WHAT WOULD THE FLINTSTONES DO?
Remember the cartoon The Jetsons? Their futuristic home featured all sorts of wonderful push-button gadgets and robots that offered lots of easy options, except when the system went haywire which it did about once an episode. Similarly our homes today contain many "labor saving" devices that offer a myriad of options for every activity: stove top, oven, microwave, toaster oven, outdoor grill, and on and on. And just as The Jetsons foreshadowed, with more complexity comes more potential for breakdowns and an ever-growing need to manage and upgrade systems for heating, cooling, lighting, cooking, etc.
In contrast to the highly mechanized, whiz bang Jetson household was the world of The Flintstones. Instead of cool machinery, The Flintstones technology was based upon natural objects, often animals, and directing the inherent characteristics of these things towards the task at hand. A car horn was a bird that squawked, a vacuum cleaner was a baby wooly mammoth that sucked things through its nose and a razor was made from bees vibrating inside a sharp-edged clam shell. Working with the inherent characteristic of materials and applying them in appropriate and innovative ways reflects one of the key principles in green design. And while things went awry in The Flintstones world too, at least you had a better understanding of how to fix them!
So how can we create really green homes based on Flintstone design principles along with some well applied Jetson technology? Let's use this Flintstone-Jetson continuum to look at three systems which together are responsible for over 60 per cent of the energy used over the lifetime of our homes. If we can make improvements in these areas we will go a long way toward greening our homes.
Staying Cool and Keeping Warm
You may be surprised to learn that over the lifetime of your home a full 90 per cent of the total energy will be used to operate the home, while only 10 per cent goes into building and maintaining it. If we start to breakdown that 90 per cent (see chart below), approximately 41 per cent of it goes towards heating and cooling. Given that so much of our energy goes towards this, there has been a lot of focus on creating more efficient, and often more complicated, heating and cooling systems, a Jetson-like approach to the issue.
Updating the Flintstones Home
An alternative strategy for lowering the amount of heating and cooling energy needed is to create a building envelop that is so efficient that it significantly reduces, or even eliminates, the energy needed for heating and cooling. Sound impossible? In fact, we have had the knowhow and technology to do this for decades and currently there are over 10,000 such homes and other buildings in northern Europe with a scattering of other examples in Canada and the US. The current term for this is "Passive House" because the strategies emphasize the passive sources of heating and cooling versus active ones like furnaces, boilers and air conditioners.
The essence of a Passive House is a very well crafted building envelop that is extremely airtight with super-insulated walls. When possible, Passive Houses use passive solar design concepts such as orienting windows to the south for solar gain and minimizing north facing windows. The only somewhat unusual and high tech features are the triple paned high efficiency windows and a heat recovery ventilation system to insure good indoor air quality with minimal heat loss. Depending on the climate, some small scale heating device may be used as back up for extreme situations as well.
Because Passive Houses are so airtight and well insulated, they can often be heated using only passive solar heat and the "waste heat" from major appliances like refrigerators, water pipes and cooking, as well as from the people and animals. The average human radiates heat roughly equivalent to an 80 watt bulb which has given rise to the saying that you should be able to heat your home simply by love making-ahhh!
All of the technology and materials used in a Passive House currently exist, and the building costs are comparable to standard quality construction. And while this approach has been primarily applied to new buildings, it has been used to retrofit existing buildings with similar results. Passive House building standards are set to become the norm in Europe by 2012.
We have become so inspired by this very low tech and green approach that we are currently planning to build a Passive House in Portland. It will be made of wood and local materials except the windows which will likely come from Canada. We want to model techniques that any builder or homeowner could do. After building our Passive House as an ADU we will look to retrofitting the existing house using Passive House standards as well.
You can begin to move your home toward Passive House standards by upgrading the building envelop and, if possible, capitalizing on the energy from the sun. You can start with a free energy audit from Energy Trust to assess where you can make energy improvements. An alternative step would be to have a Home Performance Test done for a fee which can more specifically identify the air leaks in your home and any problems with the heating system. Based on the results of the tests, you will get a work plan outlining the best strategies for air sealing, insulation, and possibly heating and cooling improvements. See the Energy Trust's list of Trade Allies for contractors who are certified to perform these tests. We made several efficiency upgrades on our 100-year-old condo, and since we have the rough equivalent of super-insulated walls because of the units on either side of us, our house now performs within a few percentage points of Passive House standards.
That Long Hot Shower
Next to heating and cooling, water heating is the next biggest user of energy at 11 per cent. This is a really good area to see how conserving first, then optimizing efficiency can work.
The typical sources of hot water use in your home are showers, bath and kitchen faucets, clothes washing and dish washing. We start with the Flintstonesque low-flow devices for showers and faucets which are very inexpensive and easy to install. In fact the city of Portland will give you these devices free for the asking. New shower heads offer 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm); however there are now satisfactory fixtures that use 2.0 gpm or less. Look for a non-aerating showerhead which doesn't mix cool air with warm water in order to boost spray power. If you are a family of three that takes three 10-minute showers a day, changing from 2.5 gpm to 2.0 gpm could save you 5,250 gallons of heated water a year.
When it comes to dish and clothes washers, The Jetsons had it right. Water and energy efficient dishwashers use up to 37 per cent less water than washing dishes by hand when cleaning full loads. (You wouldn't think of washing partial loads would you? Good.) Energy Star dishwashers use up to 40 per cent less energy than non-rated dishwashers. Likewise, efficient clothes washers can cut water use more than half, and in reality you don't always need hot water to wash clothes and never for rinsing. The full load for maximum efficiency applies here as well.
Now that we have our hot water use minimized, we can look at how to optimize heating water. One of the most cost effective uses of solar energy is the solar water heater which directly heats the water with the sun on your roof and then stores this pre-heated water in a tank. In the summer the sun is strong enough to fully heat your water and in the winter the sun can serve to pre-heat your water so that you need less energy to heat it to the temperature you want for bathing and washing. According to the Department of Energy, solar water heating can lower a home's water heating costs by 50 to 80 per cent. Given that type of savings, along with the various rebates and tax credits available, the expected pay back period of a solar system is estimated to be between 3 and 7 years.
Whether you have a solar water heater or not, you will want to be sure that your hot water tank is well insulated. Many of the new tanks come with built in insulation, but if your tank is warm to the touch, you will save energy by wrapping it up in wooly mammoth skins (Finally a use for those old things!) or a pre-cut water heater blanket if you prefer.
Let the Light Shine In
Home lighting accounts for 11 per cent of the average home's energy use over time, and there are lots of Flintstonian ways to reduce energy in this area.
You can start by organizing your home to take advantage of natural light as much as possible. Situate reading and working spaces next to windows. Trim back heavy and dark foliage to optimize the natural light getting into your home. Place reflective surfaces like light colored fences, foliage and patio materials near your windows to bounce natural light in. The lighter your interior walls are the more natural and artificial light they will reflect. Consider adding windows or solar tubes to frequently used areas of your home that are too dark during the day and always require artificial light. One of the advantages to high efficiency windows is that they can be more comfortable to sit near in cool and warm weather. Sky lights should be used sparingly as they can easily cause over heating and air leaks.
With artificial light it is helpful to decide whether you need ambient, task or accent lighting in an area and to install the appropriate fixture. If you install task lights where you need them, you will reduce the amount of ambient light needed. More light is not always better, and strong contrasts in light can cause eyestrain and actually decrease your ability to see.
The color of light is very important and most people have preferences, which they usually realize when they don't like the quality of the light. Fortunately compact fluorescent bulbs with the yellow-tinged light preferred by most people for general home lighting are now widely available. Be sure to look for "warm" on the packaging if this is what you want. "Daylight" and "Cool" lights will be much bluer and better for task areas like garages. Switch out all the lights you use for an hour or more a day to compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) as these will save approximately 75 per cent of the energy used by an incandescent bulb. While there is a minute amount of mercury in the bulbs, it is easily cancelled out by the amount of mercury that is produced for the additional electricity required by incandescent bulbs. Do dispose of CFLs properly. ACE Hardware, IKEA and Home Depot will recycle your old CFLs. Finally your father was right-turn off the lights in rooms you are not using! This applies to CFLs as well if you are out of the room for more than 10 minutes.
Outside your home, try to minimize the light that goes up into the sky and focus the light for safety on paths and entrances. Incandescent lights set on motion detectors can be an effective strategy for lighting the less frequented areas around your home. Photosensors which turn lights off and on according the amount of light outdoors can help save on fluorescent lights that you would like on continuously when it is dark.
Below are links to websites that offer additional information on energy efficiency strategies for all three of these areas.
Get to Know Your kWh/day
We only measure what matters. By paying attention to the energy use of your home on your utility bills, you can track the impact of your energy savings. You will often see electricity measured in "kWh/day" which stands for "kilowatt hours per day" which is equivalent to one 100-watt light bulb on for ten hours each day. Knowing your kWh/day for your home is just like knowing the "mpg" for your car.
The average Portland home uses 30 kWh/day. Forecasters predict that we need to reduce our energy use by a factor of 10 in order to achieve sustainable levels, which means a goal of 3 kWh/day. While this might seem impossible, the good news is that most of our homes are huge energy wasters and conservation can help us make significant strides towards that goal. For instance, our home's current usage in the winter is 9.5 kWh/day and 3 kWh/day in the summer (plus water heating which is a building-wide system). This gives us an average of 5.2 kWh/day and is 83 per cent less than average. As we have pointed out, this isn't rocket science (sorry, Jetsons) and through some fairly Flintstone-like approaches you can achieve significant energy and carbon savings over the lifetime of your home.
Who knew it was so easy to have the home of the future right now?
Below is the breakdown for energy use in a typical U.S. home:
Graph from the Center for Sustainable Systems.
To learn more about the Passive House visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house
http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHouse/PHIUSHome.html
To learn more about energy saving strategies:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/
http://www.greenerchoices.org/
Energy Trust:
http://www.energytrust.org/index.html
City of Portland Free Water Conservation Tools
http://www.portlandonline.com/WATER/index.cfm?c=29618
© Beth Meredith and Eric Storm, June 2008
