Last week, the Energy Trust of Oregon released a thoroughly researched and well-documented report summarizing their efforts to establish an “asset-based” energy performance metric for existing homes. The study tested and compared the most highly regarded modeling tools from around the country, including Earth Advantage’s. (Spoiler alert: Earth Advantage’s modeling system was ranked first overall.)
Ella Wong wrote in to update us on the status of her net-zero, passive house, duplex "Trek Haus" being built in southeast Portland by architect/contractor Robert Hawthorne and builder Bart Bergquist. KATU-TV just aired a segment on Tuesday featuring the Portland State University mechanical engineering students who are studying the phase change insulation material being tested in one of the units (the other is the control unit that uses more standard insulation).
Recently an Earth Advantage Institute certified Sustainable Homes Professional, Bruce Butler, wrote to us to let us know how our training paid off for him. Bruce has developed sustainable house plans for stock plan purchase.
I'd like to add that the pay-off is really for all of us. These aren't your ordinary stock plans! As we move toward more sustainable building, we need designers like Bruce to make house plans available to builders and consumers.
Energy efficiency is one of those few things in this world that nobody really dislikes. How many people do you know who wish that things would cost more? “Gee, my gas bill was only $50 this month, I really wish it had been $75?” The biggest problem with energy efficiency is that it isn’t sexy. I think we can agree that we all would like to live in energy efficient homes, but most of us don’t really want to pay a hefty up-front premium, especially if we don’t get the emotional satisfaction of impressing our friends with sexy features like solar and newfangled mechanical equipment.
Well, there is a pretty simple solution that is low-cost, easy to do and it reduces energy consumption… wait for it………air sealing! “What?!” you say, “How is that going to impress anyone?” Hold that thought.
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So you want to go solar, but can't decide which type of solar energy system to install. Should it be a solar water heater or a photovoltaic (solar electric) system? It's not just a matter of technology. Household size is one very important factor. A standard solar water heater in Oregon is sized for a family of four, and will produce between 2500 and 3000 kilo-watt hours worth of energy each year. However, smaller families may not use all of this energy, leaving some of it wasted.
With the war in Afghanistan now in its ninth year and no immediate end in sight, many of us have pushed the mission out of our immediate consciousness as something that’s happening “over there.” Occasionally we will be reminded of the violence by a particularly heinous or tragic event. Yet in our numbness we are prone to forget the real cost of the war in lives lost and lives changed, both military and civilian lives. As deaths and casualties continue we can expect to see the cost increasingly brought home to our own communities.
Already as many as 3,420 soldiers have been seriously injured in Afghanistan, not including the 31, 882 who were injured in Iraq. These wounded soldiers who volunteered to serve their country are now steadily returning home to their families and hometowns. After coping with physical healing and rehab, these men and women must now face re-integration into a society that is largely ignorant of what they went through, and deal with the more mundane but difficult stress of providing for family and functioning normally in society.
Read More »The Unique Advantage of High Performance Homes
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One of the biggest challenges builders face is the inventory of existing homes for sale. The financial crisis has raised this issue to a critical point because much of this inventory consists of foreclosed homes that the lenders are selling at a deep discount. Realtytrac expects 1.2 million homes will be repossessed in 2011, which is 20% more than in 2010 and would signal the peak of this current foreclosure crisis. These foreclosed homes on the market are known as the “visible” inventory. Unfortunately, the housing market will not bounce back until most of these units have been sold, as consumers are hesitant to buy if they think prices will continue to drop. Another threat is the “shadow” inventory, which are homes lenders have foreclosed on, or will soon, but are withholding from the market because they don’t want to further depress prices. Corelogic estimates that as of August 2010 the shadow inventory consisted of 2,100,000 housing units! The other component of existing inventory, speculative new home construction, is at historic lows. As of last November there were approximately 197,000 new homes for sale nationwide, the lowest since March 1968. Therefore, a new home builder is much more likely to be competing against an existing home than a new home.
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Earth Advantage Institute is a nonprofit organization that works with the building industry to help implement sustainable building practices. Our mission is to create an immediate, practical and cost-effective path to sustainability and reduction of carbon. More »
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