live-green / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

The ecological impact of suburban living: U.S. studies regarding the energy impact of population by location shows 55% of the energy consumed by a family living in a house in a suburban area is from travel. The figure drops to 26% for the same family living in the same house located in a neighborhood where work and key...

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...

  For those that aren't made for the bustling lifestlyle of cities, small towns can be a dream come true. The nature of small towns is one of community and accessible downtown cores. Essential services like grocery stores, banks and post offices are usually grouped closely together, as are schools, so children can ofte...

Choosing between buying, building or renting  1. Building a new home. Building a sustainable and energy efficient house is not necessarily more expensive than building a house simply to meet provincial building codes. Many new home starts have achieved far superior performance while still coming in the same or lower in...

Housing is an enormous source of carbon emissions, so it is also a place where we have tremendous room for improvement. This building guide will walk you through the steps than can help you minimize your personal emissions as much as possible, whether you are building, buying or renting. Keep in mind, this is not a sac...

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?)....

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...

As part of its shift to a low-carbon economy, the Ontario government just released its Five Year Climate Change Action Plan to promote the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. What this means for homeowners and buyers, is that before a house can be put on the market it will require an energy audit and rating, w...

Let's be inspired, every day According to a recent survey sponsored by Google of more than 3,000 Americans by using a type of AI called natural language processing, which is where they cluster and analyze thousands of opinions by theme to identify how people felt about environmental issues.  The keyword for how we feel...

Shipping container homes are gaining popularity globally, especially as Tiny Houses, as they can be seductively attractive with their modern looking lines, colours and shape - but one question we've been asked consistently is: "Are shipping containers Good or Bad as homes - and for the Environment?"  Like many great id...

Net Zero Energy Homes pilot program goals The goal of the R-2000 Net Zero Energy homes pilot program in Canada was to improve the performance standards of homes, and to raise awareness of energy-efficient green home building techniques among builders. Through participating in this pilot project, every builder became li...