Energy Efficient Housing

Latest in energy efficiency: homes without furnaces

CLEVELAND — Everyone needs a home, but not every home, it seems, needs a furnace, even in Cleveland.

A house built for a new museum exhibit shows how walls more than a foot thick, big triple-pane windows, doors like bank vaults and clever engineering can cut heating and cooling costs — and pollution — by 90 percent.

The house keeps a comfortable temperature year-round. No need for heavy sweaters, no drafts, no noise.

Thousands of furnace-free homes in Germany have been built to this cutting-edge efficiency standard, but only 15 U.S. buildings are certified to the same level of extremely low energy use. Until now, none has been open to the public.

The people in Cleveland who made the exhibit happen are enthusiastic about the idea, known as a "passive house." It costs more than conventional housing, to be sure, as much as about 20 percent. The economics improve if the special equipment the house needs becomes locally available, and energy prices rise.

Meanwhile, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History decided to give its visitors a peek at this possible future. The house was intended as a can-do complement to a traveling exhibit on climate change that will open in July.

"We have to get beyond incremental improvements to get a dramatic breakthrough," said David Beach, the museum's director of environmentally sound urban practices. This house, he said, is "an example of a new way of living."

Special insulation

What makes the two-story house special is an insulation system with a sealed air barrier in the walls that makes it work like a thermos. A German-made ventilator transfers heat from the stale, outgoing air to the fresh air coming in, so little heat is lost.

Two ductless air-source heat pumps, which look like white rectangular boxes on the wall, one upstairs and one down, supply all heating and cooling. They run on the energy equivalent of two hair dryers.

Because the house is insulated so well, it can hold heat from sunshine, body heat, lights and appliances.

Amory Lovins, author of an upcoming book about new ways to get and use energy, "Reinventing Fire," built a highly efficient house warmed mostly with these heat sources in Colorado in the early 1980s, an early inspiration for passive houses. The house is wrapped around what Lovins calls the jungle, a 900-square-foot indoor garden where bananas, mangos and other tropical fruit grows when temperatures outside are 30 below.

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&Nbsp;       The ideal energy efficient building retains the best environment for living while minimizing the consumption and waste of energy. © Crook 2006                The biggest source of clean cheap energy is energy not used. R. Muller, Foreign Policy, Nov 2008                If you don’t understand energy efficient technology it’s probably because it’s based on principles of thermodynamics, physics, and rocket science. © Crook 2010                When you install an alternative energy system without first reducing your building’s demand for energy you ‘re still wasting energy and foregoing comfort--You've put the cart before the horse. © Crook 2011                An energy efficient building is always "Green" but a green buildings isn't always energy efficient. © Crook 2009                "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction", Sir Isaac Newton's "Action-Reaction Law", 1687        

As of 2007, 85% – 95% of all the buildings in the United States were responsible for wasting between 30 – 50% of the energy they consumed. It appears that building material corporations, builders, contractors and developers were turning a deaf ear to this fact. They were consciously or unconsciously contributing to the building boom that contributed to the housing crash of the real estate market.

Mortgages that were outrageous are now difficult to pay, as the real value of many homes is substantially less and does not match the purchase price. In the case of newly built homes, some of the materials, methods, and workmanship used to build them is unsuitable for energy efficiency technology, and the utility bills are rapidly competing with the mortgage payments on the house.

Presto, because the market and profits have focused on new “energy efficient, green building technologies” that will save energy and the buyer money, it now is seen as very lucrative business with millions of dollars being spent on advertising annually. A home properly constructed using energy efficient technology can lower utility payments by 30 – 50%.

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