Wartime Houses = Net Zero Home?

My family and I live in a wartime house.  In the seven years we've lived here I've attempted to redesign our home and draw up plans to renovate. I've also become strongly interested in green retrofitting.  My ambition in life is to build and live in a net zero home, off-grid, if you will.

When I saw this story, I almost soiled myself.  I asked my wife to pinch me, because this was something crazy that I had already been thinking of.

A group of people in Toronto decided they wanted to see if the one million wartime houses in Canada could be retrofitted to become net zero homes.  Simply put, they don't use any energy.  None.

This group won the national competition on energy efficient construction/architecture and will develop a home in East York (where I used to live) in the coming year or so.  After that, I swear to God, I'm next!!! 

I'm so ripe to do this, I'm thinking of getting on a plane to Toronto right this moment.

CTV.ca story also check out the video version of the story to the right

Web site of winners group

Toronto Star story PDF before prize was won

Project highlights

The goal of the Now House™ project is as simple: to demonstrate how home owners and contractors can dramatically improve the energy efficiency of existing homes with a few relatively simple modifications.
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation was founded in 1946 in large part to help create affordable housing for veterans who had served their country in the Second World War. Now House™ evolves this uniquely Canadian brand of “hearth and home” by updating these postwar houses to new standards of healthy living, energy-efficiency and resource management.
Just a few of the improvements that will be made to this modest 60-year-old home include upgrades to the insulation, new windows, the installation of solar panels and Energy Star®-certified appliances, and the implementation of a waste water heat recovery system.
The result is a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a healthier, more energy-efficient home. In addition, because wartime houses were often built in clusters, the Now House™ model could easily be scaled up from a single demonstration house to hundreds of thousands of similar homes across the country.
By setting out a blueprint for the energy-efficient retrofit of all of Canada’s older or wartime homes, Now House™ is the start of a truly ambitious project—and a true one in a million home.

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Wartime houses brand every community in Canada. They offer a material glimpse into our collective memory of World War II and the socio-economic challenges associated with that event.
Between 1941 and 1947, the Wartime Housing Corporation (later CMHC) built over 30,000 houses to provide affordable housing for munitions workers, returning veterans and their families.
These houses were based on a standardized, inexpensive, sometimes pre-fabricated 1 1/2 storey designs that served as models for future housing initiatives across Canada after the war. Although they were conceived during a time of wartime conservation and intended as temporary suburbs, wartime neighbourhoods developed distinct social and cultural networks. While many of these neighbourhoods dissolved after the war, some continue to thrive and currently remain a fixture in Canada’s urban areas.

Is it Sweeps Week in Canada?

The number two story on The National last night was on a study that concluded people who nap in the afternoon have less heart attacks.

I thought this was odd for the story in second spot, or even that it should have been included at all. The TV piece didn't mention what the newspaper articles do and that is that the results might be due to people with slower, more relaxed  lifestyles are more likely to nap in the afternoon than highly stressed people who work twelve hours a day.

And today you can find the story in the 'Diversions' section of the CBC.ca website.

I like a good health study story as much as the next guy but it's just not news and the studies often don't mean butkus.

Google has done evil: Canada excluded on YouTube

I was discussing the videos of OK Go (treadmill video), made a huge success by YouTube, and searching for the video that is said to be their main competition at the Grammy's this year.

Being old, I wasn't familiar with the video entitled '8th of November' so I went to see if it's on YouTube. There's a million music videos on YouTube, uploaded by users without permission.  However, since being purchased by Google, YouTube has said it will, with deals from the record companies, put every music video every made, pretty much, on their site.

No company with billions of dollars at stake for shareholders is not going to 'do no evil' as Google still maintains is it's main corporate principle.

When I went to click on the video for '8th of November,' I got this message of horror:

"This video is blocked from your viewing location due to restrictions requested by the content producer."

Probably because I'm in Canada and Google has sold out to US interests.

YouTube, above all, is a community. Teenagers in Asia lipsyncing to pop songs made YouTube a 1.6 billion dollar site.  Google is segregating the global community of YouTubers by making deals that are in its corporate financial interests, but not in the interest of those who got it where it is. We all saw this coming.

They're excluding Canada, my home and native land.  As a videoblogger who is more and more entrenched in the YouTube community every day, I feel like I've just received a giant boot to the head.

As YouTube seeks more and more ways of making money for Google shareholders, they are inevitably going to sell out to an increasing number of corporate content producers who will restrict viewing of their videos to people only in the United $tates. If you can't show it everywhere, don't  show it, don't include it on YouTube.

This is a huge step backwards and goes against what the essence of YouTube actually is: it's community; it's global community.