by admin

Have a Cost Efficient Home You Can Be Proud Of

These days some homeowners think that you need to be doubly keen on looking for experts to work on your home or even strictly check up on Calgary home insurance quotes to be able to get the least expensive ones that are available. Yes, truthfully it is very expensive to own a home these days but when you consider some of the different recommendations below, you will have a better chance of realizing that there are a lot of key ways to be sure that your home is able to be how you wish it to be but at a fraction of the costs that you have spent on before.

Resolve Maintenances Immediately

When you really want to work on the best way of pacing all the different costs in your home, you always have to consider that you should have an immediate response when it comes to the different necessary maintenance that need to be addressed in your home. Always being keen on the particular times when these different tasks have to be done and being openly aware if there issues that need to be immediately resolved are some of the key ways for you to ensure that you will not need to pay for a lot more than what should be spent.

Work On Your Own

These days there are lot more homeowners that are keen on making different tasks and projects within their home all on their own and this is something that you should consider to look into yourself especially as it is a great way for you to address any major costs that can be cut into more than half. So go ahead and look up some of the usual home projects that other homeowners have done and see if there are some that you could accomplish on your own for your home too at a lesser expense.

Invest On Updated Home Items

There are some home items from the past years that are not necessarily helpful when it comes to your home expenses, which is why it is important that you look into investing on more updated home items where some actually help to conserve the different resources that you use in your home. Go and find some new home appliances that are energy efficient as well as updated heating and plumbing systems for your home so that you have a better chance of really cutting down on all of the different costs within your home.

Stay Online

Nothing is more knowledgeable and filled with cost effective information for your home than your computer with internet, so you should always consider some of the best ways of keeping your home cost efficient by simply looking at some of the current and updated ways that you can research about. The great thing about channeling this resource is the fact that you are ensured that a lot of the different information that you will be getting is up to date and you are sure to also see step by step ways for you to really be able to get to these different cost efficient ways for your home.…

by Smith

BLUEPRINT SERIES Part IV: Perspective with LISA ROCHON

The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. She’s the two-time winner of the National Newspaper Awards (2005) and (2006) for her national column on architecture and cities. In 2008, she was nominated for the NNAs and given the 2008 President’s Award for Journalism by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. She is the author of UP NORTH, Where Canada’s Architecture Meets the Land, praised as “the definitive guide to Canada’s contemporary architecture”. From 1998 to 2005, Lisa taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Her graduate seminar on the reconstruction of devastated cities “Post-Crisis Scenarios; Life Among the Ruins” was launched following 9-11. Lisa holds an M.A. in Urban Design Studies from the University of Toronto. Before that, Lisa studied international relations at l’Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris. Her honours degree in journalism and French was completed at Carleton University, Ottawa. She lives in the Beaches and can be found most mornings walking home from the edge of the lake with a very wet dog named Mango.…

by Wilson

TALL TORONTO – October Discussion Group

Every month Architecture for Humanity Toronto hosts a discussion on important topics related to Toronto’s built environment and urban community. You don’t need to be an expert to participate, you don’t even need an opinion… but it helps.

TALL TORONTO

Come and join us for an animated discussion of everything to do with skyscrapers and high-rises in Toronto. The good and the bad, from tower renewal to the condo boom, we’ll talk about it all.…

by Wilson

ChocoSol Tour With Lauren Baker

Event: Conversation with Lauren Baker, Sustain Ontario on food initiatives, groups and policy and Chocosol Traders on their enterprise and design and food producing spaces.

Fee: There will be a small registration fee to be paid at the door to cover the costs to Chocosol, amount (2-5$) to be confirmed.

Lauren Baker is the director of Sustain Ontario – the Alliance for Healthy Food and Farming. She is a food researcher and activist with over ten years of experience building local food economies, implementing sustainable agriculture projects and addressing food policy. From 1997-2003, Lauren worked at FoodShare as the founding urban agriculture program coordinator. Lauren has a PhD from York University and is a lecturer at the University of Toronto.

ChocoSol Traders are a small, ecological and inter-community initiative between Mexican farmers in Chiapas, technologists from the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca, and their Toronto-based chocolatiers. Winners of the 2007 Best Small Bicycle Friendly Business Award, Chocosol use their own custom designed pedal powered machines and bicycle trailers to produce, transport and promote their chocolate creations. They have a presence in the farmers markets across the city, have been establishing community gardens and have recently renovated their own facility which will have a food producing roof top.…

by Taylor

Urban Food

Thanks to everyone who came to our latest meeting at Scadding Court. Sorry it took so long to write an update about the happenings but it was definitely a very summery meeting outside the Trinity Bellwoods Greenhouse and we enjoyed some lovely lemonade and watermelon as we discussed our future plans at Scadding Court.

So far, we’re planning on helping out Scadding with a small landscape and functional design intervention. Scadding asked for some help re-designing a small corner of their community garden plot (in their annex garden in Alexandra Park) so that it will be more functional for sorting and cleaning vegetables that they grow which they donate to local foodbanks + kitchens.

After discussing some possible items that Scadding had requested, the participants at the meeting all got a chance to take a carte-blanche approach at designing a solution. Even though the site was limited, it certainly didn’t stop our members from using their creativity and knowledge about horticulture to bring together some great ideas. Based on these designs, we’ve come up with a final proposal that is broken down into two phases.

Phase 1: This phase addresses the most pressing needs of the site including a required work bench to sort and clean vegetables as well as a landscape solution that would ease access to the work bench. We’re proposing to cut down some existing wooden material that form the garden plot frame and reusing it to create a removable ramp that could be put in place so a wheel barrel could be rolled into the prep corner. Please see attached drawing for a better idea.…

by Taylor

Chocosol – New Projects – Next

I’m not sure about everyone else, but I found the trip to ChocoSol yesterday wonderful and inspiring. The work that Michael Sacco is doing exemplifies so many of my ideals.

Also Lauren Baker brought up a lot of interesting information on urban food. When I asked her what she though a group like us should do she said we should start our own urban food project.  I think she is right, our own project would be an excellent way to get practice in this field, and perhaps enable us to spread our learned knowlede to communities in Toronto who need it.…

by Smith

Potential Projects

At our last meeting we spoke about a variety of projects – some very different from each other, and not all being mutually exclusive. I would like to discuss what projects people think are most worthwhile, or perhaps suggest new ones we haven’t spoken about. I have listed and described those which we have mentioned below.

Do-It-Yourself Balcony Food Garden Pamphlet
Put together a pamphlet based on the Montreal based Alternative web-pamphlet, specifically for Toronto. Providing people with a step by step guide on how to convert their balcony into their own personal herb and vegetable garden.
Parkdale Garden – Alley Parking Lot Reclamation
One of our members owns a store front on Queen St. W in Parkdale. The rear parking lot is under-used and can be converted for the most part into a food productive garden. There is a local soup kitchen charity where some of the produce can be donated. The project could serve as a demonstration on how under-used, and poorly used urban spaces (specifically parking lots) can be used to produce food.
Regent Park Community Garden Projects
A: The Regent Park neighbourhood is currently undergoing significant redevelopment. Part of the plan and tower renewal calls for existing and new open space to be used in part for growing food. Unfortunately many of the community organizations are inexperienced and unequipped to start their own gardens. As a group we could act to help initiate, facilitate, design, construct, educate and maintain community gardens in concert with local grassroots community organizations.
B: Currently being developed in Regent Park is a new affordable housing project adjacent to a church. The design calls for a community kitchen and food garden on site. Acting in a similar fashion as in project A we could assist the architect and the church in constructing and maintaining the garden and kitchen, as well as assisting and educating the new tenants in how to use and grow food in their garden as well.
Green Roof Laboratory
One of our members has access to a roof top that could be converted into a food producing green roof. Although the location is not incredibly accessible to the public, this site could be used as an experimental and demonstration garden.
Guerilla Gardening
The idea with this type of project is to get as much publicity as possible by leaving garden planters, or seedlings in public places. Is particularely successful when done in partnership with universities. But the fruits of the project generally are short lived.…