Next task – put all of this information to productive use! Oh boy.
Luckily, my mother-in-law is a good sport and agreed to allow us to use her home as an outlet for ideas and a test case for a permaculture transformation project. Our goal – grow as much food as possible on this urban site and retrofit the home to reduce fossil heating energy by 90%.
In the spring we decided that our garden needed to have some swales and trails – shovel in hand we got to work digging. Within a day or so we had shaped our garden beds, filled the trails with mulch from a local arborist and got ready to plant the garden once we were sure that there would be no frost. Calgary has very limited precipitation (300mm) and only about 100 frost free days so we had to be on top of the garden as soon as we were able to make sure we didn't miss and inch or rain or a day of sun. In late Spring we covered the garden with 20kg of inoculated field pea shortly and planted the rest of our garden with seedlings started earlier in the year.
With the garden progressing on its own we started on the energy retrofits. Our primary focus was on improving the thermal envelope, heating appliance and thermal mass of the building as we had been inspired by a previous visit to the German Passiv Haus Institute while in Europe. The first project was to blow-in one meter thick of cellulose insulation into the attic. Although the salesman thought I was crazy (new built homes usually have 20-30 cm), I wanted to meet the Passiv Haus Standard with an R-value of R70. Also, cellulose is relatively inexpensive and is an easy “do it yourself” project.
Next we went straight to work on siding of the house. Being that the home was built in the 70's the wall insulation was approximately 1.5” thick fiberglass insulation (R8) and leakier than a sieve. We first removed the siding, sheathing, old mouldy insulation and vapour barrier to expose the studs and plywood inner wall. Next we blew-in high density foam into the cavities between studs. To prevent thermal bridging from occuring through the studs we added a layer of 2” rigid foam sheathing before replacing the siding. And it only seemed fitting that the new siding color be green! The steps above reduced our air infiltration over 5 times and brought our net R-value from 8 up to 31.
We then installed triple glazed low emissivity & insulated fiberglass frame windows. These windows have a net R-value of R7 which means that they act as a thermal appliance and allow more energy in than energy lost per annum.Another project we managed to squeeze in was the basement. The basement has also always been very cold in the winter in part due to the lack of insulation in the floor. We attacked this problem by laying a subfloof or rigid insulation.
Based on these upgrades, I calculated that we could replace our 29 kW furnace for a 3 kW one. However, when researching furnace options, the smallest available on the market is a 95% efficient 15 kW. This certainly illustrates how poorly we build our homes!The retrofit is almost done with a few minor exceptions. This summer we will be installing a solar hot water system to heat all of our domestic water. With the siding off earlier in the year we also took the opportunity to install connections for a future grey water system to feed our new garden.
And so, we have learnt some great lessons from our transformation project and are excited to see how the house perfoms over the winter. Most exciting of all - our neighbour has requested that we extend our front yard food forest into his yard (he never did like cutting grass). Perhaps we will inspire many others in our neighborhood to do the same.Wildcrafting is the fusion between an indigenous survival skill and modern botany. Southern Alberta boasts hundreds of wild edible and medicinal plants right outside our front door that we all take for granted. Some of these plants are on the verge of extinction while other plants have just been forgotten. The indigenous people of southern Alberta not only survived in Southern Alberta - they thrived.
Rob and I took an Introduction to Botany course at Wild Rose College here in in Calgary in the Fall of 2008. We enjoyed the course and the instructor Blaine Andrusek so much that we decided to bring him on for a week-end wildcrafting and herb walk session. Although we did post the course on our website, it almost filled up immediately with 20 of our friends family who all agreed it would be fun to learn more about the native plants right in our backyard.
We started the herb walk right in Calgary, in Edworthy Park, where we learnt that you don’t need to go far to find wild edible and medicinal plants.
On the Sunday we traveled out to Ghost River to explore a whole new eco-tone and the different species that exist within a very short drive from the city.
Another fantastic course - Blaine has already been reserved for next year!
