23. February 2009 by admin.

This continues where the last post left off…

Ok, so you didn’t have a house designed to work with the site or the climate.  What do you do?

Well get somebody to analyze your house or building.   Where are you losing heat from and vice versa.  If you have more heating days then cooling, you need to find where you are losing the heat from to lower your energy costs.

Simple steps like caulking or using weather stripping helps.  Then step it up if your budget allows and replace windows or doors.  Look at the insulation in your attic and if you have any under your floors in a crawl space.  If you have a slab on grade, consider insulating the perimeter of the slab if at all possible.

Look at the insulation in your walls.  Does it have any? Remember though that it is always better if the house was built with high efficiency building components in the first place.  If you decide to refurbish your home after the fact, you need to carefully research what you put in the home.

There are plenty of businesses out there that will happily pump your wall full of insulation products.  Not all good for you.  You need to check the types of insulation and if it will off gas volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into your home for months or years after the installation.   You also need to find out if by adding the additional insulation you inadvertently cause the dew point (where condensation occurs) to fall somewhere within your wall cavity.

Huh? Why?

Well, moisture occurring in your walls helps mold thrive.  People tend to forget that they live and sleep in their homes.  If they don’t see anything, it’s not a problem.  Just because its built doesn’t mean it’s right.

Ok, that went off tangent a little, so let’s get back on track.  Button up your home (but do it right).

Consider other measures like planting deciduous trees that shade the house in the summer but allow in sunlight in the winter.   Build a trellis on the south or west sides of your home to shade it from the summer sun and reduce your cooling load.  If you are going to replace you roof because it just happens to be that time, consider using roofing materials that are lighter in color.

Then look at what you have in the house.  Replace old and inefficient appliances.  Your mental calculator is going off right now.  Well, if you consider the costs of installing a PV system, most of these efforts will costs far less and still save you money.  It’s far better to save money then to spend it if you are getting the same effort.  In today’s economy, we need all the help we can.

For the most part measures like these will help reduce the heating or cooling loads on your central air conditioner or furnace.  Compare your utility bills over a number of years to see if you have actually achieved any savings.

Now after all these efforts, if you still want to install the PV system,  you’ll find that it will probably be sized smaller than before you initiated all the other efforts.  Which in turn will costs you less.

That I guess was the whole point of this post.  Do whatever you can to make your building more efficient before throwing technology at it.  Sometimes simple measures can save you a lot of money.

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23. February 2009 by admin.

Just the other day somebody asked me about incentives for installing photo voltaic (PV) panels on their home.  It appears there was a sudden surge in their energy bill and coupled with everything else that is going on, they felt that it might help to offset their utility bills with some sun power. Apparently many people were seeing that with the recent cold front.  Couple this with the news that a portion of the stimulus plan has incentives for green technology or renewable power and suddenly it seems like a good idea.

Using renewable energy to get your home or building off the grid or partially of the grid is a good goal to have.  We could go on about how using renewables will help limit this country’s dependence on foreign oil but there are plenty of experts to talk about it.  That’s not what I’m going to focus on.

Before anyone heads out the door to buy and install a PV system on their home, they need to take a hard look at their home or building.  This post isn’t to discourage you in your effort to install a PV panel system or a wind turbine in your home or building.  It is about things you should consider before doing so.

So let’s look at a single family residence as an example.  Your electric/gas/ heating oil bill is high because of your heating or cooling  loads in your home.  So you think installing a PV system (or wind turbine) will help offset the utility bills.  Great, except even with all the incentives, rebates etc, it still uses hard earned cash to put one up.

Unfortunately for most people, their homes are regular tract homes built to a series of similar plans and laid out to maximize the number of homes in the development.  Which means that for the most part, they are not designed with the site or climate in mind.

You say, what’s the big deal? It has windows and insulation in the walls and all the other homes are the same way.  Fair enough.

If all your windows are facing west and go floor to ceiling, then you’ll know how a hothouse cucumber feels all year long.  You can have triple glaze windows with low-e coatings and you’ll still cook in that house.   If your air conditioner was sized the same way as all the other houses, well it’s going to have a heavier load to deal with.  For most people living in older homes, it’s likely they have single glazing in their windows.

Truth of the matter is that you can throw all the technology in the world at a building but if it wasn’t designed to work with the climate then you are over sizing all that equipment to compensate for the failings of the design.  Not a problem when gas was cheap.

Continued on the next post….

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23. February 2009 by admin.

Why on earth would you want to read the ramblings and musings of an architect?

Let alone mine.

I just happen to be an architect who likes to design green buildings whenever the opportunity provides itself.   The reality is that while many architects tend to lean towards designing green or sustainable buildings, we still design to a budget and for a client.

If the budget does not include a sustainably designed building, then a conventionally built building might just be the result.  Most clients if educated about the benefits of going “green”, are supportive of it but leery of adding costs.  In many instances for a small developer or home owner, it just doesn’t and going green falls off the balance sheets. 

Over the last few years we have heard the klaxon call for LEED certified buildings.  You did think that before LEED came along there were no green buildings being built.  Now almost everyone out there is a LEED accredited professional (AP) and you can’t help but step on one every time a building project becomes more than a glimmer in its owner’s eyes.  However going LEED has costs implications and it takes a lot of time and money to go through the certification process.  In this economy, it appears that is one of the first things that get shown the door.  LEED has some pros and cons associated it with.  Maybe I’ll get around to talking about that one day.

Right now my focus is about greening your project.  It doesn’t have to be LEED to be green but the hype and marketing behind it can’t hurt if you want the project to stand out from the crowd.  However a well thought out building that is designed to respond to the site and climate is probably going to save money over the life of the building.  There is more to being green that fancy letters after a name. 

So bear with me and as I find the time, I’ll write a little more each time. 

In the mean time, if you want to learn a little bit more about me, feel free to check out my firm’s web site. 

http://www.gleearchitects.com

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