2013 Houses Award – Passive House Perfection
Does anybody else have strong feelings about this article (https://www.finehomebuilding.com/houseawards)? The FHB award is for a highly insulated house in Carmel, California, which must be one of the mildest climates I can imagine (okay, Coronado Island off San Diego would beat it).
Why would you build a super-insulated, completely airtight house in one of the mildest climates in the world? Let’s just ignore the more fundamental problem of fully sealed houses and the secondary problems that creates of not allowing moisture and stale air to escape. A house in a climate that needs very little heating and cooling, and doesn’t use fans (a very low cost alternative to air conditioning), and has a patio so you can open up the house the great weather and environment, just doesn’t make any sense to me. Especially at $425/sf.
Am I missing something here? The FHB award, the editor’s note about balanced design, and the architect and builder are all espousing how great this is.
Eric
Replies
When you're gonna spend that much on a house, you want it in the nicest place you can find.
Reasonable Question
Hey Perkerk,
Thanks for posting. You bring up an interesting point by questioning where high performance design is appropriate and where it is not. After speaking with the builder and homeowner on this project, they felt that the cost increase and construction difficulty associated with meeting PH standards would be minimal, so they went for it. Efficiency was a priority for them, just like granite countertops and stainless steel appliances are a priority for other folks.
Also, there's no doubt we'll get some pushback on the cost of this house. Some people get upset when they see expensive homes for some reason. Because this house had a rather high budget, we tried to include a few other projects in the issue at the other end of the spectrum. Though I didn't see an itemized cost break-down of this project, I've been told that the high costs for this particular house are tied more directly to the expense of the finishes and material choices than to the energy efficient details.This is certainly a high end project with high end finishes and materials--zinc coated roofing, timbered fan trusses etc.
What struck me most about your note is your comment about "fully sealed houses" and their inability to let "moisture and stale air escape". The idea that tight houses are inherently unhealthy houses is a rather dated one. Like a lot of high performance homes, this house has a mechanical ventilation system. If you're interested, I'd suggest reading this article that was published in Fine Homebuilding 6 years ago.
"Houses Need to Breathe...Right?"
https://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/articles/whole-house-ventilation-energy-efficient-healthy-air.aspx?collection=72770
I hope you enjoy the rest of the issue.
Best,
Rob Y.
Design Editor
I agree. With annual average temps of about 50 degrees in Carmel every house built there is a "Passive" house. Building costs are high there also but this is more about the politics of selling thr "Passive" lifestyle than it is about construction. I can't read the article but I'l bet some simple math will show that the cost of the "passive" modifications will never be paid off in energy savings.
But in that market the increase in resale value (due to the cachet of being a "passive" house, especially with an award) is probably worth it.
The resale real estate market looksk like a diamond with median oriced homes across the middle. A $700,000.00, 1600 square foot house is already toward the top of the diamond meaning the number of people interested in paying that much is very small. The number of people who would pay for it being a "passive" house in Carmel, CA is probably close to zero.
You forget the type of people who occupy the homes in Carmel. They're status seekers with more money (or at least bigger borrowing power) than they know what to do with. If having a "passive" house adds status, that feature has considerable $$ value.
Living in the rocky mountain states I've become a real believer in the real-world benefits of passive solar designs combined with high performance shells. When done well, they are not only equal to conventional houses, but the comfort level is actually higher because there aren't the temperature extremes that we experience on our skin as drafts and whatnot.
Having said that I agree 100% that giving some kind of award to a house in an area with little cooling or heating is bs that sounds good and sells magazines. I'm not opposed to selling magazines, and the new demographic of FHB is away from professionals and well informed non-professionals that actually understand the issues, so much like an article in popular science most of the readership will just look at these articles as something really interestng on the surface and not question how much of it is actually about nothing.
What I'd like to see more than anything in these kind of articles is an intelligent conversation about costs vs benefits. If that is done projects in mild climates with limited heating and cooling needs won't be winning awards over well thought out projects in areas that might see periods of both -10 degrees in the winter and 105 degrees in the summer.
The building that should get an award belongs to a cabinet maker I knew in Wyoming who had a shop which wouldn't drop below 50 degrees when it's -20 outside. If a 70 degree differential doesn't excite someone about passive solar nothing will. His house and shop made such an impact on me that ever since I've been spending as much effort as clients will allow towards giving every project a high performance shell. It's really pretty easy to sell insulation and sealing with you explain it's the only expense on the job that will actually pay for itself over time. It's like it's effin free!!
Living in Reno we have it pretty easy, but half the year we're heating and the summers are hot enough that houses require cooling to be comfortable. The track house I'm living in has a decent passive design and I'm sure the kid who designed it had no idea he was using passive design principles, all he knew was the client liked big windows on the southern exposure, a northerly garage, and relatively large roof overhangs. Out of sheer dumb luck our house has half the heating/cooling costs of houses a block away built about the same time, meeting the same basic energy code requirements.
If my architect suggested to a client to forgo a huge heat sink in the form of a thick slab on grade foundation in favor of pcm's as the primary method of heat storage I'd think he was nuts. In the article it was stated that the crawl is used for mechanical systems so it couldn't be a slab on grade - my gut tells me this is more a stunt to highlight pcm's rather than a good design. It's good to sell magazines, maybe even to turn on a client who hates concrete, but to me it doesn't make as much sense as would be suggested in the article.