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Zero energy ready homes are coming

energy.gov

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Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#151

Post by johnweldon »

roywiggins wrote: post #143
johnweldon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, people will always choose to spend money living as close to their ideal as they can, with the resources they are able to give toward it. The fact that so many people choose to live in suburbs, or the "sticks", suggests that there is something desirable to _them_ about living there. I.e. the same spending power required to live in a house in the suburbs, or rurally, could usually be used to live in…

Ponzi's are very attractive too, for a while. People get a lot out of Ponzis. "the revenue collected over time does not come near to covering the costs of meeting these long-term obligations. Development spread out over a broad area is very expensive to maintain. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability... Decades into this experiment, American cities ha…

I'm a fan of strongtowns too. To the degree that that analysis is true, it will sort itself out. We don't need to do anything to save our neighbor from themself. We can make a lifetime of difference solving our own problems.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#152

Post by IncRnd »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #139
IncRnd wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure. This is all very expensive to build and maintain, and the cities and municipalities are left to foot the bill. That's not generally how this works. There aren't necessarily highways and new paved roads going to rural properties. Electrical service isn't only downtown in cities but for miles outside of them or from…

> As everyone who has built a property outside of some service area knows, the homeowner is the one who pays to drop the lines or service to the properety. I've read recently that as of right now, if you're more than 1000 yards from the branch point the electrical company would run wire from, it is already cheaper to go fully off-grid. Not 100% true that this is true or at least universally applicable, but the curves…

That makes a lot of sense to me. I'm pretty sure there has been some cutoff like that for as long as there have been utilities.

I don't know exactly how many yards the breakeven point is. However, from what I've seen it is almost always monetarily cheaper to create your own services when possible - unless a neighbor has paid for services to get really close. It might make sense for neighbors to pool money for pulling services out. It all depends on the specifics, right?

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#153

Post by kitsunesoba »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #137
kitsunesoba wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert in this field, but I think that changing zoning in current suburbs to mixed use would go a long way towards fixing them. The central wards of Tokyo are surrounded by such mixed use residential areas and it works extremely well, with most necessities being within walking distance or at worst biking distance. It wouldn't fix the suburbs' lack of density, but it'd still be a marked improvement. It'd theore…

If you can find a way to convince Americans they don't all need a yard that can easily fit 6 (japanese) houses, we'll be well on our way.

That level of space-hungriness isn't universal amongst American suburbs. In the neighborhood I live for example, houses have only around 6'-8' between them and their "yards" are a small patch of dirt in the front and back.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#154

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Syonyk wrote: post #105
AdrianB1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No welding is needed, you can use metal clamps to hold the pipes together. I have my panels on metal structure with no welding, I used bolts for joins.

Yes, but the clamps I've found designed for that sort of use are quite expensive, and add a substantial margin to the project cost - and they're not needed if you can weld it up, or have someone else weld it up. As I understand NEC from talking to various people and reading quite a bit of it myself, someone else can do the frames for a homeowner installed solar project, but "rails and up" has to either be the homeown…

> but "rails and up" has to either be the homeowner or a licensed electrician, because the rails are typically considered part of the grounding system and therefore electrical work.

Here in NM, you can (fairly easily) get licensed as the homeowner to do your own install of such a system. That's what did. My total cost (with those expensive metal clamps and nice aluminum panel rails etc) was around $1.80/W

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#156

Post by oangemangut »

johnweldon wrote: post #140
xyst wrote: post #64

I just see this as another subsidy for single family housing developments. The home may be "zero energy ready" or whatever greenwashing term they want to use. But the fact is they are spending that energy in driving from the sticks (in some cases >20 miles away) and back, driving from their home to the grocery store and back, driving to areas of interest (ie, parks, restaurants, doctors appointments). All of this is…

Generally speaking, people will always choose to spend money living as close to their ideal as they can, with the resources they are able to give toward it. The fact that so many people choose to live in suburbs, or the "sticks", suggests that there is something desirable to _them_ about living there. I.e. the same spending power required to live in a house in the suburbs, or rurally, could usually be used to live in…

Sure, when we subsidize all expensive bits of suburban living it artificially decreases the cost to the home owner of all the negative externalities.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#157

Post by rootusrootus »

Fauntleroy wrote: post #137
kitsunesoba wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert in this field, but I think that changing zoning in current suburbs to mixed use would go a long way towards fixing them. The central wards of Tokyo are surrounded by such mixed use residential areas and it works extremely well, with most necessities being within walking distance or at worst biking distance. It wouldn't fix the suburbs' lack of density, but it'd still be a marked improvement. It'd theore…

If you can find a way to convince Americans they don't all need a yard that can easily fit 6 (japanese) houses, we'll be well on our way.

Perhaps since the US is something like 26 times larger than Japan while only having less than 3 times the population, we can avoid making comparisons that don't make sense.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#158

Post by Syonyk »

loeg wrote: post #115
Syonyk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My system is grid tie, because the local plans review process and I didn't see eye-to-eye on batteries. I have a solar power trailer for backup power. https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/ documents the build. My frames are timber, though a neighbor built a very similar system with metal frames and 72 cell panels, and got his costs down quite a bit further - he's around $1/W installed, mine was somewhat higher at abo…

What do you use pipes for?

The physical structure. Replace the wood in my designs with welded hunks of old steel pipe and you have his design.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#159

Post by pchristensen »

johnweldon wrote: post #140
xyst wrote: post #64

I just see this as another subsidy for single family housing developments. The home may be "zero energy ready" or whatever greenwashing term they want to use. But the fact is they are spending that energy in driving from the sticks (in some cases >20 miles away) and back, driving from their home to the grocery store and back, driving to areas of interest (ie, parks, restaurants, doctors appointments). All of this is…

Generally speaking, people will always choose to spend money living as close to their ideal as they can, with the resources they are able to give toward it. The fact that so many people choose to live in suburbs, or the "sticks", suggests that there is something desirable to _them_ about living there. I.e. the same spending power required to live in a house in the suburbs, or rurally, could usually be used to live in…

No one is questioning that people want to live in suburbs. People object to the government power preventing any additional development in these low density areas. These areas are desirable, but economically uncompetitive.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#160

Post by loandbehold »

xthrown1 wrote: post #124
danans wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure. What if this was done this brownfield development in areas with existing infrastructure? New development doesn't need to be coupled with sprawl. There is a significant amount of multifamily development that looks exactly like that. The IRA also included large incentives for the retrofit of the existing housing stoc…

[flagged]

Complete nonsense. Power lines last 100+ years with little maintenance. Roads may need to be repaved after 30 years, but it's only fraction of the cost of building them from scratch. Stop promoting StrongTowns nonsense, his analysis were shown to be completely off base.
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