Welcome to the 21st Century
Two articles in this morning’s Times map the distance America has to travel to have a 21st Century energy system. The first, set in Sugarloaf, PA depicts the rise of coal furnaces in the heartland.
Kyle Buck heaved open the door of a makeshift bin abutting his suburban ranch house. Staring at a two-ton pile of coal that was delivered by truck a few weeks ago, Mr. Buck worried aloud that it would not be enough to last the winter.
The second, from Darmstadt, Germany shows the success of the new “passive house” technology that is catching on in Europe.
Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.
Isn’t it rather embarrassing that we are falling back on 19th Century dirty technology while the Europeans are embracing 21st Century methods of keeping themselves warm?
No surprises there at all. After the oil embargo in 1973 Europe and the US went separate ways. While Europe went on to pursue a model with heavy taxation on fossil fuels and so really laying the groundwork for a new, much more sophisticated energy policy, where conservation and R&D was encouraged, the U.S. simply went back to the way things were before. If I look back at the time now (I was six in 73) I think it is really a marker in time when the US lost its leadership role.
No surprises there at all. After the oil embargo in 1973 Europe and the US went separate ways. While Europe went on to pursue a model with heavy taxation on fossil fuels and so really laying the groundwork for a new, much more sophisticated energy policy, where conservation and R&D was encouraged, the U.S. simply went back to the way things were before. If I look back at the time now (I was six in 73) I think it is really a marker in time when the US lost its leadership role.
Well…the funny thing is that passive design is not 21st century at all. It has been part of regional and cultural vernacular dwellings for as far back as the teepee. How far we have come…
Well…the funny thing is that passive design is not 21st century at all. It has been part of regional and cultural vernacular dwellings for as far back as the teepee. How far we have come…
Key quote for relevance in the U.S.:
“Anyone who feels they need that much space to live,” he said, “well, that’s a different discussion.”
As someone living in the shadow of behemoths built from scrape-offs during the recent housing bubble – I’m thinking I need to paint this statement on my roof.
Key quote for relevance in the U.S.:
“Anyone who feels they need that much space to live,” he said, “well, that’s a different discussion.”
As someone living in the shadow of behemoths built from scrape-offs during the recent housing bubble – I’m thinking I need to paint this statement on my roof.
As is typical of the NYTimes with its breathless “who could have known” style (usually reserved of late for the economic meltdown), the writer discusses passive solar and heat exchangers as if they had just dropped to earth. See these links about a book a friend contributed to 33 years ago.
As is typical of the NYTimes with its breathless “who could have known” style (usually reserved of late for the economic meltdown), the writer discusses passive solar and heat exchangers as if they had just dropped to earth. See these links about a book a friend contributed to 33 years ago.
Yeah, that 30 year old hippie stuff in the Whole Earth catalog that was so looked down upon…like composting toilets, rammed earth houses, and, gasp, passive solar housing built without building permits.
Yeah, that 30 year old hippie stuff in the Whole Earth catalog that was so looked down upon…like composting toilets, rammed earth houses, and, gasp, passive solar housing built without building permits.
We had a few professors who preached and taught passive solar design back in architecture school in the late 80′s. Nobody knew how to respond to them because they had been ranting on for more than 10 years already about sustainable design, all to no avail in the face of rigid outdated post-war building industry standards.
I was just discussing with a classmate of mine from that time about the irony of having to wait 20 years before being essentially forced to consider these eco “options”.
And that “new” house from Darmstadt was actually built in 1990/91!
We had a few professors who preached and taught passive solar design back in architecture school in the late 80′s. Nobody knew how to respond to them because they had been ranting on for more than 10 years already about sustainable design, all to no avail in the face of rigid outdated post-war building industry standards.
I was just discussing with a classmate of mine from that time about the irony of having to wait 20 years before being essentially forced to consider these eco “options”.
And that “new” house from Darmstadt was actually built in 1990/91!
“the U.S. simply went back to the way things were before.”
Being fat, greedy, and totally defensive when it is suggested that we might actually make things that last and work instead of things we can consume and make money off of. And yes, John, we who live in round houses know that Bucky and Stuart already showed us how. But you go ahead and belittle the NY Times instead of appreciating the info as even more relevant now than then.
“the U.S. simply went back to the way things were before.”
Being fat, greedy, and totally defensive when it is suggested that we might actually make things that last and work instead of things we can consume and make money off of. And yes, John, we who live in round houses know that Bucky and Stuart already showed us how. But you go ahead and belittle the NY Times instead of appreciating the info as even more relevant now than then.
Well, the round house thing, if you’re serious, just doesn’t make it. Geodesic domes are beautiful, but a real pain in the ass when it comes to finishing off the inside. As a former finish carpenter and someone who has done his share of sheetrock work, give me a nice rectilinear box any time. Or a nice timber framed barn… Domes do a great job of enclosing cubic space. Then you have to figure out what to do with it, and that’s when the dollars start rolling out the door. It’s kind of like the fad of making ferro-cement boat hulls…the boat builders forgot that the hull is the least expensive part of a boat; it’s the outfitting that burns cash.
I’m doing some consulting on a new home for the Roberto Venn School of Lutherie in Phoenix, and I’m deep into the whole economics of solar right now, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to get me into the economics of retro-fitting major insulation. I’ll report in if I find out anything new.
Well, the round house thing, if you’re serious, just doesn’t make it. Geodesic domes are beautiful, but a real pain in the ass when it comes to finishing off the inside. As a former finish carpenter and someone who has done his share of sheetrock work, give me a nice rectilinear box any time. Or a nice timber framed barn… Domes do a great job of enclosing cubic space. Then you have to figure out what to do with it, and that’s when the dollars start rolling out the door. It’s kind of like the fad of making ferro-cement boat hulls…the boat builders forgot that the hull is the least expensive part of a boat; it’s the outfitting that burns cash.
I’m doing some consulting on a new home for the Roberto Venn School of Lutherie in Phoenix, and I’m deep into the whole economics of solar right now, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to get me into the economics of retro-fitting major insulation. I’ll report in if I find out anything new.
Rick, please keep me posted as we are right at the start of developing a new 5 acre property zoned for four houses and we are sitting on four inland valley senior properties that definitely would love to be retro-fitted.
Rick, please keep me posted as we are right at the start of developing a new 5 acre property zoned for four houses and we are sitting on four inland valley senior properties that definitely would love to be retro-fitted.
When I was young in Chicago, most folks heated with coal. What a wonderful thing it was to have the air full of that yellow fog curling ’round the doorways, eating snow with little black dots of clinker ash, wheezing as you shoveled the walkways, the lovely effects on exterior paint and stuff. We all gotta stay warm, one of Maslow’s basic needs. Hope we can do it without recourse to home fires stoked with even “clean” coal. Whatever that means.
When I was young in Chicago, most folks heated with coal. What a wonderful thing it was to have the air full of that yellow fog curling ’round the doorways, eating snow with little black dots of clinker ash, wheezing as you shoveled the walkways, the lovely effects on exterior paint and stuff. We all gotta stay warm, one of Maslow’s basic needs. Hope we can do it without recourse to home fires stoked with even “clean” coal. Whatever that means.
I guess the reason the Anglosphere have insisted on oil and coal was because they have been the major players in the mining and marketing. The money and power from this activity has been the main driver of the Establishment’s accomplishments.
I guess the reason the Anglosphere have insisted on oil and coal was because they have been the major players in the mining and marketing. The money and power from this activity has been the main driver of the Establishment’s accomplishments.
I guess the reason the Anglosphere have insisted on oil and coal was because they have been the major players in the mining and marketing. The money and power from this activity has been the main driver of the Establishment’s accomplishments.
In the US, it is because we have a lot of it and we can get it for cheap. We can’t burn it for cheap long term. I tend so side with the engineers who say there is no such thing as clean coal.
In the US, it is because we have a lot of it and we can get it for cheap. We can’t burn it for cheap long term. I tend so side with the engineers who say there is no such thing as clean coal.
Rather than invent housing from the ground up – how about making houses simply a bit more energy efficient? When I came to this country from Switzerland 15 years ago, I couldn’t believe how badly insulated apartments in NY and houses in L.A. were. Nothing has changed, really. Hardly a window that is insulated properly – but that’s what you get from the Home Depot/DIY school of construction (I should know, I rent one of them in L.A.). I bet with a simple “energy home improvement tax rebate” the Obama administration could do a lot for the economy (think handymen, construction companies etc.). It is really time to leave the 50′s and move into the present. Yes we can.
len,
“In the US, it is because we have a lot of it and we can get it for cheap.”
Sure, local considerations matter. But when an ideology forms and hardens around a posture of dominance, it starts dominating all other concerns. This is the reason why ‘they’ have sabotaged environmental concerns for decades. “Our way or no way” is the mantra.
The ideology is accompanied by a matching spirituality; Vatican and it’s proxies.
“As body is to the soul and oil is to the lamp, a yantra is to the deity”
(Kularnava Tantra)
Vatican can talk environment now (however half heartedly) because it is already mainstream and shows no signs of weakening.
Well formed ideology lags both the formation and the degradation of the power posture. Nazi ideology persisted until the bitter end. Similarly neo-con ideology has been resisting change.
This is amplified by the short term profit seekers who have infiltrated the neo-con ranks since the erosion of their intellectual resources in the last decade. Therefore they are running from one blunder to the next.
Insulation, double or triple glazing, use of compact fluorescent or LED lights, etc. should be considered part of the rebuilding of America’s infrastructure. Net metering, whereby utilities have to buy any production of electricity generated by homeowners or businesses over what they use should be national policy. Building codes need massive revision to encourage passive solar, and there should be either tax deductions for such work or building permit fee rollbacks to help pay for green building technology.
Rick is right. What many regular folks don’t know is that building codes in the US are seriously outdated making buildings intentionally inefficient (based on 1950s standards when no one was supposed to consider energy costs). The whole system needs an overhaul. Europe is somewhat better but then again they tend to construct buildings that might last for centuries (except for the awful shopping mall boom of the 90′s).
In order to get the U.S. into a logical state of energy consumption, there seems to be three major hurdles to overcome.
As other folks have said, ideology (read cultural climate) is the primary one. As long as people are building homes with a gigantic footprint, 1,000 feet per occupant or more, efficiency is out the window. Less is more is a lovely thought, but getting the average citizen to recognize that rampant excess is no class statement will require co-operation from marketing folks, manufacturers and retailers. This sort of thinking has motivated the commercial world for nearly 60 years and it’s going to be hard to shake out. One of the few upsides in the current economic situation is that it’s forcing everyone to take a hard look at the value they’ve put on excess.
The second thing to consider is cost. Remodeling/retrofitting costs per foot are darned pricey already, and the more energy efficient window systems and door systems I’ve seen from Germany are pretty much price prohibitive. Getting the per unit cost DOWN is critical on these components – again, I feel it’s doable if they were manufactured stateside, by companies looking at volume over unit cost as their profit line (not the most popular thinking among the MBA crowd, I know), but when you consider the number of buildings in the US that leak heat/cold like a sieve, there are HUGE profits to be made in volume sales – so, I can see a motivation to manufacturers there.
The third issue has to do with the relationship between the utilities and the consumer. My brother and I have been developing a passive system that is removed from the grid, due to the current policy regarding tapping solar or wind energy systems into the grid and the “buy back” rates you get from the utilities. Due to the way the system is set up, the initial costs of building a system that feeds into the grid is ridiculously expensive – looking at a 20-year time span to recoup the costs of the system is not something that sells well to the average homeowner.
If the incoming administration is serious about “greening up” the country, it will require a completely new relationship between the government and industry – call it “the ecological/industrial complex” if you will. To turn Charles Wilson on his head, “What’s good for the country is good for business”.
As with so many things, one can to well for oneself while doing good – but there needs to be an environment that is at the very least not openly hostile to that sort of thinking – THAT, my friends, is probably the biggest single challenge we have before us.
In the NorthWest, our version of coal is wood heat. Lots and lots of night time banked fires sending every bit as many pollutants up the chimney if not more.
Last major attempt to seal heat into houses here left them unable to breath, which created toxic mold problems in a lot of instances.
The problem with building codes is that they are largely county determined which makes them vulnerable to “Oh god, that’s terrible, we can’t do that!” rules being passed but never revisited.
A huge gift the feds could give would be to pull together best and worst practices guidelines for local authorities to look at their building codes with an eye to energy conservation. Then do a major education campaign for local authorities and electrical power vendors to get some consistency for retro-fits as well as new construction that focuses on cost effective (like the water heater blankets most PUDs make available) solutions.
There is a significant slot in the proposed alt.energy.bubble in reducing wasted energy as much as developing new sources.
This is really good input from everyone.
Rick- The outmoded building codes seems like a perfect New Federalism issue. I can be applied locally and quickly.
Tom-Your point is well made. We have to manufacture these new housing components here, even if we have to license German technology to build them.
And to the Wonderful Akira- I suspect your economic argument for why things haven’t changed is the only possible true answer.
Thanks Jon, I appreciate your support and hospitality.
Jon, local building and state codes are a big part of the problem. Trying to get entrenched building departments to change codes is like pushing string. One of the issues I’m running into re. solar is that Arizona’s net metering regulations do not provide for utilities buying power from net power producing building owners. You can get credit against your utility bill, but if you generate more electricity than you use, you don’t get squat for the overage….it becomes a gift to the utility. And that’s just one example.
Then you can get into the whole issue of composting toilets, self contained sewage systems like the EnviroCycle that my girlfriend has in Tasmania, etc., etc., and you wind up with an impossible tangle of conflicting regulations, interpretations, and practices.
Unfortunately, the “New Federalism” is unlikely to make sense out of all that, and in fact may make it worse as local politicians and bureaucrats stymie any kind of moderisation out of sheer inertia at best and corruption at worst.
I think that some issues are national…our energy crisis, for instance. I think there needs to be a consistent across states’ borders approach to some of the issues at hand. For one thing, you’re only going to see confusion in the new solar industries if codes and net metering regulations are different in every locale.
And while I’m at it…here’s something completely different: the “homeless problem”. It’s a national issue, not a local one. Homeless people migrate to where the weather suits their clothes, as has been pointed out. I’d be willing to bet, for instance, that 75% or more of the homeless here in Santa Cruz came here from some other town or state, and they came here because of relatively moderate weather and a liberal populace. New Federalism will not deal equitably with migrating populations, be they jobless or homeless. These populations respond to macro issues, yet wind up in micro geographic locations. All of us would like to say, “Not in my backyard”, but these national issues do wind up in someone’s backyard.
Back to topic: And who is paying for that coal sludge clean-up? I’d guess that every customer of the coal company will be, one way or another. How does that make the cost of coal energy look?
And similarly, we started to change to metric and then went back to our stone age measuring system.
We need to re-think a lot of things as a country. Doing things “the way they’ve always been done” is costing us a lot and there’s lots of gain to be had by embracing the standards that other countries poured R&D into so at this point it’s fairly easy and cheap for us to take on. Improved building (not just housing, but offices, roads and bridges too) codes and going to metric measures would generate a lot of new jobs and help us to remain competitive in the rest of this century.
They managed to make the transition to metric in Australia within the past generation. I know a number of folks there who grew up with Imperial and now are quite comfortable with metric. It’s doable unless your country is a hotbed of jingoism…oh, that’s us!
Building codes. Bingo. These can be changed. But first the buyers have to change what they shop for, and that is a sales job. We need more contractors who realize that the way back from the building bust is the same as it is for the car manufacturers: new energy efficient and power efffective designs that emphasize both conservation and near local generation and storage.
One can argue economic politics but it’s a black box behaviorally. If neocons insist on selling coal, insist on buying gas, or electrical, or whatever works for you, but don’t insist on changing a supplier’s mind. Change the supplier and change the codes. That will work.
Rand wasn’t all wrong. You have to affect the vendor to effect the product.
Home buyers are totally at the mercy of codes and enforcers. Most haven’t a clue regarding how houses are built and don’t know a joist from a lintel or a header from a post. The home-buying public won’t have much of an effect on codes. Here in Santa Cruz County I’ll bet that at least 25 % of the remodeling that goes on is done without permits but is done at least up to code. Why? Because permits are stupidly expensive if you can get them, and the inspectors strike the fear of god into everyone they visit. Enforcement of codes is quite arbitrary, and a lot depends on just which inspector you get. Many folks I know just do what they have to do or want to do and keep a low profile. The older houses are bought and sold “as is” with no pretense of remodeling work having been permitted. It’s an underground economy that I imagine is the same more or less all over the US; I know it’s that way in Marin, Sonoma, etc. here in California, and when I lived in Topanga Canyon, you were considered nuts if you did go for a permit to do anything. The system is definitely gamed against owner-builders, though at one time it was quite normal for people to build their own shelter.
It’s a shame to see housing abandoned as in Detroit while I see homeless folks on the street here. What a thing for a house to be worth less to an owner than the annual property taxes. And meanwhile, what happened to New Orleans?
Unfortunately, new home construction is motivated by a very simple equation: “How can I get the most dollars in return for the least amount of dollars spent on construction?”
Spec homes and new housing tracts are the lion’s share of the home construction market. As a result, the least expensive methods available to meet code tend to be standard practice anymore. Steel framing, fiberboard and Tyvec seem to be the usual practice hereabouts, moreso due to cost and availability than any environmental concerns.
Curiously, one of the main components necessary for “passive houses” has been kicking around the industry for quite some time. Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) are factory manufactured load-bearing components that allow contractors a nearly seamless thermal envelope. They are a bit pricey but easy to maintain and will offset costs for the homeowner over the course of time. The problem, once again is that the initial ticket price of a home goes up when using them, so it’s a hard sell to the consumer.
Of course, that old bugaboo of regional building codes comes into play here as well. In my part of the country, tighter homes began being built during the aftermath of the oil embargo. Unfortunately, back in the day, a tight home meant an air sealed home and after a couple of carbon monoxide deaths, the codes were changed to reflect an air exchange ratio within the home that pretty much defeated the purpose of heat or cold air retention.
While you CAN educate the people that write the codes, you also have to create some sort of incentive for home builders to BUILD these sorts of homes, as well as an incentive for people to BUY them. A federal energy incentive that trims either the purchase price or the tax right off the bat would probably be the most effective method here.
The real concern is the retrofit home. Rick points out that there’s a fair number of DIY’s out there that never pull permits, never have remodeling inspected and assume that they’re saving money. Having bought homes that had unique DIY features such as a light switch IN the shower enclosure, wiring in the attic done with SPEAKER wire, and other innovations of that ilk, it speaks volumes regarding how expensive permits are, how much hassle it can be dealing with inspectors, tags and codes and how ill-informed the public is regarding the rational behind building codes.
Bureaucracies tend to become lax and assumptive regarding their purpose. Supposedly, construction and housing departments exist to guard the public welfare – somehow, they’ve seem to have forgotten that issue. Getting them to work WITH their public, having departments that are advocates for HELPING people would seem to be a logical way to go – the question is, how do you get them there?
p.s. Rick – regarding your comment on geodesic domes – that gave me a flashback to the 70′s when I was helping some friends build one up in Eagle county, where you could have a 50 degree temperature change in 12 hours. Man, that sucker expanded and contracted like a balloon. Up there, you kept TUBS of sealant on hand. It got to be sort of a mania after a while – “Who can find the leak fastest?”
Aside from under-reporting income on one’s 1040, construction and remodeling without pulling permits is the most common crime in America. A veritable Crime Tsunami, compared to the Crime Wave of those pikers who buy crack rocks and glassine bags of white powdery substances and herbaceous matter.
Times of great stress are of course times of great change. Sometimes change, like aberrant DNA replication leading to cancer, is not altogether a good thing.
Isn’t it interesting that us progressives look to POWER to “fix” what we perceive as problems: Building code changes, tax policies, directives to utilities on buy-backs, etc. And have any of us kept in the backs of our minds that human characteristic we as individuals always need to fear? That thing about “power corrupts — absolute power corrupts absolutely”?
Maybe now that the US auto industry and Joe the Plumber and the Society of Automotive Engineers are on the ropes, “we ” will join most of the rest of the world in Metric Heaven. Here’s an opportunity for you — buy into the likely Chinese-source hardware industry that will profit, and will be needed for generations to come, for connecting NPT- and NPS- and BS-threaded fasteners and pipe fittings to Marvelous Metric!
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Metric-system-in-the-United-States
And see what enlightened people “we” are, in tenaciously grasping the “English” measurement system that even the “English” don’t use any more (except for beer):
http://workbench.cadenhead.org/news/2893/keeps-metric-system-down
Sounds like a great Web-based business to me — too bad I’m not smart enough to start it up myself. And if the business gets big enough, with its own industry association and lobbyists, who knows what might not be accomplished via new codes that REQUIRE tap-in points for antique plumbing and gas and electrical users! In all new construction!
See how easy it is when you start glissading down the Slippery Slopes?
Rick, I trained as an architect at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. I never practised, but I did design five very bad houses that got built near Darraweit Guim and on the Mornington Peninsula there. The first one was all curved walls, and would have been fine if it had been larger, but it wasn’t, and it was impossible to put furniture into.
Anyway, I’m of the generation you mention, which enjoyed both the switch to decimal currency in 1966, and the switch to metric in Australia in 1975. My brain hurts.
I must say the metric system makes engineering and architecture a whole lot simpler, but my mind still works with a whole jumble of different ways of thinking. I cook using entirely metric measurements. I think of buildings in terms of metric measurements. But I think of the height of people in feet and inches, and their weight in pounds. I think of distances in kilometres, but of land area in acres (don’t ask me to look at a paddock and tell you how big it is in hectares). Maybe that’s because I lived on a farm in the pre-metric period.
My son thinks I’m completely insane, of course. He may be right!
With regard to building codes, it’s a dumb idea to let local governments or state governments control these. It makes practicing as an architect in more than one locale impossibly complicated and expensive. And if there’s one thing contributing to the shoddy buildings we live in, it’s that not enough good architects are engaged to design them. Most domestic construction these days involves developers and draftsmen rather than trained architects.