The benefit of a well built home with passive solar design
December 30th, 2009 by Matthew Leonard
Mechanical systems can sometimes fail. It’s a fact of nature. There are good and reliable mechanical systems and most are easily fixed but none are perfect.
This fact is true is especially true with your home. Any number of things can cease to work properly causing various frustrations and when the safety and comfort of your family is tied to a mechanical system, a passive backup system gives great peace of mind.
What would happen in your home if a simple part of your heating system failed late at night and your furnace couldn’t supply heat?
What if that failure happened on a cold, 16°F, December night in Wisconsin?
Let’s say you couldn’t get a repair person to your home that night to fix it, even if you were to pay the outrageous rates they would require in the middle of the night.
How cold would your house be before a repair person could get the parts and fix your heating system later that next morning? Could you see your breath? Would your family be sneezing and have runny noses? How uncomfortable would it be?
A Real Life Testimony
We received an email from the owner of the New Berlin Passive House on Saturday December 5, 2009, telling us that the pump, which circulates the ground loop liquid for the geothermal heating system, failed the night before. The low for that night was 18°F. So no heat from the furnace all night. In most homes, not getting this fixed immediately is a major concern.
Benefits of Insulation and Air Sealing
By morning, the temperature in the house had only dropped to 68°F which was still very comfortable. This decrease in temperature was minimal because of the high insulation values and reduced air infiltration of the living envelope. The structural insulated panels (SIPs), Serious Windows, spray foamed box sills, and the insulated foundation system, only allowed this 3,400 square foot home to lose 2°F of air temperature over night.
Benefits of Passive Solar Design
Even more amazing, was the fact that with only partial sunlight that Saturday morning, the house gained 2°F (back to 70°F) before the repair person arrived to replace the pump. Insulation and air sealing are a big part of that but with the passive solar design, orientation on the lot, and high solar heat gain windows on the southern exposure, the home recovered it’s heat loss without any other mechanical system. Free heat from the sun!
Conclusion
Not only can a properly built home, using the best materials and methods, use minimal energy but it can overcome mechanical failures even in difficult times.
If your neighborhood lost power for a couple of days during a cold January, wouldn’t you feel more secure if your home was built by PEA Builders?
Tags: Air Sealing, Insulation, Passive Solar Design, Serious Windows, SIPs, Structural Insulated Panels
This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 at 7:06 am and is filed under Energy Efficiency, Green, Save Money, Uncategorized, Windows.