Greening Homes leads the industry on site and in the classroom By: greening homes

March 3, 2017
Community, Indoor Health, Resource Efficiency, Waste Diversion

Community involvement and education have always been core values since the founding of Greening Homes as an alternative renovations provider in Toronto.  We thought we’d share some of the initiatives our team are currently engaged in this winter!

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(Tim Moxam unloads material for his class on High Performance Window Installation at George Brown College, Casa Loma Campus)

Chris Phillips, Greening Homes’ Founder and President, is in the middle of his second year of developing and teaching the core green building course for George Brown College’s 3rd year renovations programme. Chris is well known in the industry for his in-depth knowledge on sustainable practices in the city, and Greening Homes has an expansive green building library to draw from. With customary humour, Chris says “teaching this class is a way to forever poison young minds!” This year Chris has 58 students. What an opportunity!

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(Chris Phillips leading his class through a slide on indoor air quality.)

Greening Homes works with several leaders in the green building industry, many of whom Chris connivingly convinces to guest lecture in his course in exchange for good food and craft beer. One of Chris’ favourite people in the Toronto green building world is Greg Labbé, from the building performance consultancy firm BlueGreen Group. This winter Greg led the class through discussions and workshops on air sealing and energy audits, as well as a primer on the pros and cons of spray foam as a building material. While Greg presented, Chris ate a sandwich. Awesome.

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(Greg Labbé shares his in-depth knowledge on air sealing and energy audits.)

On another day, Chris invited Tim Moxam, Greening Homes apprentice carpenter, to teach an in-class lesson on a high performance window installations. Thanks to Greening Homes’ dedication to sustainable and resilient building practices, its team members are exposed to the most advanced products and practices in the field, which make them perfect candidates to facilitate in-class instruction. By sharing their knowledge, Chris and his team foster the growth of high quality skilled tradespeople that the industry so desperately needs.

Chris’ students at George Brown have much more to look forward to. Bryan Kaplan, Greening Homes’ General Manager, is already scheduled to lead a future class through best practices in green project management processes and procedures. Another class will be devoted to touring a current cutting-edge active Greening Homes jobsite.

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(Tim Moxam teaches High Performance Window Installation at George Brown College, along with proof of Chris eating an in-class sandwich.)

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(Tim Moxam prepares a scaled model of a high performance window installation.)

One level below Chris’ class at George Brown, Shane MacInnes is also teaching a class. Once a highly skilled Red Seal carpenter and now a construction manager for Greening Homes, Shane instructs a hands-on shop class on renovation carpentry. Although the class isn’t dedicated to sustainable practices, Shane believes that sustainability and quality craftsmanship go hand-in-hand, a sentiment he shares with his students. For example, Shane uses recycling as a catalyst for conversations around sustainable practices with his class. Happily, George Brown has implemented a rigorous recycling and waste diversion policy for its shop classes that the students are actively engaged in. When Shane isn’t teaching in the city he shares his knowledge with the Peterborough-based Endeavour Centre, that is dedicated to education in sustainable building.

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(Shane MacInnes is on the far left with his class to the right.)

Finally, every Thursday at George Brown’s St. James campus, Connor Malloy, Greening Homes’ Director of Design and Development, instructs a class on 3D Spacial Design. Connor is a highly skilled designer across many mediums and through his teaching efforts at George Brown he is poised to change how the building industry will approach design of the built environment in the future. Connor believes that through design we can change the way we interact with the planet in a positive way. Connor is yet another example of how members of the Greening Homes team are creating an impact both in the field and in the classroom.

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