Go Green

City ponders condo without cars…

There are those in Calgary who find it hard to imagine life without owning a car. But soon, the city could have a highrise full of people who wouldn’t have it any other way.
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City officials and the East Village development agency are studying a plan for a condo tower with no parking stalls for owners. If approved, a parcel of land in the revitalized community would be sold to the private developer.
City hall’s mantra for the past few years has been to create better offerings for people who want to walk, bike and take transit instead of drive. But even the most modern and urbanist new residential buildings in Calgary usually have at least one parking spot per unit.
“The developer thinks that the time has come, and that there is a market for this. If the developer is the one who takes the risk, then it’s worth exploring,” Coun. Druh Farrell said Tuesday.
“We often think of Calgary as being car-dependent, and that’s true to a certain extent,” the East Village’s councillor said. “But that’s not recognizing the reality of the communities close to the core.”
Urban sociologist Jyoti Gondek said the Beltline or East Village is an ideal spot for a tower marketed to young professionals or retirees who don’t need to own cars.
“I hate to use a cliché term, but a ‘complete community’ can offer you many of the things you need or at the very least offer you enough transit options to get you where you need to go,” said Gondek, who sits on the Calgary Planning Commission.
Condo ads for East Village have targeted young buyers who crave downtown culture, funky local restaurants, cycling and sidewalks buzzing with activity.
Susan Veres of Calgary Municipal Land Corp. – the city-owned East Village developer – said it hasn’t received a formal application for a no-parking tower yet. But the agency is doing “due diligence” before reaching a sales agreement with a developer.
Earlier this month, Veres spoke to the Herald Homes section about a 160-unit tower in the works next to the St. Louis hotel – barely a block away from the City Hall LRT platform. Mac Logan, Calgary’s general manager of transportation, noted on Twitter this week that he’d been asked to support a proposed East Village tower with zero parking for cars but lots for bicycles.
“Our data shows owners of $300k+ condo value (almost) all have cars but the city is evolving,” he wrote.
One real-estate agent who specializes in condos doubts the demand is large enough to warrant a full building, based on the clients he is worked with downtown. “If they’re couples, they might not each have a car but they would usually have one car,” Gord Piper said.
He cited University City, the multitower development at Brentwood LRT, which has more units than parking spaces. But many buyers there have been property investors who rent out the suites, Piper said.
Coun. Gian-Carlo Carra has long seen potential for no-parking condos in Calgary, because they could knock several thousand dollars off a condo price.
“One of the things that makes urban lifestyles cost-prohibitive is the extreme cost associated with underground parking stalls,” he said. The councillor said he is looking into an affordable housing project in his ward’s Inglewood district that doesn’t rely on public subsidy – it cuts development costs by not building parking spaces with the units. Kim Jones, a 35-year-old university student, lives car-free in a Willow Park townhouse. Her parking space is part of her mortgage but she can’t use it because of an eye condition.
She has noticed a change among her Calgary friends over the past five to 10 years.
“It was unthinkable not to have a car, and I was this weird outlier who didn’t drive,” Jones said. “And now it’s not at all. People are starting to make that choice.”
The car-sharing system Car2Go has been hugely popular in Calgary, serving people with no vehicle.
There is growing attention in the United States to the millennials – people born since 1982 – shifting away from driving, and how that will change cities and transportation planning.
The proportion of Americans in their late teens and early 20s with driver’s licences has dropped from 80 per cent in the late 1980s to 67 per cent by 2011, says a report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group last year.
The same report states that miles driven per capita has been dropping steadily since 2004.

Jason Markusoff, Calgary Herald

Published: Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Red and Blue and Green all over…

Calgary homeowners have a new high-tech tool to help them save money and reduce their impact on the environment.
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Aimed at improving urban energy efficiency, the HEAT (Heat Energy Assessment Technologies) project visualizes the amount and location of waste heat leaving homes and communities by using thermal imaging.
By showing homeowners where their homes are wasting heat, how much it’s costing them, and how to fix it — all on Google Maps and all for free – the tool can help residents improve their home’s energy efficiency, save money and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Led by U of C professor Geoffrey Hay, the project was chosen for the $10,000 grand prize at the MIT CoLab Conference over 400 submissions from more than 30 countries in 20 competitions.
“HEAT’s mission is to integrate leading edge geospatial technologies and key behavioural science findings to show what urban energy efficiency looks like, where it’s located, what it costs and what to do about it,” said Hay. “We believe that if people could see the waste heat they generate and if they knew how much it cost financially and to the environment that they would take action, and we want to show them how.”
The HEAT maps show grades ranging from red to blue (hot to cold) that represent differences in the amount of wasted heat leaving residential buildings, with blue representing a relatively waste-free home and red representing a home where waste heat is high. Homes are also given scores ranging between 0 and 100, which helps compare one or more houses.
By clicking on an individual home, users of the site can also see where heat is being lost in the home and even what the estimated financial and equivalent carbon dioxide (CO2e) savings per year would be.
Currently, the HEAT pilot project has gathered information on 37,914 homes in northwest Calgary, although the intention is to map the entire city.
“By scaling up the heat consumption results from 37,000 Calgary homes to the full city of Calgary with over 330,000 individual singledwelling residences, we estimate total municipal savings (for natural gas) of $33,564,386 and a reduction of 198,216 tonnes of CO2 per year,” said Hay.
Typically escaping through poorly insulated doors, windows, walls, ceilings, ductwork and electrical fixtures, waste heat represents expensive heated air that is leaving a home, instead of staying and keeping the house warm.
Interestingly, Calgary’s newer neighbourhoods ranked worse than older communities under HEAT’s rankings. With an average ranking of 25, Dalhousie was the “coolest” community in the city while Patterson was the “hottest,” with an average score of 73.
In Canada, buildings account for 35 per cent of all emitted green house gasses (GHG), generate 10 per cent of airborne particulate matter, 33 per cent of Canada’s total energy production and 50 per cent of Canada’s natural resources, of which the majority is used for space and water heating.
For Calgary home inspector Kevin Sixsmith, the ability for homeowners to visualize inefficiencies in their home is a big step forward.
“This type of tool is always good as people act quicker when they can visually see that there may be a problem or that improve their homes and save money,” said Sixsmith. “People are slowly learning the importance of how homes are built so they may save energy which in turn save themselves money.”
Comparing the energy efficiency of their future homes is just one of the new tools available to homebuyers. Along with hiring a REALTOR®, homeowners can now browse listings that come complete with professional photos and video. The power to virtually walk prospective neighbourhoods via Google Street View and criteria such as Walk Scores can help educate buyers about the area without ever leaving their home, while EnerGuide ratings, available through CREB®’s HomeSmarts website: www.creb.com/homesmarts help them better understand how to save money.
“The additional information available to REALTORS® through programs like HomeSmarts enables them to customize the home buying experience and meet the expressed needs of their clients. If energy efficiency is a priority for a client, HomeSmarts enables a REALTOR® to meet that need,” said CREB® Member Services Manager Lisa Roberts. “Connecting with the University of Calgary on the HEAT initiative is another way for us to expand our view of what energy efficiency looks like for REALTORS®.”
– See more at: http://www.crebnow.com/red-and-blue-and-green-all-over/#more-6170

Tankless Water Heaters…

Common in Europe and Japan for 75 years, tankless water heaters are still fighting for market share in Canada. The rising cost of energy may give them the boost they need to replace conventional storage tanks.

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Recently my gas water heater sprung a leak. It had been working away faithfully in the basement since before we bought the house 17 years ago. Since it’s a rental from the local gas utility, I called them and they installed a new unit. It didn’t occur to me to ask about installing a tankless water heater, and they didn’t suggest one.
Many communities and utility companies are now promoting tankless water heaters as a more energy efficient option than the conventional storage units used in most North American homes. Also known as demand or instantaneous water heaters, tankless units heat water only as it is required, eliminating the need to have 200 or more litres of water sitting in a heated tank, waiting to be used.
Information from Green Venture, a non-profit environmental group, and The City of Hamilton, Ontario says that most families use hot water for a cumulative total of about one hour per day. “The other 23 hours you purchase electricity or gas to heat water is unnecessary,” says Green Venture.
Having a constantly heated tank of water is like leaving your car running all night for the morning drive to work, suggests retailer Tankless Low Energy Systems of Whitby, Ontario. On its website (www.tanklesswaterheaters.ca), the company says that “most gas tank type water heaters lose 6 F degrees per hour because they have a flue sucking the BTUs out of the stored hot water.”
Green Venture says that heating water accounts for about 20 per cent of a household’s total energy use, and that tankless water heaters can save anywhere from five per cent to 70 per cent of the energy required to heat water. That equates to annual household energy savings of about 30 per cent, says Green Venture.
Tankless water heaters have several other advantages as well. They take up much less space than conventional tanks and can be hung on a wall. Problems with mineral or scale build-up are unlikely, because there is no water storage and they can be used with water softening systems. They are a proven technology, having been in use in Europe and Asia for more than 75 years. Finally, manufacturers say they last longer than storage water heaters.
So why do most of us stick with conventional hot water heaters?
Money. Tankless water heaters can cost up to three times as much as conventional heaters.
Until recently, there was also a question of whether tankless water heaters could handle the capacity required for whole-house installations. Many of the tankless heaters currently in use are small, supplemental units installed at the point of use, such as a remote bathroom or the laundry room.
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) says that “depending on overall water usage, they may not have the capacity to supply an entire home with hot water. For this reason, they are often used as booster heaters to supplement another water heating system.”
However, in recent years, manufacturers have been making larger tankless units for whole-house applications. “A relatively new tankless technology – the low mass water heater – is capable of supplying much more hot water to the home,” says NRCan. “These systems are typically gas-fired with electronic ignition and power exhaust, which means they are also more efficient than conventional tankless heaters. They can be connected to an external storage tank, if necessary.”
To find out what size of water heater is right for your house, you’ll need to figure out how much water flow you need to meet your home’s peak hot water demands. A report from the U.S. Department of Energy says to list the number of hot water devices you expect to have open at any one time, and add up their flow rates.
Next, select a manufacturer that makes a unit that can handle that much flow.
“Most demand water heaters are rated for a variety of inlet water temperatures,” says the Department of Energy. “Choose the model of water heater that is closest to your needs.”
A report by Platts Research & Consulting (available on the B.C. Hydro website, www.bchydro.com) says that electric heating element and gas requirements for tankless water heaters are higher than for storage water heaters. A gas tankless heater uses more BTUs per hour, so it may require larger gas lines and vents. An electric unit may require 8- or 10-AWG copper wiring, says the Platts report.
One drawback to buying a tankless water heater could be that because they are not yet common in Canada, it may not be easy to find someone to install and maintain your unit.
However, tankless water heater manufacturers are convinced that storage units are on the way out, and that before long, we’ll all be saying, “No tanks”.
Written by: Jim Adair, Homes and Cottages

Winter Garden Dreaming

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It’s not the busiest season in the garden but at the job site, one garden business is so busy right now no one is allowed to take a day off until after Christmas.
Despite their name, BC Greenhouse Builders Ltd. in Langley B.C. is a small family-owned greenhouse construction business. Selling home and commercial greenhouses right across North America, the company is shipping a huge greenhouse to Saskatchewan the day I arrive for my tour in early October. In Calgary, Garden Retreat near Chinook Mall has their sample home-greenhouses on display and it’s a nice place to go and dream on a cold winter day.
Yes, it is the season for dreaming and gardeners everywhere are dreaming about plants they could have grown if only! If only it didn’t freeze outside in May. If only it didn’t hail in July. If only there was a bit more heat in September. A home greenhouse might erase a gardener’s worries.
Sadly, small home greenhouses can also be trouble. They can overheat if placed in a south-facing location with no overhead trees or shade cloth. With Calgary’s brilliant sun, greenhouse plants can otherwise go from perfect to scorched in just a few hours. A passive venting system or electric fan also helps remove hot air.
At SAIT, an in-house designed and built demonstration greenhouse uses the latest technology to cool the summer greenhouse and insulate it in the winter, The cost of this bubble insulating structure is hard to estimate because it is a prototype with several innovations, but it is at least double the cost of a regular greenhouse because it has two layers and a bubble generator system.
Typically the insulating value of any greenhouse is very low. It is possible to add a bit more insulation by using 5-wall polycarbonate plastic – a product suggested by Kyle Exner of BC Greenhouse Builders for cold climate growing. The old glass greenhouses of the Victorian era look romantic, and the twin-wall polycarbonate is more common, but the 5-wall system gives more R-value than either.
If frost is threatening, plants will be okay indoors but if there is a deep frost, most greenhouses need a heating system to keep plants happy. I found this out the hard way after my tomatoes froze in late May when temperatures dipped to minus 8 degrees outdoors.
So it isn’t the busiest season in the garden, but it is a time for research and planning and dreaming. Imagine what you would do with a home greenhouse of your own?

by Donna Balzer on Nov 25, 2013 – See more at: http://www.crebnow.com/winter-garden-dreaming/#sthash.SetVYLV4.dpuf


Container Gardening is fast becoming a genre unto itself. Everything from flower boxes and vegetable boxes to containers for water gardens to hanging baskets and herb baskets to strawberry containers. There are many varieties of plants suitable for container gardening and many kinds of containers to plant them in. Like any kind of gardening, there are two steps: 1) The planning and dreaming stage; the call from deep within to get better acquainted with everything natural and green, the many ideas that might include colour and beauty or maybe a desire for healthy local food, and 2)The practical doing step of assembling some strategies for garden success. Strategies for successful container gardening include choosing appropriate soil materials, developing watering and feeding strategies and learning about pruning methods to keep your containers looking their best. Container Gardening is an effective part of a whole garden scheme or a complete and delightful garden by itself. Click here to read more!!!

Going Green: Tips on staying efficient in the colder weather

Fall Tips

As the leaves start to fall and summer comes to an end, we know it’s only a matter of time before winter’s chill returns. Take time to prevent heat loss, while getting ready for the winter season to come, with these tips:

  • An easy way to detect drafts is to hold lit incense sticks near potential leak locations (preferably during windy days). Leaks will be indicated by smoke movement and possible increased glowing of stick tips. Once identified, use the proper material to seal these leaks.
  • To maximize the energy savings in your attic, a minimum level of insulation of R50 is recommended in Alberta. Maintaining proper levels of insulation in the attic will keep your house warmer in the winter.
  • Be sure to position your thermostat where it is not affected by heat and draft sources such as direct sunlight, hot air ducts, appliances, stairwells and outside doors.
  • An un-insulated and poorly sealed basement can result in up to 35 per cent of your home’s total heat loss.
  • Replacing your doors with insulated steel or fiberglass doors will reduce heat loss and can also add to the security of your home.
  • Install and use a programmable thermostat. Once it is set, this device can automatically reduce the temperature setting while you are away during the day, or sleeping at night.
  • Turn down the temperature! For every one degree Celcius you consistently set back your thermostat during the entire heating season (based on eight hours per day), you could save approximately two per cent of your annual space heating costs.
  • You can reduce heat loss through your external wall electrical outlets, light switches, and lighting fixture receptacles by installing foam gaskets behind these outlets and switches. Be sure to switch off any electric power prior to completing this work.
  • Apply plastic film to your windows to reduce air leaks. Products designed for this purpose are sold in most home improvement stores and are easily applied using a hand-held hairdryer.

For more household energy-saving advice, visit our Energy Fact Sheets and Tools and Calculators sections.

(Source: ATCO Energy)

Ecological footprints

Want to know what impact you are making on the earth? Check out your ecological footprint here (via Global Footprint Network)