Our vision:
The Nolalu Eco Centre is a home and learning centre created to promote and
teach skills and knowledge that are beneficial to our planet and help create
healthy communities. For this, the Centre offers an ecology-centred learning
environment, organizing house tours, quality workshops and special events.
The Centre aims to inform and inspire all who visit, using available local
resources as much as possible.
About us:
Hubert
Den Draak and Jacomyn Gerbrandy immigrated from Holland in 1997. Hubert
is an award winning filmmaker/photographer, and directed commercials and
TV series for film production companies in and around Toronto, and has
taught at Confederation College’s Film Program. Jacomyn is an experienced
graphic- and web designer with many happy clients in parts of Canada and
Europe, and loves to play the piano.
Hubert and Jacomyn have always shared a vision to lead an environmentally
sustainable life style and to build their own “planet-friendly” home,
powered and heated by sun & wind. They found the perfect place for it
in the beautiful boreal forests of Northwest Ontario near Thunder Bay, and
started construction of their Eco Centre in June 2006. The first visitors
should be able to drop in on the Nolalu Eco Centre in May 2007, and experience
first-hand what it is like to live in a house that doesn’t have any
bills for electricity or heating, has minimal impact on our fragile
eco system, and on top of that is healthy to live in!
About the Nolalu Eco Centre:
The Centre is located on 311 acres of boreal forest and fields near the
village of Nolalu. Some of the features of this 4000-square feet state-of-the-art
facility include (some of it still under construction):
- It was built using 650 straw bales to create the exterior walls,
covered by an 1-inch stucco shell on the inside and out. The straw provides
an unsurpassed insulation value of approx. R-50, with “breathing walls” that
continuously purify the interior air, temperature
and humidity.
- Solar panels and a wind turbine to
provide the power it needs.
- Solar collectors to provide domestic hot water through most of
the year, with additional hot water coming from a clean burning wood-fired
kitchen stove in winter.
- An optimal passive solar design makes sure the house stays cool
in the summer, while soaking up the warm sunrays in winter.
- An on-demand water heater cuts back significantly on the consumption
of natural gas to heat domestic water.
-
Composting toilets cut back dramatically on the consumption of
water, while providing fertile compost for the garden.
