RADIO
STATIONS, FOR BUMPER MUSIC CREDITS, SEE BOTTOM OF THIS POST
How to
make buildings that use 10% of current energy needs.
Here is a
bonanza of links you want for this Radio Ecoshock special on Passivhaus and Net
Zero construction, including two free workshops. And this hot program has
already been Tweeted to the architects of Wales, UK – before it even hit the
air waves. My thanks to podcast listener
Phil, for getting the word out there!
[The full workshop by Guido Wimmers
on Passivhaus, held at the Sustainable Building Center in Vancouver, is 95 minutes
long, stuffed with good info, and feedback from the builders present. You can download the whole recording by Alex
Smith of CFRO, here:
Part 1 49 min CD Quality 46 MB or Lo-Fi 11 MB; Part 2 CD Quality 39 MB or Lo-Fi 9 MB
Guido Wimmers Ecoshock interview from 100402
show, 21 min CD
Quality 20 MB or Lo-Fi 5 MB
BUILDING SANITY A one hour workshop
on super-low energy houses, office & municipal buildings with Dr. Guido
Wimmers. Over 12,000 already built in Europe. Reduce Fossil fuel consumption,
bills & emissions (!) by 90%. Ecoshock Show
080613
A blog where
you can see photos of Austria House, Canada’s first true Passivhaus building.
(Takes a minute or two to load all the photos, be patient, wait before
scrolling down…)
#2 Jamee DeSimone on Net
Zero construction building in Ontario, Canada. Straw bale insulation,
sustainable materials. Vancouver 100313 1 hour CD Quality 56 MB or Lo-Fi 14 MB
Tom Pittsley solar
mass windows, video page. Tom’s web
page.
Another you tube video on passivhaus, this
time from
Nabih Tahan, a Berkeley architect,
explaining the theory behind a "passive house".
Here is
what this show is all about: (READ
MORE)
Unless
you are a farmer or one of the last rugged outdoors adventurers, 90 percent of
your time on Earth is spent inside buildings.
We are snails who don't know we are snails.
Naturally,
we dream of the perfect home. That's a cheap day-dream. It's expensive to really do it. But the biggest cost, whether you build,
buy, or rent - is the energy needed to run all these buildings. Eighty percent of the long-term cost of a
building is energy use, not construction.
And that is before peak oil and climate pressures really kick in.
Our
electricity provider has already announced an increase of 25% over the next
three years. Given the new oil demand
from China, and more oil use by exporting countries, the cost of oil is just
going to go up and up. Will it reach a
point where you have to decide between heating or cooling your home or office,
and eating? For some of our poorest
citizens, that's already happening.
For your
personal security in troubled times, and for national security, we need to
slash the energy used in buildings. Did
I mention that numerous studies show buildings contribute more than a third
of carbon emissions to our overloaded atmosphere?
I'm Alex
Smith. This Radio Ecoshock program is
all about solutions. You will hear a
prominent pioneer in the "Passivhaus" technique - buildings that use
as little as 10 percent of the energy guzzled by our current structures. I'll interview architect Guido Wimmers,
and tell you where to download two free passivhaus workshops. You'll get ideas that can revolutionize new
building, and help guide renovations to existing ones.
We'll
talk to another construction pioneer, Tom Pittsley. He's testing a super-low energy house in
Massachusetts, where the windows grab solar power to heat the home, even in New
England winters.
Then
we'll listen in to another workshop, this time on a Net Zero building project
in Ontario Canada. Jamee DeSimone
explains how to use planet-friendly materials, including lots of straw, to make
long-lasting energy misers. Again,
you'll be able to download the full workshop, for free.
The
building industry has been key to the economy in many countries. But many of the sky-scrapers and carbon-copy
mansions won't survive Peak Oil and climate disruption. Already, as I explained in the Radio
Ecoshock Show for June 6th, 2008 some of the old structures built during the
cheap energy era are being torn down or retrofitted at a huge cost. Here is a link to that program, called "Building
Madness".
We can't
afford to keep wasting massive amounts of energy, and we can't live in the
future climate if we do. Join me, in
this exploration of new ways to go, from the ground up.
[Guido
Wimmers interview]
Guido's
most recent workshop is a full hour and a half, recorded March 20th, 2010 at
the Sustainable Building Centre in Vancouver, Canada. For convenience, I've broken that down into two mp3 files,
available from our "Cities" page.
Just go to ecoshock.org. Scroll
down to the Audio-On-Demand menu on the lower left. Select "Cities".
You'll find the Passivhaus workshop there.
Lots of
resources there, for you to follow up.
During
the interview, I bring up three striking differences between European and
North American ideas of construction:
#1. Guido Wimmers says it is necessary to
pre-fab the building components in a factory. This reduces waste, but mainly it allows the close accuracy
required to make a truly air-tight building.
That’s much harder to accomplish building on site.
Most of
us in North America associate factory pre-fabs with mobile homes and such –
often thought of as LOWER quality building.
Quite the opposite in Europe, apparently. So far as I know, we don’t yet have factories in Canada or the
U.S. to make Passivhaus homes. What a
golden opportunity for new companies to emerge.
#2. I always thought of windows as a
hole in the wall, where heat or cooling escapes. And North American glass makers specialize in keeping the
sunlight OUT, rather than using it’s heating potential.
To make
Austria House, Wimmers had to import triple glazed windows from Europe. The glass is set to allow a maximum of heat
in, rather than blocking it.
The most
important part of energy efficient windows, in addition to triple
glazing, is the frame. Guido Wimmers
emphasizes that aluminum or un-insulated frames leak out an incredible amount
of heat (and energy). If you take a
heat photo of the house, the frames look red hot, leaking energy.
Again,
his imported windows have super-isolated, insulated frames. Guido is involved in setting up a company in
Canada that can make real Passivhaus quality windows and frames. The frames will be wood.
#3. Under pressure from Greens, and
cost factors, North American builders have been using less and less wood in
construction. But Wimmers says wood
has great thermal mass, about half that of concrete. That means thick wood construction grabs and holds either heating
or cooling, giving even distribution over time, and throughout the building.
Austria House uses at least four layers of wood in the ceilings, and heavy wood pillars for the structure. Walls are made out of the equivalent of two by fours on their side, making a wood wall about 4 inches thick (plus foam insulation layers etc). That helps the building hold the solar heat it gathers from the large South-facing windows.
What
about our forests? The Europeans have
long learned how to manage their limited forest resources. No massive clear-cuts, and instant
replanting and care of forests. That
can make wood a truly renewable resource.
Plus, and this can’t be emphasized enough, wood in construction keeps
carbon out of the atmosphere for the life-time of the building. So we actually suck carbon out, in the
growth stage of trees, and store it in our buildings. That could help the climate situation,
instead of damaging it, as heavy concrete construction does.
Lots more
stimulating ideas in our interview, and the two Guido Wimmers workshops
available for download.
There is
another good idea in development in the United States. What if we could capture the heat from the
Sun - in our windows! That's the idea
behind "solar mass windows".
I caught up with a builder testing them out.
[Tom
Pittsley]
Tom
Pittsley's web site is eebt.org.
For blog
readers, the general idea here: these experimental windows are made up of
“blocks” about 2 feet square. Each
block has four panes of glass. The
inner two panes contain a liquid which is heated by the Sun. That heat doesn’t go back out to the
outside, due to the outer insulating layer of glass (which again, is the type
that allows Sunlight to pass through…)
But the windows are designed to release heat into the home interior.
Tom said
he’s seen days where the outside temperature was around 60 degrees F., but the
windows were at 85 degrees. And they
keep radiating heat indoors, long after the Sun has gone down. Apparently it’s working very well.
However,
the designer has switched from water (which could build up algae, or freeze) to
Hydro Gel inside the windows. It’s an
on-going experiment. The company is
looking for more people who would like to test the product. Contact Tom at his web site, eebt.org
I've been
building a low energy home in my head for several years now. We have already purchased a retreat property
in one of Canada's few desert-like areas, where there is lots of sunshine. Everything I research tells me we are headed
for a time when energy will be very, very expensive, and probably
rationed. Folks who can get into an
energy efficient home, with their own power supply, whether solar or wind,
should be able to cope, comfortably.
Especially if you can grown some food as well.
But even
if most of us stay in the city, in what we've got, energy efficiency will still
be very important. Look to replace old
windows with triple glazed models, with low-leak frames. If possible, put big ones facing South. And you can tighten up all those leaky holes
around foundations, water intake pipes, doors and roof joints. Insulate, insulate.
Here is a
tip from a country boy. Mice can get
through a crack the size of a pencil.
True fact. Somehow, their bones
mesh enough to get past tiny holes. If
you fill holes with foam, the mice eat through. But not if you first stuff the crack or hole with steel wool -
and then blast it with expandable foam.
Mice don't like to chew through steel.
So you'll save on heating and cooling costs, while keeping the vermin
out.
At the
start of this program, Guido Wimmers told us energy use in buildings accounts
for at least 80 percent of their impact on the environment. But as an architect with a European
sensitivity, Guido still takes care to use materials that won't damage the
Earth, or leak poisons into the building.
You may want to look into green furniture, and for sure, avoid “stainmaster”
carpets. All of us already have some of
that chemical, plus fire retardants from couches, in our bloodstreams. Yechh.
Now we're
going to sample another workshop from Vancouver's Sustainable Building Centre.
This time
Jamee DeSimone describes a Net Zero building project she did near Peterborough
Ontario, creating an environmental teaching centre using wood and straw bale
technology. Jamee isn't an
architect. She just did a course on
sustainable building, which resulted in a 2,000 square foot structure at Camp
Kawartha. I recorded this on March
13th, 2010. You will hear excepts, and
remember, you can download the whole thing (1 hour long) from the Cities page
of ecoshock.org
[DeSimone
speech]
That was
Jamee DeSimone, a young woman who has specialized in Net Zero building
techniques. She was describing the
2,000 square foot Camp Kawartha Environmental Centre, near Peterborough,
Ontario. Jamee was part of a teaching
project, testing new and environmentally sustainable building materials, and
super low-energy techniques. For
example, straw was used as the main insulation in the walls.
This
isn’t technically a “straw-bale” building, since the straw is not used as the
main structural support. Instead, it’s
used as a sustainable (and cheap) insulation, places inside wood framing, and
then lined on both sides with a cement-like lime. Jamee also tells how they reduced the use of Portland Cement (which emits a ton of CO2
for every ton of concrete) – and a new way to pour a different waste product
into long bags, to make the foundation.
These are the kinds of techniques we’ll need, if 6 billion or more people want to keep building, without stripping the Earth and wrecking the atmosphere.
I play
the opening 16 minutes from a one hour workshop. The recording by Alex Smith was at the Lighthouse Sustainable
Building Centre in Vancouver, Canada.
As a stimulus and teaching place for green building, the Lighthouse
merges volunteers, young designers and construction workers, with the larger
building industry. Find out more at
sustainablebuildingcenter.com.
I hope
you've found some inspiration from these building pioneers. There is a long way to go. Vested interests, and old-school building
codes, try to prevent the changes we need.
But sooner or later, the ever-rising cost of energy, and the awful cost
to the climate, will drive humans to step much more lightly on the Earth,
especially in the ways we seek shelter.
I'm Alex,
thanks for listening.
Bumper
music credits: It
Takes More Than A Hammer And Nails, Jesse Winchester, Let the Rough Side Drag
1976, 4:33
The House
That Dirt Built, The Heavy, The House That Dirt Built, 2009, 18 sec
Building
A House, The C.R.S. Players, If You're Happy And You Know It, 2005, 56 sec
Hammer
and Nails, The Staples Singers, Freedom Highway, 1965, 2:25
Gimme
Shelter, The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed, 1969, 4:30