As the cost of heating and cooling a home continues to rise, many homeowners are frantically looking for methods to lower home energy consumption without going bankrupt in the process. And while many turn to high-technology solutions that only recently have advanced to the point of providing a good return on the investment, an expert says significant changes in heating and cooling a home can be realized by first doing simple things. “We can now make homes that are so much tighter. Making a house tighter is the biggest bang for the buck,” said Bruce Coldham, an architect and principal with Amherst, Mass.-based Coldham & Hartman Architects.
Coldham spoke to approximately 100 people on the “Sustainable Zero-Energy House” workshop held Tuesday, Dec. 11, at the Lewes Public Library. The event was co-sponsored by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA), the Southern Delaware chapter of the Sierra Club and newly formed Sustainable Delaware, a Delaware chapter of NESEA. Coldham is chairman of NESEA, an organization of citizens and professionals working in sustainable energy and green technologies. With 35 years of expertise in energy-efficient and bio-climatic architectural design, Coldham uses the principles in his practice and lectures about them at leading architectural colleges including Yale University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts.
He said new homes could easily be constructed to be eight times tighter than standards set by the nation’s Energy Star program. He said tighter homes have “thermal envelopes” that minimize heat loss and cold infiltration in winter and maximize retention of cool, conditioned air in summer. He said tighter thermal envelopes mean that smaller heating and cooling systems can be installed in homes, resulting in lower energy costs. On hearing Coldham’s recommendation to make homes tighter, audience concerns about creating “sick house syndrome,” were instantaneous. “For the past 20 years I’ve had the sick house discussion,” Coldham said. Sick house syndrome develops when a home doesn’t “breathe” properly and toxic gases given off by building materials and products such as carpeting, paneling and vinyl, or indoor pollutants resulting from combustion, accumulate.
Coldham said avoiding sick home syndrome is easy – properly ventilate a tight home. He said adding a through the wall, continuously run vent system, at a cost of about $250, is all it takes. Coldham said a home’s tightness could be measured using the blower door test. The test uses a fan placed in a selected exterior door to depressurize the house. During the test, air leaks can be seen using puffs of “smoke” from a theatrical fog machine. Gauges on blower door equipment can also indicate how leaky a home is.
Coldham said most of his experience is in New England, which he said tends to be colder and drier than Delaware’s Mid-Atlantic region. He said constructing exterior walls that are at least seven inches thick is critical in creating energy-efficient homes. Coldham said he has used designs in colder climates where walls are up to a foot thick. He said windows are one of the most leaky components in any home. Replacing leaky windows in older homes with new, high-rated insulated windows, and the use of energy-efficient windows in new construction, can result in significant long-term energy savings.
“Most of the lifespan of buildings I’m designing will not be realized during the use of nonrenewable fossil fuels,” said Coldham. He said future fuel costs will change the way buildings are designed and constructed. He said technologies that use the sun’s energy to produce some electricity for a home, and systems that heat water, are today reliable and worthy of consideration. “The time is really ripe for installing photovoltaic systems,” he said. Photovoltaic, or PV systems, generate electricity using solar energy. Coldham said PV systems can p
Source: CapeGazette.com