(Image from gizmag.com)

Being an automotive enthusiast I really love when the automotive industry finds new and interesting ways to help the environment and promote sustainability. For those who didn’t know the Toyota Prius (besides being environmentally devastating) is not by any means the first mass produced electric car. In fact, in 1912 38% of cars registered in America were electric, 40% were steam powered and only 22% were powered by gasoline. Electric cars actually date back more than 185 years with the first electric propelled vehicle created by Anyos Jedlik, dating from 1828 but that is more a side note. What I want to point out is that hybrid vehicles are nothing even remotely new and sometimes the best ideas that are coming out now are modern updates of old ideas and in this case it is Peugeot Citroën’s new hybrid system. What is unique about this hybrid is that it is not battery powered at all and is therefore very environmentally friendly and is infinitely sustainable because it really an update of the steam powered car. This hybrid system runs on compressed air which is drawn in from the outside and alone can power the car for speeds of up to 70km per hour before the gas motor takes over. That means for city driving and general commuting the car will run on just air. When combined with the gas engine the car will achieve 81 mpg. Peugeot Citroën says that this compressed air system is much less complicated and expensive than traditional battery and electric hybrids and is easily adaptable to their entire current product line. This is not some future technology but something that is actively being worked on and the company says that the engine will be available to the public starting in 2016! So in just a few years you can say that your car literally runs on air. It is innovative (or oldovative) ideas like this which are leading to a much more environmentally healthy and sustainable future for all of us.

(Image from cbc.ca)

There is an epidemic occurring in Vancouver and that is the lane way home. While normally I am a fan of small homes, this one I cannot support at all and there are a number of reasons why but first let us look at why they exist.

Vancouver real estate is obviously astronomically high especially on the West Side where it is rare to find a home in any condition for less than $1.5 Million. Due to this high land pricing, the desire to live in this area and the increasing amount of people moving to Vancouver and increasing the overall urban density of it the lane way house has been introduced. A lane way house is exactly what it sounds like, it is a fully independent separate house built on the back end of the lot of an existing house where the garage used to be and is only accessible from the back lane. There are other fancy sounding names for this such as a coach house or a carriage house but let’s be honest and just call it a 2 bedroom apartment over a garage. If I sound cynical it is because I am and now for the reasons why.

First of all I spent my entire life living in the areas these houses are being built and they are already far too overcrowded. The basement suites are bad enough but now when you incorporate a laneway house you have too many people living in an area that size. If the house has a two parent and two children and the basement suite has 3 students (which is the most common arrangement) now adding the laneway house of a two parents and two children you have 11 people living in a lot that is only 33 feet wide by 122 feet long. Doing the math of an average Vancouver house being 2,200 square feet and an average lane way house being 550 square feet and divide that by 11 people and you end up with each person living with 250 square feet. That is very tiny but manageable however I know from living in this area that resentment starts to occur from those living in the basement suites and laneway houses towards the “wealthy people in full size houses”. While yes, this does sort out the issues with urbanization it brings up new issues of social status and class which did not previously exist.

What I would rather see instead of laneway houses is more row houses like what is occurring along Grandville, Oak and Cambie streets. Where tracks of four or more houses are knocked down and replaced with row house developments of fifteen or more homes. Not only are houses sharing the same walls much more efficient but it levels the playing field since everyone has paid the same amount for their house and everyone has the same house. I think this is a much better option with far less complications and does not destroy the sense of community such as a laneway house does.

(Image from mobilehomeadvisor.com)

For those who have been following my blog it should come as no surprise that I am a fan of tiny things. Mostly tiny houses and cars but the love of tiny things is pretty wide open. I wrote previously on the community of tiny houses that is being proposed as a means of reducing the urban sprawl of massive houses while at the same time fostering the sense community lacking from an apartment building. I happened to come across a very interesting article today which was addressed this same topic but was about seniors and trailer parks. Now remove the stereotypical media portrayed image of a fat shirtless man drinking beer in between his dilapidated trailer and his rusted car on blocks and replace that image with one of new shiny manufactured homes in a well maintained and landscaped community. The article was very sobering yet interesting as it billed trailer parks as an alternative to apartment or care homes for the aging population. It can be found here

The article cites that that the destroyed real estate bubble wiped out over 50% of seniors wealth and that one in six seniors living in America lives in poverty. To add to this half of people approaching retirement have less than $10,000 in the bank and that by 2030 19% of the population will be over 65 years old. It suggests that newly built senior parks offer a much lower cost alternative as well as a community atmosphere and the ability to do things such as gardening on your own property beside your home which is impossible in an apartment or seniors home all while living in your own independent home under 800sq feet. Some communities have daily cocktail hours at club houses and therapy sessions where people can go and interact with each other on a daily basis and have a built in support network.

I really like this idea a lot as nursing homes can be up to (and over) $50,000 a year that is the cost of buying one of these homes and lots outright. I think that if this idea was expanded upon it could be an excellent alternative to being “put in a home” as I know many baby boomers fear will happen. A community such as this is small and could easily incorporate things found in a traditional nursing home. Nurses and attendants could use golf carts to drive around the community and check in on the residents a couple of times a day. Small general stores could be added (much like Centra which I covered in a previous post)so that residents have all they need without having to leave and deal with going into the city. Most importantly though it does not take away someone’s independence and pride at being removed from their home and shoved into a room in a seniors home with only a few of their possessions having room to fit. Very soon urban planners need to look at what can be done to care for and support the aging population and I feel that a solution such as this has amazing merit.

Well it seems to be a rehashing of my old blog topics this time it is about the so called green revolution that is occurring…

When I was thinking about what to write in the blog tonight during dinner a commercial came on TV and I thought “no way this is perfect!” I was very excited because I was watching a commercial for a company called Bio-Heat and in their ad they described that their company offers a revolutionary new environmentally friendly way to heat your home and that is with biodiesel. I was dumbfounded. Could finally a corporation be listening to everything that we learn in GRS and LFS and come up with an entirely sustainable heating source. The ad went on to describe how sustainable and renewable it was, it would create jobs for Americans (it was an American station I was watching) and reduce dependency on foreign oil all while recycling this waste product and turning it into something useful. The ad was very expensive looking and professional and after learning that they were operating in several states on the east coast and expanding I came upstairs right now to look them up.

This is directly from their website “Bioheat® is traditional home heating oil blended with Biodiesel. To understand what makes Bioheat® the cleaner and renewable home heating oil for now and the future, it’s important to understand the basics about Biodiesel.” Now get ready to be as disappointed as am currently am because this is under the information section “How much biodiesel is blended with heating oil to make Bioheat®? Bioheat® blends usually range between 2% and 5%” Wait what? You just got me all excited about watching your ad about saving the environment with a sustainable heat source and you are actually only using 2-5% of it in your product! I am both disappointed and angry at this, it is merely another way to trick the environmentally conscious consumer that they have a planet saving solution when in fact they are nothing more than another oil company who drips a bit of biodiesel into their product and labels it as a planet saver. This really is a lesson for all of us that we need to actually check on these claims and not just buy into something blindly because it is labelled as green.

For as long as I can remember I have always wanted to get a truck with a slide in camper mounted in the bed and go explore North America. It must be this urge to explore unknown places that made me really think about going into GRS and discovering the world. Recently I have discovered something which I didn’t know existed and that is expedition vehicles. Not the typical old Land Rover that you would find in the bush somewhere but, purpose built RV’s designed for exploring all the corners of the world. Usually the owners of these vehicles do around the world trips with them and are gone for at least a year at a time. These expedition RV’s are usually based on some kind of heavy duty military 4X4 vehicle or even a 6X6 or an 8X8 so they really are designed to go anywhere without a problem. The really interesting thing is that as they are usually one off builds by companies which specialize in this kind of work. This means that they are entirely customizable to the customer’s standards and can be as luxurious or as basic as you could possibly want them to be. The big drawback though is the cost. I saw one on a German website which was a used unit with an 8X8, fully expandable living quarters to 1500 square feet with every possible luxury available and it was 800,000 Euros! It is used and it costs 800,000 Euros! So until i can think of a more feasible way of doing this I may be stuck with my original truck with a camper idea and stick to the paved roads which is a shame because I cannot think of a better way of seeing and interacting with cultures all over the world then by driving there and living among them for a few days before heading off.

A while ago I did a posting about tiny houses which to this day I still love more than I can actually explain. I still can’t decide if I would go insane living in one or not but until that answer comes back I can still dream about living in one. So you can imagine my delight when I received an email from one of the tiny house manufactures whose email list I subscribe too. It was about “The Napoleon Complex” which no is not about tiny angry people but is a project that they are developing. What is this project you may ask? Well it is a modern version of Sir Ebenezer Howard’s 1889 Garden City movement. Basically they have purchased land in Northern California and opening in 2015 is their vision for a new community, one of just tiny houses. There will be 16-22 houses per acre each ranging in size from 270sq feet to 700sq feet. In addition there will be A 800 – 1600sq foot common house, private gardens, 1.5 parking spaces per house, shared outdoor space, private storage units, and prominent pedestrian walkways out front with parking out back. Besides being a very interesting and exciting idea it has implications which I don’t think the Napoleon Complex has thought of. If this proves to be successful it can become another solution to the issues of urban density which honestly appeals to me a lot more than high or even low rises. These units are the same space (or smaller) then a small apartment but are spread out on the ground so that not only do you have some green space but a feeling of community is purposely imposed on the layout so that you get to know your neighbours and the community itself instead of being shoved into your shoebox in the sky. For me this is a much better solution and one that I think more people could adapt too as we are all gradually forced into looking at our ecological footprint. if you want to know more information than click here

The residence of Roebuck Castle I lived in at UCD was absolutely stunning! My room had marble counter tops, LED lighting, a beautiful real wood desk and that is just the start. Roebuck Castle was named after the historic castle on the plot it was built on was only one year old when I moved in but the most important thing to us GRS’ers was it was highly praised with numerous awards because it was the “Greenest Building” in all of Ireland! I did not even know this prior to moving in and was delighted to hear this during my first week. Each apartment was comprised of 12 individual bedrooms; each with their own full bathroom and fridge, there was also a massive kitchen, a TV room and a study room in each apartment. The kitchen was nice but as a breakfast and dinner was included each day it was not really hugely important. Continuing with the green theme the meals were served on the main floor of the building in our private restaurant. Since there were only 132 people in the building the chef who was stolen from a high end restaurant made everything with local and organic ingredients and the menu changed daily with a choice of two appetizers, three entries and two desserts. For the greenness of the building, the toilet water was collected from rain water and the showers so it was recycled, the heat for the building was entirely done by the solar panels covering the roof which was also planted with green plants to help the insulation. Also to add with the insulation in the rooms, all doors and windows were air tight so that the warm air could not escape. The stove was induction and would boil water in 20 seconds saving power and every single outlet and the stove itself had a little tiny light switch beside it which turned on the power to the outlet so that way even when something was not plugged in the outlet was not drawing power off of the grid. All of the windows were thermal and also drew heat into the rooms and there was an air circulation and purification system in every single room. Everything was well planned and stunning. It was also the worst building I have ever lived in.

Where should I start with what was wrong with it? How about the fact that the plumber for the building told me that the building was based on award winning green apartment buildings from Spain and Greece however, no one took into account the massive climate difference between Ireland and the Mediterranean and the fact that students would be residing and not people that work from 9-5. As a result the heating system could not possibly cope and I was freezing the entire time and everyone was always sick. One girl had a room so cold the building engineers were repeatedly in there trying to figure out what was wrong and she ended up getting pneumonia. The heating system was designed to only product heat for three hours in a twelve hour period which in Ireland in the winter was insane. They figured that all students would go to bed at 10 pm so that is when the furnaces for the entire building shut down! They also did not stop to think that not everyone would have class starting at 9am so the hot water for the shower system was only programmed to run from 7am-9am. Due to this everyone rushed to have a hot shower at this time and maybe 70% of the time did I have hot water in my showers. Likewise I never understood why on earth when I had people over the rooms got so hot or why we all became so sleepy after a little while. I found out in November when I was at a Q&A with the building designers that since our apartments were airtight (unless we opened a door or window) and they figured we would be the only ones in our rooms. Therefore, the exhaust and ventilation system was only designed to handle the carbon dioxide produced by one person and when I would have three of four people in my room to watch a movie or multiple people in the kitchen for a party we were essentially poisoning ourselves. So basically I was in the greenest building in Ireland which was brand new and I was also freezing the entire time, I didn’t know if I was going to get a hot shower in the morning and if I had company over we were poisoning ourselves simply by breathing. So the question is, is greener really better?

You can read more about Roebuck Castle below

http://www.archdaily.com/187581/roebuck-castle-student-residence-ucd-kavanagh-tuite-architects/

(If you are an electrician in Ireland, this is the work “van” that you will use)

While living in Ireland I noticed something interesting, there was always at least one vehicle on the road or in one of the UCD parking lots which had all the windows behind the driver window painted body colour. I say vehicle because there was no set type, they ranged from Land Rover’s (which is the largest SUV you can buy in Ireland) to a Ford Fiesta (see picture) to the smallest European two door hatchbacks which we would never even consider driving in Canada because it is just too tiny. One day curiosity got the better of me and I went and looked a back window which was not painted on that particular car and was surprised to see that there was no interior apart from a driver and passenger seat. I thought maybe this person must have ripped theirs out for some reason and the next time I saw a different one I saw the same thing no interior but there was a tool box then it dawned on me, these are work vehicles. Being that in North America I always associate work vehicles with either a pickup truck or a panel van (which there were many of too) and so therefore when I saw a VW Golf with no side windows it was logical that I wouldn’t think it was actually a plumbers work car. Then I thought about it more and since the cost of gas is so expensive in Ireland and many of the roads are from the medieval days, a large pickup truck would not make sense as a work truck since the cost would be massive and often times they would not fit in different areas. This got me thinking if all of the contractors in Ireland can make do with using cars, tiny SUV’s and vans to do anything work related in the country, why can’t we in Canada? This is actually a concept that is not foreign to us in North America. Up until the late 1950’s we had something called a “sedan delivery” that all domestic manufactures made. These were basically station wagons with no side windows or interior and were designed for trades people and delivery and where hugely successful until they were replaces by trucks and vans. It occurred to me how much cost could be saved by switching to these European work cars not only would the cost be far less per unit but the gas savings alone would be astronomical. Not to mention the bigger benefit for everyone else and that is that far less gas would be used thereby producing less pollution and green house gasses. While these types of vehicles may not be embraced with open arms on a Canadian work site I wonder how they would feel if shown the cost savings over a 5 year period.

While doing all my shopping at Centra and the exceptional time at a Tesco or Super Quinn supermarkets besides noticing the drastically lower food prices compared to Vancouver, I never once paid more than 3 Euros for a single item and many of my purchases cost only cents such as canned beans which were 14 cents a can. I also noticed signs in the meat and dairy sections which said that all products were traceable, curious I went to go read these signs in more detail. It said that every single cow derived product ranging from a steak to a brick of cheese could be traced back to the farm it came from. I was shocked to see this as I cannot count the number of times in my life I have gotten sick off food be it from the grocery store or a restaurant and when I call them they say they cannot do anything since they don’t know where it comes from but will tell their supplier. This level of accountability made me envious of the food safety which they have in Ireland that is lacking in Canada. I read the sign further and was flat out dumbfounded when I saw that not only could the product say a container of butter could be traced back to the original farm or animal but each individual container of butter could be traced to the very cow that it comes from! This way if there is a problem as long as you have your original packaging, the product that made you ill could be traced to the very animal which it came from which allows them to pull that animal and every product it produced from the shelves until the problem is rectified. Furthermore, if a farm had too many instances of quality control issues the store would stop purchasing from that farmer which only makes the quality control that much higher. While I did take a food and agribusiness marketing class and it had a large section covering dairy farms there unfortunately was not a field trip to a dairy farm so I could not compare it to the dairy farm we saw in LFS 250 but I would have really liked to so I could see the differences especially when taking all of the tracking ability into account. This is something I think would be beneficial to all if it was exported from Ireland to every country in the world as food safety and accountability is such a vital thing. As it turns out I did not once get sick from eating any food in Ireland.

If you have been reading my blog then you are either Alisha or a spammer but you will have also known that last year I went on exchange to Dublin, Ireland where I studied at University College Dublin. Apart from being hands down the most amazing experience of my life, I noticed some very interesting things in Dublin as well as all of Ireland which directly relate to what we are learning in GRS class. Since everyone loves food, that is what I will talk about first. In Ireland like in most of Europe people have much smaller fridges in their homes which are about the same size as what we call bar fridges. Only once when I was in the home of a very wealthy family did I see a large fridge that we are accustomed to seeing here. As a result of this people need to go shopping far more often for food than we do in Canada. Buying milk and bread is at least done every other day if not daily because due to the size of fridges, the largest size container of milk that can be bought is 2 liters. Bread is bought so often because all bread is made without preservatives and this mixed with the exceptionally moist climate causes bread to grow mold in less than three days. Since shopping is done so much they have something in Ireland which I had never encountered before and this was a store called Centra. There are other stores which are similar such as Spar or Tesco Express but since Centra is 100% Irish owned I will look at it. But what is Centra? Well Centra is a corner grocery store. In Canada your mind instantly thinks of something like a 7-11 but despite having a similar size, that is where the difference ends. Imagine taking everything you could find at a Safeway and reducing the variations of products so that there are two types of jams instead of 60 different brands and flavours for example and you now have a Centra. Centra is a full blown grocery store with a deli, produce section, dairy section and anything else you could expect to find in a grocery store but streamlined to fit into an extremely small footprint. As a single person I was able to do 90% of all my shopping for my entire semester at the Centra right on campus. Yes there was a Centra on campus, there was also one a 3 minute walk off campus and another one 10 minutes from that location. They are everywhere! Centra is designed with traditional Irish village culture in mind where you can walk a short distance from your house, do all your shopping and walk back. There is no need at all to take a car and since Irish law charges 25 cents for a bag at any store everyone brings their own. This environmentally concept fascinated me and in a city as densely populated as Vancouver I could see it being hugely successful! If you were wondering how Centra manages to compete with the large super markets it is quite ingenious. The thousands of Centra’s across Ireland are all independently owned (the campus one was “Molloy’s Centra” as the sign said) however, they are all franchises and purchase all of their stock together which makes them more many products cheaper than what you would find at the major supermarkets. This ease of shopping combined with the low cost makes Centra so popular that everyone shops there without even thinking about being how environmentally friendly they are and this is something that I would love to see be brought to Canada.