Press Release
A Prefab Green Home is built in a Day on Kippendavie Ave. in The Beach, Toronto, on September 27th, 2011
On Tuesday September 27, 2011 a new three storey infill home will rise from its foundation in the Beaches at 37 Kippendavie Avenue in only one day. It will be an exciting experience for anyone who has always wondered what assembling a home built in a factory really involves.
Starting after 9am on Tuesday morning, 8 modules will arrive on 4 trucks and be installed by crane by skilled staff. By evening the same day, the house will be fully in place and water tight. Inside the modules will be substantially complete, fireplace in place, bathrooms will be finished with plumbing, lighting and tile, and windows and doors trimmed and painted. Once installed, the house will be completed and ready for use in approximately 6 weeks.
The owners wanted to remain in their neighbourhood, close to friends and schools, and after looking at other properties decided the best choice would be to build a new home on their current lot only steps from the beach and the boardwalk. Not wanting to be relocated for a very long, they chose factory-built construction when it was suggested by their designers, Architects Brian Lee and Marilyn Lake of The Ideal Environment / Brian Lee Architect.
Factory-Built offered the owners many advantages:
· There would be minimal disruption for their neighbours compared with regular construction methods.
· They would have the shortest relocation time.
· The cost was the same as conventional construction and the complete cost would be predetermined up front.
· All finishing materials would be selected in advance of construction using their Architects’ library and the Royal Homes, the builder’s factory showroom.
· They could see their home being built in the factory
· A Factory with consistent standards and environment was chosen for the construction, rather than a traditional Contractor, with challenges of weather and subcontractors.
The Architects at The Ideal Environment have completed several factory-built home projects and were familiar with the benefits of factory-built construction which is inherently a green building system in the following ways:
· The building is built in a short 4 week period in an enclosed facility where workers do not have to drive hundreds of miles to work saving thousands of litres of fuel and wasted travel time.
· The dry indoor factory ensures the best quality of work with no weather delays.
· Materials are delivered to the factory in large shipments minimizing trucking and fuel costs.
· Recycling of almost all waste materials is easy in a factory and scrap wood pieces can get reused in the adjacent roof truss factory.
· With almost 90% of the work done beforehand, onsite garbage is minimal, wood and poly wrap waste is returned to the factory for reuse. Only 1 garbage bin of waste is produced compared with 8 or more bins of waste from a typical house construction.
· The walls are built from the inside out allowing for continuous vapour barriers and sealing of all electrical boxes from the outside resulting in a very air tight draft free home. Air leakage causes up to 40% of the heating needs of a home
· The Beach neighbourhood has a weak sewer infrastructure and has a history of basement floods. The Architects at the Ideal Environment designed the basement drain system so that they are not capable of flooding the basement!! Since they live on Kippendavie at the bottom of the street, they know how to build with flood prevention in mind, as they know firsthand the flood history of the neighbourhood.
The Architects employed many energy efficient and green building techniques in the compact infill home.
· While only 2100 sq ft , the well designed home has 4 bedrooms and library on the upper floors and a full dining room, kitchen, living room and mudroom on the first floor.
· The exterior walls are wrapped with insulated foam sheathing to cover studs and joists which are heat loss sources, achieving insulation values of R27, the roof is insulated to R50 and the basement walls to R20 all well above normal standards. Floor edges will be spray foamed to seal all joints between floors.
· The basement concrete floor has 2” of foam insulation below to give a warm feeling under foot without needing radiant floors; it reduces condensation and removes a major source of heat loss.
· The home uses Ontario sourced, prefinished hickory wood floors to minimize shipping and avoid off gassing.
· The house has a whole house heat recovery ventilation system with HEPA filtering, a must in such an air tight house.
· The almost new furnace from the previous house was reused and easily heats the new, more efficient house which is almost twice the size.
· Exterior decking and railings are made from low maintenance composite material with recycled wood fibre and vinyl.
· The roof is shingled with life time warranty shingles saving the waste from re-shingling.
For more information about the home and to arrange tours call or text Marilyn Lake 416 702 9334 cell, email: lake.marilyn@gmail.com or marilyn@theidealenvironment.com
or call or text Brian Lee 416 706 5085 cell Office number is 416 363 7199 to speak to Sarah re interviews.