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Zero energy ready homes are coming

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Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#381

Post by DoreenMichele »

vasco wrote: post #379
DoreenMichele wrote: post #208

Contrary to what I am seeing in comments on HN, this is not just for single family detached housing. If you go to the ZERH website, under Program Requirements it says: Versions 1 and 2, Single Family, Multifamily, and Manufactured Homes https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/zero-energy-ready-home... Additionally, one of the photos in the featured article has the following caption: Lopez Community Land Trust built thi…

I followed you up to the end when you say cities didn't always have more services than small towns and that life in a city wasn't that bad if you were poor. If I think of industrial era first bigger cities, this doesn't seem true? It was way bigger gap between rich and poor quality of life and I'm pretty sure cities always had more services, that's what makes them cities.

I can see why you read it that way, but that's not the point I was trying to make.

These days, a lot of small towns don't even have a full-service grocery store and many people who want to live in a small town have to commute a long ways to get basic essential food they need.

Historically, they may also not have had a full-service grocery store, but a lot more people lived and/or worked on farms and a lot more food was sold locally, not far from where it was grown.

There are essential services that have been unraveling in recent years, making it really challenging to baseline survive in a small town in a way that wasn't always true. And it should not be true that you have a gun to your head to own a car in order to have any hope of having an adequate diet. That's just seriously problematic for individuals and even potentially threatens welfare or survival of the human race.

Something has gone very wrong that it's so hard for so many people to get a decent meal when we are awash in so much societal wealth, yet our systems for how it gets distributed and such have gotten so out of whack.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#382

Post by mrjh »

vasco wrote: post #379
DoreenMichele wrote: post #208

Contrary to what I am seeing in comments on HN, this is not just for single family detached housing. If you go to the ZERH website, under Program Requirements it says: Versions 1 and 2, Single Family, Multifamily, and Manufactured Homes https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/zero-energy-ready-home... Additionally, one of the photos in the featured article has the following caption: Lopez Community Land Trust built thi…

I followed you up to the end when you say cities didn't always have more services than small towns and that life in a city wasn't that bad if you were poor. If I think of industrial era first bigger cities, this doesn't seem true? It was way bigger gap between rich and poor quality of life and I'm pretty sure cities always had more services, that's what makes them cities.

“when you say cities didn't always have more services than small towns and that life in a city wasn't that bad if you were poor”

Pretty sure they said the exact opposite of that.

“small towns suck because they lack services and big cities suck if you aren't one of the wealthy”

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#383

Post by olau »

paiute wrote: post #95
olau wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on low humidity being bad, but your remark on insulation does not seem correct. I'm only familiar with cold climates, so perhaps I'm overlooking something, but mold needs moisture to grow, so it will appear where water condenses out of warm air on a cold surface. You can typically see this in windows. So you need to prevent cold surfaces. The best way to do that is improving the insulation. The reason you can…

It's not super intuitive at first, but its cold climates were this is actually a big issue. Water vapor "wants" to equalize from a more humid to less humid environment. So when it's cold out - the humidity can drop rather low. Then you take a shower and create water vapor - which flows into the walls, through the insulation, and condenses against the colder exterior. Open a wall in any stick frame house in the rocky…

Ah, I see where you are coming from. The standard solution (for > 25 years) where I live is that you install a vapor barrier (plastic) to prevent the moisture from diffusing outwards. It needs to be on the interior side of the insulation in a cold climate.

Edit: Sorry, I can see that you're aware of these. Perhaps my point is just that all standard houses where I live in cold climate uses vapor barriers. Moisture control is part of the building code. Trying to solve the problem with overly dry air does not make sense to me - the whole point of a house is making a comfortable living space.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#384

Post by nicbou »

twblalock wrote: post #356
bandofthehawk wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suburbs are not inherently unsustainable or terribly designed. Some are, but some cities are too. I would guess that most suburbs are financially unsustainable in the long term because they pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain their infrastructure. Strong towns talks about this in great detail.

> I would guess that most suburbs are financially unsustainable in the long term because they pay less in taxes than it costs to maintain their infrastructure. Again, that is something that might be true for some places but not others. I know of suburbs that definitely pay for themselves. And it's not hard to see why -- the property taxes are high and many of the residents are paying high income taxes too. Plus, many…

> Taxes are redistribution.

Why should they be redistributed to the recreationally remote? Are they especially in need?

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#385

Post by nicbou »

johnweldon wrote: post #144
Fauntleroy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do we need to convince someone they don't "need" anything? Each person has the best information about their own situation to decide what they need (or even want - you don't have to _need_ something to have to justify _wanting_ it)

What's best for them might not be best when everyone does the same. Suburbia is not sustainable.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#386

Post by londons_explore »

dahfizz wrote: post #265
londons_explore wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a problem as long as your grid does dynamic minute by minute pricing. When the price of power drops to zero in the spring/fall, you can be sure there will be plenty of people lapping it up to smelt aluminium, make glass, make steel, make cement, liquify air, make hydrogen, etc. When the price of power is high in the winter, companies will swoop in with gas turbines, power cables from other places, and extr…

> Power hungry industries will become seasonal or migratory too. Electricity will have to become orders of magnitude more expensive for this to be true. After you've bought the building, the smelter, and the guy to operate it, the cost of electricity to smelt aluminum is negligible. Its never going to make sense to leave all that idle if the cost of electricity bumps up a few cents.

> After you've bought the building, the smelter, and the guy to operate it, the cost of electricity to smelt aluminum is negligible.

Electricity is the biggest expense in aluminium production. There is a reason it is nicknamed "solid electricity".

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#387

Post by zoltar »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #208

Contrary to what I am seeing in comments on HN, this is not just for single family detached housing. If you go to the ZERH website, under Program Requirements it says: Versions 1 and 2, Single Family, Multifamily, and Manufactured Homes https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/zero-energy-ready-home... Additionally, one of the photos in the featured article has the following caption: Lopez Community Land Trust built thi…

Regarding passive solar, I liked this video on the Schweikher House built during the 1930s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq-3cZ0cbws

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#388

Post by germinalphrase »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #381
vasco wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed you up to the end when you say cities didn't always have more services than small towns and that life in a city wasn't that bad if you were poor. If I think of industrial era first bigger cities, this doesn't seem true? It was way bigger gap between rich and poor quality of life and I'm pretty sure cities always had more services, that's what makes them cities.

I can see why you read it that way, but that's not the point I was trying to make. These days, a lot of small towns don't even have a full-service grocery store and many people who want to live in a small town have to commute a long ways to get basic essential food they need. Historically, they may also not have had a full-service grocery store, but a lot more people lived and/or worked on farms and a lot more food w…

“ a lot more people lived and/or worked on farms and a lot more food was sold locally, not far from where it was grown”

But they’re not living/working on farms, nor are they living near where the food is grown. Our agriculture system is capable of delivering huge amounts of food for people (including the people who live near fields), but it’s not exactly trying to do that as doing that is not economically efficient.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#389

Post by londons_explore »

erikerikson wrote: post #342
bluGill wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a.company that melts steel. Cost of electric is a very large issue. We pay workers extra to work overnight shifts when electric is cheaper and shut down during the day. We also shutdown for annual maintenance in December when Christmas lights raise electric costs.. not one that melts metal, but I know one plant runs 5 months and does maintenance the other 7. Note, the above is as of 10 years ago. Now wind…

We have Nucor in West Seattle and rumor has it running 24/7/365+ because the cost of shutdown/startup is too high. I've seen steel coming out is there everything I've driven by regardless of hour.

Seattle has far more stable power costs because they have lots of hydro.

Hydro has a fixed amount of water they can generate energy from, but can do it daytime, nighttime or weekends - whenever the users want the power they can have it.

Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming

#390

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

londons_explore wrote: post #103
Syonyk wrote: post #28

When you've confused "per kWh cost" with "energy to the house delivery costs," this sort of stuff sounds good on paper, but it doesn't fundamentally solve the problem that in the winter, homes use a lot more energy than they can generate, and in the spring/fall, they will generate a lot more energy than they need. I've got a large ground mount solar install I put in a few years ago (15.9kW nameplate, though mostly ea…

This isn't a problem as long as your grid does dynamic minute by minute pricing. When the price of power drops to zero in the spring/fall, you can be sure there will be plenty of people lapping it up to smelt aluminium, make glass, make steel, make cement, liquify air, make hydrogen, etc. When the price of power is high in the winter, companies will swoop in with gas turbines, power cables from other places, and extr…

I do like the dynamic pricing idea. If you're not well situated for panels you can invest in batteries and sell at night what you bought during the day.

I don't have your faith in markets though. The invisible hand is a potent force indeed, but it's just as likely to flip you the bird as it is to solve a problem that you have. There's nothing about a market, for instance, that knows to keep prices high enough to prevent the wintertime aluminum smelters from burning all the stored energy and causing a humanitarian crisis a month later when there's not enough to weather a blizzard.

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