Two ordinary citizens

My name is Caroline Kosmas and I live in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. In the summer of 2009 my partner and I decided we would like to build an energy efficient house in the area of the city that has grown dear to our hearts, Regina General Hospital.

We have never built a house before and we want to blog about this experience to:

- Show how ordinary citizens can work as a general contractor to build a house
- Highlight environmentally friendly building approaches
- Improve public perception of the Regina General Hospital area
- Create an advertising venue for companies who have been helpful along the way

My husband Andrew and I renovated our first home/rental property in Saskatoon and our second home in Regina on the 1900 block of Quebec Street. We learned immensely from these experiences and fell in love with the General Hospital area. A rich diversity of First Nations, immigrants and long term established residents live in the area.

A walk around General Hospital reveals character homes built in the early 1900's. Our previous dwelling was built in 1922. The area was originally called Germantown because it was settled by eastern europeans - Germans, Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs, Ukrainians and Poles.

Germantown Map

The neighborhood has some problems with crime, drug abuse, unkept housing, waste management and a high concentration of vacant lots.  This is especially true north of Victoria Ave which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is a significant divide in the neighborhood.  We made the decision to focus on this neighborhood and do what we can to improve it including: living in the community, getting to know the neighbors, renovating our home, organizing with the core community association and strategizing options for vacant lot development.

We satisfied our thirst for energy-efficient, economical building design through having an eco-audit completed by SunRidge Homes before and after the retrofits. Retrofits included concrete work to fix foundation issues causing air-leakage, filling any remaining gaps with spray foam, installing energy star doors and windows, high efficiency appliances, re-insulating the attics with cellulose. All the improvements we made reduced total energy consumption by approximately 50%! Below are a few pictures of the home we renovated on Quebec Street.

Photos courtesy of www.skhomes4sale.com

After familiarizing ourself with energy efficient building materials we felt ready to move onto another project and dove headfirst into new energy efficient home construction. We will detail the products we have chosen and rationale behind these choices in subsequent entries. The story begins at the beginning of the summer of 2009.  The building process began with a visit to the City of Regina where I was provided with a single sheet of paper that contained a list of items required to be submitted with any permit application.  A 14 item list, this should be easy I thought!