Lloyd it sounds like a productive tour. I have enjoyed your speaking/ presentations in the past and will look for this one to watch when it come up. Your comments remind me very much of a conservation I had a year or two ago. In the course of a conversation it was stated that buildings should be designed with the efficiency of a bicycle. I think we do need to be become more efficient, but the pro-demolition nature of 'laying waste and declaring peace' of Passive House or equivalent has been a sticking point for me since the first project I worked on in 2014. The law of diminishing returns for the last 10% was brutal. So much material for so little return. They then expanded on the pros of super efficient buildings we all know. I though about what they said, and took pause to listen. I then realized and made the comment for all of the this talk, the truth revealed to me was that you can peddle as hard as you can, be as efficient as you like about it, but it really does not matter if you don't know where you are going, or why you are doing it. Peddling over a cliff is not what I could call productive no matter how quickly you do it. It is the demarcation point where rational thought must extend past the immediate problems, and look at the process and methods we are using to get there in the broadest of terms. Look to the horizon so to speak. Using less does matter and is historically one of the highest form of efficiency dating back the to the Bauhaus and beyond. Historically stuff took a lot of work to make. Well done for being willing to talk about sensible although uncomfortable topics.
I see things much the way you do. I was a founding board member of the Passive House Institute of the US, and was very glad when they split off from the German parent. I think PHIUS has surpassed PHI in a number of ways. I had no traction with PHIUS until that split, and in a plenary at the PHIUS conference in 2011 I asked the following questions:
Why should it be harder to meet PH with a smaller, more responsible house?
Why isn't the standard in primary energy per person rather than per sf ?
Maybe the standard should set peak heating and cooling
loads, by climate, so as to keep designers on track
And my concluding slide said:
• Concentrate the standard on climate change mitigation
• Focus the US Passive House standard to minimize primary
energy usage
• Incentivize small houses
• Acknowledge the contribution of on-site renewable energy
• Move towards environmental equity
After the split with PHI, PHIUS changed the Primary Energy criterion to be per person rather than per unit of floor area; set target limits by climate, not one size fits all; and credited solar electricity. These changes lead to more sensible buildings.
I bought a small poorly built house here on Martha's Vineyard in 2012 and in 2013 we gutted it and made it into a Zero Net Energy Deep Energy Retrofit. I have been a beta tester for the BEAM tool that analyzes embodied (or upfront) carbon and just used the new V1.1 about-to-be-released version in my testing to analyze the DER. The upfront carbon of the retrofit works out to 83 kgCO2e/m2, which is in the range you show in the graph in this post. I estimate the carbon payback of the retrofit at under two years (house was pretty bad before, I can only estimate its energy use under the previous owner, but an 1,144 sf house was over 3,100 CFM50 on the blower door test and used propane for thermal loads. The retrofit is all electric.)
Note that the house is still double the German PH standard for heating. It makes no sense to go to that level, the marginal gains vs. extra investment are so small. The retrofit includes triple glazed windows with U value under 0.2 (IP units) and the house is well under Passive House airtightness maximum. Out of an annual energy use of 5,712 kWH last year, heating/hot water/ventilation was 35%, plug loads/lighting/appliances was 32%, and the EV was 33%. PVs in the same period made 5,643 kWh, so we were 1% away from Zero Net Energy including my wife's driving.
I followed the link about your book coming out, but that source only ships within Canada. For those of us south of the border, we can pre-order it through B&N.
I do like the idea of a good enough house. Current standards for insulation and air tightness aim for buildings with very harsh exterior conditions. Harsher than what they really are Esp. in suburban conditions.
Thanks for this enthusiastic summary. Hope you at least got a little time touring Innsbruck. . . after being locked in your hotel room for so long. I'd love to invite you to speak to my students sometime. This is an important perspective.
I be have to correct Lloyd by stating more accurately that there was a thunderous applause at the conclusion of his presentation!!!
Lloyd it sounds like a productive tour. I have enjoyed your speaking/ presentations in the past and will look for this one to watch when it come up. Your comments remind me very much of a conservation I had a year or two ago. In the course of a conversation it was stated that buildings should be designed with the efficiency of a bicycle. I think we do need to be become more efficient, but the pro-demolition nature of 'laying waste and declaring peace' of Passive House or equivalent has been a sticking point for me since the first project I worked on in 2014. The law of diminishing returns for the last 10% was brutal. So much material for so little return. They then expanded on the pros of super efficient buildings we all know. I though about what they said, and took pause to listen. I then realized and made the comment for all of the this talk, the truth revealed to me was that you can peddle as hard as you can, be as efficient as you like about it, but it really does not matter if you don't know where you are going, or why you are doing it. Peddling over a cliff is not what I could call productive no matter how quickly you do it. It is the demarcation point where rational thought must extend past the immediate problems, and look at the process and methods we are using to get there in the broadest of terms. Look to the horizon so to speak. Using less does matter and is historically one of the highest form of efficiency dating back the to the Bauhaus and beyond. Historically stuff took a lot of work to make. Well done for being willing to talk about sensible although uncomfortable topics.
Congratulations on a succesful presentation!
I'm looking forward to seeing the recorded presentation when it is available, please do share it with those of us subscribed when it is online!
I see things much the way you do. I was a founding board member of the Passive House Institute of the US, and was very glad when they split off from the German parent. I think PHIUS has surpassed PHI in a number of ways. I had no traction with PHIUS until that split, and in a plenary at the PHIUS conference in 2011 I asked the following questions:
Why should it be harder to meet PH with a smaller, more responsible house?
Why isn't the standard in primary energy per person rather than per sf ?
Maybe the standard should set peak heating and cooling
loads, by climate, so as to keep designers on track
And my concluding slide said:
• Concentrate the standard on climate change mitigation
• Focus the US Passive House standard to minimize primary
energy usage
• Incentivize small houses
• Acknowledge the contribution of on-site renewable energy
• Move towards environmental equity
After the split with PHI, PHIUS changed the Primary Energy criterion to be per person rather than per unit of floor area; set target limits by climate, not one size fits all; and credited solar electricity. These changes lead to more sensible buildings.
I bought a small poorly built house here on Martha's Vineyard in 2012 and in 2013 we gutted it and made it into a Zero Net Energy Deep Energy Retrofit. I have been a beta tester for the BEAM tool that analyzes embodied (or upfront) carbon and just used the new V1.1 about-to-be-released version in my testing to analyze the DER. The upfront carbon of the retrofit works out to 83 kgCO2e/m2, which is in the range you show in the graph in this post. I estimate the carbon payback of the retrofit at under two years (house was pretty bad before, I can only estimate its energy use under the previous owner, but an 1,144 sf house was over 3,100 CFM50 on the blower door test and used propane for thermal loads. The retrofit is all electric.)
Note that the house is still double the German PH standard for heating. It makes no sense to go to that level, the marginal gains vs. extra investment are so small. The retrofit includes triple glazed windows with U value under 0.2 (IP units) and the house is well under Passive House airtightness maximum. Out of an annual energy use of 5,712 kWH last year, heating/hot water/ventilation was 35%, plug loads/lighting/appliances was 32%, and the EV was 33%. PVs in the same period made 5,643 kWh, so we were 1% away from Zero Net Energy including my wife's driving.
Sounds great, look forward to seeing the recording.
It´s on my reading list!
The violent reaction so many have against even questioning what people own/consume gives me a..... violent reaction! 🤬🤣😢
10 "good enough" houses will save way more resources/energy than 1 perfect house!
I followed the link about your book coming out, but that source only ships within Canada. For those of us south of the border, we can pre-order it through B&N.
Great post!
I do like the idea of a good enough house. Current standards for insulation and air tightness aim for buildings with very harsh exterior conditions. Harsher than what they really are Esp. in suburban conditions.
Great work! & thank-you
Thanks for this enthusiastic summary. Hope you at least got a little time touring Innsbruck. . . after being locked in your hotel room for so long. I'd love to invite you to speak to my students sometime. This is an important perspective.
Congratulations on a succesful presentation!
I'm looking forward to seeing the recorded presentation when it is available, please do share it with those of us subscribed when it is online!
Congratulations!