We spent a lot of time considering our countertop choices for Canada’s Greenest Home. It’s an area with many options, and many factors to weigh when trying to make an environmentally sound choice. Ideally, the countertop material must be durable,...
Wood framing is a conventional building practice that we use quite frequently at Endeavour. For the teachers’ union project, we are using wood framing for both the floor system and the exterior walls. The walls and floors may not look very different from...
In addition to the Durisol stem wall foundation, our project for the teachers’ union office includes two long sections of earthbag foundation to support the floor joist spans inside the building. The inherent insulation value of the Durisol blocks made them our...
The timber frame portion of our project for the teachers’ union rests outside the walls of the building, requiring individual foundation piers for each of the 14 posts. Typically, these would be poured concrete piers each with its own wide footing, resulting in...
Over the past few years, we have turned to Durisol (now Nexcem) insulated concrete forms (ICFs) several times. They offer an attractive blend of sustainable features with the convenience of conventional methodology. For the teachers’ union office project, we...
Many sustainable building projects are built in places where it is difficult or impossible to access electrical grid power, and this necessitates running a gasoline or diesel powered generator to provide power for tools. Over the course of an entire building project...
