The Low Down On Green Living
June 4th, 2008
The Now House Project: Recycling WWII-Era Houses
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Written by Kristin Dispenza, courtesy of GreenBuildingElements.com.
Renovating and “re-using” older homes may be one of the greenest forms of construction. But fixing up an old house tends to be a highly individual endeavor, and the lessons learned while retrofitting a single home are difficult to adapt to larger-scale applications.
In spite of this, Lorraine Gauthier, co-founder of the socially-conscious Toronto design studio Work Worth Doing, has identified a housing type which offers a high degree of consistency across a large number of homes: post-war housing. Post-war homes, built to accommodate returning WWII veterans, are still a part of the landscape throughout Canada and the United States, and many of these aging homes have poor energy performance. By assembling a team of designers and other sustainable building experts to retrofit a single home in the Toronto area (as part of an undertaking known as the Now House™ project), it is hoped that a formula can be created and then applied to literally millions of homes.
The goal of the first Now House is to create a near zero energy home, one that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by more than half. Key additions to the home include:
+ Better insulation
+ Increased daylighting
+ Energy-efficient windows
+ Low-flow water fixtures
+ CFL lightbulbs
+ Energy-Star Appliances
+ A gray-water heat-recovery system
+ Solar power
The first Now House is located in Topham Park, Toronto, and construction began on Earth Day of 2008. Homeowners in that neighborhood were invited to participate in a collaborative effort to renovate their homes, and currently 200 homes in the community are slated for refurbishment. It is hoped that the model established in Topham Park will proceed to a national rollout. According to the Now House website, it is estimated that there are one million wartime houses in Canada which are similar to one another in structure, and an additional 4.5 million located in the United states.
To view progress on construction of the first Now House, watch: http://nowhouseproject.com/forum/
The Now House Project received major funding by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and RBC Royal Bank.
Image Credit: The Now House™ Project
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Comments
Olga Vega
June 5th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Hi,
I live in Northwest Indiana. I have a few questions/concerns about fixing up my WWII era home. First, of course, money is an issue. The equity in the house here is very small and if we were to remodel (which it needs desperately) and convert to eco-friendly products, the neighborhood itself would not be able to withstand the amount of money that we would pour into this remodel. Secondly, I am not sure where to begin to find the right types of products as far as converting to solar or wind power energy (there is an inventor in nearby Chicago that came up with a wind machine that is ideal for this type of climate. - but of course, money again is an issue). And finally, I thought I would just ask. Would you consider coming out to NW Indiana and select my home for your show?
Thank you very much for any information.
Olga Vega
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