1402 Third Avenue
Suite 515
Seattle, Washington 98101
206.956.0883
Suite 515
Seattle, Washington 98101
206.956.0883
Musings
Solar Decathlon Shows Passivhaus Standards are #1 for Energy
Solar Decathlon is a worldwide competition that annually challenges groups of students to design, build and operate the most attractive, effective, and energy-efficient solar-powered house. This year's 1st and 2nd place winners (Technische Universität Darmstadt and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, respectively) modeled their designs off of Passivhaus standards.We are enthusiastic about the successful examples of Passivhaus, as we are currently working with those standards on projects of our own.
Richard Defendorf of GreenBuildingAdvisor.com blogs about the winners at:
http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-news/solar-decathlon-winners-embrace-passivhaus-standard
MF
Seattle's Deep Bore Tunnel: A Huge Leap Backwards
Please read this excellent guest post on the current status of Seattle's proposed Deep Bore Tunnel by Cary Moon, on my friend Dan Bertolet's blog hugeasscity.RH
Passive House (Passivhaus) in the Northwest
I have just completed the first of three 3-day sessions of the Passive House Consultant Training. It was a compelling introduction to the principles and techniques of this approach to radically reducing the energy used in buildings--to the point that the house can be heated with the equivalent of a hair dryer! We are going to use this approach with two of our current projects, and hope to incorporate this into all of our projects going forward. Here are a few highlights:• Typically when we design energy-efficient houses, we start with our more or less standard (to us) approach to the envelope of the house, and then size the mechanical system to suit the heat loss of the envelope. With Passive House approach, it's the other way around: we start with a fixed amount of energy that can be used for heating, cooling, lighting and plug loads (4.75 kBtu/SF/year), and design the envelope to make that work.
• Insulation varies with the climate, but in Seattle will likely be in the range of R-60 for walls, ceilings and slabs. Walls will be about a foot thick, offering lots of potential for design of the exteriors.
• The detailing of the ways wall, floor and slab meet each other will be different, primarily to eliminate thermal bridges.
• The houses will be very tightly constructed. Air infiltration and leakage will be less than 0.6 ACH@50 (air changes per hour at 50 Pascals. Typical construction is the range of five or six ACH@50.
• In the heating season, lots of fresh air will be supplied by a heat recovery ventilator.
• Windows and doors with a U-value of 0.09 will probably be imported from Germany. There are currently no manufacturers in the United States making windows or doors that qualify, though Serious Windows does come close.
• We will optimize passive-solar and internal heat gains. At this level of efficiency, the warmth generated by the refrigerator (and other appliances) must be accounted for! This also means careful study of shading, to prevent over-heating. Interestingly, the Passive House will not have a huge bank of south-facing windows, and no windows elsewhere, like the stereotypical "passive solar" house.
• We will be modeling the energy gains and losses using a program called the Passive House Planning Package, a sophisticated Excel-based spreadsheet.
• Sometimes referred to with its German spelling, Passivhaus, to distinguish it from "passive solar" houses.
• Inspired by work in the United States, but developed in Germany. So far there are only a dozen or so Passive Houses built in the US, but over 10,000 in Europe.
RH
Motorcycles and Climate Change
Those of you who know me (and those who have looked at our family's green roof garage or come across the book Manspace) know that I am an ardent advocate of motorcycles as transportation. I recently came across a UK study that validates my intuition with respect to motorcycles and climate change.An except:
In so far as climate change is a consideration, motorcycles have a clear
advantage over passenger cars. The maximum emissions of CO2 from motorcycles
recorded in recent tests, fall below the average values recorded from the
passenger car fleet. This is true for petrol engined passenger cars that
dominate the UK fleet and also the diesel fleet that exists on the basis of
its fuel economy. If one considers lower capacity motorcycles which dominate
the urban/commuter sector, their CO2 emissions tend to be less than half
those of the average passenger car.
When considering gaseous pollutants it is apparent that the nature of the
test cycle used during emissions measurement can have a significant
influence on the results obtained. For the purposes of comparison this paper
has considered the emission of two pollutants (NOx and HC) measured over
“real world” test cycles that have recently been developed for both
passenger cars
and for motorcycles. Comparison of these results has been put in context by
reference to the emission limits set out in legislation for passenger cars.
Lower legislated limits for passenger cars would suggest that the
environmental performance of passenger cars would be better than
motorcycles. The available data suggests that this is the case, although the
margin of difference is not as great as the difference in legislated limit
values would suggest. Average emissions of NOx and HC from motorcycles is
approximately one Euro standard behind that from petrol fuelled passenger
cars. However, the NOx performance from motorcycles is generally better than
that from diesel fuelled cars that are increasing in popularity because of
their fuel efficiency.
Future emission standards have been agreed for motorcycles and these are
almost certain to cause the use of carburettors (a major cause of high HC
emission) to cease. It is also expected that catalyst technology will be far
more widespread in the motorcycle fleet providing further improved emission
control. In addition, the complexity of the test cycle over which future
motorcycle emissions will be measured should reduce the possibility for
disparity between regulated and “real world” emissions.
Read a detailed abstract of the study here: <http://www.bmf.co.uk/briefing/Bikes-Go-Greener.html>
-RH
Energy Independence & Emergency Preparedness, Part I
A massive windstorm swept through Western Washington early last Friday morning, knocking down power lines and leaving 700,000 of Puget Sound Energy's one million customers without electricity. That's right: Seventy per cent (70%) of the PSE grid was knocked out. In Seattle, City Light's grid lost power for 175,000 customers. (I'm assuming customers means "accounts," or households.) A week later, many people are still without power, as Seattle City Light and Puget Sound Energy crews scramble to restore service.Centralization of Utilities and National Security
The centralized electrical grid is subject to disruption by storms, floods, earthquakes and, dare we say it, terrorist activity. Our centralized water supply is similarly vulnerable. (As is waste treatment...although the effects of disruption of our sewage treatment system might be more unpleasant than immediately dangerous....) I vividly remember Jim Bell, a ecological designer from San Diego, doing a slide presentation in 1992 or so for the then-fledgling EcoBuilding Guild. He first put up on the screen a map of San Diego, showing the six or seven aqueducts that supply the city coming in east to west down from the mountains. Then he added the five or six main electrical trunk lines, following similar east to west lines. And then a final slide that showed known earthquake fault lines, such as the San Andreas, all running NORTH and SOUTH, crossing every single water and power line. Seeing that convinced me on the spot that decentralized utilities was a concept that could garner support on both sides of the political fence.
First Easy Baby Steps
There are things that can be done to ameliorate the effects of outages. In our projects, even where clients have not "gone the extra mile" and installed off-the-grid electrical systems, just having a well-insulated house with a supplemental heat source that can operate without electricity (like a gas or wood fireplace), and appropriate circuitry for easily plugging in a gasoline-powered generator can make the difference between inconvenience and major disruption. Here's what one of my clients, for whom we recently designed a new house in an outlying area, had to say:
We don't have power back yet, but we're keeping warm. . . . Right now [our daughter's] room is a balmy 69F, our bedroom is 65, and the rest of the house is 57 and warming. . . . Once it's warm, the house retains heat AMAZINGLY well, but I'm sure that's what you and [the contractor] had planned :-). The fireplace warms the living room nicely and extends a bit into the dining room but we're definitely at some point going to want to do the work that we "postponed"--to get it hooked up to some sort of system that can distribute its heat more effectively. One of those "we need to stay within budget cuts that we made that I don't think we would have done differently but would definitely have been a "nice to have" right now." Still, without it, we're faring pretty well.
Because of the generator outlets you put in we're able to keep the computer on in the kitchen so we can stay "connected", power the TV, some basic lighting in each room as needed, keep the phones charged, and power [our daughter']s entire room which was a GREAT decision - it means very very little changes for her and with the heat, makes for easy evening diaper changes and book reading, and she'll sleep soundly in her own room tonight as if there was no power outage at all.
Imagine however if you will, another scenario....in which power is generated, water is supplied, and waste is processed on a neighborhood or household scale. Stay tuned for Part II.