Joined: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 76 Location: Guangzhou, China
Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 7:46 pm Post subject: Re: The most energy efficient house?
frankthetank wrote:
Too bad most people already have homes, and can't afford to go build some bunker in the side of a mtn. I think retrofitting an existing home would be more earth friendly anyways. I'm still thinking on how to superinsulate an area of my home for those cold, snowy, no electricity, no heat nights
I had thought in the past about how one could maybe as you say “super insulate” perhaps one room of their house for cases just like you said, when it’s cold, and no power. My idea would be to have a standard size room with a fireplace.
1. You would have to insulate the interior walls since 9 out of 10 homes only have insulation in the exterior walls. This would require you to tear out the drywall on one side of the interior wall to install batt insulation. You could however go about another method and cut holes at the top of the drywall between the studs and add blown insulation to the wall, then just patch the holes.
2. If you have a 2 story home chances are there is no insulation between the 1st and 2nd floor, so you may have to remove the ceiling drywall to add batt insulation as well. If your room is on the 2nd floor you could simply add some blown in insulation over the existing insulation.
3. Some older houses do not have insulation in the crawlspace, this would be a must. Concrete slab construction would be even better.
4. If you want to go “super duper insulated” then I would tear out all the drywall in that room, insulated the walls. Then go with another layer of 1/4inch foam board insulation then cover that with 3/4 inch drywall. (most drywall used these days is 1/2 inch) The 1/4 inch foam insulation has the same R-value as 4” batt insulation, so effectively you are doubling the amount of insulation right there, then capping it off with the thicker drywall would be “super duper”
5. Obviously most of your heat loss will come from windows, so thermal pane windows, coupled with storm windows should do the job just fine. Also add drapes.
Posted: Thu Mar 08, 2007 10:56 pm Post subject: Re: The most energy efficient house?
For what its worth, I've actually done a lot of research on efficient home design in an attempt to educate myself and plan for my new home. To be perfectly honest, the final choice was a compromise of many factors, not least of which was 'will my wife live in it'. Plans ranged from smallish earth sheltered homes to passive solar, to conventional stick built but super insulated.
The final choice ended up being a passive solar, stick built home on 5.5 acres in WV. We're about 90 miles outside and to the NW of DC. I've got a good well, and two very small (I think they might go to a trickle in a sustained heatwave/drought) streams that border my lot. I've got about 4 acres of mature oak/maple with some pine scattered around here and there. Its near several huge apple and peach orchards, and I'm sure there must be some other farms around, though we're not moved in yet, so I'm not 100% sure of the area. One point of interest about the lot, is that its about 1/4 mile down the road from an eco-village named Broomgrass that I've heard about from time to time on NPR. Though I'm not a member of the community (couldn't possibly afford it), I hope that it bodes well that I am so close.
The house itself isnt as small or efficient as *I* would have liked, but its reasonable. My wife wanted larger, and we compromised. One thing I am lacking is good soil. My whole lot is basically shale. I'm going to have about 40 tons of topsoil brought in, but I dont think thats going to be nearly enough. There are plans for a large compost pile, which I can hopefully turn into at least a decent garden by mixing with what soil I'll have, and maybe using raised beds.
We're close to a large city, Martinsburg, but not too close, and hopefully not in a place of much interest, but...who can plan for that kind of stuff?
Its not perfect, but its better than where we were living, about 2 miles outside the DC line in a small suburb of washington on 1/5th of an acre.
The plans for the house were purchased from www.sunplans.com. Some of the other plans we looked at for the earth sheltered homes were from places like www.earthshelteredtech.com . It proved to be very difficult to get one of those built here on the east coast though. No one wanted to touch it, either for engineering purposes, the actual build contract, or more specifically, the concrete pours.
I'm hoping to be able to heat my house primarily with the sun in the winter, backed up by a soap stone woodstove, and with that backed up by an electric heat pump. West virgnia gets its electricity from coal. 98% in fact, and its cheap. 6.5c/kwh flat rate.
At those prices, it didn't make any sense for a solar array, so I'm holding off until a breakthrough (well, I'm praying for a breakthrough anyways) would bring the prices down in terms of $/watt.
I guess the bottom line is that I didn't build a bunker in the hills, but I did try to choose a place, and a home that should prove more sustainable and self sufficient than the previous place I was living. You can never know whats going to happen in the future, but I'm hoping that I've given my family at least a bit of a chance.
If you're interested, the latest pictures and progress can be found on my gallery: http://www.brianrobak.com/gallery/NewHouse along with a couple of hopes and dreams for the new house (like that kick ass fish tank )
Joined: Sep 16, 2006 Posts: 76 Location: Guangzhou, China
Posted: Fri Mar 09, 2007 2:21 am Post subject: Re: The most energy efficient house?
I think it's a great design. I'm a huge fan of fish keeping too, so I really dig that tank!!!!. I have a 100 gallon myself, nothing like that tank in your gallery though. Currently I have 3 red belly piranhas.
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2007 4:30 am Post subject: Re: The most energy efficient house?
Yes, PassivHaus is the most energy efficient criteria that I know of.
For Europe, a dwelling is deemed to satisfy the PassivHaus criteria if the total energy demand for space heating and cooling is less than 15 kWh/m2/yr and the total primary energy use for all appliances, domestic hot water and space heating and cooling is less than 120 kWh/m2/yr
Here's an interesting hobbit house that was put up in Wales and only cost £3000 to build.
A cool thing they did was to spray the interior of the exterior walls with that expanding foam.
Man I love that expanding foam! Back a few years ago when I refitted my house with new insulation large-scale commercial foam spray rigs were not available. I had to rely on many expensive spray-cans of the stuff. _________________ Conform . Consume . Obey .
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