free-energy-bike / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Ebikes or electric bikes - an increasing trend for urban commuting A basic ebike gives a rider about the same experience as a normal bike, just with a bit less effort. You can still ride on bike paths, you’ll still need to pedal, you’ll still get exercise and burn calories (though perhaps a few less).  As an interestin...

Mitigating climate change at home, get on your bike! As we look for ways to mitigate climate change, improving home energy efficiency and decentralising power generation is something we can do to reduce our personal energy consumption and carbon footprint. Theoretically then moving towards home solar, wind power and ev...

What is the free home energy audit? Breaking News: New Canada Greener Homes Grant Scheme 2021 announced - see here for how to apply and eligibility requirements  An energy audit is a home inspection that calculates the total energy consumption of your house, including all electricity and fossil fuels for lighting, appl...

Enter the Scrooser. The Scrooser is a German engineered electric scooter / e-bike with a top speed of 24 km (15 mph) and a range of 35.5 km (22 miles). It works with an Impulse Drive that is literally kickstarted by it's rider as the engine engages when the scooter reaches speeds over 3 km per hour.  The Scrooser no...

Green Home Incentives: Net Zero Home Grants & Zero Interest Home Renovation Loans for 2020 Breaking News: New Canada Greener Homes Grant Scheme 2021 announced - see here for how to apply and eligibility requirements or see here for the $40 000 interest free home renovation loan scheme in Canada Whatever the politic...

The Canada Greener Homes Grant scheme is investing $2.6 billion over 7 years to help up to 700,000 Canadian homeowners across the country improve the energy efficiency of their homes and reduce their energy bills with grants of up to $5,000 to make energy-efficient retrofits to their homes and up to $600 to help with t...

Energy modeling is a process for determining the approximate energy a building will consume during operation. Data regarding location and climate, building design, materials, mechanical systems and appliances is entered into a software program to determine what the overall consumption of a building will be, and to atta...

All nations want and need to get back to work, and soon, but there's going to have to be a lot of adjustments to how we actually do it. When we start to get back to normal after COVID-19, (the new normal anyway), there will likely be an extended period of time where we are all a little leery of shaking that first hand,...

I'm not the Mike Reynolds who invented the Earthship, I'm the Mike Reynolds who thinks Earthships in Canada and other cold climates are a bad idea. A coincidence of names; just putting that out there so The Garbage Warrior doesn't get hate mail that belongs to me.  Where did the Earthship come from? It first showed up ...

It is easy to look at the R value rating of a material and assume that our entire wall assembly matches it uniformly. But when you factor in the thermal bridges caused by framing materials and any discontinuities in the wall structure, you can also quickly deduce that this is not the case. It doesn't take expensive equ...

Formaldehyde-free MDF made from rice - available at distributors in USA & Canada There is a natural and Formaldehyde-Free alternative to MDF (Medium Density Fiberboard) made of rice straw hitting the green building market soon! That’s a reason to breath a sigh of relief (literally and figuratively) since a lot of p...