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Zero energy ready homes are coming

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Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#361

Post by majormajor »

stouset wrote: post #325
twblalock wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep bringing up Tokyo but it's not really relevant. Yes, Tokyo has mixed zoning. But it was developed the way it is because the people who live there want it to be that way. It's also only livable because the people there have a culture that makes it possible to live in high density without high levels of crime, noise, and filth. Americans in the same situation would not have built something like Tokyo. If yo…

> Most Americans want to live in detached homes that they own, and they prefer cars to public transit. Most people just want what they're already accustomed to. We quite literally have the power to influence that instead of just throwing our hands up and saying "well gosh Americans want terribly designed communities whose long-term costs are completely unsustainable, so I guess there's nothing we can do about it." Th…

> Most people just want what they're already accustomed to.

People with more resources and more power have taken larger living spaces for centuries, the idea of wanting more space isn't some creation of post-WWII America.

Nowdays we talk about trains in the US as a "let's get away from suburban development" but the train itself was a driver of suburbanization from London, historically - people opted for more space and a train commute when they got the option.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#362

Post by jedberg »

coffeebeqn wrote: post #221
jimt1234 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just curious: what happens if a home owner installs a bunch of solar panels and batteries, declares the property "off grid" (for electricity), then simply stops paying the local utility. I'm sure the local utility will stop service, which is what the home owner wants by going "off grid". But does it go beyond that? Will the local utility put a lien on the house? Will the local utility send any unpaid "fees" to co…

Paying for what? You pay for the kWh you use and the transfer of said energy. If you don’t use any energy or disconnect your service I don’t see why would that be a problem

Electricity grids have two parts -- the infrastructure that moves the electricity and the actual power.

Before home generation, everyone needed both. The cost of the infrastructure was amortized over all of the customers. As it turned out, rich people used more power, so by having a single charge just based on usage but that covered the cost of both usage and the grid, rich people subsidized poor people.

But the home solar came along, and the rich people started getting it. So now the power companies have a problem. They still have to maintain all of that grid infrastructure, whether you're connected to it or not, and they need rich people to subsidize it.

The could have simply split the bill up and put the infrastructure on the property tax bill and then just charge people for their actual usage, but that would be complicated and would reveal how much they pay for each part.

So instead they lobbied for laws that don't let you go off grid and force you to pay a minimum "connection fee" each month.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#363

Post by majormajor »

zbrozek wrote: post #328
twblalock wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep bringing up Tokyo but it's not really relevant. Yes, Tokyo has mixed zoning. But it was developed the way it is because the people who live there want it to be that way. It's also only livable because the people there have a culture that makes it possible to live in high density without high levels of crime, noise, and filth. Americans in the same situation would not have built something like Tokyo. If yo…

And Houston has more diversity and better affordability than most other top tier American cities.

And it has much lower overall population density, so diversity and affordability clearly aren't automatically driven by density.

Houston has space to expand so it can easily keep building outwards without bulldozing shit (which requires people wanting to sell their land, etc, etc). Development is easy if there's nothing to displace. NY? LA? SF? Not so much. No coincidence that Chicago is much cheaper than those geography-bound places too.

Compare Houston to other cities in Texas *that have plenty of zoning of the sort that would be immediately recognizable in the Bay Area) and it no longer looks like any YIMBY miracle of affordability. Just... basically the same...

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#364

Post by kerpotgh »

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…

[dead]

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#365

Post by Gigachad »

bluGill wrote: post #293
SamBam wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not a big deal with only a few people on the grid, but if every house were doing this, "Renewable is great, but if we're already generating all our power by renewables then..." This argument is silly because we are nowhere close to having this problem yet. And as we start to approach that golden age (I mean, "problem") we'll have other alternatives.

Iowa is actually close to having the problem of more renewable power than demand. We are a small state yet ranked number two in wind production: your state should aim to overtake us.

This is not really a problem. You just send out a signal to shut solar off. Then people and businesses buy batteries to take advantage of the free power and sell it back at night.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#366

Post by zeroonetwothree »

djrobstep wrote: post #267
snow_mac wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the hell would I live in an American city? I live in Colorado. Denver is our 'city', there is no parking, no room for my 2 dogs and my kid would not have a giant backyard to play in. Instead, I have a 3400 sq ft house on 10,000 sq ft of land with giant trees everywhere. I'm within 2 miles of lightrail, that I will never use. I work from home, I have a home office with a indoor, led powered garden with fresh fruit…

> I hate driving in Denver. The traffic sucks. > Why is walkable so desired? When it's cold (like today) I don't want to leave my car. I'd drive through any day, I'd drive just to avoid walking half a mile. This is an amazing example of the terrible disease that is Car Brain. Instead of having a walkable city where you can walk to the shops/gym/restaurants, take convenient public transport to the theatre, and take th…

All the ‘walkable’ cities still seem to be congested with cars.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#367

Post by cwkoss »

westurner wrote: post #347
westurner wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passive solar building design : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_solar_building_design#... Low-energy house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-energy_house List of low-energy building techniques: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_low-energy_building_te... /? Passive solar home (tbm=isch image search) https://www.google.com/search?q=passive+solar+home&tbm=isch /? Passive solar house: https://youtube.com/resul…

Walipini passive solar green houses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walipini Earthship passive solar homes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthship Underground living: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_living Root cellar passive refrigeration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar Ground source heat pump (Geothermal heat pump) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_source_heat_pump Solar-assisted heat pump:…

'Pain mound' low tech compost driven water heaters are neat too

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#368

Post by zeroonetwothree »

jjav wrote: post #128
xputer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Suburban developments in the US are often in food deserts. There's usually nothing within walking distance and if there is it is prohibitively dangerous and unpleasant to walk there. Is there data to back this up, particularly the "usually" part? Having nearly always lived in suburban areas (a few times rural), food shopping is nearly always within an easy walk. I'm sure there are some cases where this might not be…

I’ve lived in various suburban places around the bay and always had stores within a mile. My current place has three grocery stores within half a mile!

I also think suburban areas are nicer for bikes because there is no theft. Biking in SF is pretty rough for example. Here I don’t even have to lock my bike.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#369

Post by zeroonetwothree »

IncRnd wrote: post #226
xthrown1 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of US taxes come from cities. It's the hinterlands that are free riding on the US armed forces.

> It's the hinterlands that are free riding on the US armed forces. Yet. "In every region of the country, recruitment rates were higher in rural and exurban counties than in urban counties. Only urban counties in the South had recruitment rates above the national average. Cities in the Northeast, Midwest and West all had rates well below the national average." [1] [1] https://dailyyonder.com/largest-share-army-recrui…

It’s absolute numbers that matter, not rates.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#370

Post by defrost »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #359
jesseendahl wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you Google “passive solar vs. passivhaus” you will find a lot of results. This one is the first result which explains the difference in terms: https://www.whitepebbleinteriors.com.au/the-difference-betwe... I believe passivhaus as a term did originally arise/derive from solar house, but since then the terms have come to mean very different things. I wouldn’t say that solar house is still considered an umbrella ter…

I did exactly that and provided a link to a source in an earlier comment. I wanted to be a translator at one time. I've had Intro to Linguistics as a college class. I genuinely have zero problem with people wanting to use the term passive house to refer to a distinct set of building techniques and passive solar to refer to a different set of building techniques. Living languages evolve. It's a known phenomenon. And,…

FWiW and simply as an additional point of interest;

the 1992 second edition of Energy Efficient Australian Housing has an entire chapter entitled Passive design strategies with a section on the use of passive solar energy.

In a sense the entire book is about passive design, optimal placement coupled with sensible insulation to create optimal (and ideally passive (no additional energy inputs)) heat sinks, sources, and flows .. sometimes to heat and sometimes to create a draw and cool as a side effect.

Historically much of this goes back thousands of years to designs that draw in water from a height and use heat towers to create flows through water sprayed gardens, etc.

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