eco-home-design / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

First published in SAB magazine.  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 and affordable housing. I think about the smaller units we are building as a...

How to build an off-grid eco-community:  Eco-community building, where groups of like-minded people come together on a plot of land to create a sustainable homestead that shares resources is not a new thing. Communes, as an example, became a pop culture phenomenon in the 1960s for those looking to live off the grid and...

Homes heated by the sun's free heat! Passive Solar Houses are aptly named because there are no wires, panels or batteries and nothing to break down. It's just about design, and it isn't a new concept. Humans around the globe have been incorporating passive solar design features into their homes for thousands of years. ...

Passive House design, how does it work? If you've ever sat in a car with black leather seats in the summer, particularly when wearing shorts, you already understand passive solar heat gain. It is a very simple concept that as a building technique dates back thousands of years. You simply need to find out where south is...

Have you ever noticed that at times you can feel cold in your home even though the air temperature is exactly where you like to keep it? That's because, contrary to what most of us think, air temperature is not the main factor that determines human comfort in a building. To illustrate a point, let's start outdoors. I m...

The  principles of green building: High performance, energy efficient homes may include features like geothermal heating, wind power and solar panels, but these are not the defining features of green living. They come in second, and some you can even do without. A green home starts with being well-designed, well-insula...

Future-proofing homes Our society seems to have a collective (but misplaced) trust in its commercial building industry to provide us with homes that meet realistic standard of resilience. They do to an extent, but a very minor extent. Assuming the climate putters along with relative normalcy, your home will keep you wa...

The first thought of home lighting design should be the orientation of windows for quality of life, but also passive solar heat gain. Not only does the sun offer free heat, but free light as well. Natural and certain types of artificial lighting can reduce the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.). Studies s...

The low carbon footprint of the S1600 kit house The Ecohabitation Eco-Habitat S1600 prefab kit home was designed by PARA-SOL Architecture & Development and built by Batiment Pre-Fab Inc. The experts of Ecohabitation recently calculated the total carbon footprint of this surprisingly affordable prefab eco home, whic...

Finding essentials while at home with the kids - ordering online What a year this week has been! As we're quarantined for 14 days, we've been brainstorming about relevant and helpful subjects to write about for during these testing times with the coronavirus or COVID-19 (which word is even the right one to use there?)....

What is passive solar heating and cooling? Passive heating and cooling of homes is not new. The above image is of Mesa Verde National Park, the Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings in Colorado, occupied from 700 to 1300 AD. This early North American settlement was shaded from the summer sun, but fully exposed to the sun ...