In discussing the Passive House standard, we learned that there are probably as many as 25,000 Passive House structures all around the world, the majority of which are in Europe, and only a handful of which are in North America.  One of these buildings is the Smith House in Urbana, Illinois, the first Passive House built in the U.S. in 2003 by Katrin Klingenberg, who literally wrote the book on Passive House.  Another Passive House is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Solar Decathlon house from 2009, also known as the Gable Home.  This house came in second in the 2009 Decathlon to Team Germany, who won their second Decathlon in a row.  We took this opportunity to talk about the technology and building science on display at the Solar Decathlon, and how great an event this is for green home designers and enthusiasts alike.  You can see more photos and read about my thoughts from immediately after the last event here.

from the Solar Decathlon 2009

Finally we got to the issue of our field trip this week to the Everhart Passive House in SE Portland.  The Everhart family has put a lot of time and effort into the retrofit of their house into a Passive House, and they are extremely generous for opening their home to our class.  For Assignment #5, we’ll be modeling the Everhart home using the Recurve modeling tool. Students are encouraged to bring a tape measure and their sketchbooks, and to “divide and conquer” spaces in the home to find inputs for all the rooms in the most efficient way possible.  See you at 10:30 on Thursday morning!

“But why?”, you say.  (Or maybe you don’t, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, ha.)  Well consider this:  although you can’t see it, using a good amount of insulation and installing it properly is one of the greatest differences between having an energy efficient house and having a drafty, cold, money-pit of a house.  Observe:

From the GDC's Green Your Home tool

Now, knowing that you need a lot of insulation is one thing; know what KIND of insulation to get is entirely another.  In my diagram above, the pink part of the wall section is pink because I assumed that a lot of people associate that color with Owens Corning’s Pink Panther, aka “The Historical American Emissary of Insulation.”  And it’s true that Owens Corning has a lot of insulation products that are useful for homes, including a new product called Foamular, which is a rigid and moisture-resistant exterior insulation.  I’ve seen how this stuff is made – at the Owens Corning LEED Gold Manufacturing Plant just outside of Portland, no less – and it’s a heck of a lot easier to use than the old pink fiberglass stuff.  No offense to the Pink Panther, of course.

BUT, there are other, perhaps more sustainable options for insulation, ones that use less manufacturing energy or recycled materials, for instance.  Lloyd Alter over at Treehugger recently posted his thoughts on the debate between spray polyurethane foam insulation and recycled denim insulation.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both, and since Lloyd covered them already, I won’t repeat him.  But, depending on what the application is, you might find the fact that the spray foam is easy to install and covers up any gaps appealing; or, you may want to avoid VOCs and use the recycled denim, which helps eliminate material from the waste stream.

Obviously, I am not paid to endorse any product here at the GDC, nor do I personally have a preference as to what people use – perhaps one day when I buy a house, I will decide!  In the meantime, I DO encourage people who have homes and the money to renovate to check out the insulation in their homes and maybe consider upgrading … in almost every climate zone in the country, it will help you save energy, which will help you save money.  Hooray for saving money! 

Well, that may soon change, at least a little bit.  Enter the HOME STAR Jobs Bill.   HOME STAR provides two paths for consumers to save energy in their homes (from their Web site):

1. The Silver Star prescriptive path provides a near-term incentive for specific energy saving investments that is simple to administer and easily introduced into the existing marketplace. Homeowners receive between $1,000 and $1,500 for each measure installed in the home, or $250 per appliance, with a benefit not exceeding $3,000 or at least 50% of total project costs (whichever is less). Covered measures include air sealing; attic, wall, and crawl space insulation; duct sealing or replacement; and replacement of existing windows and doors, furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps, water heaters and appliances with high-efficiency models. The legislation will utilize existing standards for qualifying products at a level sufficient to significantly increase consumer demand for highly energy efficient building materials and mechanical systems.  SILVER STAR improvements may be implemented by any appropriately licensed and insured contractor, but all participating contractors will receive information about opportunities for accreditation and training programs.
2. The Gold Star performance path offers an incentive to households that choose to conduct a comprehensive energy audit and then implement a variety of measures that are designed together to provide greater total returns in energy savings. This performance path represents the future of home efficiency: state-of-the-art building science is used to identify problems, present solutions and deliver verifiable energy savings, generating confidence among homeowners and investors alike. This technology-neutral approach is based on performance, not specific products, so market forces will direct funds to solutions that achieve the best results. A certified professional with accreditation from the Building Performance Institute (BPI), the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) or an approved equivalent conducts an energy audit before work begins, and a test-out when the performance retrofit is complete. Consumers receive $3,000 for modeled savings of 20%, plus an additional $1,500 incentive for each additional 5% of modeled energy savings, with incentives not to exceed 50% of project costs. Contractors implementing the GOLD STAR performance path must be BPI accredited.

What this means is that, essentially, if this legislation passes, millions of people will very quickly have several options available to them by which they can implement energy-saving measures in their homes by actions as simple as upgrading appliances or by doing an all-out renovation.  The bill primarily hopes to quickly create as many jobs as possible, while providing energy efficiency on a massive scale, which not only will ease the burden on our aging energy infrastructure, it will ultimately reduce carbon emissions.  (Both of which, incidentally, were the goals when I started this Web site.)  Additionally, anyone wishing to implement these measures will have financing options available to them that are guaranteed through the provisions of the bill.

Pretty neat, eh? Now we just need to hope that the legislation gets passed! If you’d like to learn more about HOME STAR, visit their Web site here.  If you’d like to join the coalition supporting it, visit the Efficiency First Web site to sign up and find out how you can contact your legislators to voice your support.  Even if you don’t own your own home or aren’t in a position to change your living situation to make it more efficient, I think we can all agree that adding a couple hundred thousand jobs during a recession to a very depressed construction market is a good idea, and making several million homes more efficient is an even better idea.   So CHECK IT OUT!!!

• a 20 percent mandatory reduction in indoor water use, with voluntary goal standards for 30, 35 and 40 percent reductions;
• Separate water meters for nonresidential buildings’ indoor and outdoor water use, with a requirement for moisture-sensing irrigation systems for larger landscape projects;
• Requiring diversion of 50 percent of construction waste from landfills, increasing voluntarily to 65 and 75 percent for new homes and 80 percent for commercial projects;
• Mandatory inspections of energy systems (i.e. heat furnace, air conditioner, mechanical equipment) for nonresidential buildings over 10,000 square feet to ensure that all are working at their maximum capacity according to their design efficiencies;
• Requiring low-pollutant emitting interior finish materials such as paints, carpet, vinyl flooring and particle board.

All of this and more information about CALGREEN can be found here.

So what does this mean for the average homeowner?  Well, if you live in California, you may start to see the changes immediately, especially if you are building or planning on buying a house in the next few years, as this new code will affect all new buildings.  Although on the other hand, the changes may not be as noticeable, since California has been at the forefront of energy efficient design for many years, so this code is more like an incremental step rather than a big jump.

Even gas stations in California are designed sustainably: The LEED Certified BP Helios House in LA

Now, if you don’t live in California, you should still pay attention, because you may not be off the hook:  the CALGREEN is the first green building standard in the nation, but it won’t be the last.  There are many states that are not too far behind California in discussing adjustments to their state building codes to make buildings more energy efficient, and those changes to the code might be coming as soon as this year.  States like New York, Minnesota, Florida and Colorado are no strangers to green building guidelines, while Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington have energy efficiency programs in place already.  California has many challenges facing it right now – its crazy budget problems, its constitution, and various other calamities notwithstanding – but it has always been good at leading the pack with regards to energy efficiency.  The CALGREEN program will test the system, and if it works, it will be a great model for the rest of the country.

Of course, you could just get ahead of the curve and start greening your own home without any codes or lawmakers telling you to do so… 

First the definition:  Dictionary.com says that weatherization is the process of making (a house or other building) “secure against cold or stormy weather, as by adding insulation, siding, and storm windows.” All right!  That’s a good starting point.  But perhaps we should expand this definition to include all types of small gestures in and around homes or other buildings that makes them “weather tight” and more energy efficient.  To me, weatherization could include something as simple as putting plastic wrap over drafty windows during the winter, or something as intensive as tearing out old insulation and putting new insulation in your walls.

So how do people achieve these results?  Where do they start?  Well, as usual the Department of Energy seems to be one step ahead.  Behold the U.S. DoE Weatherization Assistance Program, which “enables low-income families to permanently reduce their energy bills by making their homes more energy efficient.”  And, just in case you’re wondering why ALL families don’t get this kind of assistance, check out the DoE’s reasoning:

“By reducing the energy bills of low-income families instead of offering aid, weatherization reduces dependency and liberates these funds for spending on more pressing family issues. On average, weatherization reduces heating bills by 32% and overall energy bills by about $350 per year at current prices. This spending, in turn, spurs low-income communities toward job growth and economic development.”

I think growth and economic development is a concept that we can all get behind.  So let’s hear it for weatherization!

View Larger Map

Included in the map are instances where the General Services Administration (the GSA) is using allocated funds to affect 250 buildings, with an emphasis on converting them into “high performance green buildings,” under one of the following categories:

• New construction, including Land Ports of Entry
• Full and partial building modernization
• Limited scope projects
• Small Projects

So, the good news is, the stimulus IS stimulating and the funds are going towards green building projects.  If anyone has any suggestions on how to get involved in working on those green building projects, aka, for a salary, please let us know!

Which is why, in my most recent e-newsletter from Architecture 2030, I was pleased and not surprised to discover that they had spent so much time poring over the 1428-page Waxman-Markey climate bill in the House of Representatives.  I am going to take Ed’s word for it, as I do not have the energy (or enough caffeine) to read a 1428-page bill, when he tells me that the 29 most important pages of the bill are contained in Section 201, which requires updating national building energy codes to meet the following energy reduction targets:

• in 2010, 30% below the baseline energy code (IECC 2006 and ASHRAE 90.1-2004),
• in 2014-2015, 50% below the baseline energy code, and
• every three years after, out to 2029-2030, an additional 5% reduction.

Simply put, this is totally awesome. If designers and architects are going achieve lower energy buildings, we are going to need the building codes to be our guides, because our clients usually won’t pay for it on their own.  This is starting to change, certainly, but frankly there are not a whole lot of people in the building industry that are getting paid for anything right now.  This portion of the bill will not only regulate new construction, but it will encourage people who can’t afford new buildings to reconsider renovation as a viable option.  And both of these things NEED to happen:  new construction should be more energy efficient, while renovation should happen on a broader scale.  The GOOD NEWS is, clients, developers, and builders need to work openly with architects, designers and engineers to make this happen.  Which means, everybody gets back to work!

To read more about the awesomeness of energy efficiency in buildings and the implications of this climate bill, read the complete analysis (with fun graphs and everything) in Architecture 2030′s latest e-newsletter.