the Living Green Show

A few weeks ago, I had gone to the REMAX sponsored National Home Show to see if there would be anything new and exciting that was being offered.

And as mundane as it sounds, the best demonstration had to do with spray foam insulation. A demonstration was setup in clear plactic boxes. Each box was being heated from below like a gas furnace heats a home. At the top of the box, insulation was placed to demonstrate 3 types insulation; fiberglass, cellulose and the latest spray foam.

What the demonstration was trying to illustrate is how well each type of insulation works. As you may or may not know, if you measure the temperature of the heat coming out of vent, it is much hotter than the temperature you are trying to heat the room to. Often 20-25 degrees hotter thant the temperature set at the thermostat. It takes a lot of heat to make your home feel like 80F (20C).

What was stunning in fact was how much heat was escaping out of the roofs of the "demo homes" with fibre glass and cellulose with R factors of 30. The temperature the fibre glass chimney and cellulose chimney ranged from 98F to 103F while the spray foam insulation with an R factor of only 13 was consistantly 15 degrees cooler! This was a very powerful demo and in fact, we plan to use this material to insulate our home when we add are second floor addition.

Now getting back to the Living Green Show! I wondered how they could fill that huge space with vendors - but they did.

Every automaker who sold Hybrid Cars had a model on display.

There was a food section with suppliers of all sorts of organic foods.

Clothing made from hemp.

And of course many vendors who were selling greener ways to heat and build your home.

Since we are in the early stages of planning for a renovation, we were looking for different ideas on how the make our home as green as possible.

Our most exciting discovery was a roofing product with a 50 year guarantee transferable to subsequent owners!!!!! The shingles were made of recycled rubber tires. They came in different colours and design and in fact, we were told that the shingles would proably last in upwards of 100 years! WOW! Plus - these "shingles" were great insulators as well!

Hope you made it there this past weekend......it was worth going to.

Sam