James Glave wants to build a "green" house which he implicitly (but not explicitly) defines as carbon neutral. He lives in Canada so heating his house is a big issue for him. Unfortunately he and his wife couldn't afford to build the carbon-neutral house of their dreams so he instead tries to build the carbon-neutral office/guest house of his dreams. He does a decent job too and makes the story entertaining and even somewhat informative. $90,000 later he has a nice 400 square foot space built with responsibly grown lumber and solar-heated. It sounds good, but it was a lot of effort and a lot of cost and is so obviously out of reach for most people that I sort of wonder what the reader is supposed to do with the information?
I will say that if I were headed to do a building project I'd look for the responsibly grown/harvested lumber he discusses, that seemed minimally more expensive, and definitely worth it, although at least where he lives, hard to come by.
I was disappointed that he insulated with an expanding polyurethane foam. It does it's job well but was incredibly toxic getting installed and I wonder what happens if the building ever has to be torn down or a wall replaced or something like that? Not to mention that even though once cured it appears to be inert it is incredibly volatile and dangerous until then and the people who work with it are putting themselves at risk for respiratory problems. And of course when it is installed some of those toxins are released into the greater world.
I think keeping our carbon footprint down is important, I'm just not sure it is important above and beyond all other environmental concerns, especially in a building project the size of Glave's which is so small as to have a small impact regardless. And, after all, sits immediately next door to his much larger house which was built without the same carbon consciousness.
At the end I found it to be a fun read but as I'm not building anything any time soon I didn't take much from it that I could use.
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