They look and live like most newly built Toronto suburban homes. But for their builder Scott Simmons, two Etobicoke houses that were listed for sale on Thursday are the realization of a 30-year dream of sustainable construction.The side-by-side, three-bedroom, four-bathroom houses open up to views of generous back gardens with windows that extend almost from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. But the real selling feature for Simmons is that they were constructed with as many sustainable, recycled and Canadian-made products as he could find.“When we demolished the original house we recycled, repurposed and reused 98 per cent of it so only 2 per cent went to landfill,” Simmons said. The lot with the original house, on Chauncey Ave. in the Sunnylea neighbourhood, was severed to make way for the two new homes. “And it wasn’t that crazy hard. It was just, pay attention, be careful, a different way of thinking and really caring about what you’re doing.”Features include radiant floor heating, metal roofs made in Fenelon Falls, Ont., and corrugated steel siding. The houses have standard plumbing for the moment — but Simmons says he is hopeful buyers will take him up on an offer to help them install a grey water recovery system that sends water from showers and sinks to a cistern in the basement where it is recycled to flush the toilets. Once installed, the system can reduce household water consumption up to 40 per cent, and can be as easy to maintain as a standard household furnace, requiring only an annual filter change, he said.“Three or four showers provide enough water to flush the toilets for a family for a day,” Simmons said.All the doors, baseboards, trim and kitchen cabinets are made of Polyetheylene Terephthalate (PET), a durable recycled acrylic, that Simmons says he used in a daycare project a few years ago and has held up perfectly.“People want scrubbable trim. This stuff you can go to town on ...
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