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Louise Jacques,
French Canadian architect reviewed our preliminary
diagrams. Louise was excited at the unique opportunity
to design a luxurious bed and breakfast from the ground up.
We first took many pictures of our property and gave Louise
a surveyed lot plan with the north/south coordinates.
Louise visited our future building site with her partner Jim,
also an architect. They took notice of all the natural
features that should be preserved. Louise then studied
our plans combining her experience of public space design,
the need to ensure effective people flow and privacy of the
guests of Claire de lune and its hosts. Louise made
it her ultimate goal to present us with the best overall structure.
The roads and building site were first
cleared and the logs were set aside to be sawed for flooring
and furniture.
One of Rod's hobby is his sawmill
business specializing in custom sawing of softwoods and hardwoods
for decks, docks, flooring and fine furniture. Our slabs
and sawdust are waste products which result from turning logs
into a number of useable products. We are choosing to
heat with an outdoor furnace to burn our waste products hence
contributing to the complete package of reducing our carbon
foot print. The outdoor furnace heats the entire Bed
and Breakfast operation, our personal living quarters and
Rod's workshop. Furthermore, the outdoor furnace heats
all the domestic hot water including the outdoor shower.
Burning wood in our outdoor furnace reduces our carbon foot
print to nearly zero.
The roof structure is positioned
for future installation of solar heating when the outdoor
furnace will no longer be required to burn slabs and sawdust.
Due to our rural location in
a recreational zone which is considered low on Hydro One's
emergency list, we have installed a self-starting propane
fired backup generator to produce electricity. To ensure self-sufficiency,
heat, potable water, cooking, emergency lighting and waste
water are all fully operational using the generator in the
event of a power outage.
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The building is an insulated
concrete foam (ICF) construction. ICF is the new way
to build homes and commercial buildings. These "Lego"
looking blocks are put together with rebar steel rods with
cement poured into the interior of the blocks. The wall
has 3 inches of insulating foam on the outside, 6 inches
of local concrete on the interior and 3 inches of foam on
the inside resulting in a 12-inch wall with an insulation
factor of R50.
Argon E windows and blown in roof
insulation in the trusses completed the envelope of the structure.
Being green at Claire de
lune;
Most of the interior studding,
flooring and wall coverings were logged off our property (or
locally purchased when required to meet various building codes).
We used our saw mill and a wood fired kiln to process the
lumber into products that you will see in our rooms.
Painting and interior finishes have all been chosen for their
environmentally friendly composition.
Our beds offer the latest Koosh®
Hybrid natural latex technology and are therefore hypo-allergenic.
Koosh® technology uses soya bean oil which replaces traditional
fossil fuel materials in mattresses.
The carbon foot print of building
and operating our Bed and Breakfast is very low.
We strive to continue
making it our priority. Our next step and ultimately
our future goal will be to generate wind or sun electricity
to completely be off the grid, that being a couple of years
away... look out Hydro One!!!
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