Imber Akse House – Burlington’s LEED home

There are a number of passive cooling and heating methods our house will utilize to reduce the need to mechanically condition the living space. One main passive system is the breeze maker or lungs of the home.

The center main floor of the house is flanked front and back with sliding patio doors that can be opened on nice days when interior temperatures are higher than exterior. In most homes, exhausting this warm air quickly can be a problem. With the design of high ceilings throughout the breeze zone combined with clerestory windows at the 14′ ceiling height on three walls, the rising hot air is allowed to escape which in turn does two things. Firstly the rising air creates a low pressure zone on the cool mass floor, pulling air along the floor from other areas of the house as well as any open doors. Secondly the rising and escaping air creates an interior low pressure that should pull in large volumes or exterior air from the patio doors. Depending on the primary wind direction and which doors are opened relative to time of day and shade, we can create a breeze of cooler incoming air.

Since air movement changes the relative feeling of temperature, we should stay comfortable longer with just cool mass floors and exterior air temperature.

One technology we’re excited to install in the house is a power monitor. We are considering a device from Power Watch – a design and manufacturer out of Oakville Ontario next door to Burlington where we are. Power Watch makes a clever little unit with big results. With a simple power clamp, it hooks into your electrical panel without need for disrupting wiring or any cutting – it reads current through the wiring insulation. After a couple minute install the unit begins to read energy load on all wires coming from the panel and is fed into an IP Based software program on a PC – wirelessly. Slick.

This is where it all starts as you can begin to see what the house is using and log it 24/7. After bench marking the average consumption of the home for a number of days, you can then begin to see what affects consumption, peak activities, appliances, lighting use behavior all are events that can be monitored. Once you are aware of benchmarks you can set goals for lowering consumption and adjusting mindsets on usage – perhaps you’ll see that the savings of a house warmed to only 19º is attractive compared to 22º — you’ll be able to calculate the savings in real time.

John Schroeter of Power Watch tells me that this technology is so compelling that some municipalities are making it a standard in new construction both commercially and residentially. Apparently some regions are installing this type of equipment as part of the service which they control and monitor because they understand that the more we are aware of energy use, the better we will become at reducing our dependency on and waste of cheap energy.

Contact John Schroeter
905.338.2900 ext. 11
www.powerwatch.com

The solution to save thousands of megawatts and carbon output for Canada is at our fingertips, and in our minds, already. It’s simple – change our perspective on comfort. There’s a reason why Canada and the US consume considerably more energy than the rest of the world and it’s not climate. It’s that we’ve developed an overly keen awareness to comfort — we are far more particular than other cultures. We like it warm in the winter and cool in the summer like everyone but consider the energy necessary to keep a house artificially cooled at 24ºC as compared to 26ºC. It doesn’t sound like it should be much but it usually takes a system a couple of hours to shift 2 degrees throughout the home and that accounts for a lot of energy.

But what if we just decided that 26º or even 28º was perfect in summer and 19º in the winter. That’s it. Then for most of the summer or winter the house would only require venthillation and little conditioning. Then also the system in summer could run the condensor on a low fan speed to remove humidity to make the air feel cooler in a relative sense. Nation wide this would be a major savings.

Using this perspective how would we judge other mechanical systems that require energy? Say lighting? Well we could consider a slightly darker room romantic, especially if we used accent and task lighting instead of a center of the room high wattage bulb trying to do too much. And then there’s our thirst for cold water compared to room temperature – image if we just unplugged all water coolers concluding that room temperature water was just as refreshing.

In the end we pay, as does the environment, for our desire for perceived comfort – for our perspective that’s unrelated to need, health or even average human comfort.

That being said, how will we change or relate our comfort consumption to cost especially when it’s an individual, house by house case scenario. I believe the start is knowing what the real cost is and that’s with a Power Monitor. Over the next year you will be hearing a lot about these devices and ideas. More.

Our feeling is if you’re going to do it, do it well. So when we decided to maintain a romantic throwback to a less efficient era of home, the wood burning fireplace, we agreed to look for the best of both worlds. The criteria was beauty combined with quality and of course efficiency. Beauty and quality are subjective and relative to one’s current condition but efficiency is a standard that is quantifiable.

We found Stüv a few years ago and fell in love. The short list of benefits are:

+ high end of efficiency at 80+% (measured by energy converted from material burned)
+ air tight – for a long hot burn that doesn’t suck your heated home air out the chimney or cause your HRV to cycle to keep up with pressure loss
+ fresh air intake – ported from an outside intake, the combustion air is brought in from the exterior, burned and exhausted through the chimney
+ air to air heating – the interior air is pulled (optionally from the cooler basement) into a heating chamber (not combustion) and blown back out optionally into your ductwork or into the room without pressure or energy loss to your home

The North American distributer, Stüv America is in Montreal which is a plus when dealing with import furniture like this – a Canadian distributer has a smaller market and is often more approachable and inspired by love of the product. Stüv America are great to deal with and delivery is quick with a variety of models in stock. Depending on your area they have set-up a number of dealer installers so check the site. And it has a BBQ on some models but don’t tell the code officials. Recently reviewed on Treehugger.

You’d never think a hole in the ground was so exciting. Yes, it is. Foundation digging started today and should complete in another with forms arriving sometime day 9. As we expected from the Soil Engineer’s guestimate, there is water sitting on clay. Consequently we will be using a series of technologies to keep the basement dry. First under the slab we’ll use a system of water collection tubes to direct the flow away or toward the two sump pumps. See system plan by AMEC. Next, the walls will be sealed and insulated from cold and moisture using Tremco’s TUFF-N-DRI® Basement Waterproofing System. This system dissuades water from sitting against the absorbent concrete foundation wall and moves it down and under the floor slab into the tubes.

The foundation walls are also sealed with Watchdog Waterproofing making them impervious to moisture. The combined system apparently provides a thermal break of R12 from the grade down. This combination should guarantee the basement is dry for at least 10 years. What? Only 10 years? This is the sad state of basement guarantees – if you believe you’re about to get better, read the fine print.

We have a major decision to make, and fast. From the beginning of the design process we had determined we would use radiant in-floor heating with a ground source heat pump if it were something we could afford. However we had preconceived notions about GSHP costs so we concluded a High Efficiency Natural Gas Boiler would have to do though it was a second best choice, a compromise due to price.

As we got into the process and learning curve we learned that the cost of the two technologies were closer together than we first understood. And when we considered that the GSHP could also provide heating for the pool on the same system, we realized that we were very close to making it a reality. So chopping we went, through the plan, to find room in the budget to go the rest of the way to afford the GSHP.

Recently, through investigating insulation and high performance building standards, we have come across research and recommendations from leading researchers that perhaps the NG Boiler may still be the better choice.

Here’s the debate. Let’s start by talking about money. It is our belief that for every dollar we have to earn, despite our efforts to reduce the industrial impact of our business, we inevitably mow down some trees, create some C02, and fuel our computers on Panda tears. So the most cost effective route needs to be involved in the sustainable equation. Simply, you can’t throw money at the sustainable problem without considering that the high footprint money spent outweighed the positive results unless, the positive results were infectious on others – another story.

So understanding that factor here’s the score card with other factors as we understand it:

GSHP Cons vs. NG Boiler

+ $ cost of money is higher for GSHP

+ the $ spent on GSHP could go to another sustainable feature with more immediate benefits

+ $ cost of electricity is currently higher than natural gas

+ environmental cost of electricity is greater than natural gas in Ontario (we burn coal!)

+ disturbance impact on your building site is greater for GSHP (drilling or excavating your yard)

+ GSHP requires a higher performance envelop to operate efficiently with lower output temperatures — requiring high insulation values, tighter sealing

+ not ideal for all situations, particularly extreme hot or cold average climate zones

GSHP Pros vs. NG Boiler

+ GSHP can easily be powered by solar, lessoning the environmental impact

+ GSHP uses only 1 fuel, NG Boiler 2 (NG and Electricity) – less dependency on utilities

+ GSHP has a lifetime supply of fuel from the get go, the ground, while the NGB is forever dependent on utilities

+ GSHP doesn’t introduce exhaust or venting issues into the home

+ GSHP uses less energy to operate within ideal ranges*

What’s the conclusion? If it weren’t possible to heat the pool with the GSHP and also install solar to run the GSHP we’d be immediately back to NG. Over the next few weeks we’ll conclude what’s involved in heating the pool and weigh in again. If the pool drops out of the equation, then NG it will be.

*For a comprehensive debate, see the attached document from John Straube, PHD, of Waterloo University and Building Science. bsd-gshp.pdf

One of the passive technologies we’ve designed into the house and hope to utilize is the passive fresh air vent. Airtight efficient homes require fresh air to supply not only a forced air heating system but simply fresh air to breath. If allergies to outside air is not an issue as in our case, there is no need to filter outside air before it enters the home, you need only acclimate that air so that you don’t have to waste energy to heat or cool it. This is done by pulling air from the outside close to the ground, through air intake tubes that run underground, then through your foundation and tie into your ventilation system. Tah dah!

Instead of using electric fans to pull the air, this system uses the natural high and low pressure zones that occur in the home when warm air rises to the ceiling. The low pressure on the floor is a vacuum which pulls for any air it can get. Instead of that air being yanked from wall sockets or under wall baseboards (you’ve all seen the black streaks on white carpet at the base of walls), the path of least resistance is through the tube.

The pulling of the air through the underground thermal mass acclimates it to roughly ground temperature (12ºC+-) in summer or winter before bringing it into your home. This is essentially what a component of a good HVAC system does. We’re guessing that with the right thinking we can tie this into the heat exchanger so that we bring the air to interior temperature even further and reduce humidity in the summer. This system is passive and replaces electronic methods that might have pulled air from the roof or soffit height wall vents. This passive vent is sometimes called the Earth Tube. More info at TheNaturalHome.com

We’ve been looking for a turf solution that suits our criteria – aside from no lawn which might be a possibility except we have 2 children that love to roll around on a natural, flat and shaggy surface. Fine fescue turf grasses might be the answer if the info on this suppliers website is correct.

This cold climate fescue mixture from Prairie Nursery grows to only a short species height, is resistant to drought requiring next to no water and absolutely no fertilizers, enjoys sun or partial shade and only needs mowing twice yearly! If anyone has had experience with such a mixture or the like, please let us know.