I am happy today to have as a guest writer Gina Bisaillon. Gina is a Permaculture Designer with many years of experience in renovating and greening homes in places as far apart as Canada and Mexico. Gina writes and shares her enthusiasm and practical knowledge at My Green Home Project. Thanks Gina for sharing your green home tips.
When I returned to Canada after 20 years in Mexico, I didn’t know what to expect. Most of my building experience had been in the mountain climate of Central Mexico – cool nights and comfortable days pretty well year-round. No need for central heating, air conditioning, or insulation. With my permaculture training, it was quite easy to build and live green there.
Greening a Home in a Cold Climate
Here in New Brunswick – one of the coldest and snowiest Canadian provinces – I was starting from scratch, and the fixer-upper I bought needed a lot of work if I was to make it as energy efficient as I hoped.
I had a lot to learn, and I had to learn it through trial and error. Here are ten tips I’ve learned from greening my home:
1. Everything costs twice as much as you think.
2. You can never have too much insulation.
3. A vapor barrier needs to be continuous, or you might as well not have one.
4. Water is your No. 1 enemy: if it leaks through the roof it can ruin your whole house; if it gets into your walls it can kill you and if it gets into your basement it can cause all kinds of problems. But water in an unfinished basement is the least disastrous of all – just get a sump pump or wet-dry vac and a dehumidifier.
5. Caulking comes in several different types and they’re not necessarily interchangeable. You will need ten times more tubes than you thought, so look for quantity discounts. Get plenty of cans of spray foam, too.
6. You don’t need new windows if your old ones are in decent condition and have storms. Just caulk, caulk and caulk some more.
7. Buy local: survey your area for the existence of useful industries or resources. For example, within an hour’s drive of my small remote village I located:
- a lumber mill that manufactures custom trim out of finger-jointed pine (a recycled wood product);
- a kitchen cabinet factory with a retail outlet for their slightly imperfect merchandise (in addition to all my kitchen cabinets, I also found some great cabinet doors there);
- a sand pit (for fill, mortar and concrete, Zen gardens);
- two very different gravel pits (for driveways, landscaping)
- a shale quarry (for my patio flagstones and walkways)
8. Accept your physical limits: I’m 67 and quite strong, but I fell and hurt my shoulders and for a whole year I had to hire people to do many of the construction chores that I had reserved for myself. I’m still not quite my old self.
9. Learn to live without guilt with the shade of green that you can afford, both financially and practically.
- This also means that you should gauge your project according to your age: if you’re young and can afford it, by all means go all the way, but at my age and in my financial situation, some investments, such as solar panels, wouldn’t be worthwhile because I could never recover their cost. It makes more sense for me to keep that money in case I live till I’m 100!
10. Don’t expect perfection, so that you can rejoice when you do get it. It has helped tremendously that I’m crazy about home remodeling in general!
I love the challenges, I get a lot of satisfaction out of finding unusual solutions to new problems and I’m passionate about recycling and reusing materials. As a result, I’m enjoying the journey as much (more, I think!) than I will enjoy the house once it’s all finished.
You can follow Gina’s green home adventures and find lots of great tips on her website at http://www.my-green-home-project.com
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