Portland, Oregon is hoping that the generation of power within the water system will alleviate some of the growing costs the city has seen in its delivery of water to residents.This pilot project is slated for completion in June of 2013, and will generate enough power to run 150 homes....

...City of Vancouver Step Code is well underway with the Greenest City 2020 initiative. BC Energy Step Code Builder Guide Message to BC general contractors about the new Step Code requirements, don’t panic! It’s not that crazy, and before you scratch a hole in your head reading the BC Step Code PDF cover to cover, we’ve c...