No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in 'Passive Houses'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?th&emc=th
beginning of article:
DARMSTADT, Germany - From the outside, there is nothing unusual about
the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein
District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling
through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution
in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no
snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in
fact, no furnace.
In Berthold Kaufmann's home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for
emergency backup in the living room - but it is not in use. Even on
the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann's new "passive
house" and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they
need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair
dryer.
"You don't think about temperature - the house just adjusts," said
Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt,
tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors
open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating
energy of his parents' home of roughly the same size, he said.
Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy
efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better
insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into
alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.
The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000
outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle.
Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the
architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that
barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a
passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat
from appliances and even from occupants' bodies.
And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to
build than conventional houses.
Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed,
because of stagnant air and mold. But new passive houses use an
ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes
side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90
percent efficiency.
"The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our
goal is to create a warm house without energy demand," said Wolfgang
Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. "This is
not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and
putting up with drafts. It's about being comfortable with less energy
input, and we do this by recycling heating......
--
Elan Shapiro
Sustainable Tompkins Community Partnership Coordinator
Sustainable Living Associates, Principal
Frog's Way B&B
211 Rachel Carson Way
Ithaca, NY 14850
607-275-0249 607-592-8402 Cell
"We must be the change we want to see in the world"
Mohandas Gandhi
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