Passages, a.k.a. News and Olds

Passive House Conference 2008, Day 2

Sat, 8 Nov 2008 09:47:42 -0500

We got in a bit late this morning, driving through flurries down the hill toward the grand lake that’s shrouded in low-flying clouds. On the choppy surface in the far distance a few large ships. 800 feet and 1000 feet long, iron ore, grain, coal.

Morning Sessions
Linda Wigington: Deep Reductions in Existing Housing
Housing’s Crisis of Obsolescence
four flawed assumptions:
1. predictable energy & water cost/supplies
2. predictable weather events & climate
3. energy consuption value neutral, just a commodity, no moral consequences to consumption
1. new construction is the solution
Adaptation:
David Korten: The Great Turning
from caterpillar (voracious consumer) to butterfly (living lightly)
Need transformation, not caterpillar upgrade
Richard Heinberg, Peak Everything
124 million homes
redemption or demolition
sanctuary or cell (imprisoning people rather than providing home)
Death of an Expected Future
Transition to a Sustainable Future
New paradigm, new thinking
need new mental map, otherwise see only what we want to see, or know to see
ACI Summit: moving existing homes toward carbon neutrality.
Have to address life style choices
Many paths to deep energy reductions:
Thousand Home Challenge
building performance
measured results
stimulate new products
customized household allowance: adjust energy use metric depending on size of house
create shared resources: solar water heater for several houses
optimize investments
conservation
efficiency
renewables
community solutions
www.affordablecomfort.org

Mark Rosenbaum: Super Insulation Projects
mini-split heat pumps by mitsubishi
cop: coefficient of performance, range from over 2 to over 3, depending on climate, model, fan power, etc.
Tom Lane, Solar Hot Water Systems, Drainback systems, no antifreeze, pump has to lift water up to collectors
larson trusses on the exterior for insulation structure
www.buildingscience.com

Ty and Ben Newell: Design and Operation of a CERV (Conditioning Energy Recovery Ventilator)

Passive House Conference 2008, Day 1

Fri, 7 Nov 2008 22:36:43 -0500

There are about 100 people in one of the meeting rooms at the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center. It’s around 9:00 am. The views of Lake Superior to the east are magnificent, with low clouds near the horizon. The smells of birches and pine trees on this crisp November morning remind me of the quiet landscapes in Sweden and Norway, except here I am in a busy harbor town of almost 90,000 inhabitants. Let’s get started:

Morning Sessions
Don Ness, Mayor of Duluth: Introduction
describes the elation following last Tuesday’s election. Programs that might be useful to people interested in energy-efficient progress: Mainstreet stimulus package: 5 billion dollars. Duluth might see 10 million dollars as a one-time investment. Citizens urged to support this measure. Deep economy: moving toward long-term investment of community, not continuous growth.

Katrin Klingenberg: Whole > Sum : Parts
Katrin just returned from PeakOil conference in Michigan.
Economy | Environment | Climate
Incredible challenge of three converging issues.
CO2 situation: we need two planets but we have only one. Personal choices to reduce our CO2 footprint. Goal to reduce building sector’s contribution by 90%.
Worse economy has helped reduce CO2 emissions a little bit. Options are Nuclear, Renewables, Biofuels, Efficient Technologies. Passivehouse metric helps lower CO2 emissions: Eliminate standard heating systems, tight envelopes,
Goal is zero energy AND zero emissions.
Martha’s Vinyard house: carbon-neutral with windmill providing more energy than the house needs.
Stanton residence.
Passivehouses as retrofits.
Passivehouse is not a European but a worldwide concept (peat houses in Iceland).
Future is now.
Lo-Cal house 1974-76 at U of Illinois.
Harold Orr, Saskatchewan
Eugene Leger, Eastern Massachusetts
Amory and Hunter Lovins
Power Tower, Energie Agentur, Linz, Austria

Pat Murphy: Designing Communities
Retrofitting: four technology options:
1. Black (fossil fuels)
2. Green (wind solar corn)
3. Pessimistic view: die off
4. Low-E way of living: curtail energy use: Plan C book
Cuts must be deep: 4% yearly reduction
Take responsibility: can’t wait for the government
Look at per capita perspective:
CO2: 75% reduction required for surval: 1 tonne per person CO2
How to measure CO2 out put?
Energy/CO2 and Income correlate!
Cannot grow a CO2 economy
Conserving, Sharing, Saving
NOT Competing, Hoarding, Consuming
Cooperative living
67% energy use in the household sector: what am I consuming? Personal choice and personal change is KEY.
Personal car period is over. Smart Jitney is an option (shared transport), example: Avego (Ireland)
Eat locally grown food: no factory meat: Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan
Change diet
Deep retrofits for housing: live in smaller spaces: 35 m2 per person is passivehouse standard.
Real problem is not the car, not the food but the building.
Retrofit is Key
LEED too little, too late.
Deep Envelope Retrofit (Shurcliff)
20 to 30 K per retrofit (5 trillion dollars for 130 million homes in the US). How much energy is saved? 10 barrels of oil equivalent per year). May cost 10 trillion but will save 40 or 50 trillion.
Must change habits and way of life: become different people.
In the depression community flourished.

Stephan Tanner: The Green Bridge
McKinsey Quarterly 2007-1
technoloy is available
cost effective
doable
why is it not done?
matter of perspective: holistic optimization
bridge to a new renaissance
requires personal change: legislation and doing things one step at a time.

Passive House Conference 2007, Day 2

Sat, 3 Nov 2007 09:50:58 -0400

Nabih Tahan, Berkeley and Austria
Renovation of house in Berkeley. But first renovation of barn in Austria, Satzhof, Condo. Also prefab houses transported from Austria to Ireland. Closed walls, beautiful details. House Mall called Blue Lagoon near Austria. Model homes from Elk Fertighaus. Holistic system of design that includes forestry management. Waste as fuel, engineered lumber, pellet stoves, design and aesthetics and engineering, reduce waste in construction and verify performance, government supports energy efficient homes through grants, government spends less money to generate power. Back to Berkeley: Green Building Initiative. Difficulty of changing minds in building departments at city level. Have to do Title 24 energy calculations to do any renovation or new construction. Maze-like and contradicting consequences. For construction use Optimum Value Engineering (OVE), Smart Framing. Use 2x6 FSC certified lumber at 24” o.c., Stego Wrap Vapor Barrier. Filter fabric stapled and glued to studs. Seal all plywood joints and intersections, foam everything.

Christina Snyder, Lawrence Tech
Manitou Arbor Ecovillage, Comstock, MI, http://www.manitouarbor.org spiritual community. Affordable pathway to zero energy.Investment priorities: conservation (negawatts), solar thermal, photo voltaics. Holistic approach as well: 1/3 passive solar, 1/3 internal gains, 1/3 backup energy. Other issues: water, nutrient recycling, transportation, food sourcing, etc. Create micro climates. Nu-wool and Insulspan good for insulation. Solarcrete: Insulated concrete panel company in Ohio, are basically concrete SIPS. Check value of embodied energy in different materials for comparison. Heat recovery ventilators. How to recover humidity. Uses SketchUp to visualize shading on critical days. Use solar path finder as tool to look at. Use solar chimney to dry clothes (example from Rocky Mountain Institute?). Use solar cooking, passive drying. Daylighting, LEDs and CFLs., super efficient home appliances (SEHA), induction cook tops, solar tube collectors (evacuated).

Rachel Wagner and Michael LeBeau, Cold Climate Case Studies
Collaboration between architecture firm and energy consultant. Project of design. Energy and energy design. Definition of passive house principles by Feist. Guiding principles as important as verifying through PHPP. Energy supplies are limited and not guaranteed. Difficult to hit passive house standard in northern climate.All electric is not a good idea because electric generation usually done using coal which adds tremendous amounts of co2. Goal is to build homes with lower emissions. Importance of communicating idea through knowledge clients know: hybrids. Compare kW/hours with mpg. Call it a hybrid house. REM Design for energy modeling, check. Assembly: 14” thick walls with 2x4s with 7” air space in between, 12” extruded polystyrene foam insulation under 5” concrete. EPS versus XPS (extruded polystyrene). House produces less co2 than a Prius.

Stephan Tanner, First Passive House: Biohaus in Bemidji, MN
Concordia Language Villages, teaching kids language and culture of different countries around the world. German Language Village Waldsee. Develop modern German home as a goal, environment is important. Climate zone 7, design temperature -32 F (-36 C). Socio-cultural component of passive house: communicating German culture. Durchblick/Ausblick/Einblick: architectural ideas used for programmatic ideas. Scales of insulation: 16” is BIG. Simple design is good, appropriate building technology with American and German elements, keeping it simple to maintain, health building materials, ecological building materials. R 55 below ground, R 70 above ground, R 100 in the roof. VIP Panel (vacuum pac insulation), $10/ft2, about R 30/inch. Design, education of trade people, control/verification, advise not to drill (break vacuum). Ground to Air Heat Exchanging (earth tube 30 m length), temperature difference about 25 degrees. Ground source heat pump for heating and domestic water (60 to 80 m deep). High efficiency heat exchanger >85% efficiency. Eco Balance: compare other low-energy buildings (FMPA report: “Comparative eco-balance of low energy buildings.”)
www.waldseebiohaus.com
www.theperfectbuilding.com
www.concordialanguagevillages.com
www.intep.com

Passive House Conference 2007, Day 1

Fri, 2 Nov 2007 23:56:43 -0400

It’s almost 9:00 am, and I’ve parked myself in the right hand front corner in the meeting space of the Urbana Civic Center where the introduction takes place. The Urbana Mayor Pro-Temp starts out by saying that “we have to accept unacceptable problems because we inherit them,” referring to the untenable situation where the city on one hand gives utility subsidies to pay the utility bills for low-income families while providing badly built, energy-hogging houses that don’t allow families to have a comfortable home because they can’t afford the utility bill. Why not create energy-efficient houses up front that will allow a family to live in a very comfortable home paying $25.00/month rather than $150.00/month?

Urbana comes across as a very progressive city that is interested in improving the quality of life for its citizens. What guides the policy decisions is an energy standard, which is what the passive house standard provides.

Director of the E-co Lab Katrin Klingenberg describes going to the ACI summit where she was on a panel of “Women in Green”, and another woman stood up and asked what she can do? Hunter Lovins had just talked about the dire situation of the world’s environmental state, and suggested that from now on, from today on, the other woman should make the decision to live in a carbon-neutral home.

Then Klingenberg read a lecture by Dr. Wolfgang Feist. Basic tenet: replacing energy with efficiency > Prometheus. Passive Houses in Iceland, using peat and grass insulation. Research ship The Fram, Fridtjof Nansen’s Arctic Research ship as passive house construction. Arthur Rosenfeld, American Energy Efficiency Pioneer.

Stephan Tanner from Integrated Planning LLC, first Biohaus in Bermidji, Minnesota.
Benefit of small conferences: having a dialogue in the first Passive House conference in 2006. Incrementalism is Death. We need a leap, not small steps (applause). Energy matters: transportation, industry, and building. Global warming. CO2 concentration. 1 ton of co2 = max. 500 watt of fossil fuel annually per person. Nicholas Stern report. McKinsey Quarterly Report: biggest payback is in building insulation, lighting, etc. What is true cost? Not just the purchase number but total cost over life-span of use. Currently US use: 20 tons co2/per person per year. Goal is 1 ton of co2 per person per year. 2000 watt society. check http://www.novatlantis.ch
energy efficiency versus economic efficiency. US is highly economically efficient but not very energy efficient.
Energy demand related to buildings: 38% to 48% (includes production of buildings, working in buildings, equipment in buildings). from US Energy Information Administration. Commercial buildings last 50 to 100 years.
Try to use components within building that are in tune with each other. Everything should fail at the same time.
Comment from audience: Importance of mass flow AND energy flux. HIghly efficient 3500 ft2 house may still be worse than 1500 ft2 conventional house.
Stephan Danner blog: http://theperfectbuilding.com
Comment from audience: Look at book “How buildings learn.” High brow and low brow buildings. Change over time. Firm in UK DSGW is referenced in book.
Comment from audience: embodied energy to estimate life-cycle of building.

Harold Orr lecture: 2300 BC civilization in North Africa, didn’t conserve energy, making charcoal from trees and burn charcoal for heat. North Africa now deserted. Sahara means desert. Need to live in conjunction with resources we have. George III wanted strong Navy, confiscated all lumber, forced people to use coal: steam pump, steam engine, steam locomotive. Industrialization moving at faster and faster pace.
History of low-energy houses:
Arkansas project in 1974,
Lo-cal house in 1976,
Sask conservation house in 1977 (76kWh/m2)
Leger house in 1977
R 2000 Project in 1983 (reduce consumption by 70%)
Advanced House 92 kWh/m2 in 1989 (Regina, Canada)
Dumont house 47 kWh/m2 in 1992
Factor 9 house 30 kWh/m2 projected in 2006
Net Zero Duplex 0 kWh/m2 projected in 2007
Detailed examples:
31 Deborah Cres, Saskatoon, 1200 ft2 <5kW, 11000 degree days
Bigelow and Williams Project, Yellowknife, NT, 16000 degree days, about twice as cold as Minneapolis, MN. 52 units, 2 storey, add R40 to exterior walls, new windows and doors.

Rule of Thumb for insulation: degree days divide by 180 get r value. use that for insulation of house to get 0 net energy in house.

Afternoon Session
Manfred Brausem.
Designing a Passivhaus on the fly. Continuous insulation, continuous air tightness. Check out Passive House Comparisons calculator. Huge difference between energy needs of conventional versus passive house. Westaflex ventilation system. Use car heater to supply supplementary heat to house. One 1000 W heating system. Earth tube pre-cooling and pre-heating. Consider heating sources of energy in the house: people (75 W/person), washing, lighting. Sun is free, no charge. No need for heating system, no chimney. Avoid thermal bridges. Affordable system. Can also use sun for solar hot water heating. Calculator from wrm (check online). Need to check every house by thermography and blower door test. TGI monocoque construction. Check out. “Was immer du tun kannst oder träumst, es zu können, fang damit an. Mut hat Genie, Kraft, und Zauber in sich.” Goethe. House roofs can be tilted toward the north (no need for photovoltaics). Small surface solar hot water heaters only thing needed.

Katrin Klingenberg
IEA world energy outlook charts. Passive house technology central in reducing energy efficiency standard. First passive house built in 1991. Requirements for passive house standard: annual heating (≤15 kWh/m2a), annual cooling ≤15 kWh/m2a), annual total primary energy demand (≤120 kWh/m2), air leakage (n50≤0.6 ACH) (check passivhausinstitut website for precise numbers). Primary energy is what energy has to be produced at the powerplant, not what comes out of the outlet. Check PHI for values, especially for heat recovery ventilator quality (efficiency and size of blower motor). Main problem with high performance systems is not heating but air exchange and dehumidification. Vitodens 343 check out online. Adaptation of passive house designs in various climate zones. Question of active versus passive systems in the south. Need to work on dehumidification.