Pretty Good House
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Pretty Good House provides a framework and set of guidelines for building or renovating a high-performance home that focuses on its inhabitants and the environment―but keeps in mind that few people have pockets deep enough to achieve a “perfect” solution. The essential idea is for homeowners to work within their financial and practical constraints both to meet their own needs and do as much for the planet as possible.
A Pretty Good House is:
· Simple and durable, but also well designed
· Comfortable and energy efficient
· Only as big as it needs to be
· Healthy, responsible and resilient
· Cost-conscious
Bonus - Attend the full session and you will have a chance to win a copy of the book, Pretty Good House.
Continuing Education Units (CEUS) 1 hour in
• Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI)
• Building Performance Institute (BPI) NonWholeHouse
• American Institute of Architects - AIA (HSW)
• Certified Green Professional (NARI & CGP)
• Certified GreenHome Professional (CGHP)
• AIBD
• State Architect / Builder License may be applicable
Lessons Learned:
1. Navigate the sometimes-overwhelming quantity of “things to think about when designing and building a house” and organize them into categories of importance that make sense for a high performance house on a realistic budget. (without the dependance on a rating system or certification) (though we will share with attendees who they can download their own certificate if they really feel they deserve it).
2. Recognize the importance and relevance of the many issues of climate, health, and comfort, and address them through the implementation of proper design and detailing.
3. Observe and appraise the implementation of building science concepts in Pretty Good House examples (case study excerpts).
4. Become motivated to improve the quality of their own projects and bestow them with the tools and information to allow them to pass that knowledge on to others within the trade. We will then serve kool-aid and tell them about the new church we are starting.
Need CEUS?
Take the Quiz here:
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Speakers:
Michael Maines has worked as a furnituremaker, carpenter, building contractor, building science consultant and operations manager at a panelized building fabricator, but since founding Maines Design (www.maines.des...) in 2014 he has focused on working closely with clients to design homes and renovations that are healthy, efficient, resilient, and comfortable. He is a Certified Passive House Consultant, frequent contributor to Fine Homebuilding Magazine, Editorial Advisor for Green Building Advisor, co-founder and co-host of The BS*+Beer Show (*building science) and co-author of the book, Pretty Good House. He is based in Palermo, Maine.
Emily Mottram, principal, Mottram Architecture
Emily Mottram is the founder and principal of Mottram Architecture, a boutique practice specializing in new homes and renovations that are beautiful, functional, comfortable, healthy, and durable.
Mottram received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from Penn State University and is a Registered Architect in Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
An educator at heart, Mottram also teaches building science and sustainable design at a local community college and has served as a consultant for projects in a secondary school trade program. She hosts the monthly podcast E3: Energy and Efficiency with Emily and co-hosts the live-streamed BS* + Beer Show, a monthly building science show, and is a co-author of the book, Pretty Good House.
I have a Wick home which is basically a panelized house from early 2007. My wife and I ordered every option related to insulation that was available. The dealer urges us to cut back with the fear of the home being too tight! Thankfully I kept pushing forward. A few things that we did was 2X6 with 24” center and R19.75 in the walls with R50 in the ceiling. In the lower level(basement) we went with a product called Superior Walls which was pressurized concrete sandwiched with 1 1/2 in foam. We then spray foamed another 3” of spray foam around the entire envelope once the basement was in place. Then a few years later when we did the build out in the lower level(around 1000 sqft.) we did a light layer of rockwool insulation over the top of the spray foam and then drywall for sound proofing. We have a home theater and a bedroom down there which can be challenging sound wise.
The problem we have, is what was mentioned here briefly, too much humidity in the house. We have battled it since day one. The HVAC contractor that was involved with the project didn’t believe that a panelized home could be air tight enough to require a HRV unit install. Needless to say we had to fork out the money a year later because we had large amounts of condensation on the windows. The HRV seems to control the humidity in the winter but being here in WI the last few summers my AC unit don’t need to run very long to cool the house so sometimes we get scary high humidity. I am not sure how to handle this problem.
I'm building in the desert so I'm pretty sure I'll have the opposite problem but I think I have seen AC units with dehumidification modes so they can run without cooling.
Otherwise there are plenty of dehumidifiers that you could plumb in to your HVAC if you have a ducted type system.
@@joequixotic3039 Correct - Check out Aprilaire.
It would be great to see a talk by Emily on just HVAC systems!
We agree, in the meantime please search our channel for other top trending HVAC Talks!
This is great but your case study looks nothing like what I will build because it's designed for a primarily heating climate zone.
In a dry, primarily cooling climate zone (southern Nevada), maximum HVAC load will line up with maximum solar production and the shading effect of solar panels covering the roof will all work together when it is hot. Over sizing the solar array to almost or completely shade the entire roof will allow for panel efficiency to drop over time without going past net zero on energy consumption in summer and generate more than required to heat in the winter even if the panels are not angled to maximize generation in the winter.
Snow is not a real issue so a single pitch shed roof simplifies construction details.
Ground temperatures stay fairly warm year round and my ground floor will be a garage/workshop that won't be conditioned as much as the upstairs living area so slab insulation isn't really necessary.
Your carbon footprint graph does show that reducing energy usage is more important than reducing C02 emissions required for construction but if you are going to say your stick built house has a realistic 100 year lifespan, you have to consider that a foam and concrete ICF house is realistically a 200-300 year house or more because demolishing a steel reinforced concrete building is a huge pain in the ass (even if it is small). Realistically my land will never be bought to tear down and rebuild because it's rural and Lex Luthor isn't trying to turn it in to ocean front property.
Regarding insulation levels, if you over provision your solar panels to shade your roof and use lower output panels to save money, why insulate to reduce HVAC energy requirements to less than your minimum predicted solar generation (75% of rating × sunny hours)? I doubt I'll need R40 in my roof but it will be vented with a radiant barrier and shaded on top of that.
Operable windows seem pretty silly except when there is an egress requirement. Glass block has pretty decent performance, it can be mortared in to an ICF wall and it's pretty cheap.
Design is the big factor. Mine is kind of dictated by I-joist span charts to make good solid floors and a clear span under the roof. It will be a split level design basically for packaging the spaces I want but also to hide the mechanicals in a chase that's hidden between two floor trusses but easily accessible for the day when my plumbing or electric need to be replaced 100%. It's pretty much right-sized but rectangular because the span charts are maxed out and I need about 66% more floor space than I could build square with clear spans.
I know rectangular is not as good as square from a performance standpoint but it will minimize my construction details, making a tight envelope easier to achieve which probably makes up for the rectangle's weakness compared to a square with a peaked roof.
Lastly, you said one thing I 100% disagree with and one thing I 100% agree with. Climate change isn't a problem that needs to be addressed in 10 years. If it was, admit defeat and buy land in the arctic circle. It should be the goal of pretty good house building to take these lessons and get them adopted by developers so that the houses average people buy or rent are better built, better designed and more efficient but not prohibitively expensive. You said it, two living house certified homes built in 20 years, that's nothing. If you could get 10,000 new homes built 1% more efficient in one year, that's 5x the impact in 5% of the time. I think 10-25% more efficient might be achievable with minimal impact on building cost (and offset by right-sizing and designs that reduce wasted space). Once most building crews know how to build like that, it won't be hard to get a crew that can build even better than that. Why fear monger and argue about stuff that will have zero impact when you could try to do something that would have tangible results? You should be designing panelized housing developments to find economies of scale with pre fabrication but enough customization that the houses don't feel cookie-cutter, then build 100 units instead of 1 unit.
As part of the presentation, we usually say that a house in Nevada will look nothing a house in Maine or Miami, because the site conditions and local practices vary so much. We acknowledge that our experiences are all in heating-dominated climates, but in the book we were careful to include case studies and lessons from all over the US, to show how details and situations vary. We are trying to explain what is important to think about, without providing prescriptive solutions.
Oversizing the PV array is a good idea, if you can afford it. Panels typically lose about 1% efficiency per year and are usually warranted to last 25 years, but in practice usually last 30-40 years or more. (And to answer a question in the chat box that we didn’t get to: PV panels recover their carbon debt in 1-3 years. Yes, that includes the fact that they may be built with Chinese coal-fired energy.)
Most of my career has been designing and/or building renovations. Most people want to renovate their homes eventually. While it’s true that building with concrete and steel can make for a long-lasting building, thinking that what you need in 2022 is the same that someone will need or want in 50 or 100 years is pretty myopic. Assuming that southern Nevada will remain a good place to live for the next 200-300 years is also myopic; climate change is already happening and will only accelerate unless major changes are made now.
If you want to eliminate R-40 roof insulation in favor of a radiant barrier, go right ahead. It’s pretty easy to use energy modeling to show how that will affect your energy use. Radiant barriers, when properly installed and kept free of dust, are equivalent to R-1 to R-3 insulation. If that’s the only R-value you have, it can be noticeable. But conventional levels of insulation are more effective, and you can use energy modeling to find where above code-minimum levels make sense for you.
I agree that operable windows are often not necessary, especially if you live in a place too hot or cold to have the windows open very often. I have yet to convince a client of that, but fortunately the cost and energy penalty of using operable windows compared to fixed windows is pretty small in most cases.
The most efficient shape when looking at the ratio of floor area to surface area is a sphere, but that’s not an easy shape to build. The next most efficient shape is a cube, but as you found, that often presents design limitations, so most Pretty Good Houses are rectangular or composed of rectangles. Passive solar advocates in heating climates prefer to have a long side face the sun but with good insulation and air-sealing, and good quality windows, that’s less important.
You have a right to your own views on climate change, but your view is at odds with the vast majority of scientists actually studying the issue. It’s not going to be solved in 10 years; in fact it’s almost certainly not a fully solvable problem, but we have about 10 years to reduce emissions so that in 50 years the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere doesn’t wipe out most life on the planet. We're already in the midst of the sixth great extinction event in the Earth's history. That sounds dramatic, and it is, but it’s also why we are doing what we can to slow the advance of climate change-more accurately called catastrophic climate disruption.
I think you are actually agreeing with us on one point: that it’s better to make 10,000 homes 1% more efficient each year than to make one perfect house every decade. But we also need those “perfect” houses to inspire and learn from. A typical PGH is probably around 10-25% more efficient than a typical code-built home. Passive Houses are usually around 50% more efficient than code-built homes. We have found repeatedly that once builders (and designers) understand what they need to do for high-performance homes, they realize that it’s not very difficult and it becomes another source of pride in craftsmanship.
Finally, we are not fear-mongering, we are keeping our heads out of the sand and using our free time to show people how to build better homes, for both the near future and the more distant future. Every decision matters and has an impact, somewhere, even if it’s not immediate and within your view. Emily is designing net-zero developments and is using prefab panels. I mostly design renovations. What are you doing to make the world a better place?
@@michaelmaines103 I'm going to build my house and try to be net positive so I have an energy surplus. I'm not saying I won't insulate my roof, it will be about R40 which is probably overkill but also shaded and with a radiant barrier with a vented air gap on top. I only need one layer of decking on the roof but I should greatly reduce solar heat gain in the roof using an assembly that barely costs more than code minimum (not including the steel roof and solar).
The point about overprovisioning solar with older, lower efficiency panels is cost reduction, higher energy generation and more shading. Higher efficiency is great but cost makes overprovisioning a lot more expensive with state of the art panels and you'll have less shading.
Renovation and especially "green remodeling" are a minefield. I believe most of the time you will never have a carbon payback on that type of construction. My place won't be fancy but the upstairs will be "open concept" which is a trend that I don't think will go out of fashion ever, especially in small-ish right-sized homes. Downstairs will be a configurable workshop/garage and I want to recycle ballroom style air walls to make it a configurable space so that I can have a sealed off wood shop or paint booth when I need it and a garage when I don't. I'll have an enclosed carport style steel building as overflow storage/shop space that doesn't need to be conditioned as much as the main house. I'm pretty sure there will always be people that want shop space but don't need a huge living area. People build that all the time with things like Barndominiums because there is an unfilled demand for that in the real estate market. I'm not worried about resale or renovation but also I'm building it for me.
I believe in making sustainable, high performance buildings but I'm not a builder by trade, just a guy with a few years of professional fabrication experience (and decades of amateur) who can build. It's not much but I don't think I have to save the world by myself.
When you say we have 10 years, shit or get off the pot. By shit, I mean do something impactful. The developing world is our biggest problem if you are right about the climate but no one is seriously trying to green up China, India or other Asian countries that are gross polluters and conspicuous consumers of coal, oil, concrete and steel. That 10-25% efficiency increase in housing developments is the low hanging fruit in the western world. Once you get to 25%, the next 25% won't be as bad as trying to make builders do 50% better today. That's how you move the needle. Do it if you believe it but realize the developing world's carbon will outpace everything you do here unless you can effect change there too.
We either have a short game, a long game or no problem at all. If it's a short game we're screwed, we will never see the change you claim we need. If we treat it like a long game we win if it is a long game and no harm if it's no problem. If that strategy had been adopted 10-20 years ago we would be in a situation where we would be working on that second 25% now, not still complaining about standard construction not improving fast enough and Asia might be convinced to clean up their act if they see us doing it without huge costs. We should also insist on bringing manufacturing back to the US so that we can enforce emissions regulations, reduce transportation carbon emissions, become energy independent and improve our economy by becoming net exporters.
Why is it that leftist governments always misses that last part about bringing energy independence, manufacturing and jobs back?
My theory, they are more interested in control than improvement. Don't be like them.
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