Where we came from.

We acquired 20A Senlac in the winter of 2013.  The home was innovative, to the point of being unusual (in Toronto), high efficiency and environmentally sensitive.   

It had been built by Nexterra Green Homes from a Living Homes design by Ray Kappe .  The design is known as "RK 6.2".  It is a modular home, built from 6 modules that were created in the Hi-Tech Housing factory in Bristol, Indiana (USA) in January, 2012.  

The house was assembled on-site in February 2012, and put up for sale later in June.  We discovered it around December and moved in the following February, 2013.

I have included a cute video of the assembly process here, but beware : it is a 16 MB upload / stream !!!

Another thousand words.... from early November, 2013.  Luckily the garden grew well in the summer of 2013.

This home was built to be LEED certifiable. Originally, "platinum" certification was anticipated by the developer, but it is likely to be "gold" when the t's get crossed and the i's dotted.  There's many a slip "twixt the cup and the lip".  

In line with its small footprint / high efficiency / low consumption / low wastage heritage, we were attracted to the opportunity to "go greener" with PV solar panels and possibly a greener roof. 

While we are not ardent tree-huggers (actually we hug rhododendrons and azaleas) we are increasing aware of the real costs of living in a city, the phenomenal impact of bloat-housing, rampant over-building and all the wastage associated with it, both short and long term.

So, in the fall of 2013 we installed a 5.25 kW PV solar panel array that is tied to the local grid through a Micro-Feed-In-Tariff agreement with our local power company. Ontario has a luxurious MFit program running, and we jumped on the band wagon at 54c / kWH.  

Even with 21 rather large solar panels on the roof, there is still about 860 sq ft (80 sq m) of unencumbered space.  While the white roof (DURO-Last D50) might be very efficient, it would be a whole lot nicer to sip our evening coffee surround by verdant "something".  We need something bountiful and natural to balance or dilute the stark technology of the solar panels.

 (3 PM shot)

Some of the area is in the shadow of the 3rd storey walkout, some is on top of the walkout, some is on the roof of the extension to the kitchen and there is a "trough" above the garage. 

Some of the space is relatively extensive, while a lot of it is narrow, in the lane ways between the solar panels. The panels were arranged so that there would be a lane way at least 12" (0.3M) wide between the banks of panels, if only to provide me with space to stand while I sweep the snow off the relatively flat panels.

So at this stage, we are looking to slather the roofs with something lightweight like sedums, interspersed with grasses, caryx and some native flowers.  More details about the design in the next instalment.

A quick note about units.  In Toronto we are metric. But I grew up imperial. So now I flip-flop ambivalently. 10 3/4 square feet to a square metre, give or take a bit.

Inaugural Posting

20A Senlac Green Roof

This blog is set up to document the installation of a living / green roof on 20A Senlac Rd in Toronto.  

As we wend our way through the "dream and design" stage in the winter and spring of 2014, it is quite clear that there are very few "tall tales and true" from people doing small (75 m2, 750 sq ft) residential installations (other than many English garages). The vendor support seems to be scaled at 500 m2 to  5000 m2 sized areas, like the top of a condo tower or a whole factory, where growing media gets delivered by the truck load and the crane is in-place to lift it for you. Not to mention staff / labour, contractors, consultants, etc....

Not for us.  86 square metres of roof, maybe 8 yards of medium. No crane.  One unit of labour plus one more on the weekends. Equipment rented from Home Depot or Stevenson's.

Having said all that,  there are a few evangelists out there who are really generous and gracious with their time and experience, to encourage us forward.  We are increasingly thankful for their guidance and enthusiasm.

Starting Point.

To save a couple of thousand words, here are a couple of pictures to show our starting point. 

The first shows the existing DUROLAST D50 membrane on the top of the kitchen extension.

The second picture shows one corner of the main roof, with a clutterati of PV solar panels.  We have our challenges ahead of us.

I'll fill in the background over the next few entries.

Big picture.... it is my intention to provide a virtual diary of our endeavours as we proceed through the next few months and years, getting our living roof installed and then maintained for years to come.  The trials and the tribulations. I don't have any particular axe to grind other than providing a documentary of our endeavours.  Some things will go well, and we will likely stub our toes on more than one occasion.  I'll try to include all aspects of our journey.

Very much "in the fullness of time..."

The only other gotcha is that this project had a number of parallel streams of work related to different aspects of the larger undertaking. So the blog might seem to jump around a bit as Task B appears to be proceeding,  while waiting for materials for Task A.  The publishing dates are in the correct sequence work-wise, but might not be that actual date the work was undertaken, nor closely related to the date when the photo was taken.