Your Green Building Project
Starting any building or renovation project can be overwhelming. Ask anyone who’s done it. Factor in your environmental values, your budget and your unique taste, and the whole process becomes trickier by the minute. Raisingspaces.com has assembled a range of free research and planning tools to help you make sense of it all.
What’s Green and What’s Not
If you have no formal training in the field, understanding what makes a product healthy and environmentally friendly is tough no matter who you are. If you’re new to all this, you may not understand all of the terms and acronyms like natural, non-toxic, LEED, cradle-to-cradle, or VOCs. And even if you know the lingo of the field, how do you go about comparing one product to another?
Try some of the tools and calculators below to help you with your decision-making process. Read through the Green Building Basics page to get acquainted with Green Building, and don’t forget to check out the Rebates & Promotions you might qualify for.
Tools
Resources & Links
Tree Canada
Transport Canada’s Urban Transportation Emissions Calculator
CarbonFund – Reduce what you can, offset what you can’t
Home Heating System Cost Calculator Natural Resources Canada’s Office of Energy Efficiency (OEE) has released a new and updated calculator to help homeowners determine the cost benefits of switching to high-efficiency heating systems. (Natural Resources Canada)
Phantom Power Carbon Calculator (Raisingspaces.com)
Conduct an easy audit in your home to save CO2 and money on your utility bill. All you need is a watt meter and this handy spreadsheet with carbon calculations for each province. Eliminate columns and rows as needed. Click here for background.
Hot2000 – Free Software that allows you to model the energy use in your home and even factors in Canadian weather averages for your area. It offers a detailed analysis of energy gains and losses to be had by changing design elements like insulation, window type, size and location, and more.
Find a Qualified Home Energy Advisor
To qualify for the government of Canada’s Ecoenergy rebates, you must have a before and after energy audit done on your home by a qualified home energy advisor. Find one through Natural Resources Canada.
Sustainable Building Sourcebook
Browse a range of materials, products and building systems by category to learn more about their ecological impacts. This site has a wealth of information and is a great starting point for researching material choices.
A Consumer’s Guide to Green Power in Canada
Learn about green power, find residential green power providers in your province, and find out how to invest in green power.
Green Alberta
A new initiative is about to launch in Alberta and it’s got the building industry talking. It’s called Green Alberta , an online database of green building products and materials that offer an ethical, health-conscious, environmentally low-impact and cost-effective alternative to current standards in interior and exterior building design.
A Guide to Geothermal Systems for New and Existing Homes
Produced by Natural Resources Canada, this 44 page pdf runs through the different types of systems available as well as the financial figures for owners of new and existing homes to install a geothermal system (2002).
The Carbon Buster’s Home Energy Handbook, Slowing climate change and saving money, by Godo Stoyke
Get all those hard to find energy related numbers like efficiency ratings, payback periods, and CO2 savings in one tidy and value-packed bundle. Save up to $17,000 in 5 years by implementing Stoyke’s suggested actions.
Green Remodeling, Changing the World one Room at a Time by David Johnston and Kim Master, LEED AP
This easy to read resource gives readers all the necessary background on green building issues, plus a project by project guide of interior and exterior upgrades that lays out opportunities to go green including brief blurbs on what makes a material greener. (Purchase through Amazon.ca by clicking the book cover image in the left sidebar.)