For people allergic to electricity.
Zero energy ready homes are coming
71–80 of 454 posts
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#72I 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…
> All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure.
If you're 20 miles outside a town, you almost certainly have electrical service, but are on a well and septic system. City water and sewer doesn't make sense at those sort of densities. You also probably have the land to easily put a nice ground mount PV array in, and grow a good bit of your own food, should you care to.
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#73When 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…
I have been toying with the idea of buying used panels in bulk and doing the same, but the payoff just isnt there at the current battery price. What kind of frame did you install to mount the panels? I have tons of room for ground mount and would love to do it diy as soon as the costs line up.
What if instead of batteries you hooked up a boiler to heat water or a deep chest freezer to cool water and then used heat exchangers to heat or cool overnight when solar doesn't work? I'm assuming no one does this because batteries are likely cheaper than this type of setup.
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#74This is a pet issue of mine, having lived in two off grid homes going back to the 80's. The barriers are not materials, technology, or labor, but purely regulatory. I could take my current home off permanently grid with solar today for less than 10k but to do so would be illegal. Permitted grid connected solar costs 5x that and disconnecting from the grid is not permitted.
Disconnecting from the grid is overly romanticized. What you get from paying the utilities is a team of people who will fix equipment issues due to failure or the environment. If your home battery system has issues, scheduling someone could take a day or more. Off grid electrical services isn't popular enough to be on call 24/7. And getting parts may get take even more time. Equipment failure could take your electric…
I totally agree that it is not for everybody, but I think there is a place for it and think there should be fewer barriers .
I've seen a few people quoted more than 500K for PG&E to run power to their house. That can buy a lot of redundancy and peace of mind. Similarly, many cities have power outages longer than 24 hours on an annual basis in California. At this point most people in my neighborhood have gas generators for when the grid goes out.
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#75Tough acronym to say, and spell apparently
> … Zero Energy Ready Homes (ZERH) their standard offering. To this point, our ZEHR program …
Sometimes acronyms get too cute, but there’s value to something that can easily be said in conversation or in one’s head while writing
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Things switched from insulating the wall cavity to insulating the outside of the house. Engineers started to factor in the insulation value of a 2x6 compared to the insulation it was next to and the heat loss in cold climates. Same applies for hot climates. Now these homes are being wrapped in insulation on the outside with all joints sealed, then insulated on the inside and essentially pressure tested for air leaks.…
> Things switched from insulating the wall cavity to insulating the outside of the house. Oh good they finally figured that out. Cause that's where you want the stuff. And insulating a bunch cavities is labor intensive.
I’m not at all convinced that exterior insulation would have lower labor cost. You have to competently install sheets of rigid insulation, and then you need to competently install siding over it.
Insulating cavities needs some skilled labor if you use mineral wool, but a skilled installer goes fast. Or you can use some kind of blown in product, which takes very little labor. (I have never seen competently installed fiberglass batts. I’m not sure they really exist.)
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been toying with the idea of buying used panels in bulk and doing the same, but the payoff just isnt there at the current battery price. What kind of frame did you install to mount the panels? I have tons of room for ground mount and would love to do it diy as soon as the costs line up.
What if instead of batteries you hooked up a boiler to heat water or a deep chest freezer to cool water and then used heat exchangers to heat or cool overnight when solar doesn't work? I'm assuming no one does this because batteries are likely cheaper than this type of setup.
You're welcome to do that, and it's something some off grid systems use, but the energy storage in that sort of thing is fairly poor. Go do the math on it, but you'll find a 55 gallon drum of water, from "room temperature" to "really darn hot" holds 15-20kWh of energy. It's useful, but not a staggeringly large amount for a typical house, that can easily use more than that on a single day's heating.
Thermal mass storage requires a lot of mass to do anything useful, or the ability to run exceedingly high temperatures. Or a phase change. Molten salt storage can store a lot of energy, but you're at "very hazardously hot" temperatures with "stuff that's mind-bogglingly corrosive when hazardously hot." It's not the sort of thing most people would want to mess with at home. Myself included, and my tolerance for experimentation is pretty darn high.
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#78Those dehumidifiers make these places uninhabitable for me. Constant low humidity is really unhealthy. Without them these ultra insulated homes have major vapor and mold issues. Being highly insulated is good but at a point it's just silly. I'd rather see efforts to insulate old trailers, manufactured homes, etc. Rich people experimenting with zero energy homes don't need a credit.
The location of the home (Fairhope, Alabama) is in a humid subtropical climate where the average humidity is above 70% year round. I couldn't find any data but seems possible that the net average interior humidity is not actually that low?
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#79I 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…
> All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure. If you're 20 miles outside a town, you almost certainly have electrical service, but are on a well and septic system. City water and sewer doesn't make sense at those sort of densities. You also probably have the land to easily put a nice ground mount PV array in, and grow a good bit of your own food, should you ca…
I don't think this is the case for suburbs, at least for water. Septic tanks are used I think
Re: Zero energy ready homes are coming
#80A GPT blurb about what goes into a zero energy ready home: > There are several core technologies and products that go into creating a Zero Energy Ready Home. These include: Advanced insulation materials: These materials are used to reduce heat loss and gain through walls, roofs, and floors. Examples of advanced insulation materials include spray foam insulation, rigid foam insulation, and blown-in cellulose insulatio…
Congratulations, you've found something to describe, in a dull and useless way, the concept of energy efficiency in a home. Blown-in cellulose is "advanced," huh?
It doesn't answer any of the specific questions about what's specifically different in a Zero Energy Ready Home from something Energy Star rated, and it's filled with weasel words and vague handwaving statements.
I could nitpick the response further against the actual PDF linked elsewhere in the thread, but there's no particular point.