Adventure Traveler Garry Sowerby in his own words:

Saturday, October 2
Wetaskiwin, Alberta

Environmental Initiative #62
Dabrro Homes, Insulated Concrete Form Home, Wetaskiwin, Alberta

Mission Green has been a voyage of contrasts. Last Saturday, we found ourselves feeding 10,000 fish. This weekend, Mission Green decided to do a little house-hunting.

We went to an Open House in Wetaskiwin, Alberta.

We drove through suburban neighborhoods, looking for Northbend Drive. The houses we drove by were quite similar, people out doing yard work, neighbors waving to each other and gangs of kids tearing around on bicycles, enjoying the unseasonably warm day.

I have friends who go to open houses on weekends for entertainment. My wife, Lisa, and I joined that culture for about four years when we were looking for a house. I was feeling a bit homesick as we followed the signs that directed us to #108.

Number 108 looked ordinary enough. It still had the air of a construction site since the stucco exterior walls were not yet complete. We knew we'd have to get inside to find out what was so special about the house.

Inside, there were the usual 'floorboard kickers', people making the rounds of open houses on a Saturday.

Like any other open house, kids were looking bored, causing commotion, running around, their mothers shushing them, telling them to be quiet or else.

We met Dale Rott, co-owner of Dabrro Homes, the company that had built this house. The company's slogan is 'A Home with a Difference' and Mission Green wanted to know what that difference was.

I could feel the difference when I walked in. We live in a 75-year-old solid, brick house in the centre of Halifax. I always say it's built like a bank. Over the course of looking for our home, we'd been to many open houses where I'd notice that, in some new construction, we would walk with a normal tread and feel a shudder.

Well, #108 Northbend Drive felt as solid as a rock. I guess that's because it is rock. The walls of this house are made of solid concrete. Dabrro uses insulating concrete forms, or ICFs, to create a home that has numerous advantages over standard wood-frame construction.

Insulated concrete forms are interlocking, lightweight polystyrene blocks that serve as a form for poured concrete walls. The forms remain in place to provide insulation, a vapor barrier and attachment surfaces for interior and exterior wall finishings. Businesses and homes built this way are more energy efficient, stronger, safer and quieter.

Dale tells us that the blocks themselves are made using a steam process and do not emit off-gasses.

So how is an ICF home more environmentally-friendly?

In so many ways, ICF homes reduces their consumption of energy. They are the most air-tight homes on the market. The concrete absorbs solar heat and slowly releases it so heat is distributed evenly throughout the home. The average energy consumption reduction is 40-50% below conventional wood frame houses. The houses use fewer natural resources to heat them and they will last quite literally for centuries.

ICF walls conserve forest resources and their energy efficiency reduces fossil fuel consumption. It's estimated a 3,800 square foot home saves up to 25 large trees when compared to conventional construction. Concrete is inert, non-toxic, and produced from abundant natural and recycled material.

Lower noise from the outside world and the air exchange system all contribute to a more sane and healthy environment for the humans that inhabit an ICF home.

One thing that impressed me was that the material to build these homes, manufactured by Plasti-Fab, is readily available at any home building centre, like Home Hardware Building Centre here in Wetaskiwin.

It's out there and it's waiting.

Here's to Dale Rott and his partner Les Wold of Dabrro Homes Limited for their commitment to the environment and the health of the planet and for exclusively building these ICF homes.

http://www.dabrro.com/

http://www.plastifab.co m /

Insulated Concrete Form Home