grid-2 / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

With their house about three kilometers from the nearest paved road and hydro pole, so truly off-grid, Craig Anderson and  France-Pascale Ménard had no option but to go for extreme efficiency in design, product selection and construction. Craig and France-Pascale went for LEED certification through the CaGBC, and this ...

The tiny house movement is on the far end of the scale of a very encouraging and growing trend towards modern smaller home sizes. Small homes take less materials to build than large homes, and they consume less energy to operate. Ergo, smaller homes are ‘greener’ homes. At least most of the time…  Tiny houses are on on...

This is the third piece in a blog series written by Craig Anderson as he documents the design and construction of an off-grid LEED Gold passively-heated home. See post 1 of the off-grid homes blog her, the overview . or post 2 in the off-grid homes blog here covering design and construction choices.  For better or wors...

Snowboarding pioneer and photographer Mike Basich built himself an epic Tiny off-grid cabin. Without a bedroom or bathroom per se, but equipped with a hot tub and chairlift, this gorgeous Tiny House is most perfectly situated in the heart of the Sierras.  © Mike Basich Basich began his career as one of the p...

Tesla is a powerful brand that when riding on its track record of Electric Vehicles needs to do little but step into a market to get glowing accolades. Some of it is well-deserved, but in the case of their solar shingles that are flooding news feeds, we found very little hard facts behind the big marketing push. To get...

This is the fourth piece in a blog series written by Craig Anderson as he documents the design and construction of an off-grid LEED Gold passively-heated home. See post 1 of the off-grid homes blog here, the overview . or post 2 in the off-grid homes blog here covering design and construction choices. or here see post ...

We saw this on Off Grid Quest and found it was begging to be shared... If your fantasy is to live totally off the grid anywhere around the world, that dream just got one step closer to reality. Nice Architects just unveiled the first photos of their incredible egg-shaped Ecocapsule home - and the tiny solar and wind-po...

The Fincube is a pre-fab multi-purpose dwelling, it's built to operate off-grid, it's portable, and it's beautiful. It's also made in Italy so would hardly be a "green" choice for a North American dweller, but one can't help but be inspired by it just the same.  The most obvious and unusual design feature about the Fin...

This is the fifth piece in a blog series written by Craig Anderson as he documents the design and construction of an off-grid LEED Gold passively-heated home. See post 1 of the off-grid homes blog here, the overview . or post 2 in the off-grid homes blog here covering design and construction choices. or here see post 3...

In 1996, this off-grid house designed by architect Martin Liefhebber was one of two concept homes selected by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) as part of their Healthy Housing Design Competition. What was to be built was a three-bedroom semi-detached home on a small lot in downtown Toronto, And beyon...

This is the fifth piece in a blog series written by Craig Anderson as he documents the design and construction of an off-grid LEED Gold passively-heated home. See post 1 of the off-grid homes blog here, the overview . or post 2 in the off-grid homes blog here covering design and construction choices. or here see post 3...