The homes of the future, almost everyone now agrees, have to be greener -- use less energy and consist of materials that don't pollute and don't need to travel far -- to do their bit in cutting the greenhouse-gas emissions (GHG) that are warming the planet.
But what about the homes of the past?
"The biggest environmental challenge [is] improving homes that are already built," says Lorraine Gauthier, who leads a tiny yet ambitious project in East York to show how some of Canada's most humble and ubiquitous houses can be retrofitted to cut their GHG emissions by two-thirds.
The National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy estimates that 66 per cent of the residential buildings that will be standing in Canada in 2050 have already been built. And Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. reported in 2003 that homes accounted for 17 per cent of Canada's total energy use and 16 per cent of its GHG emissions.
"So there's a pressing need for these retrofits if we ever hope to have a sustainable future," Ms. Gauthier says.
She answered a call by CMHC last year for contestants to build a "Net Zero Energy Healthy House."
The agency's criteria for such a house were: It must produce as much energy as it consumes, have no harmful health effects, use local resources and be affordable.
The contest was aimed at developers of new homes, but Ms. Gauthier, who heads a green-design consulting firm called Work Worth Doing, decided to "take a flier" and submit a retrofit plan instead. The federal housing agency could hardly say no -- she was proposing to retrofit one of the 30,000 Victory homes CMHC built at its inception for veterans of the Second World War. Orderly clusters of these 1½-storey prefabricated homes dot every major city in Canada, and the homes and streetscapes were used as templates for subsequent subdivisions.
The retrofit project, which Work Worth Doing has designated the "Now House," had already made it through two rounds of the contest and, on Wednesday, was among 12 homes across Canada chosen to receive $50,000 from CMHC to offset construction costs.
The residence -- at 12 Topham Rd. in the Topham Park area of East York -- is one of the original Victory homes. Built in 1946, probably from prefabricated panels delivered by truck, it's set on an almost circular cul-de-sac with a central field that serves as a play area for children from the dozen homes on the street, which is linked to similar cul-de-sacs by long boulevards.
Topham Park is named in honour of East York Second World War hero Fred Topham, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for saving fellow soldiers under attack even after taking a bullet in the face. Now, 12 Topham has become another source of pride for the neighbourhood as the Now House -- a demonstration model showing how an old building can be turned into a "green" one by using currently available materials and technologies.
Homeowner John Van Dusen, 39, shares the trim little dollhouse with his 130-pound bloodhound, Alvin. With a footprint of a mere 650 square feet, it has two rooms plus a galley kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor, two tiny bedrooms flanking the stairwell on the second floor, and a basement that has space but needs refinishing.
Mr. Van Dusen is so excited about the project that he's willing to open his home for public tours for six months after the retrofit is complete, as required by the contest.
"I've always been into nature and environmentalism, and I was a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity for four years," says Mr. Van Dusen, who lives on disability insurance after a serious accident.
