Home Sweet Zero Energy Home

Barry Rehfeld

Description

Zero energy homes produce at least as much energy as they consume through a combination of energy efficiencies, passive design and renewable energy production. California has adopted zero net energy as the new residential standard for 2020; many other governments are considering similar policies. Developing zero energy homes is the first step towards making all buildings zero energy — a critical step in mitigating climate change, since buildings account for 40% of material and energy use worldwide.

Home Sweet Zero Energy Home is the first practical guidebook that clearly shows how zero energy homes can be good, livable, affordable homes. The author identifies all the pieces of the zero energy puzzle and how they fallinto place, and explains how homeowners and buyers can also take smaller steps towards sharply reducing the energy use of existing buildings. Focusing on real costs and savings, this book takes an in depth look at:

• Site selection and passive design
• Insulation, windows, doors and building materials
• Heating and cooling
• Appliances and electronics
• Financial resources and incentives.

Whether you are a prospective buyer, owner, or developer, Home Sweet Zero Energy Home is your complete guide to creating a more comfortable, efficient, environmentally friendly home without breaking your back or yourbank account.

Sujets

• Sustainability
• Energy use
• Global warming
• Insulation
• Home insurance
• Building material
• Sustainable living
• Climate change
• Renewable energy
• Energy
• Énergie

Informations

• Publié par: New Society Publishers
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781550924923
• Langue: English

Extrait

A DVANCE P RAISE FOR
Home Sweet Zero Energy Home
I attempted my first net zero energy home in 1995 and quickly learned that designing and building a net zero energy home requires extensive knowledge of energy efficiency, residential renewable energy, and green building. This book provides an excellent overview of these and other vital topics that will help readers make choices to reach their goals of building the greenest, healthiest, and most sustainable homes on the planet.
— D AN C HIRAS , director of The Evergreen Institute and author of The Homeowner’s Guide to Renewable Energy, Power from the Sun, Power from the Wind , and many more books on residential renewable energy and green building
Net zero and zero carbon buildings are the wave of the future. If you want a house that costs you next to nothing (or nothing) to heat, cool and operate, Rehfeld’s book is an excellent guide for home owners. From passive solar design, walls, windows, appliances and government grants, Home Sweet Zero Energy Home provides a comprehensive outline of how to build your own zero energy house.
— G ODO S TOYKE , author of The Carbon Charter and The Carbon Buster’s Home Energy Handbook
Home Sweet Zero Energy Home illustrates the bright future of mainstream home building as it evolves to incorporate the goal of zero net energy use without exceeding the cost barriers which have hindered it in the past. Mr. Rehfeld cuts through the technical jargon and examines the key topics and information necessary to transform this once esoteric building strategy into a new paradigm for our standard way of building.
— D AVID A. P ILL AIA Pill - Maharam Architects Architect/Owner of a Zero Net Energy Home
What it takes to develop great homes that won't cost anything to heat, cool or light up , without going broke or crazy
BARRY REHFELD
Copyright © 2011 by Barry Rehfeld. All rights reserved.
Cover design by Diane McIntosh. Blueprint background © iStock (Nicholas Belton).
Printed in Canada. First printing November 2011.
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-86571-698-8 eISBN: 978-1-55092-492-3
Inquiries regarding requests to reprint all or part of Home Sweet Zero Energy Home should be addressed to New Society Publishers at the address below.
To order directly from the publishers, please call toll-free (North America) 1-800-567-6772, or order online at www.newsociety.com
Any other inquiries can be directed by mail to:
New Society Publishers P.O. Box 189, Gabriola Island, BC V0R 1X0, Canada [phone]
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Rehfeld, Barry J. Home sweet zero energy home : what it takes to develop great homes that won’t cost anything to heat, cool or light up, without going broke or crazy / Barry Rehfeld.
ISBN 978-0-86571-698-8
1. Dwellings--Energy consumption. 2. Dwellings--Energy conservation. 3. Renewable energy sources. 4. Sustainable living. I. Title.
TJ163.5.D86R44 2011 644 C2011-906373-5
New Society Publishers’ mission is to publish books that contribute in fundamental ways to building an ecologically sustainable and just society, and to do so with the least possible impact on the environment, in a manner that models this vision. We are committed to doing this not just through education, but through action. The interior pages of our bound books are printed on Forest Stewardship Council-registered acid-free paper that is 100% post-consumer recycled (100% old growth forest-free), processed chlorine free, and printed with vegetable-based, low-VOC inks, with covers produced using FSC-registered stock. New Society also works to reduce its carbon footprint, and purchases carbon offsets based on an annual audit to ensure a carbon neutral footprint. For further information, or to browse our full list of books and purchase securely, visit our website at: www.newsociety.com
For Elizabeth
Books for Wiser Living recommended by Mother Earth News
T ODAY, MORE THAN EVER BEFORE , our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending select New Society Publishers books to its readers. For more than 30 years, Mother Earth has been North America’s “Original Guide to Living Wisely,” creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature. Across the countryside and in our cities, New Society Publishers and Mother Earth are leading the way to a wiser, more sustainable world. For more information, please visit MotherEarthNews.com
Contents
Chapter 1: Free and Clear
Chapter 2: Following the Sun
Chapter 3: Eyes On The Target
Chapter 4: Out of Sight Efficiency
Chapter 5: Taking a Good Look
Chapter 6: Cash Backs and Other Green Possibilities
Chapter 7: All-Year All-Electric Comfort
Chapter 8: Getting Into Hot Water
Chapter 9: Cool and Bright Ideas Well Done
Chapter 10: Sustaining the Drive
Chapter 11: More Stuff
Chapter 12: Under Its Own Power
Chapter 13: The Ratings Game
Resources
Notes and References
About the Author
Join the Conversation
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1 Free and Clear
I F YOU WERE driving through the small town of Townsend, Massachusetts, along Highland Street in the spring of 2011, you would have passed the future of building just off the side of the road. You would have passed it, too, because at thirty miles an hour the small new development looks the same as any other small middle-class neighborhood you’d see in New England.
The nearly two dozen houses already built and occupied are a typical collection of robin egg blue, canary yellow, warbler gray and cardinal red single- and two-story clapboard homes with steep gabled roofs. Had you taken a right, though, on to Coppersmith Way, the development’s single road, you’d have seen almost immediately one of the rarest of sights in any single community.
All but one of the homes have solar panels — visibly darker and shinier than the gabled roofs they cover on one side. Towards the end of the lane, you would have seen a nearly completed house that on close inspection had some other uncommon features: unusually deep walls and windows that are noticeably wider than most windows.

Townsend, Massachusetts home with solar panels facing south. Photo Credit: T RANSFORMATIONS , I NC .
You might have wondered whether what you’d see inside the house or any of the existing homes would be different too, then shrug and think maybe not any more than the little you’d seen so far. You’d be right, and that’s just the point.
The future of building is not about any radical change in the way houses and other buildings look. It goes deeper, to the way they work, and here the change is nothing short of revolutionary. Put simply, these are houses that will produce as much energy as they use. This balance is summed up in the name they are known by: zero energy or net zero energy homes.
It doesn’t stop there, though. The spirit, if not the letter, of zero energy homes requires that the energy produced must be from completely natural renewable energy sources — typically solar, but possibly wind too — converted into electricity on the property. What isn’t used at the time it’s produced is fed into the local utility grid. Any energy consumed when the sun isn’t shining or the wind blowing is also electricity, supplied to the home by traditional fossil fuel-burning power plants. Eventually, however, those plants will be replaced by solar, wind, geothermal and ocean wave power facilities — as they have been in a few communities to some degree today — when coal, oil, propane and natural gas supplies start running out or become more expensive than the renewable sources. (And nuclear facilities become untenable.)
Also, a zero energy home consumes very little energy. The amount should be at least two-thirds, and hopefully as much as ninety percent, less than consumed by a standard house the same size. Smaller houses trump larger too — the better to reduce the amount of energy used.
Inside the house, it’s mostly a story about the many ways — small, unseen, out of the way or uncommon — that make up the structure and components of the house that will separate the future from the present and the past. It’s a revolution about doing nothing less than changing the way we live — without, as contradictory as it may seem, reinventing the way homes are built. That’s because everything it takes to build the house of tomorrow is for sale today, bought off the shelf or from the Internet.
Some of the features and ways of doing things will be new to most homes, though much of what makes up a zero energy house will just be more efficient versions of what’s already in them. In the package of features that make up a zero energy home there can be heat or energy recovery ventilator systems, tankless hot water heaters, heat pumps, fiberglass doors, low-flow showerheads, Energy Star top-freezer refrigerators, front-loading clothes washers, LED lighting and cellulose and foam insulation, as well as triple-pane gas-filled windows and solar electric panels.
Finally, a zero energy home must be priced within the means of the average homebuyer. <