What’s happening at www.ramsayhome.com

I guess this idea kind of makes sense, go to the about page for information. Its things like this…the little things that can help make the world a cleaner place…i guess!

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Via Exposay.com.

Orlando Bloom is building an eco-friendly house in the British countryside. The “Pirates Of The Caribbean” star decided to construct his own green home because he can’t afford to buy a property in London.

The actor complained to Britain’s Daily Express newspaper: “I was trying to buy somewhere in London but couldn’t afford it. It is not the actors making money, it is the boys in the City.”

However, the project has been a lot more time consuming and expensive than Orlando had anticipated.

He said: “I wanted to make a green house, a place that felt safe and comfortable and out of the way. But building a house has been so stressful, it has taken double the budget – but I did make changes.”

The 30-year-old, who is a committed environmentalist, recently traveled to the Antarctic for environmental organization Global Green to study the effects of global warming.

Read more about Orlando Bloom’s home.

[tags]eco-friendly,new home, green, environmentalism, global warming[/tags]

Long time readers may have noticed that our blog has returned to it’s original theme – this was by far the most popular and we are happy to bring it back for our readers.

Please excuse us while we clean up from our virtual reno – some images are missing and some links may be broken.

Things will be back to 100% within the week.

Thanks

–ryan

[tags]css reboot, themes, styles, web refresh[/tags]

Al Gore condemned Canada’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, saying it was a fraud “designed to mislead the Canadian people.” Canadian Environment Minister John Baird rejected Gore’s criticisms. “The fact is our plan is vastly tougher than any measures introduced by the administration of which the former vice president was a member,”

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[tags]al gore, environment, climate change, canada, politics, environmentalism[/tags]

Green Options Senior Editor Jeff McIntire-Strasburg interviews Ed Begley, Jr. on electric cars, Hollywood environmentalism, and Living with Ed.

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In the market for a new car? Then you might want to check out “The Greenest Vehicles of 2007,” a list released this week by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. The top scorers are listed here.

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How will we balance the need for carbon neutral fuels with the need for people to eat?

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The EPA and Wal-Mart are aggressively promoting the sale of compact fluorescent light bulbs to save energy and fight global warming. But the bulbs contain mercury, a neurotoxin, and the companies and federal government can’t figure out how to dispose of them.

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With the growth of the mining industry and development of advanced extraction techniques, local population often left with nothing afterwards.

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A new report shows that home owners are prepared to pay more to live in a sustainable home. 92% interviewed for a new survey were keen to see sustainability features offered on new homes. The report also shows that men are more likely than women to know about energy saving and energy generation in the home.

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The production of one liter bottle of Fiji water uses 26 times more water than the bottle contains. Twenty-six! The production also consumes almost one kilogram of fossil fuel, and emits over one pound of CO2.

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Although consumers are now more aware of holistic living and sustainability, finding green furniture can be a frustrating experience for many. The Seattle Times has put together a list of stores that carry eco-friendly, sustainable and natural furniture as well as tips for shopping in your own area.

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Echo Haven is 6 acres of land within the Calgary city limits dedicated to sustainable development and responsible building for 25 families. As well as being both an electricity user and generator, the houses will use rainwater harvesting and a gray water treatment system to reduce the burden on the infrastructure and replenish the hydrology regime.

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[tags]calgary, sustainable, responsible, environment, echohaven, building, rainwater, electricity,net metering[/tags]

Advocates see net metering as an environmental twofer: it promotes green energy and reduces the strain on the power grid. But the number of people investing in solar panels or wind turbines has been relatively small so far, despite the selling point of being able to turn the table on electric utilities.

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Ever increasing delays, escalating costs, bad contractors, missing materials, unpaid suppliers, stop-work orders, cement shortages and liens. This young family is trying to finish their eco-friendly, green home project. They have been blogging and sharing research from 2005 and need a bit of help. Check the extensive resource list on their blog.

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We packed up the baby and headed east for our summer vacation!

We don’t have much internet where we are – so there will not be many new posts for a few more days. Please bear with us.

We are having a blast though!

M & R

Just when it seems that house prices couldn’t go up anymore, especially for those of us in Calgary, Canada. The huge initial cost of building or purchasing a green home can force a young family into a refinancing mortgage. Some people will never have a problem with their refinancing mortgage while others may never work their way out. Found at www.ctv.ca.

Young families could be forced to consider a refinancing mortgage as house prices continue to rise.

Housing prices in Canada are expected to rise 9.2 per cent this year despite rising mortgage rates, as demand continues to exceed inventory, according to a report released Wednesday.

Royal LePage Real Estate Services said in its quarterly report that the average house price in Canada will be $272,200 by the end of 2006, given current economic forecasts for the balance of the year.

“We are unlikely to see the kind of housing market corrections that have begun to occur in isolated regions south of the border in our country,” Phil Soper, chief executive of Royal LePage, said in a release.

“The midterm outlook for the Canadian housing market remains very positive.”

Canadian housing prices rose in all major cities in the second quarter, but growth in Western Canada outpaced the rest of the country, especially in the oil-rich province of Alberta, where extraordinary demand outstripped stock.

“The result has been some of the highest year-over-year price increases that have been experienced in any region of this country in decades. This pattern will likely continue for the remainder of the year,” said Soper.

Some buyers were priced out of the market — particularly in the West — leading them to consider “less established areas” or to rethink the type of housing they want to purchase.

“The rising mortgage rates are regarded as having little to no effect on buyers entering the market,” the report said/

While the market was hot out west, the Central and Eastern provinces saw more modest growth.

Growth in the housing markets remained stable in Ottawa and Toronto, as increased inventory levels helped to control the rate of price appreciation.

In Atlantic Canada, inventory increases resulted in a slower rate of price appreciation. Of the housing types surveyed, the highest average price rise was in detached bungalows, which went up 15.6 percent year-over-year to $292,237.

Prices for standard condominiums saw an increase of 14.2 percent to $208,403, while standard two-storey house prices rose 13.3 per cent to $351,367.
In Calgary, a lack of inventory, a thriving provincial economy and a low unemployment rate drove prices to record-breaking highs. The price for a standard two-storey house rose 54.6 percent year-over-year to $397,867, while a standard bungalow was up 50.4 per cent at $371,200.

In Edmonton, the price for a standard, two-story house climbed 38.6 per cent to $281,286 while a standard bungalow rose 33.2 per cent to $253,857.
Despite the jump in house prices, the study expects the total number of transactions to rise a marginal 0.4 per cent to 485,000 in 2006, from 483,250 last year.

[tags]Refinancing mortgage, blogs,blogging,news,current events,daily,housing,mortgage,house prices[/tags]

We are planning to use wood for the floors inside our home but we hate the chemicals found in almost any floor polisher. That was until we got some excellent advice from our friends at City Hippy that we just had to share! Great as a floor polisher or polishing any wood in your green home.

floor polisher – here is an alternative furniture polish

Instead of using regular floor polisher here is a great alternative thanks to 1001 Natural Remedies by Laurel Vukovic (Read our review here).

Lemon floor polisher

• Extra virgin olive oil helps to protect the wood in the furniture. Lemon essential oil cleans the wood and provides a refreshing scent.
• 1/2 cup (125ml) extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon lemon essential oil
• Mix the ingredients n a glass bottle, shake, and store. Rub a small amount on to wood furniture with a soft cotton cloth.

Trust me it works. And if you like the sound of that everyday green alternative you should check out her other furniture care alternatives including those for leather & bamboo care, removing sticky labels and candle wax, repairing scratches and the astonishing Raw walbut rub method of removing stain rings. And she goes way beyond furniture covering pets, body care, pest control and a whole lot more.

Happy polishing

Namaste

[tags]floor polisher,blog,blogging,daily,internet,reviews,weblog,news[/tags]

Here is the first of our new daily format of short bits of green building related goodness, all found via Google Blog Search. Please subscribe to our XML feed with your favorite news reader and leave your comments/suggestions here on this story.

Google Blog Search – Green stories for June 28, 2006

Put your energy into saving energy this year

Putting energy into saving it [www.madison.com/wsj]- Manufactures and markets energy-recovery ventilators, will be the first Midwest company to receive a Green Globes award from the Green Building Initiative of …”

Shopping for items for your eco-friendly home?

Create an environmentally friendly shopping policy [www.newzrover.com]: “make smart choices when shopping for food is the key to the success of any healthy diet plan. Learning to recognize the … Of course, the logical place to start the healthy shopping trip to the grocery store is at the produce section. …”

Beware of that general contractor about to knock your house down!

Contracting disaster! [www.ramsayhome.com]: We are happy with our new contractor and the project has started to show signs of life again. I have avoided talking about the situation in detail as I was really hoping that things could be addressed and settled. As the situation has become worse, I have decided the right and honourable thing to do is to warn others about doing business with Marcello Spoletini (info@urbantechhomes.com) and any of his contracting and construction companies: Urban Tech Homes Ltd. and Green Tech Construction.

Funders have seen the light with energy saving construction

Investors see the green in building [westnorth.com]: “… Investors have thought of how to clean up the picture in the building industry-source of, say some, … Green developer extraordinaire Jonathan Rose, of New York, … Perhaps the most promising is the $100 million Green Living Fund, …”

Thinking of building green? Here are some tips to save money with your project

Building the green way – how to save [www.internafrica.org] : “Although they look like regular structures, green buildings are designed to have less negative impact on the environment, be healthier, boost the productivity of workers within, and have lower overhead costs. They also yield a greater …”

[tags]Google Blog Search, blog, blogging, daily, internet, reviews, weblog, news[/tags]

How to protect yourself from bad contractors

If you have been following this blog for the past few months, you probably read or noticed that our house project slowed down before Christmas and then came to a complete stop. There was virtually no construction for the first four months of 2006 until we found a new contractor. We are happy with our new contractor and the project has started to show signs of life again. I have avoided talking about the situation in detail as I was really hoping that things could be addressed and settled. As the situation has become worse and we are now dealing with liens and things, I have decided the right and honourable thing to do is to warn others about what can go wrong when dealing with general contractors. We would like to share some of what we learned in our interactions with Marcello Spoletini (info@urbantechhomes.com) and his contracting and construction companies: Urban Tech Homes Ltd. and Green Tech Construction.

Our house project has a simple final goal, to build a small house just outside the downtown core for two newlyweds to start a family in. We carefully based our designs on the Ramsay Community design guidelines to build a house that fit into the historic community instead of an ultra-modern in-fill. We also wanted to try and build the house in a manner that might lessen the impact the environment, both in construction and after the house was built.

Liens and things – How we found our contractor

When we were visiting my wife’s parents in Canmore, Alberta, we saw a house being

built next door that was using Logix Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF). The house project was just getting started and we happened to catch the home owner on-site. The home owner introduced us to his builder, Urban Tech Homes Ltd., which is a Calgary based construction contracting company run by Marcello Spoletini. Marcello Spoletini came across as an interesting, warm and confident builder and Urban Tech Homes Inc., appeared to share our interest in ecology, environmentalism and energy efficiency. After our meeting, we contacted our Architect and made plans to switch from a stick-frame construction to Logix ICF concrete blocks by Marcello Spoletini and to have Urban Tech Homes Ltd. be our contractor for our home in Ramsay, Calgary.

Marcello Spoletini and Urban Tech Homes Ltd., contracts the demolition of our home on August 14, 2005

Liens and things – Our house is gone!

Our initial relationship with Marcello Spoletini went well. We knew that he was building at least two simultaneous homes, one in Canmore and our house in Calgary and that there was an incredible housing boom in Calgary. On August 14, 2006 Marcello Spoletini and Urban Tech Homes Ltd. arranged for an excavation company to demolish our little old house and officially begin our home project – and we became nomads living with friends and family while our house was being built. Our original contract with Marcello Spoletini and Urban Tech Homes Ltd., had a move-in date of December 31, 2006 and we made arrangements to find places to stay for the next six months. We were beyond excited to start our project and I began putting together the pieces that would be this website during the fall.

The Logix ICF foam blocks for the basement walls arrived in September and things seemed to be moving along. My wife and I found out some great news, our first child was on the way! On the house project, we received invoices from Marcello Spoletini (via Urban Tech Homes Ltd. for contracting and Green Tech Construction for labor) for the major pieces of our home like the excavation, the trusses, the ICF blocks, steel for the concrete, etc. Marcello Spoletini told us that things would be moving fast for Urban Tech Homes Ltd. and that he wanted us to pre-purchase materials and store them at Macello Spoletini”s father-in-laws warehouse in Calgary. This talk about the project about to move quickly and our new basement walls made us excited and very happy to have our dream house being built by Urban Tech Homes Ltd., in the perfect neighborhood to raise our new family member in.

Our house on October 1, 2005

In November, we met the Architect on site and noticed that nothing had happened in the past couple of months. We couldn’t figure it out as Marcello Spoletini, Urban Tech Homes Ltd., or Green Tech Construction hadn’t told our Architect or us that there were problems. Marcello Spoletini, Urban Tech Homes Ltd., and Green Tech Construction were always hard to reach via telephone or cellphone but when we did contact Marcello Spoletini he always assured us that minor delays (which were out of his control, such as concrete powder being unavailable to him) were delaying the house but that things would be back on track shortly.

Our house in November of 2005

In December, my wife and I stopped by the house to take pictures of the project before our Christmas vacation. We would be gone for two weeks and wanted to see how the house coming along before we left. We were saddened to see that again, nothing had happened since September. Marcello Spoletini told us that some slow downs had happened. The sole truck for Urban Tech Homes Ltd., and Green Tech Construction had broken down and the Canmore project was behind schedule. Marcello Spoletini told again that within days, the pace of Urban Tech Homes Ltd., would pick up over the Christmas break and things would really start moving. When we got back home from our break we stopped by the house again to find lots of snow on the site, but sadly no one had been on-site during the Christmas break. It was clear we were not going to be moving-in anytime soon and that our original contract with Marcello Spoletini and Urban Tech Homes Ltd. had incorrect milestone dates and completion dates.

Celtic Contractors begin to install the trusses and Warmboard even though the basement walls are still not filled completely with concrete.

The new year started off with a notice in the mail that a sub-trade from a previous project was trying to garnish Marcello Spoletini, Urban Tech Homes Ltd. and Green Tech Construction to receive money for unpaid services. We were alarmed and forwarded the information to our Architect and lawyer. I also launched this website and decided that perhaps we could help Marcello Spoletini, Urban Tech Homes Ltd. and the project by generating some great publicity for the project on-line and stopping by everyday and photographing the progress. I would collect links to eco-friendly resources and other green building projects and help others who may be building similar projects or developing similar plans. I hammered out a schedule with Marcello Spoletini and Urban Tech Homes Ltd. to move things forward: I found out who would be supplying gravel for the basement, who the plummer Urban Tech Homes Ltd. was supplying, who the electrician Urban Tech Homes Ltd. was supplying, and who the framers were. Marcello gave dates and times that all his sub-trades from Urban Tech Homes Ltd. would finish key tasks. We set a goal for Urban Tech Homes Ltd. and Marcello Spoletini to have the back-fill in around the house by January 20th so we could begin working on the main floor.

A new year but old story – no workers and no work.

Our contract said the house would be finished on January 1, 2006. This is at the end of January and no work has been done since Christmas.

After the first couple of lunch meetings, I soon noticed a disturbing trend. Marcello Spoletini, Urban Tech Homes Ltd., Green Tech Construction or any sub-trades were never on-site and there were no signs of work. I met the neighbor one day and she said that she rarely saw anyone working on our project. On another day I met an electrician contracted by Urban Tech Homes Ltd., but he hadn’t seen the house plans and wasn’t sure what exactly he was supposed to be doing. When the end of January came, the basement walls were again pretty much the only thing still on-site and another important milestone for Urban Tech Homes Ltd. would clearly not be reached.

Marcello Spoletini gave us confidence in Urban Tech Homes Ltd. when we finally talked to him again. Macello Spoletini said that the housing boom was causing all kinds of problems and that we would have to make plans to work around the boom. Marcello Spoletini said that Urban Tech Homes Ltd. could get framers in to start the floor and that would at least progress things while we waited for other sub-trades. Marcello said that Urban Tech Homes Ltd. could only supply one framing company, Celtic Contractors from Canmore. We didn’t know what to expect from the rag-tag collection of guys that Marcello Spoletini personally drove into Calgary from Canmore each day (Marcello Spoletini lives in Calgary, 90 minutes each way from Canmore) but he said they were great and worked fast. We were also nervous that these would be the ”experts” who would be installing our Warmboard product, a material that Marcello convinced us to use that was very expensive and had massive warning instructions about incorrect installation of the Warmboard product. Clearly, Celtic Contractors had little, if any, professional construction training.

Early February 2006. We brought this supply of wood for Celtic Contractors but it mostly sat exposed to the elements.

Celtic Contractors

Celtic Contractors worked on our house for roughly four days straight and then we didn’t hear from them again. We got a hold of Marcello Spoletini and Urban Tech Homes Ltd. and were informed that the entire crew came down with the flu and hadn’t been able to work for over a week.

At this point, we knew that the relationship simply wasn’t working with Marcello Spoletini, Urban Tech Homes Ltd., or Green Tech Construction. We had to find a new contractor to finish our house. The baby was arriving in a couple of months and we had to reluctantly find an apartment to bring him home to. Incredible for us, this website actually put us in contact with our new contractor and all his references came back glowing. We visited a show-home he was building in Calgary and we were blown away by the quality and craftsmanship of his work. We checked in on the Canmore project that Urban Tech Homes Ltd., had been working on and sadly found an almost identical story as ours. Work was progressing at a snails pace, the owner was project managing the entire process and had even found his own laborers after the Urban Tech Homes Ltd. sub-contracted labor failed to show up. The home owner also had to repair or re-do some of the work done by Celtic Contractors.

The end of the relationship

To end our relationship, we gathered and contacted all the invoices that Marcello Spoletini had billed us for from Urban Tech Homes Ltd., and Green Tech Construction. Our lawyer told us that we should call everyone and make sure that the sub-trades Urban Tech Homes Ltd. had billed us for had actually been paid. We found out that the largest invoices, such as the trusses, the house demoltion and the original excavation had actually never been paid by Urban Tech Homes Ltd even though Marcello Spoletini assured us they were. Each of these companies were desperate to get in touch with Marcello Spoletini.

Dismantling the Ramsay House Project, April 2006

Starting over again

Our new contracter started to work immediately and wasn’t happy with what he had found. The walls had become shifted, concrete pads were in the wrong place and Celtic Contractors had installed the trusses and the Warmboard product completely wrong. In fact, Celtic Contractors didn”t follow the detailed instructions supplied by Warmboard and glued the boards to the

trusses incorrectly. Both the Warmbood products and trusses had to be destroyed to be corrected. The first few months for our new contractor would be to dismantle almost the entire project by Urban Tech Homes Ltd., Green Tech Construction and Celtic Contractors. In May of 2006, our house was again reduced to the basement walls that were first put up in September. Despite repeated promises by Marcello Spoletini to pay the companies that Urban Tech Homes Ltd., had invoiced us for, major debts remain unpaid even though we had paid Marcello Spoletini, Urban Tech Homes Ltd., and Green Contractors promptly whenever we received an invoice for the house project.

In summary, we have learned a lot from this project and hope others do not get victimized by Marcello Spoletini, Urban Tech Homes Ltd., Green Tech Construction or other ethically challenged contractors.

How can you protect yourself from bad contractors?

1. Get as many references as you can before you even consider a contractor. Not only phone those references but check on the projects yourself. All construction projects fall behind schedule but find out the reasons why things were delayed in past projects.

2. Marcello Spoletini told us that Urban Tech Homes Ltd. would supply three sub-trades for each task and we could choose the one we liked. We thought that was great customer service and was a big seller when we decided to go with Urban Tech Homes Ltd. When we needed a trade on-site, Urban Tech Homes Ltd. usually only had one option and there were no options available

in Calgary on such short notice.

3. Keep tabs on suppliers and sub-trades that you are billed by your contractor for. Check that large bills have been paid.

4. Watch for multiple company names and requests to write checks to new business names. Our lawyers have told us that Marcello Spoletini’s multiple company names such as Urban Tech Homes Ltd. and Green Tech Construction were used to further reduce liability to Marcello Spoletini when he doesn”t pay his bills.

5. We learned the painful lesson that it is virtually impossible to take small contractors to court effectively, especially when they use multiple company names. After the pain, distress and possible rulings not in your

favor, the chances of getting any money out of the contractor are almost zero.

6. We learned that there are people who are willing to look you in the face and gladly take tens of thousands of dollars away from young couples with a new baby.

[tags]Liens,Contractors,Lawyers,Attorney,suit,claims,buliding,construction[/tags]

This is perhaps the perfect southern california audi. Found this exciting Audi concept car, an electric sports coupe, from The Grand Auto Club Blog.

The perfect Southern california Audi green vehicle

Combining sportiness with a respect for the environment, the Audi R-Zero illustrates that extreme performance and reason are not contradictory. If anyone thinks that an electric car is deprived of elegance and dynamism, Audi R-Zero is a battery-driven vehicle that can fulfill dreams and arouse desires.

As oil prices continue to increase and the Protocol of Kyoto enters application, the bio-energies face serious limitations. Our energy future does not depend only on crude oil reserves. In the face of climatic change and its ecological and human cost, the consumption of hydrocarbons cannot continue at the current pace. It is necessary to decrease and diversify our consumption. Transport is the principal source of air pollution and oil consumption to a total value of 50%.

The initial purpose for the elaboration of this concept was to create a machine with demonic sensations by avoiding the immoderation and the inconveniences that we know of the current supercars, mainly in term of pollution. A concept with the image of a muscular sports car, the Audi TT, and with performance equivalent to that of the Bugatti Veyron, the whole works in harmony with our environment and must join the perspective of 2010.

Aside from the production of the batteries themselves, this car is respectful of the environment mainly due to its electric motorization. The system of electric motorization transmits the fabulous power and reactivity of the engine. It is in harmony with the ecological challenge and meets the needs of the present without compromising the capacity to satisfy the needs of the future generations.

The R-Zero is an exceptional supercar benefiting from an outstanding architecture. The electric motorization allows an original hierarchical organization of the streams of air in order to to control the behavior of the airflow around and inside the car. The structure of the aerodynamic flow optimizes cooling of the motor and the brakes, as well as generating steady aerodynamic support, all of which is synonymous for performance.

The “Back single frame” is not a free aesthetic subtlety nor deprived of functionality. An airstream connecting the 2 single frames (back and front) is present inside in the car : This structural column thus traverses the total length of the machine. Technique drove the design and the technical constraints were not subject to stylistic demands that, aside from the “Back single frame”, we have created a product which forms part of the lineage of explosive motor vehicles. And in the end, we have an electric motor car which does not look like an electric car.

This concept represents a future prospect coming from students of the International School of Design, ISD France.

Read more about the only green friendly electric sports car, perfect for southern california audi

[tags]southern california audi, r-zero, electric car, concept, green[/tags]