GreenGeezer

Our Green Home is Starting to Take Shape

We are building a green home in Bloomington, Indiana.  Our plan is to build it over the next year, with plans for completion in late 2009.    Here is the latest rendering.  The house was designed by Conservation Technology International.   The house is a high-performance, super-insulated version of the German Passivhaus, dubbed a "One Watt House" by Marko Spiegel, principal of CTI, because it will take only about one watt per square foot of house to heat it on the coldest day of the year.  It also incorporates a heat chimney, which will draw air up and out of the house on hot days, allowing the house to cool itself naturally. 

Energy Modeling in Home Design

Today we met with Marko Spiegel and Ron Dean, from Conservation Technology International and we looked over the energy modeling they have done for our proposed house design. It was exciting to see that the projected heating cost will be only $211 per year for heating!  Now that's a beautiful house.....Ron promised to send me the cool graphics that he prepared to show how the house will beat HERS  and Energy Star ratings by a huge margin. We'll earn extra LEED points (if we choose to submit the house for LEED for homes certification) because there was a house existing on the lot before; there is only rubble now.

Solmetric SunEye

Last month we ventured to the site of our future home and our energy modeler, Marko Spiegel of Conservation Technologies International, joined us there, bringing with him a handy tool that we all gathered round to marvel at.   The  Solmetric SunEye allows you to stand on the site of your future structure and tell you how much direct sunlight will fall on your structure and at what angle, so that you can create the most efficient passive solar design. Fundamental things like the location of the house on the lot and the height and length of overhangs, will be determined based on the sun's position in the sky throughout the year.  So, while the sun is lower in the sky during the winter, your home will still capture its rays below the overhang, while being shaded inside from the hot summer sun, which is higher in the sky.   The SunEye measures all this while generating on-site sunpath images and bar charts.   Cool: now say "azimuth" ten times fast.