Lance Olson and Wendy Wright are living the retirement dream, investing in a new home being built upon the beautiful shores of Buffalo Lake.
That dream is called Pelican Perch.
The pair have saved up for the retirement perch and are now in process of seeing it be built from the ground up, but as the home takes shape, it's plainly obvious that this is not a typical lakeside home or cottage.
The pair's retirement paradise is being built with a care to the environment, and is being built from eco-friendly and recycled materials.
It's also small, about 850 square feet. The standard home comes in with measurements closer to 2,500 square feet, meaning Olson and Wright are getting on board with the "tiny house" movement.
Tiny houses are just that – small homes that, at times, are so small they can be moved around on a trailer. The owners who dwell within are looking to reduce their footprint on Mother Earth, not only in using eco-friendly building techniques and technologies, but by keeping it small. The average tiny house is between 500 and 1,000 square feet in size.
The pair's dream has been aided by the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), whose Green Building Technology (GBT) team has been working with them to develop their plans and fine-tune the home so it can be considered a "net-zero energy home" (NZEH).
"We took on this project because of its high-energy performance goals, its use of natural and alternative materials in construction, and the learning opportunities it offers," GBT researcher and project lead Rebecca Davidson said. "I'm excited that this is a workshop where students will be on an actual build site, learn from the challenges that arise, and see the result of their work. It's rewarding to see a completed project."
The small home features a post-and-beam structure and will be insulated with straw bales.
Straw bales will be stacked on top of each other within the structure, and will be wrapped with insulation between the posts and behind the cladding, to increase it's R-value.
"We know the straw bale on its own, in the dimensions we are limited to, doesn't have the R-value we are looking for in a net-zero energy home," said Davidson. "Another layer of natural insulation will be added around the straw bale that will still allow it to "breathe," which is what straw-bale walls are designed to do."
The building of Pelican Perch also provides a unique learning opportunity for people interested in the technology, and off-campus workshops will be offered through the end of August and into September at the site.
Pelican Perch's walls will be made of rammed-earth. The walls and foundations in rammed-earth structures are made using formworks. Within the forms, or moulds, are raw earthen materials such as dirt, which is compacted manually to make a firm, solid surface.
Rammed-earth walls don't look like what the name would suggest. There surface takes on the look of marble or slate and, depending on the earth used in the ramming process, can take on all sorts of colours.
"The rammed-earth walls are more gorgeous than we anticipated and are truly works of art," said GBT team lead Rebecca Davidson. "The upcoming stages of construction will be keys to success and things will certainly begin to look a lot more like a home as we move into framing the walls and roof structure."
NZEH-certified homes consume as much energy as they produce over the course of one year – resulting in net-zero energy usage. That means the small home, with its earthen walls and straw-bale insulation, is designed to be thrifty with the energy it uses. However, much of the design is theory, so the team began looking around to see if others had put some of the theories into practice.
Davidson travelled to Picture Butte to meet with John and Laura Kolk, who have lived in a home similar to the one being designed for Pelican Perch. The couple has lived there now for three years.
The Picture Butte home uses several different technologies in use to cut back on reliance on traditional resources, such as a solar chimney, straw-bale walls and a wind turbine.
The Kolks also used a composting toilet to cut back on water consumption, a technology being considered for Pelican Point, but their experience with the technology turned GBT down another path.
"What we learned from the Kolks is the composting technology for toilets is still in development," Davidson explained. "Because of difficulties encountered during troubleshooting, such as overflowing toilets and costly replacement parts as well as poor customer service, they opted for a toilet system similar to an RV or cabin, which is emptied manually."
Ample research would be required before choosing a composting toilet, the Kolks warned. Some systems combine liquid and solids, while others deal with them separately. Overflow and broken parts was also a concern.
With what the team learned from the Kolks, Davidson guided her team toward other possible eco-friendly sanitation systems, such as ultra-low-flow toilets combined with rainwater collection for flushing.
Despite set-backs and being behind in the construction process, Olson said he is optimistic, and impressed, with the work being done by SAIT's GBT team.
"I'm very confident about the team, and have always heard great things about SAIT," he said. "We're going full throttle now and ensuring the home is sealed for winter by the end of September."