Hi Robert,
Building houses is always a special experience. I always said that if your
marriage survives a building project, it survives almost
anything.
I inserted some comments,
At 10:24 PM 11/23/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Hello Everyone!
>
> It's been five months since I've been able to post here. My wife
>and I have built a new house, and not only have I learned a lot about
>the building process, I've been astonished at how much waste and
>inefficiency goes into putting up a home.
It is a wasteful and conservative Industry and it is even more astonishing
if you look on the energy waste to live in it. You can have differences of
2-3 times in energy use, for no apparent reasons other than ignorance.
> 1. Builders love concrete. We used WAY more concrete than I
>believed we would when we first considered this project. I'm not
>certain we could have done much better than we did because our property
>slopes considerably, but concrete manufacturing is VERY energy intensive
>and next time we'll have to be more careful about property selection.
>Any ideas about alternatives out there?
The problem here is Building Codes and standards, that regulate the quality
and security. You can always do special stress calculations, solutions and
design of the house. It will in many cases use less concrete, but it will
be more expensive.
> 2. The amount of waste generated by a building is simply
>astonishing! I own a Ford Ranger with a short wheelbase and a small
>box. I filled the thing 4 times with dimensional lumber cut too short
>for use, and hauled all of it out to my father in law so that he could
>mix it with his firewood this winter. (Generally speaking, dimensional
>lumber is so dry that it burns too quickly for a clean fire and
>therefore produces excessive smoke.) Surely gasification or clean
>pyrolysis would be much better alternatives than the landfill, where all
>of our oriented strand board, drywall, carpet scraps and other waste
>ended up. What's worse, is that our tradesmen kept saying that we
>actually had very little waste. . . Some of the houses going up around
>here have huge dumpsters that get filled more than once during the
>building! (I had asked the architect who drew our plans to minimize
>waste by making room sizes as close to standard dimensions as possible.
>We ended up with a bigger house for less money that way. Strange, isn't
>it?)
Your instructions to the architect was a clever thing and it is obvious if
they only thought about it.
> 3. There's a certain "momentum" in doing things the "conventional"
>way. The lender at our credit union looked at me as if I was crazy when
>I said I wanted solar hot water. The builders simply didn't understand
>why I was so particular about southern orientation, minimizing north
>facing window sizes (our view is to the north, so I lost on that one. .
>.), and people scratched their heads when I specified a relatively small
>electrical panel ("just" 100 amps of service!) and high efficiency
>lighting. We argued about extra insulation in the ceiling, heat in the
>floor and the "tiny" size of our natural gas boiler.
You managed to catch some very important principles, that should be
standard for any construction industry. At the same time you developed to
be an understanding supporter of what we try to preach at
http://energysavingnow.com/ .
1. It is no reason why the worlds population should not cover 70-80% of the
domestic hot water needs with passive solar panels. It is economically
feasible and advantageous. It pays back in 3 to 5 years and last for 15-20
years before replacement is needed, it is difficult to find a better and
more secure investment.
2. Heated floors gives you a radiant low temperature system, that are low
consumption and flexible in choice of alternative heating sources. Properly
done, it is more comfortable at lower temperature and therefore a large
energy saver.
3. The extra insulation in the ceiling is also a very good investment, the
extra cost probably paid back in 1-2 years for a new house.
4. Anything else than high efficiency lightning should be a crime.
5. The smaller size boiler will save you a lot, especially with the storage
capacity of the concrete in combination with heated floors. If it is half
the size of what is normally suggested, you are alright. In 10 years, you
might have 4-5 weeks of extreme weather conditions and a capacity problem.
I hope that you do not have a control system with outside sensors, because
this will be wasteful and create some problems of comfort. See the article
about 0 degree mystery on our web site.
If you have a comparable house nearby without your considerations, you will
find that their energy consumption is around double of yours.
Congratulations to your new house.
> There's a lot of ignorance about energy issues out there. I suppose
>people in forums like this one have a LOT of educating to do. . .
>
>robert luis rabello
>
>
>
>Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
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>
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Biofuel at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html
Biofuels list archives:
http://archive.nnytech.net/
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