Architects designing custom homes often seem to go overboard on the complexity of the shape, seemingly unaware of the impacts on construction cost and operational cost. Let’s look at the walls of two custom homes of equal floor area but different shape. Both homes are 5400 square feet on one level, nice sprawling ranch homes [...]

The font page of the Toronto Star of today, Sunday February 15 2009, had the headline “Meet the doomsayers of our time” featuring some interviews with various ‘doomers’ in the city. I was impressed with the direction of the Toronto Survivalism Group which is not about the stereotypical independent survivalist hoarding food, fuel, guns & [...]

David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept, and author of the deep ecology treatise “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability” has examined the challenges of our times and created a web-based book at www.FutureScenarios.org where he describes in detail how society will react to the issues of climate change and peak energy. Holmgren begins with [...]

In the interview How to Publish in a Recession, Chelsea Green president Margo Baldwin recounts some of the best selling backlist titles: The Four Season Harvest and New Organic Grower by Eliot Coleman (over 100k copies sold of all editions), The Straw Bale House (over 150k copies sold), The Man Who Planted Trees (300k copies [...]

WebEcoist has an article on 15 amazing earthen buildings from around the world. From the old to the modern, from small and inconspicuous to large and impressive, these buildings made of earth are worth a look. Although this list omits the mud skyscrapers of Yemen, it includes the equally stunning Hakka houses of China, and [...]

The 4th International EcoMaterials conference is in Cuba, November 24-27 2009. The organizers of the conference, EcoSouth, provide information and small equipment for making building materials such as microconcrete roofing, puzzolanic cement, earth brick construction, and more.

Natural Resources Canada has published a 10-page review of the design process for low energy solar homes. It includes a look at several standards for measuring and certifying low-energy houses, including the eQulibrium design competition, the Building America program, California Solar Homes Partnership, and Passive House standard.

I’ll be delivering the Friday night keynote presentation at the sold-out CIRQUE’09 conference, January 30-31 2009. CIRQUE is the annual Conference on Industry and Resources at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. This year’s theme is “Extreme Engineering”. My talk is going to be about industry and resources alright, about the permanent decline of both and [...]

A New York Times December 26 2008 article No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’ gives some welcome attention to this otherwise overlooked concept. While the article suffers from a poor description of how the heat exchanger functions and makes no mention of the existence of the smaller North American-style heat recovery ventilators, it [...]

Pat Murphy of CommunitySolutions has written an excellent summary of the talks at the third annual North American Passive House Conference. Organizations such as Net-Zero Energy Home Coalition in Canada should take advantage of Passive House and run with it. The standards, methodology and technology have already been worked out, and Germany is several years [...]