In the beginning

Braden and I are both young professionals, who, like many, were interested in doing what we could to help keep this earth stay healthier longer by minimizing our impact to it.  But, again like many, we struggle with how much we should modify our lifestyle to achieve "being green" or "eco friendly".  So when we started looking for a home in the summer, incorporating eco-friendly technologies was not even something that crossed our minds.  We thought it would be both too inconvenient to achieve, too expensive and would involve really modifying our lifestyle.

We knew we wanted to live centrally in Saskatoon- such that we were both in at least biking distance to work as this is where we spent most of our time and energy commuting and we want to minimize driving and maximize time at home.  We also knew we loved the quality and character found in older homes.  Lastly we wanted something between 1500-1800sq ft with greenspace for gardening.

Being young and naive though, meant that we were in for a wake-up call.  Old homes required a TON of work-basically stripping down to the studs and renovating.   After a few weeks of looking, we realized that we weren't going to end up with a home that we wanted unless we did major renovations to the home prior to living in it.

Vereco homes

This is when I remembered looking at the Vereco homes website in the spring.  Vereco homes provides energy efficient home design and consulting specific to homes in Saskatchewan.  We took a look at one of the plans and were wowed by the space efficient layout and how "normal" the house seemed even though it could be designed to be net-zero.  We met with the owner Ronn, who comes at homes from his background as a Chartered Accountant and then with a Masters in Environmental Strategy.  His approach essentially stratifies eco-friendly technologies into how much their payback is and many of the technologies available to homes will pay themselves off in 5-10years time if not sooner.  I feel that if the average person is going to make their home "green", it's going to have to pay off because we have to face the fact that most people aren't ready to fork out extra cash to help the planet- we just aren't there yet.  In addition, the home that appeals to a wide audience has to be "normal".  Not everyone is going to want to live in an underground lair, a home made of tires or one without all the amenities.
You can check out their website here: http://www.vereco.ca

The eco-friendly home

REDUCE

For starters, the home isn't huge.  Remembering our stratification of recycling-you'll hopefully remember that the first thing is reduce, then reuse, then recycle.  It's key to reduce the amount of space you think you need in a home.  The design we chose has few hallways (wasted space) and is open concept (to create different sized spaces depending on your needs).  We found that after looking at hundreds of plans, this 1500ish sq ft design that we chose really measured out to have rooms like a 1700sq ft home because there was such little wasted space and lots of flexibility with how we choose to use the main floor.  In addition, this home is a rectangle.  Why? Because that is the shape that maximizes space and minimizes materials. It also is a standard size for building materials so that all materials ordered will be used with minimal waste.  Other features of the home include items that last a lifetime, thus reducing the need for more materials.

REUSE

Several technologies in the home promote reuse.  It will reuse hot water (both with showering and heating the home), reuse materials for the build where possible, and will reuse the sun's energy through heating and cooling mechanisms.

RECYCLE

The recycling comes in with the old home that we bought on the lot we desired.

So more on reducing, re-using and recycling later!

For now, we wanted to just give you an overview of how we got into this build and the basics of technology. We hope you enjoy this blog and that it has something for everyone.

Ali and Braden