COMMITMENT TO GREEN TECHNOLOGY

Man­dala Cus­tom Homes is ded­i­cated to cre­at­ing pos­i­tive change in the world through inno­v­a­tive green tech­nol­ogy and a focus on using safe, healthy and sus­tain­able build­ing products.

NON-TOXIC WOOD FINISHES

Man­dala Cus­tom Homes uses non-toxic fin­ishes to bring out the nat­ural beauty and grain of our wood sid­ing, pan­el­ing and timbers.

LIFETIME WOOD PRESERVATIVE

Life­Time fin­ishes are free of poi­so­nous or toxic ingre­di­ents. Friendly to plants, ani­mals, and peo­ple, Life­Time can be used in direct con­tact with gar­den soil. The nat­ural sub­stances in Life­Time Wood Treat­ment pen­e­trate the wood fibers, per­ma­nently mod­i­fy­ing the wood struc­ture, cre­at­ing a beau­ti­ful, nat­u­rally aged appear­ance that many wait years for.

CANADIAN BUILDING RESTORATION (CBR) WOOD PRODUCTS

CBR’s Broda? line has been Eco-Certified by Canada’s Envi­ron­men­tal Choice Pro­gram. The out­stand­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of Broda Wood Pro-Tek-Tor is its base of nat­ural oils and resins. These nat­ural ingre­di­ents, com­bined with water, pro­vide excep­tional pro­tec­tion; bond­ing with the mate­r­ial it is applied to and hence safe for the envi­ron­ment. Man­dala Cus­tom Homes offers Broda stains in a vari­ety of colors.

ENERGY EFFICIENT ROUND HOME DESIGN

Round homes use less wall area to enclose the same square footage as a rec­tan­gu­lar build­ing result­ing in less BTUs to heat than a con­ven­tional home. Man­dala Cus­tom Homes’s weather-tight design pro­vides a strong bar­rier from the ele­ments, lim­it­ing air leak­age and vastly cut­ting down on heat­ing and cool­ing costs.

ENERGY EFFICIENT INSULATION PACKAGES

Man­dala Cus­tom Homes’s optional insu­la­tion pack­ages include formaldehyde-free insu­la­tion. You have the choice to upgrade the R-Value of your insu­la­tion package.

BUILDING A FOUNDATION THAT COUNTS

When you say you want a foun­da­tion that will save energy, last a life­time and cre­ate a noise­less bar­rier to the out­side, we tell you about Insu­lated Con­crete Forms (ICF).  ICFs are made from rigid foam and are energy-saving and easy to install.

ALTERNATIVE POWER

Man­dala Cus­tom Homes encour­ages you to inte­grate the use of alter­na­tive power sources into the design of your pre-designed or cus­tom Man­dala Home Kit. Please con­tact a Man­dala Homes Sales Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for more infor­ma­tion or refer­ral for the instal­la­tion of solar, wind or micro-hydro power on your property.

HEATING SYSTEMS

The most energy effi­cient heat­ing sys­tem for your home depends largely on where you live, since both cli­mate and access to fuel affect a given system’s effi­ciency. That being said, here are some gen­eral guide­lines for home heat­ing systems:

Elec­tric­ity: Heat­ing with elec­tric­ity can be very effi­cient (con­vert­ing elec­tric­ity into heat is almost 100% effi­cient), but only if your elec­tric­ity comes from a green power source (hydro, solar, wind, etc.). If your power comes from coal or gas, the orig­i­nal con­ver­sion of fos­sil fuels into elec­tric­ity is extremely inef­fi­cient, mak­ing elec­tric­ity a poor envi­ron­men­tal choice. Other fac­tors to con­sider when heat­ing with elec­tric­ity are esca­lat­ing costs and the fact that, by using more power to heat your home, you may con­tribute to your util­ity being forced to build a non-green power source at some point in the future.

Gas: Mod­ern gas heat­ing appli­ances can be very effi­cient at con­vert­ing gas into heat (bet­ter than 90% effi­ciency for the best ones), but the energy required to orig­i­nally extract that gas from the earth and then process it detracts from any on-site effi­cien­cies. What’s more, nat­ural gas is still a fos­sil fuel, and burn­ing it con­tributes to cli­mate change, to say noth­ing of pro­jected price increases in com­ing years.

Wood­stoves: Wood heat has many advan­tages if the wood is burned cor­rectly. Mod­ern wood­stoves have effi­cien­cies of 70–85% and pro­duce just 2–5 grams of smoke par­tic­u­late per hour (com­pared to 40-80g per hour for older wood­stoves). Wood is also con­sid­ered a car­bon neu­tral fuel, since burn­ing it prop­erly releases only as much car­bon diox­ide into the atmos­phere as that tree sequestered dur­ing its life­time (com­pared to burn­ing fos­sil fuels, which releases car­bon diox­ide that has been stored for mil­lions of years). How­ever, wood that is burned poorly (either wet wood or wood that is allowed to smoul­der) releases larger amounts of both green­house gases and smoke par­tic­u­late into the atmos­phere. The for­mer is bad for the planet; the lat­ter is bad for local air quality.

Masonry Stoves: Masonry stoves have been around for cen­turies in Europe and are begin­ning to make a bit of a resur­gence. Essen­tially, a masonry stove con­sists of a large ther­mal mass (usu­ally either brick, con­crete or stone) sur­round­ing a fire­box. The fire­box is con­nected to the chim­ney by a spe­cially designed pas­sage­way that a) re-ignites the smoke on its way through, allow­ing the masonry stove to reach effi­cien­cies close to 90%, and b) enables the sur­round­ing ther­mal mass to absorb the vast major­ity of the heat before the small amount of smoke rises out of the chim­ney. The large ther­mal mass then slowly radi­ates that heat for 12–24 hours after the fire is fin­ished. As a result, masonry stoves are not only extremely effi­cient, but they allow home­own­ers to light a quick, hot fire in the morn­ing and another at night, with no need for stok­ing dur­ing the day. Some masonry stoves even come with a built-in oven above the fire­box, which is per­fect for slow-roasting a pizza. Tra­di­tion­ally, masonry stoves were built by skilled stone masons, but few masons in North Amer­ica are famil­iar with the tech­nique, and it is essen­tial that the fire­box and chim­ney be built to exact spec­i­fi­ca­tions. How­ever, it is pos­si­ble to buy com­mer­cial masonry stoves (www.tempcast.com; www.tulikivi.com) that take the guess­work out of the process. The only down­side of masonry stoves is that they are rel­a­tively expen­sive, and they require a very solid foun­da­tion to sup­port their sig­nif­i­cant weight (mak­ing them tricky to retro­fit). Over­all, how­ever, they are one of the most envi­ron­men­tally friendly heat­ing sys­tems available.

Pel­let Stoves: Wood pel­let stoves are very effi­cient (up to 85%), and have the added advan­tage of burn­ing recy­cled saw­dust as a fuel. The saw­dust is car­bon neu­tral, and a mod­ern pel­let stove’s smoke emis­sions are equal to or lower than those of mod­ern wood­stoves (see above). What’s more, pel­let stoves can burn 24–48 hours with a sin­gle hop­per full of pel­lets, and many come with a ther­mo­stat that reg­u­lates how quickly the wood pel­lets are fed into the fire. One thing to con­sider is where your fuel comes from and how reli­able that source of fuel is. Wood pel­lets that are shipped from half a con­ti­nent away may not be all that green by the time they reach your home, and if your local hard­ware store stops car­ry­ing them, find­ing sub­sti­tutes may be tricky. In addi­tion, pel­let stoves require a small amount of elec­tric­ity to feed the pel­lets into the fire.

Corn/Wheat/Rye Stoves: These stoves are becom­ing more com­mon in farm areas where access to fuel is straight­for­ward. In most cases, the fuel needs no spe­cial pro­cess­ing (although the corn must be dried) and can be bought straight from a farmer. In terms of effi­ciency and ease of oper­a­tion, the stoves func­tion much the same as pel­let stoves, and some can even han­dle both grain and wood pel­lets as fuel. The grains are con­sid­ered car­bon neu­tral and have the added advan­tage of only tak­ing one year to grow. As in all fuels, how­ever, there are envi­ron­men­tal costs asso­ci­ated with get­ting the fuel to your door – in this case, the fuel used by the farmer to power his equip­ment, as well as the petroleum-based fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides that may have been used in cultivation.

Geot­her­mal: Geot­her­mal heat­ing is not a fuel on its own, but it greatly improves the effi­ciency of other fuels. Essen­tially, geot­her­mal heat­ing (and cool­ing) takes the latent tem­per­a­ture of the earth (or a large mass of water) and uses heat pump tech­nol­ogy to make that tem­per­a­ture warmer or cooler. Geot­her­mal sys­tems gen­er­ally con­sist of a series of under­ground pipes and a heat pump. The pipes pick up the tem­per­a­ture of the ground or water (a year-round tem­per­a­ture of 7–13°C) and com­press it to pro­duce heat or expand it to pro­duce a cool­ing effect. The advan­tage of using the ground or water is that it starts at a sig­nif­i­cantly warmer tem­per­a­ture than the out­side air tem­per­a­ture in win­ter, and in sum­mer it is much cooler than the air tem­per­a­ture. Although an exter­nal energy source (usu­ally elec­tric­ity) is required to run the heat pump, it can reduce power con­sump­tion by between 25% and 70% com­pared to con­ven­tional heat­ing and cool­ing systems.

In-Floor Radi­ant Heat: In-floor radi­ant heat­ing and cool­ing con­sists of either an elec­tric heat­ing blan­ket under­neath the floor, or a matrix of pipes run­ning through the floor. Water, or a mix­ture of water and antifreeze, in the pipes can be heated and cooled by any num­ber of meth­ods, and the sys­tem is a method of heat deliv­ery rather than a heat source by itself. The envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of in-floor heat­ing are two-fold: 1) Because the heat radi­ates from the floor and through people’s feet, most peo­ple feel com­fort­able with their ther­mo­stat set 1–2°C lower than with other kinds of heat; 2) Radi­ant heat reduces allergy issues often asso­ci­ated with the blow­ing air (and dust and mould) of forced air heat­ing sys­tems. What’s more, radi­ant heat pro­duces a more uni­form, con­stant heat, instead of the cycling of warm and cooler air often asso­ci­ated with forced air heating.

Pas­sive Solar: In most cli­mates, pas­sive solar design is not enough to be a home’s sole source of heat, but it will likely be able to reduce your home’s heat­ing needs. Since pas­sive solar heat­ing relies on direct sun­light, it helps to live in a region that receives sig­nif­i­cant amounts of win­ter sun­shine. See our web­page on Pas­sive Solar Design.

Annu­al­ized Geo-Solar: Annu­al­ized geo-solar is a method of stor­ing the sun’s sum­mer heat and re-using it in the win­ter. It has been used at the com­mu­nity level in Oko­toks, Alberta (www.dlsc.ca), but it can also be used at the sin­gle home level. All that is required is a method of absorb­ing the sun’s heat, a method of stor­ing it and a method of redis­trib­ut­ing it. Absorb­ing the heat can be done with solar hot water pan­els on the roof, or with a green­house attached to the house. A very large ther­mal mass can then be used to store the heat for months at a time. In some cases, the ground directly under­neath the house is used as the ther­mal mass, with the sum­mer heat being pumped through the ground at a depth of 2-3m under the house. This mass also acts as the heat deliv­ery sys­tem, as the heat slowly rises through the ground, ide­ally tak­ing approx­i­mately six months to reach the house’s un-insulated floor. Accord­ing to some experts, a well insu­lated house can reach a win­ter tem­per­a­ture of 20°C after two to three years (it takes a few years to accu­mu­late that much sum­mer heat). The ground under­neath the house must also be insu­lated and pro­tected from the leach­ing effects of rain in order to avoid los­ing the stored heat into the sur­round­ing soil. Although this heat­ing sys­tem has the poten­tial to pro­vide free, pollution-free heat, it is still rel­a­tively exper­i­men­tal and should only be under­taken by those peo­ple com­fort­able with exper­i­men­tal green build­ing techniques.

PASSIVE SOLAR HEATING AND COOLING SYSTEMS

Pas­sive Solar Design refers to the use of the sun’s energy for heat­ing and cool­ing a space. Many of the basic prin­ci­ples of pas­sive solar design have been around for thou­sands of years, but had until recently been largely for­got­ten by the west­ern world due to our abil­ity to use arti­fi­cial means to heat and cool our homes.These prin­ci­ples include:

1. ori­ent­ing build­ings along an east-west axis
2. ensur­ing that south-facing win­dows receive sun between 9am and 3pm dur­ing the heat­ing season
3. orga­niz­ing inte­rior spaces so that those areas requir­ing the most heat­ing (liv­ing room, etc.) are directly exposed to south-facing win­dows; rooms with lower heat require­ments should be located on the north side of the house
4. using an open plan design to allow warmed air to circulate
5. using roof over­hangs to shade south-facing win­dows from strong sum­mer sun
6. min­i­miz­ing win­dows on east– and west-facing walls to reduce unwanted heat gain in sum­mer, and on north-facing win­dows to reduce heat loss in winter
7. build­ing “ther­mal mass” into the home so that the sun’s rays can be absorbed and later radi­ated as heat (ther­mal mass refers to dense mate­ri­als that store and release heat slowly – con­crete, stone, water, etc.); ther­mal mass can also help mod­er­ate a home’s tem­per­a­ture dur­ing hot sum­mer months
8. locat­ing oper­a­ble win­dows to catch pre­vail­ing sum­mer breezes

Design­ing your house accord­ing to the prin­ci­ples of pas­sive solar design has many benefits:

1. increased occu­pant comfort
2. less energy consumption
3. lower heat­ing and cool­ing bills
4. reduced green­house gas emissions
5. less reliance on exter­nal sources of energy

At Man­dala Cus­tom Homes, we do our best to incor­po­rate pas­sive solar design in all of our build­ings. How­ever, many aspects of pas­sive solar design depend on spe­cific char­ac­ter­is­tics of the build­ing site, such as pre­vail­ing winds, ori­en­ta­tion of the prop­erty, exist­ing veg­e­ta­tion, slopes, etc. Please ask us for more details.

Note: Solar Hot Water heaters are also con­sid­ered part of Pas­sive Solar Design, but they are cov­ered in their own section.