At a time when natural gas and electricity costs are going through the roof, Jorg and Helen Ostrowski are saving about $4,000 a year on their home energy bills.

The Calgary couple’s home is in suburban Scenic Acres in the northwest, but they don’t heat it with natural gas or rely on the city’s water and sewer systems.

And they haven’t taken their garbage to the curb in seven years.

Then again, the Ostrowskis’ home isn’t your typical electricity-gobbling and heat-wasting urban dwelling.

Photos by Mike Sturk, Business Edge
Above, Helen Ostrowski stands beside the composting toilet; below, the Ostrowskis display their solar oven, which sits outside on the front deck.

The Alberta Sustainable Home/Office is the husband-and-wife team’s pioneering, continuing experiment in creating a community-friendly, energy self-sufficient, sustainable home.

“We’re trying to take the best of yesterday and combine it with the realities of today, to be ready for tomorrow,” says Ostrowski, president of ASH — Autonomous & Sustainable Housing Inc.

The Ostrowskis, both with degrees in architecture, have spent 25 years putting into practice their belief in resource conservation and healthy and energy-efficient houses and communities. Along with partners Orian Low and Karen Braun, their projects have included using straw bales as safe insulation in houses and factories, and retrofitting a college and a downtown Calgary office tower to yield energy savings.



The Ostrowskis moved into their 1,820-sq.-ft., three-bedroom home on Scurfield Drive in 1994. It is a test bed for trying out eco-friendly technologies that range from a do-it-yourself powerless refrigerator to a $5,000 sophisticated composting toilet.

“We’ve seen an increase in interest” in energy-efficient housing since natural gas and electricity costs went up, Helen says.

Energy costs in Alberta have more than tripled compared with two years ago. The only thing shielding homeowners is more than $4 billion in temporary gas and electricity rebates from the provincial government.

The Ostrowskis think a sounder, long-term approach is to consume less energy and, in fact, give something back to the environment. Other people are starting to get the message.

Since 1994, the couple has hosted 100,000 visitors, including dozens of foreign delegations, at regular free public open houses and paid private tours in their home. Money from the tours goes into further research and development of sustainable housing.

So what does a sustainable house have — or not have — compared with a conventional dwelling?

Start with the solar-powered oven sitting outside in the sun on the front deck.

The Solar Freedom oven, like many of the innovations the Ostrowskis use, is on the market now. Solar Freedom International in Saskatoon makes a residential (or cottage/camping) version that weighs 10 kilograms, along with a larger oven for institutions.

Less technologically sophisticated is the “cool closet” inside the house. It’s based on a proven idea from the past — the root cellar. The closet is essentially a vertical cold-storage area built into an uninsulated, shaded outside wall. Damper-equipped pipes bring in outside air, and a simple thermostat keeps food at refrigerator temperatures.

The Ostrowskis’ other fridge, an energy-efficient electrical version, “has been on vacation” since the first frost last fall, Jorg says.

Natural lighting is used throughout the two-storey home. It’s accomplished through the design and placement of windows, skylights and store-bought “sunpipes” (highly reflective pipes that channel daylight through the roof).

Energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs provide additional lighting. Windows are all triple-glazed and fitted with roll-down insulated shades. A large living room picture window, with five layers of insulating glass, completely silences the traffic from outside on Scurfield Drive.

Most of the year, the house is heated through passive solar heating and radiant hot water heating circulating in the floors. All the hot water used for the laundry, dishes and showers comes from a solar collector.

During the winter, the Ostrowskis burn scrap wood in a super-efficient masonry heater-oven, centrally located on the main floor. Once the fire is going, the heater’s six tonnes of brick provides sufficient mass to keep the house comfortable for 1.5 to 4.5 days, depending on the temperature outside.

Even in the coldest winters, “we’ve never burned more than one cord” of scrap wood, Jorg says.

The 30-centimetre-deep walls of the house contain R50 insulation, compared with R20 in a conventional home. The attic contains R74, compared with the typical R40.

Along with cellulose made from recycled fibre, the Ostrowskis are testing other insulation materials including straw and sheep’s wool.

Water conservation is another key difference between the Ostrowksis’ abode and a conventional house.

Take the flush toilet, for example. Thomas Crapper’s invention typically uses 12 to 30 litres of treated tap water per flush. The Ostrowski home is equipped with a large commercially available composting toilet that would save a family of four about 200,000 litres a year of potable water.

Anything that is biodegradable — from kitchen veggie scraps to plant clippings — goes into the toilet. Aerobic (using air) decomposition, aided by the occasional handful of earthworms, breaks down the mass into mostly water vapour.

The Ostrowskis collect all the water they use from rain barrels in the yard and a collection system on the roof, and store it in a cistern. So-called grey water from laundry, dishes and showers is cleaned and reused, via a system that recycles the water through a compact, attached greenhouse and fish tanks. The greenhouse produces edible figs — even in February! — along with insects that are fed to the fish.

Numerous other features of the home include non-toxic drywall mud, salt-free water softener, natural Alberta pine flooring, floor tiles made of recycled glass and interior wall sheeting made of recycled newsprint.

The house, now valued at $250,000, has been technologically enhanced through more than 200 partnerships with industry and other agencies, Jorg says. The Alberta and the federal governments have contributed, respectively, $30,000 and $10,000 toward the demonstration home. The house has received the Emerald Award for Environmental Excellence and a 1999 Northeast Sustainable Energy Association Design Competition Award.

Studies show that every dollar invested in energy efficiency can boost a home’s resale value by $10 to $25, Jorg says.

The Ostrowskis’ vision, which already exists on paper, is to design and build an entire Calgary neighbourhood based on what they’ve learned in their home.

EcoVillage 1, estimated to cost $5 to $10 million, would consist of 25 to 50 homes, a mix of townhouses, duplexes and single-family residences.

It would be a totally “combustion-free community,” Helen says. Solar photovoltaic panels, which could send electricity back into Calgary’s grid when it’s not required by village residents, would generate all power and heat. None of the housing units would be connected to the city’s water and sewer systems.

A 50-unit EcoVillage 1 would prevent about 700 tonnes of carbon dioxide, otherwise generated by natural gas-fired furnaces, from going into the atmosphere, Jorg says. The greenhouse gas could be sold for more than $40,000 into emissions-trading markets that are starting to put a price on carbon.

The Ostrowskis thought they were close to realizing their dream in February, when a quarter-section in the northwest that would have been ideal became available for sale. Unfortunately, negotiations with a couple of potential investors went sour and the option to purchase the land expired.

More than 80 people are on a waiting list to live in EcoVillage 1, Jorg says.

To make the dream a reality, however, the Ostrowskis will need help from a home developer, an energy company or a similar investor with suitable land and a vision for the future. Says Jorg: “We have the opportunity of doing a world-class project that would be unique in the world.”

The couple can be contacted by e-mail at jdo@ecobuildings.net

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