Project Vivo’s Allison Ashcroft at the beginning of the project

Credit: Darshan Stevens

Fernwood Green

Project Vivo is literally building for the future

Allison Ashcroft’s paradigm of urban green living encompasses more than energy-saving fluorescents and recycled toilet paper. Using her tiny Fernwood home and diminishing bank account as an experimental testing ground, Ashcroft is calculating the real value—and cost—of a total green renovation. Her original purpose with Project Vivo, the name she has given her Fernwood undertaking, was to analyze the process of green renovation and, in doing so, help make green technologies—and their implementation—more accessible to the average home-owner in Victoria and beyond. And although she has had to draw up blueprint after new blueprint since buying the house in 2003 and then beginning Project Vivo earlier this year, her original purpose has always stayed intact.

“It’s taking myself out of the textbook and into a live classroom to see if my ideas around how the process should be improved are actually realistic,” says Ashcroft. “It’s about being a customer fully, so I can see where there are problems with integration along the supply chain—from the time I’m integrating it into my design, all the way to communicating with the trades as to how they need to install it.”

More commonly found on the consulting end as the founder of Vivo, a green design and consulting company, Ashcroft decided the best way to practice what she preached was to nominate the renovation of this thousand-square-foot, late-19th century home for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Homes pilot case-study program. While Victoria boasts a growing number of buildings approved by LEED—a third-party certification program and internationally accepted benchmark for design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings—Vivo is attempting to implement many of LEED’s standards and codes at an accessible and local level.

“What my company is trying to do is be an integrated solutions provider,” explains Ashcroft, “because I believe the way that green building will gain greater ubiquity, and become affordable is by looking at buildings as whole systems.”

Framing for tomorrow

In the beginning Ashcroft intended for her small house, sandwiched between Cook  Street and Fernwood Road,  to be fully decked out with rain-barrel water for laundry and toilets (cutting about 40 percent of her annual water usage), a living roof, solar-thermal water heating, air-tight windows and high-quality insulation. Also, with space efficiency closely associated with environmental responsibility, her end product would be a multi-purpose live/work space with a 700-square-foot pre-fabricated second-storey addition on the original house . . . all of which, on the drawing board, was to be completed by the end of summer. (Phew!)

Now that it’s October and the original house frame has all but disappeared in the wake of red-tape and lot-size restrictions—not to mention the need for a new foundation—plans have slightly shifted.
“The reality and immensity of the task has morphed since the conception of the renovation idea,” she says. “The existing house is substantially gone, the budget has bulged, the timeline has stretched and some green building technologies and attributes have been abandoned, compromised or postponed.”

According to the mission statement, Project Vivo, is an “ambitious renovation on a shoestring budget committed to the objectives of healthy, responsible housing and greening existing inner-city homes affordably.”

Ashcroft originally budgeted to go no more than five percent above the cost of an ordinary renovation. She estimated that the products, suppliers and consultants would tally higher in dollars and cents, but determined the percentage via attributable value, including things like the increase in market value of her home, and the enjoyment, productivity and health factor of the occupants.

True, things have gone over-budget since the initial proceedings, but Ashcroft insists that’s not specifically because of the project’s green nature. “It’s not that by going green this project has cost more, it’s that we’re building an average-sized house on a small infill lot with no off-street parking, on a street with aged infrastructure and zoning bylaws that pre-date a shift toward smart growth and urban densification,” she says, noting that the main issue complicating the project is increasing outdated policies.

“It’s not the people, but the policies that drive the rules and regulations they are required to uphold,” she continues. “It’s these rules—not those enforcing them—that have impeded affordability, challenged efficiency, created uncertainty and impaired best-use and best-process.  It is the complexity of these rules and this process that restricts the accessibility of such an undertaking to the average homeowner.”

Ashcroft is the first to admit Project Vivo hasn’t materialized exactly how she envisioned, but she’s also keen to move forward, knowing substantial progress has been made in unforeseen avenues.

“Vivo has hosted and facilitated the certification of the first five plumbers on the Island in a preferable polypropylene plumbing pipe from Germany,” she notes. “And we’ll do the same with our green roof product. We’ve worked intently with manufacturers, suppliers, inspectors and trades and will have the first legal, urban residential rainwater harvesting system and greywater reclamation system in Greater Victoria to flush toilets.” And she points out that Project Vivo has also introduced technologies, practices and products like advanced framing, material-efficient concrete forming, hot-water heat pumps and heat recovery to local suppliers and inspectors.

Ultimately, Ashcroft insists that this project has always been more about process than end-product for her. The plan, she says, is to analyze Project Vivo to death and, in doing so, determine which were good decisions and which were not in the hopes of incorporating decisions more favorably in the future.

 “Today,” says Ashcroft, “when I look at my site, the house that is virtually all new, the project that is incomplete and has cost far more than envisioned, the concepts that were abandoned, compromised or postponed, I can now see beyond all that and see our significant successes too.”

Talk about a lady with a vision. M

Visit the interactive website at projectvivo.vivodepot.com to find out more or to get updates on Project Vico.