shipping green from the ground up

7/30/2019 Shipping Green From the Ground Up

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Monte Paulsen Investigates

Green Homes, Out of the Box

and Green Buildings that Pay Off (Two Series from The Tyee Solutions Society, Originally Published on The Tyee)


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Shipping containers revolutionized the global economy, making trade possible on a scalenever before seen. Now, these big steel boxes hold the potential to revolutionize urban livingand design.

In Green Homes, Out of the Box , reporter Monte Paulsen details how these containers are be-ing refashioned into affordable, green buildings in Europe and Asia and examines how theycould be used to solve North America's housing problems as well.

In Green Buildings That Pay Off , Paulsen continues his investigation into sustainable, envi-ronmentally friendly building methods. He looks at a new generation in green building thatpays off in nancial and energy savings, improved living, and new jobs in a strengthenedeconomy.

These series are both part of the larger Green From The Ground Up series, a project of thenon-pro t Tyee Solutions Society made possible through the support of the Vancity/Real Es-

tate Foundation Green Building Grant Program. Support for this project does not necessarilyimply endorsement of the ndings or contents of these reports. The articles published (so far)can be found at http://thetyee.ca/Topic/GreenBuilding/

As he compiled research for the series, Monte met Linus Lam, the Executive Director of Architecture for Humanity Vancouver. The two decided to work together on a two-day eventcalled Quick-Homes , which attracted nearly 100 participants, including City councilors,funders, architects, planners, non-pro t housing managers, designers, and students. You canlearn more about Quick Homes here: http://thetyee.ca/Tyeenews/2010/04/14/Superchallenge/

You can also view a video of the event here: http://vimeo.com/11247497.


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Green From the Ground Up

Green and Affordable Homes, Out of the Box...........1

Is this Canadas Most Affordable Green Home?........5

Homeless Housing for Less.......................................9

After the Fact: The City of Vancouver passes a motionon modular housing, July 2010............................ .....14

Five Myths About Green Building.............................15

Green Homes for Less............................................20

How Do They Decide a Building Is Green?............24

Monte Paulsen researched and wrote Green Homes, Out of the Box for the Tyee Solutions Society. It was published on

The Tyee in April 2010. The entire series is available athttp://thetyee.ca/News/2010/04/11/OutOfTheBox/

Green Buildings That Pay Off is a current project of the TyeeSolutions Society. The articles that have been published thus

far can be read on The Tyee athttp://thetyee.ca/Series/2011/01/06/GreenBuildings/


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Green and Affordable Homes,

Out of the BoxShipping containers hold the potential to revolutionize urban housing.

TO LEFT: City Centre Lofts is slated to become the rst mid-rise to be built out of shipping containers in North America.

It will be constructed using 50 per cent recycled material.The Salt Lake City building was designed by architect Adam

Kalkin. The buildings footprint is about the same size as acommon 25- by 120-foot Vancouver Lot.

Vancouver boasts both the Greenest Neighbour-hood in the World --- the LEED certi ed Olym-pic Athletes Village --- as well as the worlds rstLEED Platinum convention centre.

But the city that calls itself the Green Capital hasshown surprisingly little interest in a rapidly emergingbuilding technology that promises to become not onlyfar more environmentally friendly but also signi cant-ly less expensive than the heavy concrete constructionthat has reshaped the citys skyline. Indeed, Canadas

rst modern home built this way stands not in theTerminal City, but across the straight in Victoria.

Over the next few days, The Tyee will report on howintermodal shipping containers --- those 40-foot steel

boxes that ow through the regions ports at the rateof more than two million a year --- are being refash-ioned into affordable green buildings across Europeand Asia.

And on Thursday evening, the Tyee Solutions Societywill join with Architecture For Humanity Vancouver

and the Design Foundation of British Columbia tokick-off the Quick Homes Superchallenge, a two-partcharrette aimed at generating affordable housing con-cepts for public discussion.

The box that changed the world

The humble steel boxes in which goods are shipped,trained and trucked around the world touched off aneconomic revolution, according to Mark Levinson,author of The Box: How the Shipping Container Madethe World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.

Levinson chronicles the 18 million big steel boxesthat make globalization possible, ooding marketswith low-cost consumer goods from China, lling cit-ies with cut-rate department stores such as Wal-Mart,and felling wide swaths of the North American manu-facturing sector and the high-paying jobs it provided.

This series was originally published on April 12, 2010, on TheTyee.ca. The electronic version of the story is available athttp://thetyee.ca/News/2010/04/12/GreenAffordable/


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In 1956, the world was full of small manufacturersselling locally, Levinson writes, by the end of thetwentieth century, purely local markets for goods of any sort were few and far between.

One of the worlds rst purpose-built intermodalcontainer ships set sail from North Vancouver inNovember of 1955. The Clifford J. Rodgers carried600 containers to Skagway, Alaska, where they wereloaded on to rail to be carried over the White Pass tothe Yukon.

Today, Port Metro Vancouver is Canadas busiest port.More than two million twenty-foot equivalent units,or TEUs, ow through every year, according to portrecords. (Containers come in ve basic sizes. A stan-dard 20-foot-long by 8-foot-wide container equals one

TEU. A 40-foot container is two TEUs.)

The vast majority of containers arriving in Metroports hail from China, followed by Japan and Korea.And most return to the nations that sent them. Butalmost 100,000 get left behind each year.

In 2009, for example, records show that a total of 1,122,849 TEUs entered Port Metro Vancouver, whileonly while 1,029,613 TEUs were shipped outbound.Thats a difference of 93,236 containers.

Likewise, in 2008, Metro ports took in 96,509 moreTEUs than they sent away.

Those containers dont all pile up in the Lower Main-land. Most leave the region via truck or rail car, andmany of those ultimately leave Canada via a bordercrossing or another seaport. But North Americaslongstanding imbalance of trade with China and otherAsian exporters tends to create a backwash of surpluscontainers in places Vancouver and other port cities.

Greener than concrete, stronger than wood

Containers are built to stack nine high while carrying60,000 pounds on a deck thats pitching on the openocean. They are built to survive decades of service ina marine environment, and, if kept painted, will lastinde nitely as part of a building.

These are just big steel boxes, said Barry Naef,who directs the GreenCube Network and the Inter-modal Steel Building Unit (ISBU) Association. Naef noted that these boxes present the opportunity to notmerely recycle but creatively reuse what is arguablythe most durable waste product of the globalizationera. Stranded containers that are not repurposed tendto be melted down. As fuel costs rise, containers onthe wrong side of the ocean can become worth moreas scrap metal than the cost of shipping them back toChina empty.

A typical 40-foot container represents about 8,000pounds of steel, which can require about 8,000kilowatt-hours of energy to melt and remanufacture.Thats about half of what a typical home uses in ayear. As a result, buildings created from used shipping

containers function like carbon reduction and long-term storage devices.

At the same time, containers tend to replace con-crete in more urban settings, due to the metal boxesstrength and easy stackability. And cement is far fromgreen.

The manufacturing of cement is the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions after fossil fuel consump-tion, according to U.S. government statistics. A report

by the World Business Council found that every tenpounds of cement releases nine pounds of carbondioxide emission.

But according to Barry Naef, the biggest green advan-tage of shipping containers may be their strength.

Their strength allows the structure to provide greenroofs, green walls, solar hot water roofs, all withoutadditional supports, Naef said. Its hard to do thesethings on a wood-frame structure. Concrete is great.But when you have to go spend so much to do a greenroof, I dont think it winds up getting built.

Construction costs 25 per cent less

In port regions such as Vancouver, end-of-life ship-ping containers are often sold for as little as $1,500in the Lower Mainland, while pristine 40-foot highcubes -- which feature nine-and-a-half-foot ceilings


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-- can fetch $4,000. Either way, its substantially lessthan the cost of building a similar box out of wood orconcrete.

The cost to convert that box to a home varies widely.

Charities providing housing to Maquiladora workersin Mexico are able to convert used shipping contain-ers into simple homes for about $15,000 (excludingland costs). Those homes are small, but they comecomplete with doors, windows, a full bathroom andkitchen appliances for less money than most Canadi-ans spend on a car.

Companies that provide container-based workerhousing to the oil and mining industries sell heavilybuilt pre-fab units for prices that start in the range of

$35,000 per container unit. Some of these are heavilyinsulated for arctic conditions. Others include genera-tors and water-processing plants. (More on these unitson Wednesday.)

Custom home builders report saving an average of about 25 per cent against what a comparable homewould have cost to build, according to Naef. He saidcost savings vary widely according to how manyhurdles are thrown up by local zoning and buildingcode of cials.

Local building codes are a real hurdle for somebuilders, Naef said.

We need to do a much better job of educating zon-ing boards and building inspectors, he said. Eachbuilding inspector seems to have a different reasonwhy they wouldnt let someone build with shippingcontainers. Many objections are based on false as-sumptions.

For example, he noted that many local buildingcodes still require studding out all the walls in orderto comply with outdated zoning ordinances. Thisunnecessary duplication reduces --- but still does noteliminate --- the cost effectiveness of container-basedconstruction, Naef said.

New built form emerging in Europe and Asia

In dense cities such as Vancouver, however, the great-est cost savings and the most signi cant green advan-tages generally come down to the same thing: Theless land a home requires, the better.

Containers are built to stack. And it has been throughthe creative assembly of stacks of containers --coupled with the innovative ways of opening up theinteriors -- that a new built form has begun to emergein Europe and Asia. Here are a few examples:

Container City is a collection of London-area devel-opments drawing on container techniques perfectedby a company called Urban Space Management. The

rst project was built in East London, in 2001. The

Container City projects include of ces, retail shops,artists studios, a nursery, a youth centre, and a schoolas well as housing.

This modular technology enables construction timesand cost to be reduced by up to half that of traditionalbuilding techniques while remaining signi cantlymore environmentally friendly, states Urban SpaceManagement.

Keetwonen is the worlds largest container housing

project, as well as one of the simplest. The projectis a student village built from 1,050 containers nearAmsterdam city center.

Though only 320 square feet, each suite has separatesleeping and living rooms, a full kitchen and bath,large windows and a private balcony. The units arewell insulated and served by a central heating system.The complex hosts cafes, shops, art studios and evenmini-gyms.

And while some container projects strive to concealthe containers industrial essence, a Korean project,Platoon Kunsthalle, takes the opposite approach. TheSeoul artists centre was created from 28 containers.


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Excerpts from the Ensuing Discussion in the Tyee s Comment Section:

Contaminants in shipping containers posted by gwebster on April 12, 2010

I have considered using a recycled shipping containerto build a laneway house in my backyard, but I won-der about potential contamination issues. Have thesecontainers been sprayed with insecticides or fungi-cides? What other chemicals might have been usedin the goods originally shipped in these containers? Ihavent seen any discussion about this yet.

Contaminants posted by Monte Paulsen on April 12, 2010

Thanks for asking, gwebster. This was one of the in-teresting minor points that didnt make it into the naldraft of this weeks series.

Some nations (Australia, for example) require the ply-wood oors in shipping containers to be treated withpesticides. The idea is to keep pests from migrating inthese boxes. As a result, many container oors containpesticides.

Builders using existing containers resolve this issuein one of three ways: Some remove the old oorsentirely; some put a barrier between the old plywoodand the new oor; some use newer containers thathave only made one or two trips and have never beentreated.

invented in Vancouver posted by Lloyd Alter on April 12, 2010

I am so happy that you got it right about the shippingcontainer being invented in Vancouver and NOT byMalcolm Mclean as it says in the Box. Peter Huntersbook The Magic Box written in 1993 clearly showsthat it was predated.

Haiti posted by Don_EC on April 12, 2010

With so many surplus containers in North America,since the Haiti earth quake, I have been wonderingwhy donated containers -- even without improve-ments -- might not represent a potentially-more-usefultemporary shelter than thousands of tents?

This article suggests more elaborate usage, and thiscould certainly be considered in the long run. But if you gave me an option of occupying a tent or having acontainer in which to set up a temporary home, I thinkI would go for the container. And considering theingenuity of the Haitians, I expect that in short order,they would have done conversions to make them veryhabitable.

As well, I expect that they would be fairly earthquakeproof, if located on level ground and not stacked.

As always posted by zalm on April 12, 2010

The question is not what to live in but where.


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within the realm of feasibility for an average builder.So I didnt get too extreme with anything.

Victoria inspector supported the plan

The idea of using shipping containers came to myattention back in 2000, when I saw a magazine cover

about a project called Future Shack, which was devel-oped in Australia, Dewey told The Tyee. That reallycaptivated my imagination.

The designer toyed with the concept over the nextfew years, and, when the opportunity arose for us todesign our own house, it was a natural developmentof the ideas that Id conceptualized.

Dewey built the home he calls Zigloo Domestique in2006. The 1,920-square-foot home is nestled into asmall L-shaped lot in the Fernwood neighbourhood.The open-plan home rests on a typical residentialfoundation.

The City of Victorias building inspector requiredDewey to employ a structural engineer and a buildingenvelope specialist, but otherwise treated the projectlike any other single-family residential home.

Is this Canadas Most Affordable

Green Home?How Victoria designer Keith Dewey transformed eight used shipping containers into an airy residence.

TO LEFT: Zigloo Domestique is a custom home in Victoria, B.C. Architect Keith Dewey reused eight 20-foot-long shipping containers to create its frame. Open oor plans suchas this can cost less to build using shipping containers thanwood or concrete, because long steel beams are included inthe price of the used container. Photo courtesy of Keith Dewey

One of Canadas most affordable green homes

stands not in the swaggering Green Capital of Vancouver, but in B.C.s actual capital, Victoria.

Designer Keith Dewey built his own home out of eight end-of-life shipping containers. In so doing, hesaved ve years worth of electricity and spared about70 trees -- all while cutting the cost of his new homeby roughly 28 per cent.

Initially, everyones perception is that steel contain-ers must be cold, cramped and uninviting, Deweysaid of the reaction to his custom home, pictured inthe slide show above. That perception dissipates assoon as they step inside.

Dewey, who will talk about his home this Thursdaynight at the Quick Homes Superchallenge, added,I was trying to create a green house that was well

This series was originally published on April 13, 2010, on TheTyee.ca. The electronic version of the story is available athttp://thetyee.ca/News/2010/04/13/MostAffordable/


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We found ways to harmonize what is already knownabout the residential building industry with things thatare already known about the shipping container indus-try, Dewey said of his approach.

For example, he framed two-inch interior walls attwo-foot centres, and sprayed foam insulation into thevoid.

It ended up being closer to four inches of foam,because theres a little bit of an air gap between thetwo-by-two wall and the steel, and then theres thecorrugated nature of the steel wall itself, Deweysaid. We got R-28, which is well above the minimumrequirement.

He topped the house with a conventional wood-framed roof, and dry walled much of the interior

-- leaving strategically placed sections of corrugatedsteel as accents.

The house carries a traditional mortgage.

I was able to convince the mortgage and insurancecompanies of the fact that this is a steel frame build-ing, which just happens to have steel cladding. Oncethey were able to categorize it that way, then it wasnot problem, he said.

A natural resource of consumer society

The sustainability issue was important for me. In mymind, a sustainable concept is one that makes use of materials that have already served their purpose. SoI went out looking for end-of-life containers... thingsthat were between 12 and 26 years old, Dewey said.

These shipping containers, of course, weve got themall over the place. In a way theyve become a naturalresource of consumer society: everything comes to usin this box, but we have no use for the box now, hesaid.

Dewey bought eight used shipping containers, eachmeasuring 20 feet long by eight feet wide by 8.5 feethigh. He paid between $2,000 and $2,400 per con-tainer.

A lot of them had dents and dings. One even had abreach on the side, he said. By itemizing our inven-

tory, I was able to use those in areas where I would becutting out portions of the wall.

Thousands of old shipping containers like the onesDewey bought are melted and recycled into newsteel every year due to a variety of economic factors,including ocean-going insurance requirements, thehigh price paid for scrap metal, and North Americasongoing trade imbalance with Asia.

By reusing -- rather than recycling -- most of the steelin those eight containers, Dewey saved something inthe range of 50,000 kilowatt-hours of energy. Thatsenough hydro to light his home from the day hemoved in through sometime next year.

Dewey also saved a small forest. Though Zigloo Do-mestique makes extensive use of manufactured wood

products such as paneling and cabinetry, it employsless raw framing timber than a wood-frame house.

I gured that I saved 70 trees worth of wood by reus-ing the containers, Dewey said.

The house has a concrete oor on the main level,which was poured atop a grid of hot water lines thatprovide radiant heat. The hot water is supplied by anon-demand (tankless) hot water heater.

Its a very ef ciently heated house... by heating thebasement and the main oor, the residual heat rises upthe stairwell and ows through the remainder of thehouse, Dewey said.

Its easy to cool, too. By strategically placing oper-able windows, we are able to get really nice summerbreezes, he added.

A custom home for a spec-house price

My idea was to design a custom home, using sus-tainable materials, and do it for the same price theywere building spec quality houses out in the low-costsubdivisions, Dewey said.

In Victoria, spec homes run about $150 per squarefoot, while custom homes average about double that.

In addition to the engineer and envelope specialist,Dewey contracted professionals for all the trade work


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such as electrical, plumbing, drywall, painting, etc.The only cost he avoided was his own design fee.

I didnt cash in any favours on this one. I wanted tosee what the costs really were, he said.

As it all turns out, we were able to do it for $180 persquare foot, he said.

I would easily stack this house up against any houseout there for $250 per square foot or more. So Im as-suming we saved in the realm of $70 per square foot,mostly as a result of the reuse of these containers.

That works out to a 28 per cent savings, which isconsistent with the 25 per cent estimate provided byBarry Naef of the Intermodal Steel Building Unit(ISBU) Association.

Dewey acknowledged that he spent an inordinateamount of time and money working out solutions tospeci c design problems. The building envelope, forexample, required considerable attention.

When you put two containers together, there is thisinevitable quarter-inch gap. So we had to develop alibrary of little details that could prevent water anddrainage, he said.

Im sure I will be able to do these things much moreef ciently next time.

Public perception remains a challenge

Dewey has several new container-based constructionprojects in the works. He said they all face the samechallenges.

Perception is the rst. The most common containerbuildings are the thousands of workers camps scat-tered across the booming Arab states, along with asmall number of mining camps in remote locations.

They look a bit like concentration camps... That doesnot help overcome the perception problem, he said.

Thats why I think the designer is a really importantelement. There are lots of engineers and fabricators

who can fabricate something low cost, easy to main-tain, and durable. But if its not appealing, if its notan attractive thing for people to walk by, then its notgoing to work in an urban environment.

Unrealistic expectations about cost are the secondchallenge.

Nine times out of ten people are wanting somethingcheaper... People call me and they say, Oh, its a box,and its cheap, he complained.

There is money to be saved using shipping contain-ers, he said, but the cost of the house is much morethan the cost of the used container.

Dewey does anticipate that once the form becomesmore widely accepted, complete homes will be manu-

factured in low-wage regions and sold worldwide.

Were not quite there yet, but there is the potentialfor these homes to become extremely affordable inpre-fab manufacturing, he said.

He designed a pre-fab workers housing complexcalled Modulute, which would have created 220small, self-contained suites. Whistler approved the$3 million project a couple years before the recentWinter Games, but the American vendor contracted

to prefabricate the containers was unable to securenancing during the 2008 recession.

It was an easily stackable con gure that could havebeen removed and reinstalled somewhere else,Dewey said. Its a bit of a shame. It would have beena real nice spotlight project during the Games.

For the time being, he said, the container concept iscatching on much more quickly in Europe. He citedAmsterdams Keetwonen project and Londons Con-tainer City developments as examples. (See yester-days slide show for pictures of those projects.)

I guess theres sort of a conservative mindset inNorth American culture, Dewey chuckled. We say,Ive got to see it to believe it. And Im not going tolook too hard to try to nd it.


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just wondering , posted by Takuan on April 13, 2010

how do you ght res in these?

Its the LAND people posted by cocean on April 13, 2010

Theres no shortage of novel ideas for extremelycheap and environmentally-friendly housing. That hasnever been the problem. The problem is largely mu-nicipal laws that restrict the size and type of a shelter,the amount of land to be associated with it and thematerials used.

And there isnt so much a shortage of land as a short-age of political will that would free up land for the useof truly affordable housing, shelter that people even inthe lowest decile of income could afford.

I have to admit, I like it posted by zalm on April 13, 2010

This is the rst article Ive seen on this mode of adaptive reuse in building technologies that doesntpretend to solve the affordability crisis. Land is still$500,000 for a crappy lot in the Big Smoke, and willnever be affordable even if you use cardboard boxesfor houses. This is the signal failure of the market,and will require other interventions to conquer.

But for adaptive re-use, this is well thought out. Forthe insurance industry to cover it, it must have passeda number of inspections from proper engineers. And

like most steel buildings, you cant cut too big awindow into it without compromising the structuralstrength of the building, so that minimizes the heatloss - Im surprised with R-28 average in the wallsthat it would need heating at all. Activities of dailyliving should keep that place comfortable on all butthe below-0 days.

Of course, Im a bit of a polar bear, as my wife pointsout....

How about the Eco-Sense project in Victoria? posted by dave49 on April 13, 2010

Look up Eco-sense.ca. It is a project of two Victo-

ria residents, Ann and Gord Baird, to demonstrate asustainable and affordable lifestyle. Their off-grid,seismically reinforced cob home, fully equipped, cost$148.25 per square foot.

They pushed at a lot of policy issues and the latestchallenge is the valuation by BCAA and their result-ing tax bill. Under present law, they are paying moretax because they are equipped to be energy-indepen-dent (off-grid).

Info sheet at -- http://www.islandnet.com/~anngord/ downloads/eco-sense-general_info_sheet_feb2010.pdf

To quote Ann and Gord, If it isnt affordable... it isntsustainable.


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Homeless Housing for Less

Proposals to build free or low-cost homeless housing said to be stalled by the province.

TO LEFT: C-Bourne is working with developers in Saskatch-ewan who plan to erect prefabricated apartment buildings,then rent the suites for $550 to $700 a month. The apartmentscould include 480-square-foot bachelor suites such as theone pictured above. Each 20- by 24-foot unit would feature alarge glass wall overlooking a 20-foot-long balcony.

Last summer, Vancouver City Council invited sev-eral B.C.-based companies to submit ideas abouthow modular housing might be employed to house thehomeless.

Three container-based proposals were among theve submitted. One rm offered to build a 43-suite

supportive housing complex at no cost to taxpayers.Another offered to lease dormitory-style rooms foronly $350 a month. Yet another offered to build asimilar project from scratch using local labour at itsCoquitlam factory.

But the Vancouver councils enthusiasm for the proj-ect was dampened by a distinct lack of interest fromthe province. Vancouver councilor Kerry Jang said,This initiative just sort of stalled at the province.

This installment of The Tyee s overview of container-based housing takes a look at the three proposals.

MC Quarters offered free housing

Basically, we are asking the city to identify a sitewhere we could do a pilot project. And we will pro-vide the funding to develop that pilot project.

Thats the extraordinary offer MC Quarters presidentFrank Lo told The Tyee that he made to the city.

MC Quarters is a new company that is building pre-fabricated worker housing in China for export world-wide. It was founded by Lo, a longtime Vancouverresident and former shipping container broker. Lo

gures he sold more than a quarter of a million ship-ping containers before launching MC Quarters.

Los concept involves adapting technology developedfor refrigerated containers -- which are basically onesteel box inside another, with foam insulation sand-

This series was originally published on April 14, 2010, on TheTyee.ca. The electronic version of the story is available at http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/04/14/HomelessHousing/


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wiched between the walls -- for use as a structure inwhich super-insulated housing can be built.

MC Quarters sells construction camps to mining andoil companies. His company claims its container-based work camps are both more durable and moreeasily transported than the wood-frame modularstructures sold by competitors such as Atco, Britco orWilliams Scotsman. The B.C. companys rst order isfor a mining camp in the Yukon.

Los edgling company also prepared by far the mostdetailed of all the container-based homeless housingplans submitted to the city.

MC Quarters hired architect Gordon MacKenzie toplan 43 units of supportive housing in a three-storey

structure to be erected on a city-owned parking lot atthe southwest corner of Princess Avenue and PowellStreet. (See slide show at top of this page.)

In addition to 43 very small but fully self-containedsuites, the proposed 13,755-square-foot buildingwould include of ces as well as a kitchen, commonarea, and laundry room.

MC Quarters proposal pegged the construction costat $3.1 million. Thats $72,000 per suite. Lo said he

can deliver those units six months from the date hereceives an order.

BC Housing recently started construction on six of 14promised new homeless housing buildings in Vancou-ver. The suites planned for those mid-rise buildingsare almost twice as large as the room-sized units inthe MC Quarters proposal. But the BC Housing suitesare expected to cost taxpayers more than $350,000 perunit.

About $1.6 million of the projected construction costsfor the MC Quarters building is for on-site construc-tion by local trades, with the other half allotted forthe purchase of 30 prefabricated container modules.Lo -- who has already hired and architect and built aprototype with his own money -- said he has offeredto put up the cost of the containers, and help raise thecost of the local trade work.

This is basically a semi-commercial project as far aswere concerned, Lo said. We want to do somethingfor the community.

C-Bourne offered to lease rooms for $350 a month

Vancouver-based C-Bourne Structures is among MCQuarters competitors.

Though C-Bournes container housing proposal wasneither as elaborate nor ultimately as generous as MCQuarters, it did include one particularly intriguingelement: C-Bourne offered to lease the city howevermany units its needs for $350 per month per unit.

We lease these units all over the world, said C-Bourne partner Grant Powell, who joked that mining

juniors never actually buy anything.

C-Bourne is the Canadian distributor for Isopod mod-ular housing. Isopod is a Canadian-owned companythat has built thousands of units of container housingin places as far ung as Afghanistan, Dubai, Russiaand Saudi Arabia. Isopod owns one-third interest in aproprietary factory near Shanghai.

C-Bourne submitted a conceptual proposal for dor-mitory-style housing that could be quickly erected

on any city-owned lot, and then just as quickly disas-sembled when the real estate was needed for someother purpose.

I basically said to the city, Tell us what type of unitsyou want, how many you need, and where you wantto put them. Well engage engineers and architectsand bring you a proposal, Powell told The Tyee.

Powell offered to lease the city as many dormitory-style rooms -- with a shared bathroom down thehall -- as the city wanted for $350 a month per room.Thats $25 less than the $375-a-month housing allow-ance the province provides welfare recipients.

After seven years, the city would be eligible to buythe rooms for $10 each.

These units are virtually indestructible. Theres nodrywall to mildew or wood to rot, Powell said. If


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the city didnt want to keep them, we would happilytake them back.

C-Bourne is also working with developers in Sas-katchewan who hope to erect pre-fabricated apartmentbuildings in communities near the tar sands.

Its nuts out there, Powell said. Some of thosetowns are facing an even worse housing shortage thanVancouver.

Plans for the prairie apartment buildings call forsprawling three-story walkups surrounded by parkinglots. Most of the apartments would be 480-square-footbachelor suites with full kitchens, bathrooms, Murphybeds and in-suite laundry facilities. Each 20- by 24-foot unit would feature a large glass wall overlooking

a 20-foot-long balcony. (See a plan in the slide showat top of this page.)

Powell said C-Bourne can deliver and construct theseinstant apartment buildings in six months or less at acost of about $100 per square foot (excluding land).He said the developer aims to rent these apartmentsfor between $550 and $700 a month.

We can do two-bedrooms, three-bedrooms, any-thing, Powell said. This is just the tip of the ice-

berg.

Mogil offered to build in Coquitlam

While less detailed than either of its competitors,the third proposal offered the prospect of bolsteringthe B.C. economy by building its entire complex inCoquitlam.

Mogil Modular Structures was founded by Phil Wangand is run by his son Nam Wang. The family is fromKorea, where shipping containers are more frequentlyused as of ces and small shops.

Japan manufactured shipping containers to start off.But the cost was just too high, so it shifted to Korea,the younger Wang noted. Then the same cycle hap-pened again, and the production shifted to China.

Mogil builds 10-foot-wide containers that betterlend themselves for use as construction components.

Because Mogil is focused on the North Americanmarket, its super-sized containers do not have to t oncontainer ships.

That extra two feet makes a lot of difference, Wangsaid. Shipping containers are nice. But the width iseight foot. Its just too narrow. By the time you do thewalls, you put in a desk, and all you have is a littlespace as a corridor.

Mogil invested in all the tooling to make shippingcontainers from scratch, including massive metal-bending machines, precision plasma-cutting tablesand a giant painting booth.

We are pretty much self-contained, Wang said. Webring in raw materials. We stamp, we bend, we pro-

duce our own components. We dont source out anywork.

Mogils camp business has slowed down considerablyduring the past couple years. We had a good dealwith the oil elds, Wang said, but when that sloweddown there just werent any more orders.

So the family leapt at Vancouvers invitation topropose homeless housing. Mogil built a table-sizedmockup intended to show off both its design and itslocal fabrication abilities.

We built this miniature model just to show that wewere really into it 100 per cent, Wang said. Wethink these structures are ideal for housing. We wouldvery much like to nd a way to build some housing.

New vs. used containers

All three rms told The Tyee that the bene ts of

purpose-build containers outweigh the advantages of reusing end-of-life shipping containers.

I am biased against used containers, said Lo. I wasin the shipping business. These containers go all overthe world. You dont know what kind of freight theycarry. And then you expect people to live in them?

Lo added that new containers come from the factorywith certi cates that civil engineers can use to assessthe load-bearing ability of the steel frame.


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You cant even tell them what kind of steel an oldcontainer was made of, Lo said. If you have vol-ume, your price difference on a per-unit basis is notlarge.

Nam Wang agreed. He said that even without thevolume discounts available to larger rms, the costof cutting, re- ooring and repainting a used containercan wind up costing as much a new container.

Its like you converting your hatchback into a pick-up, Wang said. A lot more effort is going to go intoit to convert it, and its not really made for that.

Both the MC Quarters and C-Bourne units come t-ted out with xtures that would seem familiar to anyNorth American.

Remember that nearly everything we install in ourhomes is already made in China, Powell observed.He said C-Bourne installs the same American Stan-dard sinks and Bosch appliances available at the localHome Depot or Future Shop.

Powell added that the next generation of urban apart-ment buildings could just as easily include larger win-dows LED lighting, bamboo oors, solar hot waterheating or other green features.

We are still doing this

Another thing all three rms agreed upon was a senseof confusion about whether or not either the city orprovince will ever follow up on their proposals.

Several months went by. We heard nothing. And thenone day I got a call saying, Youve got to come pickup your stuff. Powell said.

In response to his questions, Powell said the city toldhim only that, BC Housing was not going to givethem any money for this.

Wang recounted a similar experience.

The whole idea with this was that we were going togive them a sweet deal so that we could help promoteour product, right? Powell said. But if they dontsee it, they dont see it.

City Councilor Kerry Jang, whose Vision Vancouverparty has promised to end street homelessness by2015, acknowledged that the process was dropped.

We welcomed these proposals in order to raiseawareness about this type of housing, Jang told TheTyee. And then we referred them to BC Housing forconsideration, because at the end of the day its BCHousing that has to decide whether or not these unitswould t their needs, Jang added.

Nothing came of it after that. It just sort of stalled inprovincial hands, he said.

On his own initiative, Lo recently met with HousingMinister Rich Coleman.

Its a chicken and egg situation, Lo said. The citywont grant a site without some signal that the prov-ince will help fund the support services. And theprovince wont commit to a project that doesnt havea site.

Lo said he is neither discouraged nor dissuaded.

We are still doing this. I think the key is to have pa-tience. Because the whole idea is for the communityto bene t. Lo said. I believe that it will work.


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is it best to keep the posted by frank2 on April 14, 2010

is it best to keep the homeless housed on the streets

and in shelters -- rather than allowing some to tryaffordable full-time accommodations? Why not trysome new options? We might learn something. Maybeeven nd low cost ways of dealing with the problem.

Great idea! posted by greengreen on April 14, 2010

I think this is fantastic! I would live in any of thestructures shown. Really, we have people living on thestreets because the city and province cant coordinate,get their shit together, and solve the problem! Howabsolutely pathetic! When the roof on BC Place got aslight tear last year, It took no time at all to come upwith a solution. Cost was no problem. When Falconcouldnt get a taxi, f---, there was a bill of rights forpassengers-problem solved immediately.

The homeless problem has been going on for at least15 years and will be with us for the forseeable future.

These accounts have shown a very workable, afford-able solution. Stop the bulllshit-get on with it.

Empowering People posted by jim1966 on April 18, 2010

I dont think that the BC Liberals are listening. Howcome our society values $350.00 per month instead of the value of everyones lives?. I live in a BC Housingbuilding. I am lucky because I had a social worker

who gave a crap and a doctor that did not want meto die on the streets. There are always 2 sides to anissue and this is one of them. We all want people tobe safe, fed and have a quality of life that Canadianshave come to enjoy. Problem is though is our viewof the poor, the addicted and the mentally ill. Howcan we build or refurbish anything when the taxpayerknows that within a few short years it all be trashedor wrecked anyways. I had to prove that I was worththe effort and take some responsibility for my own

life. Then I got help. More importantly people havegot to want to change and that is not always that easyto do. The second part of this is our current govern-ment. I have been saying this for a very long time and

thats British Columbias Social Services are not ableto handle the real human de cit.If it could we wouldhave a system in place that really works 99% of thetime. Because of my disability I was lucky enoughto get PWD and CPPD . I am one of those peoplewho our society considers The Deserving Poor, asopposed to the Undeserving Poor, this is how oursafety net really works, hence the various catagoriesfrom social services, IE: Expected To Work, $610.00,PPMB (Or Level 1) $667.00 and PWD $906.00 permonth. These are the real numbers for a month. Iwould like to see this entire ministry do a completeoverhaul of its own policies etc. I can also tell youthis, I will not be voting for the BC Liberals in thenext election. In my case a graduated program workedreally well. Could we not try this out in the future. Wewould have a much much smaller homeless popula-tion and a lot of people could take there own livesback?


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After the Fact:The City of Vancouver passes amotion on modular housing, July 2010

The following motion was passed during the City Council meeting on July 20, 2010. More informationis available at http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20100720/regu20100720ag.htm


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Five Myths About Green Building

Green doesnt have to mean expensive, exotic or uncomfortable.

G reen buildings have earned a reputation for beinglarge, complicated and absurdly expensive. Thisis particularly true in Vancouver, where taxpayers arestill forking out millions of dollars a month in interestpayments on the worlds rst LEED Platinum neigh-bourhood -- the 2010 Olympic Village.

But this reputation is increasingly at odds with thenext-generation of green homes, schools and work-places. These green buildings -- most of which arecerti ed by organizations such as the Canada GreenBuilding Council or Built Green -- tend to be small,simple, and surprisingly affordable.

Whats more, these green buildings represent the fast-est growing sector within the North American con-

struction industry, one that McGraw-Hill Constructionestimated to be worth $60 billion last year.

During the next several weeks, The Tyee SolutionsSociety will explore trends within green building --call it Green Building 2.0 -- with an eye for ideas thatcould pay off by helping create sustainable jobs inBritish Columbia, lower energy bills and make a realdent in emissions causing costly climate change.

Today: A look at ve common misperceptions aboutgreen building.

Myth #1: Green buildings cost more.

Its easy to see what spawned this idea.

The Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre isthe worlds rst LEED Platinum conference hall. Itboasts an arti cial reef as well as a ve-acre livingroof. And it cost B.C. taxpayers more than double the

promised price.

Likewise, the Olympic Village and Southeast FalseCreek neighbourhood were also awarded Platinumstatus by the Canada Green Building Councils LEED(Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design)program. The 32 hectare reclaimed industrial sitefeatures an innovative district heating system as wellas one of Canadas rst net zero buildings (designedto produce as much energy as it consumes). But the

This series was originally published on January 6, 2011, on TheTyee.ca. The electronic version of the story is available at http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/01/06/GreenBuildingMyths/


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project bankrupted its developer and left Vancouvertaxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dol-lars.

These high-pro le megaprojects appear to con rm thewidely held opinion that green design costs more. In-deed, respondents to a survey by the World BusinessCouncil for Sustainable Development were found tobelieve that green buildings cost an average of 17 percent more than conventional buildings.

But theres another question to be asked: Did Van-couvers signature green projects run over budgetbecause of sustainable design? Or did costs skyrocketbecause these megaprojects were specd by ambitiouspoliticians, built by loosely supervised public-privatepartnerships and rushed to completion at the peak of arecord-smashing real estate bubble?

Theres evidence that green design does not in u-ence construction cost. A study that compared 221new buildings found no difference in cost between 83LEED buildings and 138 similar conventional build-ings.

There is no signi cant difference in average costs forgreen buildings as compared to non-green buildings,concluded Davis Langdon, the rm that conducted the2006 study, Cost of Green Revisited.

The Davis Langdon study compared LEED librariesto non-LEED libraries, LEED community centres tonon-LEED community centres, LEED laboratories tonon-LEED laboratories, and so forth. The study foundno signi cant statistical difference between theaverage costs per square foot for LEED versus con-ventional buildings.

Developers who persist in thinking about green build-ing the same way they think about Sub Zero kitchens-- as something to be added on to a conventionallydesigned building -- will incur higher costs, the studywarned.

We continue to see project teams conceiving of sustainable design as a separate feature. This leadsto the notion that green design is something that getsadded to a project -- therefore they must add cost, theDavis Langdon study concluded. Until design teamsunderstand that green design is not additive, it will

be dif cult to overcome the notion that green designcosts more.

Myth #2: Green building materials must beimported.

This notion appears to combine the misunderstand-ing that green design is an additive feature with themisimpression that the preferred additions includeelements such as European plumbing, exotic plantsand tropical materials such as cork or bamboo.

The truth is that none of the major green building cer-ti cation systems require exotic materials, and severalactively discourage the use of such products.

Granted, as recently as a decade ago, it was still dif-cult to obtain green xtures such as ef cient lights

or low- ow toilets. But thats no longer the case.High-ef ciency xtures of all types are now availableat competitive prices in nearly every hardware store inNorth America.

Likewise, some rst generation green roofs didexperiment with exotic plants. But LEED and othercerti cation systems now reward the selection of na-tive and locally adapted plants, as well as the use of building products manufactured within 500 miles of the construction site.

Where forest products must be shipped from afar,most green building certi cation systems reward theuse of wood that is grown and harvested in certi edforests. These policies create a competitive advantagefor Canadian wood products because Canada boastsmore hectares of certi ed forest than any other nation.

Myth #3: Green buildings energy savings aremore hype than reality.

Buildings account for up to half of energy use andconsume up to 72 per cent of electricity, according tostatistics compiled by the U.S. Energy InformationAdministration.

Reducing the amount of energy used in buildings iswidely regarded as the cheapest and easiest way tolower dependency on fossil fuels and reduce emis-sions of associated greenhouse gasses. (Green build-ing may also be among the few carbon reduction


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strategies that create jobs in both the short and longterms.)

But misperceptions and misleading claims aboutgreen building have left many with the impressionthat green buildings are not energy ef cient.

Since the 1970s, many green technology promot-ers installed expensive solar photovoltaic arrays orgeothermal heat pumps on existing buildings as a wayof demonstrating their products. In so doing, theycreated facilities that generate carbon-free power,then squander that energy in drafty and poorly insu-lated buildings. Such kluge-like constructions are theantithesis of green design, but its understandable thatpassersby could confuse them for green buildings.

Likewise, the prototypical Vancouver condo build-

ing -- towers of (poorly insulated) glass separated by(heat radiating) concrete balconies -- provides about atenth of the insulation value that a wood-frame homedoes. Yet, through the addition of a few energy ef-

cient appliances, unscrupulous (or merely ignorant)marketers have succeeded in labeling condo towers asgreen buildings.

The truth is that mainstream green building certi ca-tion systems such as LEED, Built Green Canada, andGreen Globes all reward strategies that lower energy

demand, while next-generation standards such as Pas-sivHaus and Living Buildings are whittling buildingenergy use very close to zero.

Research has con rmed that certi ed green buildingssave energy and money. A study by the New Build-ings Institute found energy use in green buildings tobe 24 per cent lower than in conventional buildings.And a survey by the US General Services Adminis-tration found that the rst dozen LEED buildings inits portfolio consumed 26 per cent less energy andproduced 33 per cent lower carbon dioxide emissionsthan comparable government-owned buildings.

Myth #4: Green buildings are less comfortable.

This idea may be rooted in a Victorian perception of comfort, which cherishes plush drapes and thickcarpets and lavish wallcoverings.

The Victorian approach to interior decorating madegood sense in an era when homes were exceedinglydrafty and everything was made from natural materi-als.

But buildings changed. By the 1970s, curtain wallshad led to of ce buildings with controlled ventilation.And by the 1990s, better quality windows and doorshad made many homes relatively air-tight.

So did furnishings. By the late 20th century, the useof toxic chemicals had become commonplace in themanufacture of paint, carpet and furniture. Many of those chemicals, such as formaldehyde and vinyl,continue off-gassing for years. For a time, consum-ers were persuaded that the resulting new car smellwas a bene t. But as buildings became tighter, peoplestarted to get sick.

Studies by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencyfound that, on average, Americans spend 90 per centof their time indoors, where they are exposed to con-centrations of chemical pollutants that are 100 timesgreater than outdoors.

Green design aims to improve indoor air quality byeliminating toxic building materials. Many rst-gen-eration green buildings eliminated carpet and drapesaltogether. These were replaced with nontoxic -- but

hard -- surfaces such as wood or concrete. Somepeople found the hard surfaces within these rst-generation green structures to be cold, uninviting andacoustically annoying.

In the past decade, the supply of non-toxic nishingsand furnishings has caught up with the demands of air-tight green buildings. Nontoxic paints and carpetsare now commonplace. And the choice of interior

nishings is once again a matter of taste rather thantoxicity.

Myth #5: Green building is a fad.

As was the case with the previous myths, past is pro-logue.

Alternative building exploded in the 1970s. Backyardinventors pioneered ideas about solar design and natu-ral material selection that have evolved into todaysgreen building standards. But an awful lot of those


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do-it-yourself homes were, in a word, awful. A fewbuildings survived, but the movement did not.

Having watched that fad come and go, constructionindustry veterans should be forgiven for believing thatthis green building boom will do the same. Many arequick to point out that few of those early alternativebuildings held value relative to conventional proper-ties.

But there is evidence that in addition to spawning a$60 billion-a-year industry, this generation of certi edgreen buildings is fetching a premium in the market-place.

A University of California study compared the rentsat 694 certi ed green of ce buildings with 7,489conventional of ce buildings. All of the comparison

properties were located within a quarter mile of thegreen building.

The study found that, on average, certi ed greenbuilding rent for two per cent more than comparablebuildings. After adjusting for factors including ageand occupancy levels, the University of Californiaresearchers gured that green certi cation added anaverage of $5 million to the market value of eachgreen of ce building.


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Industial practices in materials production. posted by Chernoe Znamia on January 10, 2011

First, thanx for the great article. It has been many

years of greenwash in the building trades, focusingon energy savings rather than curing the sickness of industrial production and shipping of green, or anyother building materials that we use to build with...

...Every community in B.C is surrounded by wood,stone, clay, almost everything needed to build withlocal materials. I think its a mistake to to try to buildgreen like the rest of the world. A world lacking theabundance of NATURAL resources that B.C enjoys.Wood is the obvious answer and if it is kept dry andout of the sun will last inde nitely.

Here in B.C the option to step away from the indus-trialization of the planet and embrace from harvestto installation without industrial practice. We can beindustrious without industry.and bring back skillsinstead of division of labour and assembly line hell.

future topic posted by icare_dou on January 10, 2011

Id love to see more coverage on the negative impacton indoor air quality in green and energy ef centhomes. During the rst energy crisis we sealed upcommercial buildings and people got sick. We subse-quently required commercial buildings to have freshair ventilation. We are still in the phase of sealing uphomes without requiring adequate fresh air. Research-ers have already documented that green or energyef cent homes have higher concentrations of pollut-ants than traditional homes built at the same time.

As a residential builder posted by cynic on January 10, 2011

As a residential builder, I like to stay abreast of thelatest building science and I feel fairly well-versed. Ican think of a point or two that are worth keeping inmind.

First, the greenest thing you can do is not build. Con-struction materials contain so much embodied energythat the green choice is to buy an existing buildingand renovate. Obviously there are many consider-

ations in that scenario.

That said, over the life of a building, heating is by farthe largest cost. The two main factors for achieving alow energy use home are good insulation and a prop-erly detailed air barrier.

I think that achieving a green certi cation like R2000or LEED can be too costly for individuals and mighteven be unnecessary. Were lucky here in our marinecoastal area where temperature and humidity uc-tuations are relatively at. Imo, (and starting with awaterproof envelope), good insulation, a meticulouslydetailed air barrier, and a heating system that mechan-ically controls air changes will produce a comfortable,energy ef cient home without costing the earth.

Right on Chernoe Znamia! posted by Stayweird on January 10, 2011

What a clear statement of a building ethic I have tried

to live out in the real world, mostly in isolation. I wasfortunate to aquire raw land in a district without anenforced building code. It seems to me no real changecan happen without radical land reform. Is it not ahuman right to occupy some small piece of the planetwe were born on without huge mortgages or rent toa landlord? Owner built housing is a luxury very fewcan achieve. The average logging slash pile containsenough materials to build a small home and heat it fortwo winters(Ive done it). Our greatest resource hereis land and no way to occupy it without oppression.


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Green Homes For Less

Three affordable homes that could change that way you think about green building.

In New Orleans, on the very spot where HurricaneKatrina breached a levee, more than 50 LEEDPlatinum homes have been built for an average cost of about $150,000 each.

In Philadelphia, on an inner-city in ll site deemedworthless by mainstream developers, a two-storeyLEED Platinum home has been built for only$100,000.

And on Lopez Island, just east of Victoria, B.C., agroup of families have built their own net-zero homesfor a net cost of just $112,000 apiece.

While megaprojects such as the Olympic Villagehelped introduce green building to the public, smallhomes like these may come to de ne green buildingin the next decade.

In New Orleans, a green neighbourhood rises

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed more than350,000 homes. Another 146,000 suffered major dam-age. Five years later, much of New Orleans remains aghost town.

The Make It Right foundation was created to helprebuild a 16-block area within the citys Lower NinthWard. Its founder, actor Brad Pitt, sought not only torebuild one of New Orleans poorest districts but totransform it into a neighbourhood of green homes thatcost less to operate, provide better indoor air quality,and are built to survive the next hurricane.

Make It Right has built 50 LEED Platinum homeshousing 179 people. A hundred more homes are underconstruction.

Property owners are able to choose from more than adozen green home designs. Some of the designs incor-porate elements of the neighbourhoods architectur-ally distinct steamboat houses. Others are distinctlymodern.

The rst 50 homes cost about $150,000 each to build.Make It Right hopes to build the next group for evenless.

Though inexpensive, these homes arent cheap. Thelist of features is impressive. Metal roofs absorb lessheat and reduce the need for air conditioning. Pho-tovoltaic panels, tankless water heaters and EnergyStar appliances slash monthly power bills. Bluwoodframing, spray foam insulation and mold-resistant

This series was originally published on January 7, 2011, on TheTyee.ca. The electronic version of the story is available at http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/01/07/GreenHomesForLess/


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drywall reduce moisture problems. Zero-VOC paint,formaldehyde-free cabinets and green carpet improveindoor air quality.

And the Make It Right homes -- the rst of which wasbuilt on the very spot where the Industrial Canal leveebreached on Aug. 29, 2005 -- are designed to with-stand the next hurricane.

They are built with advanced framing techniquesdesigned to withstand winds of more than 130 milesper hour. They are elevated beyond U.S. governmentrequirements to ensure they will stand above the next

ood. They are landscaped with pervious concretesidewalks and driveways that allow stormwater todrain freely. And they include roof hatches, just incase.

The new houses have been estimated to be 10 timesmore sustainable than the homes they replace. And theLower Ninth Ward now boasts the largest communityof LEED Platinum homes in the world.

In Philadelphia, a LEED home for $100K

Proof that one does not need to build 50 homes at atime in order to lower the cost of building green isprovided by Philadelphia developer Postgreen, whichbuilt a 1,150 square foot LEED Platinum row house

for a construction cost of only $100,000.

The 100K House was conceived as an attempt toprove that green construction can be affordable if properly designed and executed, said Postgreenpresident Chad Ludeman.

The two-storey row house demonstrates how the mod-ern construction methods (such as structural insulatedpanels) can update a familiar urban oor plan: twobedrooms separated by a bathroom upstairs, a livingroom and kitchen downstairs.

The 100K houses roof uses solar energy to heat thehouses hot water, and collects rainwater for use in thegarden. Its walls are constructed from prefabricatedpanels of rigid foam insulation sandwiched betweensheets of oriented strand board (called SIPs) and

tted with high-performance casement windows tocreate a tightly sealed envelope.

The home is cooled through a ductless (mini-split)air conditioner, heated via a radiant in- oor system,and tempered year-round with a small energy recov-ery ventilator. The interior features low- or no-VOC

nishes, while the small yard is landscaped withdrought-tolerant plants and 100 per cent permeablewalkways.

In addition to being certi ed LEED Platinum, the100K House won a LEED for Homes Project of theYear award from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Wherever possible we reduced complexity and nishlevel until we had a very clean, modern, simple home.Then we focused on those areas of green buildingwhere we saw the most value... location, site andenergy ef ciency, Postgreen wrote in accepting theaward.

Postgreens post-100K experience also proves theresmoney to be made in small green homes. The com-pany sold the 100K House for more than twice what itcost to build, and is now developing a PassivHaus andother projects in the Fishtown, Kensington and North-ern Liberties neighborhoods of Philadelphia.

On Lopez Island, a net zero co-op

By pooling their resources and providing much of

their own labour, a group of Washington State fami-lies have succeeded in building 11 net-zero homes fora net cost of just $112,000 apiece.

Lopez Island lies due east of Victoria, B.C., in whatthe Americans call the San Juan Islands. As is thecase on the Canadian Gulf Islands such as Mayne orSalt Spring, home prices in the San Juans have spi-raled beyond reach of working families. Accordingto a government report, Working people and peoplewho grew up in the islands have a hard time ndingpermanent housing in the county at prices local wagescan support.

The Lopez Community Land Trust was created toaddress this problem. And Common Ground, a coop-erative project of 11 family homes, is Lopez newestdevelopment.

The project has functioned like a green buildingworkshop since its inception. Residents were involved


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in the design and construction, and remain responsiblefor efforts to maximize ongoing performance. Dozensof volunteers, professionals and interns also partici-pated.

Though the site is only seven-tenths of an acre, theprojects design takes advantage of its strengths.These include solar gain for heating water, prevailingwinds for ventilation, rain fall to offset potable waterdemand, and a climate suitable for gardening. Passivedesign strategies enable the project to minimize heat-ing and cooling demand.

Lopez Common Ground uses 60 per cent less energyand 30 per cent less water than similar buildings. Asolar photovoltaic system -- funded through a grantand a rebate program provided by the utility -- pro-vides much of what power is required.

The total price per unit (including land, constructionand soft costs) was $236,000. But after deductinggrants and incentives such as those for the solar powerpanels, the net cost per household came to about$112,000 -- plus a lot of labour.

The Lopez homes were designed to produce as muchenergy as they consume, and data collected in the pastyear show that several have achieved net zero energyconsumption.

Though the Common Ground project did not pursueany certi cation, the cooperative used the LEED forHomes, Built Green, and Energy Star programs asguidelines.

And last fall, the Home Depot Foundation awardedCommon Ground its Award of Excellence for Afford-able Housing Built Responsibly. The award came with$75,000 to help the Lopez Community Land Trust getstarted on its next project.

Polishing the turd

Consider what these three projects have in commonwith one another, as well as how they differ fromthe sea of (unsold) new housing built in the past fewyears.

Heres what youll nd in each of these affordablegreen homes: A high-performance building envelope.

Each of these homes have walls that are almost twicethe thickness of the minimum that code requires. Eachof those walls contain high-performance insulation.(None of these builders use berglass batts.) Thedoors and windows in each of these homes are notonly double-glazed but also tightly sealed. And eachof the gaps between doors, windows, junction boxesand the high-performance walls are foamed, taped orotherwise sealed to prevent air leakage.

Heres what you wont nd in any of these homes:Italian marble countertops, European faucets or Sub-Zero kitchen appliances.

In other words, these builders invested in the partsof a house that last for 100 years or more, rather thansquandering money on xtures that are typically re-placed every 10 to 20 years.

Postgreen partner Nic Darling put it this way:

Why do production home builders and establisheddevelopers, people who have been building homes formany years, have to spend 15 per cent more to get toLEED Platinum while us rookies are getting there at adiscount? Darling asked.

Most of the builders and developers reporting highpremiums for pursuing LEED are still trying to build

the exact same home they have always built. Theyare simply adding features to make that same houseenergy ef cient, healthy and sustainable, Darlingcontinued.

So, they polish the turd. Rather than redesign thehouse that has been successful for them in the past,they add solar panels, geothermal systems, high-endinterior xtures, extra insulation and other green fea-tures. The house gets greener. It gets certi ed, but italso increases signi cantly in cost. Since the featuresare add-ons and extras, the price rises as each one istacked on.


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Neighbourhoods wont accept polished turds posted by Tommy Boy on January 10, 2011

Good stuff, Monte. Its not a matter of if, but when

this type of housing will be the norm. Im impressedby the cost savings in construction. These type of homes are ideal for our relatively moderate climate,and the Philadelphia model shows that they are alsopractical and viable in the the harsher climes as well.

However, land prices in New Orleans and Philadel-phia are not though the roof. As well, most LowerMainland neighborhoods would not accept a polishedturd, a golden turd or a titanium one. The rallying cryis that we must preserve the character of the neigh-borhood (a character that most of them had nothingto do with creating). If NIMBY attitudes and neigh-borhood vehemence against any change persists, youwont be able to build a bird house, never mind hav-ing a sustainable society. People who live in towersagainst people living in more towers. What a world!Looking forward to the series and hope more youngfolks read it.

Wood frame construction

posted by mcik prince on January 11, 2011

I believe the use of more wood within the construc-tion of new homes and commercial buildings willreduce the amount of gravel.This would also reduce the massive use of cement thattilt up buildings use and save our environment fromthe gravel producers.

Photovoltaic panels? posted by Sask Resident on January 11, 2011

Except for the inclusion of the uneconomic photovol-taic panels, most of these building make a lot a sense.The knock against breglass was unwarranted sincethe life cycle of breglass is well known while theblown foam is still relatively new. The keys to anybuilding is, in order of priority, the foundation, thebuilding structure, the envelope then the basic hardwear (the electrical wiring, the water and sewer pip-ing, any heating system),then everything else. I liked

the focus on not spending lots on short-term xturesand more on the building itself.

The cheapest energy?

posted by Countrytype on January 12, 2011

Is the energy that isnt used. Passivhaus is the wayto go. Biogas from humanure is another engineer-ing frontier that has been crossed in Asia but not inCanada yet. But, can we afford to ignore one of ouronly growing and free resources?

Great to read about the green and affordable posted by Countrytype on January 12, 2011

My folks built a passive solar and wood furnace housein Ontario at the end of the 1970s alt building boom.We were squarely in the centre or slightly lower of themiddle class, without inheritances, and with one 9-5breadearner and one housewife. Labour costs werekept down by my dad and friends supplying muchof the labour of framing, laying oors, drywalling,and such on weekends and in summer, and by hiringstudent labourers.

Thick walls and ceilings, and thermally broken win-dows, doors and foundation were the secret to holdingindoor temperatures at comfortable levels. Large win-dows were a big cost, but in winter let in heat, whilein summer they let in breezes. Overhangs providedshade and cooling in summer, and protection fromrain on the walls in winter. A lot of wood was used insiding, as it was more insulating than vinyl. The houseI live in in Vancouver now has such thin and poorlyinsulated walls that they feel chilly even when thefurnace has been on for an hour.

With a little design help (to avoid the awkward lookof my parents home), the energy savings available todwellers in better insulated buildings would be veryattractive. No sick home there, it was not an of cebuilding or full of foams and glues.


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How Do They Decide a Building is

Green?The Tyee Guide to green building certi cation systems in Canada.

LEED. Built Green. BOMA BESt. Green Globes. Pas-sivhaus. Living Building. Got it?

Of course not. No worries, though. Youve found TheTyee Guide to green building certi cation systemsin Canada. Give us 10 minutes, and well teach you

enough about green building certi cation to fake yourway through a cocktail party with the arrogant archi-tect of your choosing.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

LEED, as this mouthful of awkward acronym is moreeasily described, is the leading green building ratingsystem in the U.S. and Canada. There are now morethan 32,000 projects registered in the LEED program,plus 7,748 projects already certi ed.

The LEED standard is set -- and repeatedly rewrit-ten -- by the non-pro t U.S. Green Building Council,and administered by the Green Building Certi cationInstitute.

The Canada Green Building Council is one of 16international green building councils that maintain amirror-like standard that preserves the structure andintents of the American version, while adapting minordetails for domestic conditions and building codes.Through such af liations, LEED is now in more than90 countries.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and its

many sisters are on a mission to change the (built)world. Setting green building standards is only the be-ginning of an agenda that includes rewriting buildingcodes, transforming the marketplace and educatingthe public. The USGBC warns that buildings are re-sponsible for 39 per cent of American CO2 emissions,and promises that a commitment to green building canmeet 85 per cent of that nations future demand forenergy while generating 2.5 million new jobs.

LEED was drafted through a consensus-based processin the late 1990s, and the rst rating tool, LEED forNew Construction, was launched in 2000. The LEEDstandards are continually revised by a sprawling net-work of committees.

There are now six LEED Canada rating systems,including LEED for Commercial Interiors, LEED forCore and Shell, LEED for Existing Buildings, LEEDfor Homes and LEED for Neighbourhood Develop-ments.

This series was originally published on April 14, 2010, on TheTyee.ca. The electronic version of the story is available at http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/01/11/GreenCerti cation/


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All LEED certi cation systems are structured aroundsix core categories: sustainable sites (using urbanbrown elds good, ripping up prime farmland bad),water ef ciency (both indoor and landscaping),energy and atmosphere (extra points for reducingcarbon emissions) materials and resources (the 500Mile Diet), indoor environmental quality (no New CarSmell) and innovation in design.

LEED rating systems are points-based. A candidateproject must meet a slate of minimum standards inorder to be eligible. Once those prerequisites are met,candidate projects earn points by documenting thatthey have met or exceeded additional green build-ing criteria. Projects that earn 40 per cent or more of available points are deemed LEED Certi ed. Projectsthat get 50 per cent earn LEED Silver rating, 60 percent earn LEED Gold, and 80 per cent earn LEED

Platinum.

Such a multifaceted rating system is neither simplenor inexpensive to administer. In order to make itwork, the Green Building Certi cation Institute hascerti ed more than 157,000 professionals to navigatethe LEED maze. (About 10,000 of whom are in Can-ada.) The USGBC also offers training at its annualGreenbuild conference. (The next is in Toronto.)

LEEDs complex and continually evolving nature is

also the source of much criticism. Large developersgripe about the cost of hiring LEED professionals andthe time it takes to receive certi cation, while manysmall builders avoid LEED altogether.

Built Green Canada

Built Green Canada, which has enrolled more than15,000 homes, is everything that LEED is not.

Whereas LEED has been applied primarily on largeprojects, Built Green Canada was created for single-family homes and small multi-unit residences.

Whereas LEED often requires the use of paid consul-tants, Built Green Canada posts its online checklistatop the front page of its web site and encourages allcomers to give it a spin.

Whereas LEED was imported from the states, BuiltGreen Canada is a made-in-Alberta program.

And whereas the Canadian Green Building Councilis on a mission to gradually upgrade laws and build-ing codes, the Built Green Canada is committed to anon-regulatory market-driven approach to optimizethe use of innovative industry-based solutions to po-tential environmental problems.

Built Green began as a discussion among some Al-berta homebuilders, and evolved into a project of theCanadian Home Builders Association (CHBA). Itsfounders examined several Built Green programs inthe United States, as well as the U.S. National Asso-ciation of Home Builders green home building guide-lines. Built Green Canada was launched in Alberta in2003, nationwide the following year. (Click here forB.C.)

The Built Green program is pointedly simple: (1.) The

builder must complete a two-day Built Green BuilderTraining course and become a Built Green Certi edBuilder; (2.) The certi ed builder submits an enroll-ment form, the completed checklist and a standardizedassessment of the homes energy ef ciency; (3.) Athird party energy auditor conducts a blower door testand con rms the energy assessment. Upon completionand inspection, the builder receives an EnerGuide forNew Houses rating label and a Built Green seal forthe home. Both are af xed to the furnace.

The EnerGuide for New Houses rating and labelingsystem is the mandatory requirement at the heart of the Built Green program. EnerGuide is not unique toBuilt Green, but is a Canadian government program.It is based on a 100-point scale, with zero being theleast energy ef cient and 100 being the most. In 2005,the average Canadian home rated 66 on the Ener-Guide scale.

A Built Green home must achieve an EnerGuide forNew Houses rating of at least 72 to be certi ed. AnEnerGuide rating of 75 is required to earn a silver rat-ing, 77 earns a gold, and 82 earns a platinum.

In addition, the online checklist offers variety of greenfeatures from which the builder selects a minimumnumber to meet a chosen achievement level. Thechecklist is revised annually.

Advocates of the accessible and transparent BuiltGreen Canada program note that it has educated


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hundreds of builders and improved the energy per-formance of 15,000 homes, very few of which wouldhave participated in the much more rigorous LEEDsystem.

Critics complain that Built Green requires little inthe way of site selection, water savings or materialselection. They further note the EnerGuide R-2000standard -- which forms the basis for both the trainingof Built Green builders and the bar above which BuiltGreen platinum homes must rise -- was drafted 30years ago by the federal government, and represents anarrow and outdated de nition of green building.

BOMA BESt (aka Go Green, aka Green Globes, aka BREEAM-Canada)

Just to spice up this alphabet soup of acronyms, the

other major Canadian green building certi cation sys-tem has operated under several different names.

More than 800 commercial buildings have been certi-ed under the system now known as BOMA BESt.

BOMA BESt shares a common ancestry with LEED.Both evolved from the United Kingdoms BRE En-vironmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), whichin 1990 was rst to offer an environmental label forbuildings.

The Canadian Standards Association publishedBREEAM-Canada as a guideline (but not a ratingsystem) for existing buildings in 1996. The Americanauthors of the rst LEED standard have acknowl-edged borrowing ideas from BREEAM and BREE-AM-Canada.

A program called Green Globes was created in 2000as an assessment and rating tool based on the BREE-AM-Canada guidelines. And in 2004, the BuildingOwners and Manufacturers Association of Canada(BOMA) adopted a version of the BREEAM-Canada/Green Globe standard for existing buildings, andrebranded it Go Green.

BOMA subsequently renamed its program BOMABESt (for Existing Buildings). BOMA BESt featuresfour levels of certi cation and a simpli ed (online)

application procedure. Participants assess their ownfacilities, then hire a third-party veri er to achievecerti cation.

Major commercial real estate rms such as CadillacFairview, Bentall Real Estate, SNC Lavalin Profacand GWL Realty Advisors use BOMA BESt, whichclaims its certi ed buildings use 11 per cent lessenergy and 18 per cent less water than the industrystandard.

Complicating the brand a bit further, an Americangroup called the Green Building Initiative was cre-ated in 2004 to launch an industry-led version of Green Globes in the states. That system is based ona 1,000-point scale divided into categories similar toLEED: site, energy, water, resources and materials,emissions and ef uents and project management. As

is the case with LEED, roughly a third of the totalpoints are allotted in the energy category.

A University of Minnesota team published a detailedcomparison of the American LEED and Green Globesystems. The 2006 study found the Green Globessystem appears to be doing a fairly good job in im-proving upon the delivery mechanisms employedby LEED which are so often criticized. The onlineapproach to assessment not only improves ef ciencyand reduces costs, but also provides opportunities to

in uence the design and planning processes of theproject through immediate feedback not availablefrom a primarily paper-based system.

Next-generation rating systems

While Built Green and Green Globes serve the greenbuilding industry by providing less complicated alter-natives to LEED, a new pair of labels have challengedLEEDs dominance by offering even more stringentstandards.

Passivhaus is a European standard focused solely onenergy use. Passivhaus certi ed buildings must con-sume no more than 15 kilowatt hours of energy persquare metre per year. In order to achieve this rigid re-quirement, Passivhause structures are super-insulatedand astonishingly airtight. Many are built withoutfurnaces, even in northern countries.


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There are an estimated 25,000 Passivhause buildingsin Europe, but only a handful in North America. Oneis in Whistler.

Living Buildings, on the other hand, produce theirown energy, capture and process their own water andrelease minimal toxins. The Living Building Chal-lenge describes itself as a philosophy, advocacyplatform and certi cation program that aims to bethe most stringent in the world. (More about LivingBuildings later in this series.)

A project of the Cascadia Region Green BuildingCouncil -- the only multinational chapter of the U.S.and Canada green building councils -- the Interna-tional Living Building Institute will convene its fthannual unconference in Vancouver this April.


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Tough Question, Monte posted by VivianLea Doubt on January 12, 2011

But after a little re ection, I think transportation has

to come rst among elements. In the face of peakoil and water shortages that have hit many Canadianmunicipalities, this may seem, gosh almost frivolous...In thinking about the best community I ever lived in,it was actually also the poorest. What this meant wasthat people walked, took the bus, rode their bikes -obviously because they had to - and the corollary wasthat anywhere one went there were opportunities tomeet ones neighbours.

On any given day then, I had brief, friendly conver-sations - or even simply exchanges of greetings, as Imoved about my neighbourhood. The impact of thison obesity, or traf c jams, or a myriad of other factorsprobably cannot be overstated. Certainly, its impacton social relationships cannot be overstated; here wasa place where school children walked to school, andneighbours looked out for them, where elders werelooked out for, too, where we felt mostly con dentand safe in our place. This is in stark contrast to thesterile subdivision where I now reluctantly reside -

where everyone has a car and no one talks to eachother because they never see each other.

Maybe, just maybe, if we had neighbourhoods wherepeople walked to the store, the coffee shop, the bus- maybe this might be the catalyst for the other deepchanges that need to be made.

Why the need to prioritize? posted by stevesatow on January 13, 2011

Monte, rstly I want to say that I have enjoyed read-ing this series of articles on green building. Thankyou.

That being said, I question the premise that there is aneed to arti cially prioritise ANY element in favourof others when drafting a certi cation programme.

tered project just outside Victoria and, for me, thepriority is to try to BALANCE all the elements inorder to create a building that sits comfortably in itsenvironment.

That being said, sometimes the elements are self-se-lecting. For instance; we may not have a choice as toour site, and this could have implications with regardsto transportation, etc. that are outside our control(short of not building at all).

I believe we need to have an holistic approach whichrecognises the conditions that apply and works tomaximise the potential of all the elements.

shipping green from the ground up

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