LEED Home in Construction Update

I finally got around to posting a bunch more pictures from construction progress at our SuperGreen duplex project in Takhini North.

Here is a link to the photo album (go to Day 23 for the new photos):




We got our project resisted as a LEED Canada for Homes project at the end of last month, so it is exciting to be the Yukon's first LEED Home in construction.



Construction is progressing, albeit slower than planned. The team is taking time to make sure the details are done right and so some of these elements are take us a bit longer. This includes using the ICF for the foundation and the I-joist floor system. We originally planned to use some specialty ICF blocks to integrate the floor system, but these blocks never arrived, which caused us to have to re-design the floor connections. We ended up switching to using LVL headers and joist hangers for everything, but this really slowed the work down (first waiting for the blocks, then a bunch of labour for installing all the hanger hardware). The second big factor I see that is slowing the project is we have a small framing crew - basically one lead carpenter and two assistant carpenters.

We are now on the second floor and things are going much faster. We have an concrete party wall between the two units, and the ICF for that went much faster. Similarly, the second floor went on much faster.

A Real Conan Run

Last weekend's US Long Orienteering Championships was the perfect Conan Run.

From 2010 Orienteering Trip

What's a Conan Run?

It's a term I use for a long, epic run that crosses vast distances. The term comes from my favorite clip in the movie Conan the Barbarian (fast forward to about 1 min in this clip) - it's a short segment where Conan and his buddy Subota, King of Thieves decided to go somewhere, and then there are a series of shots of them running - running through mountains, running across plains, running through deserts, day and night. It looks like they are running across the continent: wherever they go, they are running.


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Running Sunday's race at Fishtrap, WA was exactly like what I envisioned Conan to be doing - running on and on, across open grasslands, scorching heat, crossing vast distances, and always running. The race distance was 16km and it took me around 2hr18min - but the scenery was epic and the whole time I felt like Conan; well, minus the broad sword and I wasn't wearing a pile of furs....

Forest's 2010 Orienteering Adventure

Decided to go to some orienteering races this year - the US Orienteering championships are in the Washington "Scablands" which is a really wild, catastrophic landscape created by glacial outburst floods.


Next weekend is the North American Orienteering championships in Cranbrook, BC. I've worked there several times over the years, and it always looked like really good terrain - open pine forest - it looks like really fast running forest.

Here are some pictures so far:

Finished the Basement Pour

Today we finished the pouring of the insulated concrete basement (ICF) for the SuperGreen duplex we are building. Below is a little movie from the pour. It's good to have it done as we now have a very robust foundation and basement system that should provide a resilient base for the home are planning to last more than 100 years.

From 38 & 40 Nijmegan Road

The pour went well due to the hard work and preparation of the crew. We're a few days behind schedule because some of the insulated concrete form blocks didn't arrive, causing us to modify the design a bit; but also because we wanted to take our time on making sure everything was square, level and secured for the pour. We figured take a bit of time now will save us time later in the project.

There are also quite a few new photos added to the project's photo log (see Day 19 and Day 22 photos) that show many of the details included in the basement, including some "planning ahead" features that will facilitate future building adaptability:

38 & 40 Nijmegan Road

Photos of Building a SuperGreen Home

I've started a photo album to document construction of our sustainable housing project at 38/40 Nijmegan Road in Takhini North. As I described in the previous post, we are hoping to get this building double green certified: SuperGreen and as the Yukon's first LEED certified home.



Although there is lots of "green" in the project design, the project is really designed around truly sustainable housing concepts. That is a project that is not only environmentally sustainable, but also socially and financially sustainable (I wrote about this the Elements of Sustainable Building Design in a previous post). I've illustrated the interrelationship of the various elements of sustainable building as follows: