Building materials

One of the things I have most wanted to write about in this blog is selection of building materials. There are so many materials that go into building a new house. I'm sure I won't be able to list them all, but I'll try to cover the main ones, especially those I haven't talked about in other posts.

Slab:
Our slab has a high proportion of recycled aggregate and uses Boral Envirocrete 60% Slag/Flyash with 100% recycled mesh. This is the kind of stuff that would never have occurred to me and probably wouldn't occur to anyone except a dedicated green builder. Score 1 to Positive Footprints. Creating markets for recycled products is a huge part of closing the loop. Given that about a third of waste in Victoria is construction waste, it's great to know that our slab is partly made of concrete that might otherwise have ended up in landfill.

Timber:
The structural pine we are using is treated, but not with CCA. It's something else, but I have no idea what. :)

Cladding:
I have just been reading Linda Woodrow's permaculture book, and I've been chuffed to learn that plants really dislike the heat that radiates out of buildings that have a high amount of thermal mass on the outside. I can afford to be chuffed, because we have none! We chose lightweight cladding products for many reasons:

• Radial sawn timber and Ecoply for their relatively low embodied energy
• Zincalume for its zero maintenance, long life span and recyclability (in facilities that exist even now, not just in some hypothetical future).

I do love mud brick and strawbale, but the former was beyond our budget, and the sheer square metres taken up by the latter just wasn't going to work on a block of 363m2.

Wall insulation:
Tontine Thermal & Soundbatt R2.5; CSR Bradford Enviroseal Breather Foil. I particularly love the clauses in our specifications that say things like:

"Batts to fit snugly between framing members with no holes or missing sections. Batts not to be compressed. Any batts removed during construction to be replaced."

Maybe that language is standard in any building contract these days, but with our builders, I can feel totally confident that these provisions will be observed.

Ceiling insulation:
Tontine Insuloft R3.5; CSR Anticon 55mm (R1.5) foil backed blanket.

I also like the bit in our specification that says, "During construction the Builder is to limit any thermal bridging between inside and outside as far as is practical." (Thermal bridging is where heat from outside can get transferred in, or vice versa; aluminium window frames are the best example of these).

Windows:
Our windows are from Mouldright. Crap name, beautiful windows: www.mouldright.com.au.

All of our windows are double glazed, most have low E glass.

Almost all of our window frames use finger jointed hoop pine. Finger jointing is basically a way of creating incredibly strong joins between pieces of timber. It means you can make quite long pieces out of many shorter ones and so is a very good way of making trees go further. This was the most affordable timber option for us, but while I love finger jointing, the fact that it is hoop pine does represent a bit of a compromise for me.

Hoop pine is plantation grown. Lots of people might think this is preferable, but personally, I've walked through hoop pine 'forests' in Queensland, and I would prefer well managed, selective logging of native forests over a monoculture every time. Here's a nice article that gives some background to explain my preference:
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0919-plantations_hance.html

External doors:
Also by Mouldright. Ours are made of recycled Karri. They're gorgeous.

Other timber:
We are using American off-cuts from another job for the timber nosing on our stairs. Our bannister will be recycled jarrah.

Paints:
See my post of 16 August: http://buildingour9starhome.blogspot.com/2010/08/paint.html

Roof:
Colorbond, same qualitities as zincalume. We would have used zincalume, but didn't want to reflect that much sunlight into our (hypothetical) neighbours' eyes.

MDF:
E0 wherever it is used.

Stairs:
E0 MDF is also being used in our stairs. I don't know if Jeremy found these folks on the basis of doing the right thing, or whether he worded them up. Either way, it's great to know that there are people out there doing stuff like stairs with VOCs and recycled materials in mind.


Plumbing stuff:
We've relied on WELS ratings here. We have installed a hot water diverter to reticulate the warming-up water, but apparently they can all be a little glitchy so they've been installed in ways that are easy to get in and fix. We haven't installed a first flush diverter on the rainwater tank, because Jeremy says he's never found one that really works.

Thanks to PF really caring about the little things as well as the big ones, we are using recycled crushed rock as bedding for our sewerage and stormwater pipes.

Decking:
Modwood. See www.modwood.com.au


Phew. That's all I can think of for now.

As I said in my last post, I'm running out of topics. I do want to post on the different options we had to choose from to boost our house's thermal performance. And I want to write about what this place is actually costing us. I was also thinking that I might go into the design side of things a little more. So that's three more posts!

But my statcounter seems to suggest people are actually reading this blog, so if any of you have questions or things you'd like me to write on, please let me know.



Thanks for reading.

e.

Deep Green Builders

A couple of things have happened recently to make me realise the incredibly important role that truly green builders play in building a sustainable home. So this blog is, in part, to tip me lid to our builders: Jeremy, Chi and Grant at Positive Footprints www.positivefootprints.com.au. They are truly awesome.

I need to start off by acknowledging that:

• there probably aren't enough green builders to go round, especially if you happen to live outside a major city and not in a place like Byron or Castlemaine
• it's critically important that mainstream builders start to move towards even a very light shade of green if my son and his friends are going to have even the remotest chance of any kind of decent life on this planet, and
• if builders were mandated to use the kinds of materials and approaches that we are using in our build, all buildings would be more or less sustainable and I wouldn't need to write this post (instead, I'd write one on closed loop water systems, or roof gardens, or going beyond 9 stars ...).

But with those caveats in mind, I would still always suggest if you can find someone who is really, properly green, go with them (unless of course they have a reputation for being dodgy or bodgy!).

If they're more expensive than the next gal, build a smaller house, save up for the solar panels later, or skip the polished concrete floor. That's what we've done, although in part that was to pay for our great indulgence: five round windows on our street facing side. (At this point in the build, our window makers must be wishing we'd chosen the solar panels)

We chose to build with PF because it seemed from the very beginning that we were on the same page. They, unlike most builders, had a deep understanding of our value statement, and even had a matching one of their own! The fact that we could afford them was a bonus! :)

We have never once regretted our decision. I reckon building with them - rather than building with a conventional builder - has probably halved the amount of research and thinking I've had to put into this build. It has meant that I have been able to focus on questions like the layout of the kitchen, rather than insulation and windows.

In our experience, having builders who start with a principled environmental stance means that:

• they are incredibly well informed about current product options
• they have a network of tradies who either work within the same building paradigm, or at least are willing to fit in with it on green jobs
• they are willing to work with the 'green' expectations of clients, but also knowledgeable enough to challenge them (for example, we started out wanting a waterless loo; Jeremy convinced us there were far better ways to spend our money)
• they will build everything with principles like low embodied energy in mind.

As I said at the beginning of my post, a couple of things have made me appreciate the importance of green builders all over again.

The first of these was last week, when we decided to get the builders to just bung in a cupboard rather than have it made by a cabinet maker. Jeremy said, "So we'll just get some E0 mdf for the doors". It was that easy. I love it that E0 is a given, not something I have to specifically request (over and over and over again).

The second was today, when I was sitting on the train writing my next post, on materials, in my head. (I'll put it up in a day or two). There have been so many aspects of the build that I sincerely doubt any but the most committed sustainable builder would think about. Put together, I suspect that our house will have - for a new dwelling - significantly less embodied energy than most other houses being built in suburban Australia today.

Of course, there are people building all kinds of wonderful places out of town, using all manner of building materials, but when it comes to building on small block in Preston, we simply couldn't have achieved anything like the ecological values that we're having if it hadn't have been for our green builder.

Just to finish up, I want to suggest the things I'd be looking for if I were starting my search for a green builder tomorrow. There is of course the Master Builders Association Green Builder certification, but for me, that would be the elementary qualification. I'd also be asking about:

• Skills - is there good evidence that the builder really knows their stuff? Do you see evidence of attention to detail in the houses they have built? If there appear to be things that could have been done better, can they explain why they are as they are, and/or what they would do differently next time?
• Knowledge - Can the builder talk knowledgeably about the range of products that is out there? For example, can s/he tell you what building materials are preferable in terms of their embodied energy? Do they seem to have a really strong attachment to one style of building or one product? (If it coincides with your interest, that might be a good thing, but if they feel they've found 'the best', it might be that they've stopped looking at alternatives)
• values - what evidence is there that the builder really cares about environmental matters? For example, how has green building influenced how they live their own life? How sustainable is their own house?
• Understanding - what evidence is there that the builder has thought about the complexity of issues that need to be considered in sustainable building. For example, what do they think of plantation versus logging native forests? From memory, I think Jeremy and I don't exactly see eye to eye on this, but he knows the issues, and that's what counts.
• Networks - does the builder have a network of similarly minded and skilled tradies? How does s/he manage when tradies are not on the same page?

Okay, that's it for now. I'll post the materials blog next. After that, I will have exhausted most of the topics I wanted to write about when I started blogging. Am open to suggestions for future topics! Bring 'em on.

Cheers
e.

PS I just realised that I don't think I've said anywhere else that Positive Footprints also designed our house. More on that in a later post. :)

Plans and elevations - finally

Okay, so I finally found time to clean up the plans and elevations so that they are fit for the general public to see. I just scrapped a lot of the technical stuff with a quick once-over with photoshop. Hopefully they're comprehensible. And hopefully, this works!

e.

Officially in debt

One of my aims through this whole building process has been to be up front about money matters. Today I specifically want to talk about mortgages. When I'm at my other computer, where all the spreadsheets are (!), I'll write about money, or specifically, how much money various aspects of the build are costing us.

We are soon to be officially in debt. I suppose to many people, it's incredible that we have managed to get this far without borrowing. I guess it is. We'd saved quite a bit between us and we live a pretty modest lifestyle. We're incredibly privileged to have skills that are well paid.

Our loan is coming from MECU: a credit union (see www.mecu.com.au). We choose to use credit unions rather than banks because they fit better with our broader ethos about how to live:

• Profit is not their primary reason for existence.
• They are more accountable to their members.
• They often tend to be more socially and environmentally progressive.

From a consumer perspective, they tend to be less punitive, offer competitive rates and to have lower fees. Ours also offers options such as:

• an 'ecopause' (where we can take a break from repayments to assist with the purchase of energy and /or water saving devices such as rainwater tanks, solar or grey water system)
• a 'family repayment pause' when one income earner is on maternity leave.

Of the six or so credit unions we considered, MECU clearly fit best with our values and needs.

Of course, all money and all financial decisions are ultimately part of the global financial system. We are under no illusions that our individual choices will make a difference. Nevertheless, it seems to us to be a contradiction to borrow from a big bank - which has its tentacles in all manner of unsustainable and unethical industries around the globe - to build a 'sustainable house'.

Some people's financial circumstances mean that they really, really need to pursue a lender that can undercut others by point something of a percent. But many people are not so greatly constrained.

Arguably, for these people, including ethical criteria in selecting a lender should be seen in the same light as any other cost:benefit analysis aspect of sustainable building. I'm not convinced that double glazing paid for with a loan from the ANZ bank is better for the environment than single glazing paid for via a loan from MECU.

(Important note here, I have absolutely no idea what the current difference might be in the ultimate financial cost of loans from these two institutions. MECU might even be cheaper!)

The profits that our loan yields to our lender will be significant. These profits can be used wisely and accountably, or they can be spent further plundering our planet's scarce resources. We know which we prefer.

A lot of people have never thought about these issues, and I don't blame them one bit. It's not in brokers' interests to flag them, the big banks are full of greenwash, and credit unions just don't have the profile. I hope this provides some food for thought for those of you who are yet to find a pot of money to build your sustainable home.

e.

Indoor air quality

I posted some of the info here on a recent post in the homeone forum http://forum.homeone.com.au/ and I thought I would post it here too.

I had flagged my blog on our low VOC paint, and somebody pointed out - quite rightly - that paint is only one of a number of things that can pollute the indoor environment.

So here's the list of the other things we are doing to try to keep our air as nice as possible:

• very low VOC kitchen
• as low VOC carpets as we can find (and only in two rooms), with E0 underlay (rubber, by Bridgestone)
• no plastics on light fittings
• Marmoleum on the upstairs floor
• all fans ducted to outside
• blinds not curtains
• wardrobes from Ikea, so E1 but better than the alternatives.

I think we are going to recover our old couch rather than buy a new one, although if I could find a new one that was E0 and comfy and under $2000, I'd buy it in a minute. (Any leads on this topic very appreciated)

And most of all, we're ready for new mattresses (ours have been trampolined beyond everyone's comfort zone) so will buy latex ones complete with pillows and have them delivered straight to the new house. The rental place we are in now is a cesspit of mould and dust, through no fault of ours. I want to leave the spoors behind! :)

Trouble spots: we want wallpaper in a few spots, and the options for low VOC are so fugly they aren't worth the effort of sticking to a wall.

And I can't seem to get a clear answer on house plants - some researchers say they clean the air, others say that potting mix and damp are inherently evil. My compromise at the moment is to have a few, but not a whole conservatory full.

What have I missed??

Paint

Martin from the Designer Paint Shop is an unlikely hero. But after literally months of agonising over what timber treatments to put on our battens and ecoply, he has saved the day.

I was futzing around with a low voc, water soluble product called Quantum, but despite the very best efforts of the lovely folks at Bristol in Clifton Hill, we just couldn't get a colour we felt happy with. Ecoply turns out to be a difficult product in that regard; it soaks up heaps of whatever you put on it, meaning that things can end up looking very dark quite quickly. As the ecoply is on our upper story on the north side (above zincalume), I didn't want anything that was going to make it too top heavy. But I kept ending up with either baby poo brown or midwestern barn red.

To complicate matters, we are using (at last count) five different timbers:

• undressed radial sawn, silvertop ash battens (these also suck up heaps of product)
• recycled karri door frames
• finger jointed hoop pine window frames
• treated pine (not the nasty stuff) exposed joists and pergola etc
• ecoply.

While I grimaced and grumbled and fretted, Rodney got on the phone to some folks in Byron, at Painted Earth: www.house-paint.com.au. Deb was incredibly helpful in talking through options for low VOC paints, and at her suggestion, we ended up at The Designer Paint Shop: www.designerpaintco.com in Surrey Hills.

Martin is a painter, and has been working with Oikos paints for over a decade (if memory serves me correctly). He very patiently brushed out - I think - six Oikos timber treatments onto ecoply on our first trip, AND a further four on ecoply, two on hoop pine and one on karri on our second trip. And then after all that, made up a special colour just for us, one that happened to turn both the hoop pine and the silvertop the exact same colour as the Karri! He said it was incredibly easy, but some people say that about surfing too.

The product we're using is actually a wax. Theoretically, unless abraded by sand or something like that, the protection will last many years, and the biggest problem we will have is that the colour will fade over time.

Here's a little spiel from the website:
NOVALIS WAX FINISH WOODSTAIN  is a a transparent, acrylic, woodstain. Its formulation allows it to protect wood from atmospheric agents, Uv rays, woodworm and fungi whilst at the same time maintaining the natural beauty of the wood. The product is available in a vast range of colours, obtained using special transparent pigments. Easy and quick to use, it is non-yellowing and since it works by penetrating into the wood and not by forming a film on the surface, there are no problems of it peeling away in time.

At Martin's suggestion, we are using a product called Archital to paint the ecoply that will be behind our battens. Our builder had suggested black, but after a discussion with Martin, we went for a deep grey/black that he invented for the job. It's already up on the eastern side, and I love it so much I nearly cancelled the battens!

On the money side of things, our exterior paint is costing us more than we budgeted for. It will come in at about $1400. We'll also need more coats than our builder costed, so there will be some extra labour costs, but more coats now means greater protection and longer re-coat time, so we will save money in the longer term on that score. And I actually think any product we used would have required more than two coats - the ecoply just slurps it up. So on a metre for metre basis, I'm not actually sure that the Oikos product is costing us much more than any other.

So that's our paint journey to date. No more sleepless nights on that score. I must say it's reassuring to know that once we find a colour we like (the hard bit, Rodney has a very complex relationship with colour!), the internals will be a cinch. Martin has a spectrometer, so we can take it to him and he will make us an internal paint to match.

Oh, and I should've said this earlier, all the above products are non-toxic, GECA certified, and low voc. That's all Oikos makes, and they've been doing it for a relatively long time. Europe is way ahead of the pack on this stuff.

If you are at all in the market for paint, go to these guys!!! They rock.


e.

Lights

Lights are the bane of my life. I never realised how much I loathe most lights. Maybe that says I don't really notice them. Hmm. That is worth thinking about, because right now, I am in a Lighting Pickle.

So our journey to now has consisted of:

• a consultancy with the Environment Shop www.enviroshop.com.au, which was a great place to start. We got all kinds of great ideas - many of which we have retained.
• a spreadsheet in which I worked out that our lighting plan was going to cost us $4,500 (admittedly including quite a few LED globes)
• visits to half a dozen lighting shops and several online shops in which it became clear that nothing, NOTHING is easy when it comes to lights. Oils, as they say, ain't oils.

Good news first. Things that appear to be working out:

• routing the bottom of our bannister and placing a line of LED strip lights so that we get a lovely wash of light down the wall and onto the stairs
• embedding another line of strip lights into the bedhead in the master bedroom
• simple pendant lights fitted with LED globes in downstairs bedrooms, lounge and dining room (latter two rooms with dimmers).

What's not working? Everything else.

I can't remember if I've written about our upstairs studio/work area. It comprises two adjoining open plan rooms, with curved ceiling (arcs up to about 3m), heaps of natural light and marmoleum floor. I make felt, so we've chosen a floor product that can withstand a fair amount of water sploshing around. It's also very good environmentally. Read more at http://www.forbo-flooring.com.au/Residential/Products/Marmoleum-Global-3/

So anyway, the lighting challenge starts here.
* Halogens will be too hot in summer (our temperature graphs show this will be the hottest part of the house in summer)
* Fluoros give off awful light and are altogether too officey (we will spend a lot of time in this space)
* Tracks with compact fluoros can't be dimmed and there's no guarantee that the fittings will be able to accommodate LED globes, even if they do have GU10 bases
* Tracks with LEDs are too expensive
* Pendants might not give us enough light for our artistic endeavours.

We are using halogen downlights in the kitchen and a couple of other strategic spots downstairs. Even though I know they are not too bad an option in our scenario (the insulation between the floors serves accoustic as well as thermal functions but is unlikely to be greatly affected by 9 downlights), I still feel that somehow I am breaking one of the golden rules of sustainable housing. I daren't confess to the folks at the ATA.

I'll spare you the details on the bathroom lighting. Suffice to say that the lights I liked most started at $365 for one light (plus globe).

Of course, it doesn't help that so many light fittings are fugly. We chose a whole suite of lights on Saturday afternoon, and then I turned around and informed Rodney that I hated them all. Lovely person that he is, he simply said, okay, let's find others. I have never appreciated him more!

Sigh. It's therapeutic to vent. Yesterday I submitted the electrical and lighting plans to the builder for the rough in. We hedged our bets by providing for four spotlights (on two switches) and two wall lights in the studio, latter with dimmer. I now understand why people just put in halogens every square meter.

So that's it for lights. For now. We are yet to choose a single fitting ...