2010 A Year in Review

In my last post I talked about how wasteful we are of our water and said that, in this post, I would cover the many ways to re-fit your home and your behaviour to save our precious water. Well, I'm not. I'd like to put that off for one more post because, as winter approaches, it seems like a good time to report on the performance of our earth-sheltered house over the last year.

Site

We have germination on our roof, probably not great news for most people, but very satisfying for us. Our nurse crop of oats has sprouted over creeping red fescue to hold the three feet of soil in place over the winter on both sides of our curving stone roof path that runs over the kitchen, hallway, study, and guest room. Planted here and there to spread over the next few years are a dozen varieties of native perennials such as Coreopsis, Coneflower, Butterfly Milkweed, and Yarrow. We will add a few more but generally are letting nature fill in with the hardiest plants for our rooftop meadow.

Out front, three multi-tonne rocks anchor a welcoming gateway and a wall of stone gathered from the site during construction. Inside the stone wall is a scree garden, 60 cm of #2 road gravel, into which are planted Little Bluestem native grass, Prickly Pear cactus, Harebell and six other varieties also native to this part of Ontario. Here, the purpose is a nearly maintenance-free front garden with hardy perennials that need no watering or weeding.

The deciduous trees did their job to perfection, allowing warming sunlight in during the winter and shading the above-ground part of the house during the summer.

Of course, the river was a constant companion. We ate many meals on the shoreside deck and wore out several inner tubes shooting down among the rocks on hot summer days.

Heating and Cooling

We were very relieved to have the underground concept do its job, too. Not that we had many doubts, but it is always nice to see an unusual idea work out the way it's supposed to. In the winter we were warm and snug, and actually ran out of propane for the in-floor heating during construction and didn't notice it for two days as the underground temperature remained constant.

The bedroom stayed cool all summer and it was just as pleasant as we had hoped to be lulled to sleep by the sounds of the flowing river.

The Trombe window provided a significant amount of heat throughout the winter on sunny days as the stone wall behind the glass was heated then slowly released that heat after sundown. We did, though, have to replace the single panes in the Trombe window with sheets of double-glazed, low-e, argon-filled glass to eliminate the waterfall of interior condensation. Tucking a flannel sheet along the bottom of the window every night and hanging it to dry in the mechanical room every day quickly lost its pioneer appeal. But it was great to feel the warmth of the sun flood in on sunny days, not enough to heat the entire two-story section but a very good supplement.

The rest of the heating in this part of the house came from a woodstove with in-floor hydronic as a backup. There is nothing as comforting as the heat from a woodstove, or as handy when you come in from outside with cold hands. Standing next to a forced-air register just doesn't do the job. Since we are harvesting wood only from this site, and have enough firewood for several years from the trees removed during construction and leftover lumber, we expect to be carbon neutral in wood.

Interior

The interior beamwork worked even better than we had hoped. Being surrounded by 300-year old wood does have a grounding effect and we are so happy to be able to mix the newest design with some of the oldest materials.

We chose cork floors because cork trees are peeled every seven years to make them, and no trees are cut. Cork is renewable, a bit soft, and warm from the infloor heating but, boy do the 3 m panels ever expand lengthwise in the summer humidity. We had one long run the whole length of the house, about 26 m in length that swelled so much it looked like a skateboard track. One bump 20 cm high was a definite safety hazard, we had to place buckets of rocks here and there to make it flat enough to walk over without tripping and it took three visits from the installers to finally corral it.

Water and Sewage

The Waterloo Biofilter® is working very well, delivering biologically-cleaned water to the small drainfield that we surrounded by stumps pulled from the site. We have had many adventures with hard water and a water heater that sounded like a giant popcorn popper, but that, too, is a post for another day when we have it sorted out.

All and all, we can't believe our good fortune in how well the house functions and we remind ourselves every day not to take it for granted.

Water

The Salmon River is low this time of year, so water seems even more precious. When we think of resources, we usually take water for granted. But what seems like abundance is really a scarce resource that we depend on for the foundation of all life on Earth.

Steven Solomon, in his book Water, puts it well:

"Only 0.025 of Earth's water is fresh. But two-thirds of that is locked away from our use in ice caps and glaciers. All but a few drops of the remaining one-third is also inaccessible, or prohibitively expensive to extract, because it lies in rocky, underground aquifers - in effect, isolated underground lakes - many a half mile or more deep inside Earth's bowels. In all, less than 0.003 of total freshwater is in liquid form on the surface."

Unfortunately, much of that liquid water, even on the Earth's surface, is hard to reach.

As Solomon states, "Some societies have been built around the edges of lakes, which hold some 40 times more water than rivers. Yet lake water has been a far less useful direct resource to large civilizations because its accessible perimeters are so much smaller than riversides. Moreover, many are located in inhospitable frozen regions or mountain highlands, and three-fourths are concentrated in just three lake systems: Siberia's remote, deep Lake Baikal, North America's Great Lakes, and East Africa's mountainous rift lakes, chiefly Tanganyika and Nyasa. One of the most striking facts about the world's freshwater is that the most widely accessed source by societies throughout history-rivers and streams-hold just 0.00006 of the total."

We are lucky to be surrounded by water-Lake Ontario on the south and many lakes and streams on the west, north, and east. We think that this is true for everyone, but it is not. The distribution of water on Earth is wildly unequal. One-third of all streamflow occurs in Brazil, Russia, Canada, and the United States, with a combined one-tenth of the world's population. Semiarid lands with one-third of the world's population, by contrast, get just 8 per cent of renewable supply.

We should remember that when we hose off our driveways and water our lawns on sunny days (which wastes 90% of the water through evaporation). Canadians are terrible wasters of water. The United Nations calculates that 60-80 litres per day are needed for drinking, sanitation, food preparation, and bathing. Canadians manage to use more than four times that amount.

An article titled Economics And Technical Change: The Water Resource Conundrum, published by Environment Canada states, "The average Canadian per capita water use from municipal systems is 350 liters per day, second only to that of the U.S., and over double that of many European countries. Also, of the water pumped in many Canadian municipalities, less that 75% can be accounted for by deliveries to customers. Water use inside the home is excessive. The typical toilet uses 20 liters per flush, and showers use over double the amount of water required for effectiveness."

However, individual Canadians should not be singled out for blame. Dan Shrubsole and Dianne Draper in On Guard for Thee? Water (Ab)uses and Management in Canada, state, "Agriculture is the #1 consumer of water, with only 25% of the water it withdraws being returned to its source. Over 85% of agricultural withdrawals of water are for irrigation, and 15% are for watering livestock.

Then there is recreation. Municipal golf courses use more water than municipalities. There are also hidden uses of water, and the amount needed to produce common foods and clothing will astound you. The average bathtub without you in it holds about 200 litres of water.

According to Waterfootprint.org (http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/productgallery), a kilogram of roasted coffee takes 105 bathtubs to grow and process. A kilogram of beef takes 775 bathtubs of water to produce. That cotton shirt in your closet takes 135 bathtubs. A bottle of wine takes 36 bathtubs.

It adds up fast.

It's clear that we can use much less water with technology and by making a few simple changes. Baths take 100 litres of water, showers with water-saving showerheads, about 30 litres. Toilets need 4-6 litres per flush, not 20 litres. Turning the tap off while you are brushing your teeth will save 700 litres a month.

We hear a lot about the oil crisis but the water crisis is next, even here, living beside Lake Ontario. Remember, you can survive without oil; you can't survive without water.

Next time, I will explore many ways to re-fit your home and your behaviour to save our precious water.