The text of this tour has been adapted from the CBC television program Marketplace which featured a segment called "Environmental Apartments" about our ES units during their April 6, 1993 broadcast. Photos will be coming soon.
The ES Units are housed together in an apartment complex with seven units, ranging in size from one to three bedrooms. This project is the first of it kind certainly in Canada and possibly in all of North America.
The Tour
The Living Room. A cabinet divides the living room from the kitchen. This cabinet has sliding glass doors on both sides. Electronics, such as televisions, stereos, etc. that give off ozone can be placed in the cabinet. Substances such as burning dust, heated plastics, etc. are contained within the cabinet, and then they are constantly ventilated out of and away from the cabinet.
All the ducts are exposed which means that all the dust can be seen. There is no hollow space between the floors or walls, so there is no place for dust to collect. This means that cleaning is a lot easier. The walls are made from the least toxic concrete available and are not painted. The floors are also concrete, polished and ground.
The Kitchen. A full sized door in the living room when opened reveals the back side of the refrigerator from the kitchen. This provides access to the back of the fridge for cleaning. It can be difficult to move the fridge so many people won't clean it. With this access door, the back of the fridge can be vacuumed and washed as part of the regular household cleaning.
There are no typical kitchen cupboards as they would trap stale air. Instead a series of open shelves have been made available. The stove also fits into an opening in the wall of the kitchen, this time backing into the mechanical room, so that it can be cleaned and washed.
The Mechanical Room. A large duct delivers fresh air. The smaller ducts are the extract ducts from the first and second floors. They all meet in the mechanical room above this one, which is where the system recovers heat and eliminates the foul air. The heating system is extremely efficient because the whole complex is extremely well insulated.
The Second Floor. The staircase going up to the second floor is all solid maple with no adhesives or glues. The second floor includes the bedrooms, a walk-in closet, the bathroom and the second floor mechanical room mentioned above.
The second floor mechanical room contains the heat recovery unit so that the extracted air comes up, goes through the unit, has the heat extracted and the foul air dumped.
A single large shared walk-in closet will hold all the family's clothes to keep dust in the bedrooms to a minimum.