High Park Lofts, Toronto’s first condominium project to use a geoexchange system for heating and cooling is featured in the article “One hot address” in the October 31 2008 edition of the Toronto Sun. Since the building is pushed flush to all setbacks on the lot lines, the only place for the loop field was [...]

Elio Di Iorio has started up a development project intended to be a full-blown ethical green community residential building, and he wants your input. The goals are high and offer a breath of fresh air in Toronto’s otherwise typical antagonistic community-developer relationship, featuring LEED Platinum goal, brownfield development, full community-oriented integrated design, and much much [...]

Integrated Environmental Solutions Limited has released a free energy modeling plug-in for Google Sketchup. This looks promising. Other free energy modeling with a 3-D interface is eQuest and a beta Google Sketchup interface for EnergyPlus. Of course, the idea of the free back end and plugin is to get you hooked enough to buy the [...]

If you think crawlspaces have to be “icky,” think again. Building science whiz Joe Lstiburek has published “New Light In Crawlspaces” to guide you through the mess. An earlier version of this article first appeared in ASHRAE journal several months ago. It’s great to see this information being made available for non-subscribers. Other highly recommended [...]

U.S. Green Building Council president distributed some stirring words by e-mail to all members on October 17 2008 making it clear the Council has set its sights on the existing buildings market. The time has come. Dear USGBC Constituents: In recent weeks, a wave of fear and pessimism propagated by the world financial crisis has [...]

Ontario’s fifth annual public sector energy management conference hosted by Peel Region will take place April 20-21 in Mississauga. Building on earlier years where strategic planning and changing mindsets were themes, this year’s focus is on implementation, primarily energy management. Designed to foster the best practices that make today’s public agencies greener places to work [...]

Phil McNeely, MPP (Ottawa-Orléans) introduced Bill 101 – Home Energy Rating Act in late September 2008. If the bill becomes law, Ontario will join B.C. and several other progressive jurisdictions in requiring energy evaluations for all new homes and at time of sale for all existing homes. This is an important step towards recognizing the [...]