Redo of Blower Door Test

Posted on August 15, 2018August 15, 2018 by kent

Way back in 2015 before we moved into the house we completed a Blower Door Test. Check out my previous post for a more thorough breakdown of the testing and our rationale for decisions/assumptions. Briefly though, a Blower Door Test assesses the airtightness of a building – basically, how leaky/drafty a building is. It probably goes without say but an eco house should not be drafty. Drafy = bad. Airtightness is rated based on “air changes per hour a 50 pascals of pressure” (ACH). Typical construction in Canada these days reaches about 3 ACH. The Canadian R2000, our high-efficient energy standard, is 1.5 ACH. While the Passive House standard is the most ambitious and rigorous target of 0.6 ACH. These days, pretty much anyone shooting for an energy efficient target has their eyes on the Passive House standard – even if not building a true Passive House per se.

Although that was the ultimate target, when we were building and modelling the house, we’d shot for a modestly ambitious goal of 0.8 ACH (again my prior post for the background information). I was only aware of a handful of houses that had been able to reach 0.6 ACH in Canada and much less that had ever done so in Saskatchewan. Anyways, when we’d originally run the Blower Door Test in 2015 we’d ended up hitting 0.72 ACH – meeting our goal. We were happy with that.

Still after we’d tested, Howard, who ran the test, speculated the results were perhaps not entirely accurate and he’d suggested running the tests again. But one thing led to another and we got busy, life happened and we sort of forgot about doing it again…

That is until this past Spring. I’d written in my last post about having issues with 2 of our exterior doors needing to be replaced due to bowing of the frames (increasing leakiness). When we replaced these we’d also decided to add cam locks to all of the doors to increase the seal and prevent any potential bowing in the future. Surprisingly, we had noticed almost immediate improvement in the comfort of the house. It’s strange but when you have such an energy efficient house any slight deviations from it (that you may not ever perceive in a standard home) become blatantly obvious.

Also, which I did not write about, but around the same time I realized that the locking mechanism on one of our windows was not working at all – basically the window would close but it did not lock (also increasing leakiness). When the service technicians came out to replace the doors, they fixed the locking hardware of this window as well. We asked them to check all of the other windows when they were here and they recognized that a couple of the other windows were not totally centred (several of our windows had to be site glazed, i.e. glass installed in the frames on site as they were too big to ship with the glass in the frame). So they fixed those as well.

I started to think back to the Blower Door Test. I wondered how much tighter our house was now that these issues were fixed? I mean, we actually noticed a perceptual physical change in the airtightness of the house. It felt different, better. How could that not correlate to some change in the actual air leakage values?

I contacted Howard again and asked if he would like to come repeat the test. I was cautiously optimistic about the potential to actually reach 0.6 ACH – the Passive House standard. But I was not going to hold my breath.

The testing took about an hour or so and I was anxiously awaiting the results.

Drum roll…

The air leakage rates for the house were:

Depressurization: 0.56 ACH

Pressurization: 0.61 ACH

Total: 0.58 ACH

That’s right. We hit the 0.6 ACH Passive House benchmark! Might have been 3 years in the making but we made it. I’m so pleased with the results.

Granted back in 2015, as I said, there really weren’t that many houses that hit the 0.6 ACH Passive House benchmark. There are more houses since that are reaching this standard and I couldn’t be happier that we can now put ourselves in that fairly elite category as well. It makes me very proud of the house and all the people that have worked to reach that level of efficiency.

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Year 2: Solar Tracking and Energy Use for 2017

Posted on February 4, 2018 by kent

Last year, I’d been very pleased with the house’s first year performance, but after analyzing the numbers, I’d thought there was still room for improvement.

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With a few tweaks and utilizing our wood stove a bit more, I was looking forward to seeing how we did for 2017 compared to our first year. Let’s find out!

For completeness sake, below are some key stats from my previous 2016 blog post about our energy modelling and actual use:

HOT2000 Predictions:

Annual Space Heating Energy Consumption: 7159 kWh

Annual Domestic Hot Water (DHW) Energy Consumption: 3409 kWh

Annual Appliance Energy Consumption: 8760 kWh

TOTAL = 19,328 kWh/year

PHPP Predictions:

Annual Space Heating Energy Consumption: 7584 kWh

Annual DHW Energy Consumption: 3974 kWh

Annual Appliance Energy Consumption: 11,310 kWh

TOTAL = 22,868 kWh/year

PV Array Predictions (6.2 KW)

PHPP Estimation: 7321 kWh/year

Solar Installer’s Estimation: 9300 kWh/year

Also:

For interest, according to Stats Canada website’s most recent 2011 home energy use data, a Saskatchewan home consumes an average of 30,555 kWh/year (110 GJ), of which electricity for appliance use is 8889 kWh/year (32 GJ).

2016 ACTUAL TOTALS:

Actual Solar PV Generated = 8189 kWh

Actual Household Energy Consumed = 19,000 kWh

Actual Total Energy Used (consumption – PV) = 10,811 kWh

We did pretty darn good in 2016, actually coming in under the estimated values with the exception of the higher end of the solar production (though that is the manufacturer’s estimates so probably these are the “best case scenario” numbers anyway).

So how did we do for 2017?

2017 ACTUAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND PV GENERATION:

January: Solar generated = 250 kWh vs. Energy Use = 2979 kWh

A dramatic difference no doubt. But I was not surprised given I had 2016 to compare, it’s January in Saskatchewan after all. Still our energy use was less than the previous year (by almost 400 kWh) so we were off to a good start.

February: Solar generated = 378 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1258 kWh

This is when I did my experiment. We kept the boiler set at 65°F and tried to burn wood as much as possible. There was a more than 50% drop in energy use (electric) from 2016.

March: Solar generated = 695 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1652 kWh

Pretty much the same as 2016. We kept the boiler set a bit high at 68°F (65°F is too cool first thing in the morning!). But it was starting to get warmer this month. Note that we used over 400 kWh more this month then February – due to less wood heat, even though the outdoor temperatures were rising.

April: Solar generated = 736 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1125 kWh

April kind of sucked. It was cloudy and not very Spring-like at all. Many days were around the freezing temperature still.

May: Solar generated = 1143 kWh vs. Energy Use = 840 kWh

Hot month and hit the net positive energy production one month early as a result.

June: Solar generated = 1092 kWh vs. Energy Use = 708 kWh

It was a hot and dry month and I watered the garden nearly every day which uses a fair bit of electricity to run the water pump at the river.

July: Solar generated = 1112 kWh vs. Energy Use = 575 kWh

It was really hot again in July. Only 2 or 3 days of rain all month.

August: Solar generated = 982 kWh vs. Energy Use = 643 kWh

Almost completely opposite weather to 2016, which was extremely rainy. This month was HOT and DRY.

September: Solar generated = 744 kWh vs. Energy Use = 662 kWh

Finally started to become seasonal temperatures in September. But still remained Net Positive for energy use.

October: Solar generated = 555 kWh vs. Energy Use = 771 kWh

Last October (2016) was terrible – snowing on October 4th. This October was more normal and as such, our energy use was 50% less than 2016 (1478 kWh). I did turn the boiler on for the basement heat, but not on the main level.

November: Solar generated = 234 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1569 kWh

It snowed on November 1st and stayed snowy and cold until the last week of the month when it got above freezing and melted a lot of the snow off.

December: Solar generated = 291 kWh vs. Energy Use = 2229 kWh

December was extremely cold again with several days of -40°F. Good fun. But still used way less energy then 2016 (almost 600 kWh less!) despite it being a similar month weather-wise.

ACTUAL TOTALS:

Actual Solar PV Generated = 8212 kWh (Comparison 2016 = 8189 kWh)

Actual Household Energy Consumed = 15,011 kWh (Comparison 2016 = 19,000 kWh)

Actual Total Energy Used (consumption – PV) = 6799 kWh (Comparison 2016 = 10,811 kWh)

Shheeeet! That’s good! I was pleased about 2016, but 2017 was awesome. That’s a 4012 kWh reduction of our electrical energy use from the previous year. And at $0.12/kWh that works out to a $481 saving for the year.

Granted we burned more wood this year than last. I’d estimate we burned around 3/4 cord of wood in 2017 compared to about 1/3-1/2 cord in 2016. But at $250 per 1 cord that’s still a good savings. My February experiment had the biggest single month change with mostly burning wood. I have no idea how to factor in the equivalent energy. Obviously it’s not zero. Maybe another post if I find some information on it.

Even so, almost every month we improved from the prior year. I think part of that was us getting used to the functioning of the house and getting our house thermostat temperatures dialled in better at least in the winter. As for why it was still less energy use in the summer months, well, I’m not sure?

Our solar generation was almost identical to the 2016 which was good to see.

My favourite comparison though is to the Canadian home average of 30,555 kWh/year. At 15,011 kWh, our house used 50% as much energy, while factoring in solar use, it’s at 78% less energy use then the average house. High fives!

Also we were again, way under the predictions of both the HOT2000 (19,328 kWh/year) and the PHPP (22,868 kWh/year), which is pretty sweet. Again, I have to wonder how close we would have come to meeting the Passive House standards had we made sure to reach the 0.60 ACH airtightness benchmark…

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Speaking of airtightness, in January (2018) we made a few changes to our doors to try and get a better seal.

I wrote in the “everything is perfect” article how we’d had issues with bowing of two of our three doors from Duxton. I’ve been really happy with the service of Duxton and they’ve been out to our house a few times now to tweak and make some changes to help optimize our house’s performance this past year. But the doors had been a problem since the beginning with not getting a great seal on top and bottom corners. In an apparent airtight house, leaky doors is not something you want. Due to the bowing of the door frames, Duxton offered to replace the doors at no charge. Still, we had some issues with getting a really tight seal even after replacement.

Duxton now offers multi-point locking doors which, like it sounds, have multiple latches that create an extra tight closure. Unfortunately, I didn’t know they were available at the time or they actually weren’t available yet when we ordered our original doors, either way a deadbolt with one single 1″ contact in the middle of 6.5′ tall door, inherently doesn’t create an optimal closure. So what were our options? We did chat with Duxton briefly about pulling out the doors and retrofitting them with their multi-point doors, but the labour and extent of work to do so was going to be terribly extensive. Instead, we went with a simpler option: cam locks.

We had them install two of these low profile cam locks on each of the doors: one at the top and one at the bottom. Immediately we’ve noticed a difference. The house felt… snugger. We’ve also noticed a significant improvement in the heat retention of the house overnight. It does not cool off nearly as quickly at night, even on the -40°F/C nights. It’s tempting to have another blower door test done as I’m certain there has been a fairly dramatic improvement with this simple fix. I wonder how much under 0.72 ACH we’d be now…

It’ll be interesting to compare the above numbers with 2018. I’m not expecting as dramatic a change from this past year as I’m not going to burn as much wood – just what is comfortable for us. But I think the change in airtightness will have really positive effect. We will see.

The February Experiment: Heating with Wood Fire

Posted on March 21, 2017 by kent

After writing my last post, and happily confirming that our house had exceeded our expectations for energy use for 2016, I’d made the comment: “Based on the predicted numbers, the heating energy likely accounts for about 50% of our overall energy use. Makes me wonder too how much better we could do if we burned wood a bit more often?”

I’d written that without thinking about what that would mean too much. But after re-reading my post I got thinking, ‘Hmm… what if we did burn wood more?’

We tended to keep the thermostat around 70°F in the winter, which was comfortable, but would still allow us to have a wood fire on occasion and warm the house up to 73-74°F. It’s not that we really needed it, we just liked it. The in-floor hydronic heat can certainly meet our heating requirements. But we’d figured the wood stove would always be our back-up heat in the event of a prolonged power outage or in extremely cold weather. BUT – what if we flipped it and tried a little experiment? Make the wood stove our primary heat source and our in-floor heat the back-up. I’d also received our most recent bill from the power company which advised that our electrical rates had gone up 3% for 2017…so…

Impressively, my wife was game for the idea too. So, on February 1st, we turned the boiler way down, to 65°F, and started loading the wood stove.

My objectives for the month were:

To determine if we would love/hate or be impartial to the need to fill the wood stove in the morning and night.
To determine if we would be comfortable with the house temperature we could maintain.
To determine how much electrical energy we could save by using wood as our primary heat source.

First off, I love our wood burning stove from Morso Denmark. And I love fire. Who doesn’t really? Isn’t their something primordial about sitting around a crackling fire with friends and family? We’d had it a mandatory requirement from day one of the house planning that we would have a wood burning stove in the main living space.

fire2

I’d only ever seen one house with the stove in front of the windows and I think it is a brilliant spot. It doesn’t obstruct our view during the day, but at night the fire gives a nice focal point to the room. This placement also allows it to be viewed from the kitchen, dining room and living room and extend it’s heat range to the bedrooms on the main floor.

We have a wood nook directly opposite the wood stove that is 24″x84″x20″ which contains the mess and also adds another interesting feature to the room.

living1

But enough about design and aesthetics (although I do want to write about that again sometime), let’s talk about function.

My goal was to keep the house around 69°-72°F during the day and a bit cooler at night while we slept.

The month of February was an interesting temperature mix. The first week was stupid cold (-30 to -40°F/C). But then typical for SK, it warmed up to above freezing temperatures for mid-month and then dropped to seasonal temperatures for the last week (-15°C or 5°F). This made it actually a very convenient month to test the wood heat giving us a fair bit of variety.

The first week (very cold week) we burned through the entire wood storage nook. This was surprising to me as I’d only filled it twice the entire winter beforehand! We were going to use up some wood. Basically what I would do is start a fire when I got up (it was good reason to get up and not to hit the snooze button too). The house temperature was around 66°F or 68°F most mornings. I’d get it hot, then load it up and turn the damper down before work. Passive solar gain would keep the house reasonably warm during the day and when we’d get home the house was usually about 69°F. We’d start the fire again and keep it burning until we went to bed, usually trying to get the house temperature up to around 74°F. Again, I’d load up the stove and turn the damper way down before tucking in.

I actually didn’t find this nearly as much work as I thought I would. In fact, I liked it quite a lot. Certainly it’s more work then just getting up and doing nothing, but it really wasn’t bad.

By the second and third weeks, we were in our groove, and the outside temperature was mild. We used half as much wood and the house stayed above 70°F most days and nights, which was higher then we’d had the boiler set at before.

In the last week, we used a bit more wood again, but it didn’t seem like much work. I ended up loading the wood nook three times for the month in total.

We had pine, tamarack, maple and poplar wood that we burned for the month. The pine and tamarack had been what we’d mostly been using for the winter. It’s a soft wood, but has high BTU output, so it burns hot, and also burns quickly. It’s good for a quick warm-up if the house is cooler, but it doesn’t give that prolonged slow burn you might want at night time. It does however burn clean, not giving off a lot of smoke and ash. Maple is a bit better for the prolonged evening slow burn given that it is a hardwood. While the poplar, well, it’s crap. I regret burning it. It’s a dirty wood, very smoky and lots of ash. It’s BTU output is crap too. Oh well. Now I know.

wood

OK so for objectives #1 and #2, I realized that I was generally impartial to the work of loading the stove. We loved the wood heat though. It was comforting and, in fact, most days the house was able to stay above the typical 70°F temperature we’d had the boiler set at previously, which was a nice bonus. Some of the really cold days when you’d wake up to 66°F inside were a bit uncomfortable for the first few minutes until the wood stove got things warmed up. Also, I didn’t really want to be in bare feet on the concrete floors. Even though the house would be warm, we generally would wear slippers.

Now, the big question was, was the extra time/effort worth the energy savings?

This was something that I was most interested in and there was no way to know for sure until I checked out power at month’s end. I’d had the data from 2016 so it was easy to compare the numbers. Based on my notes from February 2016, it was a similar month in terms of average temperature, however as you will see, there are some significant differences. I’m fairly confident that a direct comparison from February 2016 to February 2017 is reasonable. So what did the numbers show? Let me tell you:

February 2016: Solar generated = 553 kWh vs. Overall Energy Use = 2706 kWh

February 2017: Solar generated = 378 kWh vs. Overall Energy Use = 1258 kWh

First off, I was shocked at the overall energy use! It was a massive drop from the previous year. That’s a 64% drop in electrical energy! Wow. I really did not expect that. And as you can see it’s not like we had an especially sunny month by any means, the solar generation was actually one-third less than last year so we weren’t even getting much passive solar heating.

Needless to say, I was very pleased with these results. When I crunched the numbers a bit more, the cost savings were $177.00 (1448 kWh x $0.12224/kWh)! In a single month. That’s awesome.

Roughly taken over the course of an entire winter that could be upwards of $1000/year in energy savings if we burned wood regularly. And now, well, I’m seriously considering doing just that…

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How Were Our Energy Predictions? An Analysis of the First Year Energy Use: Solar and Energy Performance

Posted on February 11, 2017March 4, 2017 by kent

bwhouse

We had spent a lot of time planning and designing a house that would be energy efficient, aesthetically pleasing, and cost effective. This is a fine balance to try to find. However, it really is a big guessing game until you actually live in the space and track it’s performance. You can run all of the computer programs you want, but you really don’t know how things will be until you’re in and living your normal life.

We had installed PV solar panels on the house to combat some of our energy use with the hope that someday we could work towards a Net Zero home, but this too, seemed to be a big guess as to how well it would perform.

In the planning and designing stages of the house we ran a couple different energy models on the house. The first is called the “HOT2000” program. “HOT2000 is an energy simulation and design tool for low-rise residential buildings. This software is widely used across Canada to support program, policy and regulatory development and implementation. HOT2000 is developed and managed by the Office of Energy Efficiency at Natural Resources Canada” (NRCAN). It was originally designed for use with the R2000 energy efficiency program, which was an early promoter of green home building in Canada.

We later used the Passive House Planning Package (PHPP), which is now the widely used software program for building highly efficient homes worldwide.

My intent with this article is to report the varying predictions of the these two programs, as well as our predicted solar generation, and also to show our actual energy use for the year of 2016 – our first full year in the new house. I’ll also report some considerations and possible options for the future.

1: PRE-BUILD ENERGY MODELLING

I had been very curious about this when we were in the early stages of planning the house. Most of what I read was the predictions of various homes, but I’d only come across one house that actually tracked and reported its energy use – that being the Mill Creek Net Zero House in Edmonton, AB, Canada. Which, although using exceptionally little energy, did not meet it’s net zero target. That being said, it was very close.

I fully did not expect our home to be anywhere close to net zero, but we hoped that over the next number of years we could gradually build our solar panel array (as costs come down) to eventually reach our goal.

OK, let’s get to the numbers:

HOT2000 Predictions:

Annual Space Heating Energy Consumption: 7159 kWh

Annual Domestic Hot Water (DHW) Energy Consumption: 3409 kWh

Annual Appliance Energy Consumption: 8760 kWh

TOTAL = 19,328 kWh/year

PHPP Predictions:

Annual Space Heating Energy Consumption: 7584 kWh

Annual DHW Energy Consumption: 3974 kWh

Annual Appliance Energy Consumption: 11,310 kWh

TOTAL = 22,868 kWh/year

PV Array Predictions (6.2 KW)

PHPP Estimation: 7321 kWh/year

Solar Installer’s Estimation: 9300 kWh/year

So obviously there are discrepancies between the HOT2000 and the PHPP. Although their prediction of Heating and DHW are quite close, surprisingly the Appliance use was significantly different. Also, surprising was the discrepancy in the solar predictions – I was a bit disconcerted by the drastic difference of 2000 kWh/year!!

For comparison’s sake, according to Stats Canada website’s most recent 2011 home energy use data, a Saskatchewan home consumes an average of 30,555 kWh/year (110 GJ), of which electricity for appliance use is 8889 kWh/year (32 GJ).

Drum roll please.

… Actually first, some clarifications. All I have is our actual overall energy use. I cannot separate out Heating vs. DHW vs. Appliances unfortunately, although this would be interesting. The following information is taken from the solar panel’s generation and the Electrical meter. I tracked each month and have recorded it below.

OK, now the drum roll.

solar

2. ACTUAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND PV GENERATION:

January: Solar generated = 315 kWh vs. Energy Use = 3323 kWh

Yikes! I was a pretty worried when I saw this. That being said, January was very cold and has very short, dark days (-20° to -30°Celsius most days. We kept the house around 71°F).

February: Solar generated = 553 kWh vs. Energy Use = 2706 kWh

February is always a cold month. Although you can see the solar was getting a bit more sunlight already as the days lengthened.

March: Solar generated = 603 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1716 kWh

This was getting a bit better still. I lowered the house temperature to 69°F. It was getting warmer outside and more solar gain.

April: Solar generated = 979 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1385 kWh

April was warm and sunny. Nice spring weather. Started to not need the in-floor heat on at all during the day, but still ran it during the night.

May: Solar generated = 960 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1029 kWh

Almost net zero for the month. It was a very nice month. We were running our river pump frequently to water new grass, which I think increased energy use quite a lot.

June: Solar generated = 1434 kWh vs. Energy Use = 989 kWh

Net Positive in a big way. Beautiful month. Obviously the longest days of the year.

July: Solar generated = 956 kWh vs. Energy Use = 511 kWh

The first two weeks of July were cloudy and rainy which is unusual for July.

August: Solar generated = 950 kWh vs. Energy Use = 645 kWh

This month was very rainy as well, which again, isnot normal. Usually August is very hot.

September: Solar generated = 778 kWh vs. Energy Use = 611 kWh

Cool and cloudy. I replanted grass seed and was running the river pump a lot again.

October: Solar generated = 315 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1478 kWh

October sucked!! 315 kWh is the same as January! It snowed on October 4th. We had to turn the heat back on. There were only 2-3 sunny days all month.

November: Solar generated = 390 kWh vs. Energy Use = 1750 kWh

Cloudy month, but had some mild days mid-month with above freezing temperatures. Still, we generated more solar in November then October, which should not happen.

December: Solar generated = 229 kWh vs. Energy Use = 2857 kWh

Shortest days of the year and extremely cold (-40°F). What do you expect?

ACTUAL TOTALS:

Actual Solar PV Generated = 8189 kWh

Actual Household Energy Consumed = 19,000 kWh

Actual Total Energy Used (consumption – PV) = 10,811 kWh

3. DISCUSSION

I’m extremely pleased with these numbers! I’ve been waiting for two and a half years to know what our actual energy use would be.

We actually used less overall energy then was predicted by both the HOT2000 (19,328 kWh/year, although it was close) and a LOT less then PHPP (22,868 kWh/year), which is surprising that it was so off… It makes me wonder how close we would be to meeting the Passive House standard given the actual energy use is 3868 kWh less then it predicted… Hmm. Maybe we should have tried to hit that airtightness target of 0.6 ACH after all. Oh well.

Nonetheless, the overall energy use of 19,000 kWh is very good (and such a nice round number too!). We did not do anything different in terms of our behaviour except to just be smart and not be wasteful. I still baked bread every weekend and we used our larger appliances just like we normally would. We have two refrigerators and two deep freezers in the house. All the lights are LEDs. We try to hang our clothes to dry. We used our wood stove occasionally, maybe 2-3 times per week, but mostly just for ambiance and occasionally on the extremely cold days. That being said, based on the predicted numbers, the heating energy likely accounts for about 50% of our overall energy use. Makes me wonder too how much better we could do if we burned wood a bit more often?

As for the actual solar PV generation (8189 kWh), it pretty well split the difference between the installer’s predicted 9300 kWh/year and the PHPP prediction of 7321 kWh/year. I think this past year was on the cloudier side for sure. We had a lot of rain in the Spring and even more in the Fall, which is very unusual. Followed by an extremely early snowfall which seriously cut into our PV generation (see October – brutal). It probably would be closer to the installer’s prediction on a typical year (will have to see what 2017 brings).

Still based on the actual numbers, our solar panels did cover nearly 45% of our overall energy use for 2016. We would however need to double our solar panels (add another 6.2 KW array) to meet Net Zero with consistency year to year. Who knows, maybe in the coming years the costs will drop more and perhaps government incentives will increase. One can hope.

Comparing our house to the average Saskatchewan home consumption of 30,555 kWh, we did very well. Using 37% less energy then the average home. And when you take into account the solar energy generated that drops us further to using 65% less energy then the average house! Sweetness.

Considering that we are completely on electric energy, it makes sense to make the house as energy efficient as possible. The cost of electricity for us is $0.12224/kWh (while cost for natural gas power is about $0.04/kWh equivalent), which works out to an electricity bill of $1321.54/year (10,811 kWh x 0.12224). We do however have to pay a basic service fee of $32.61/month (even when we are net positive in a month) which sucks and then 5% tax. That brings our absolute costs for the year to $1798.50/year or $149.88/month, which is about half the cost of our previous homes power and electricity bill. I’m ok with that.

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This post was updated on March 4, 2017.

Blue Heron EcoHaus in Western Living Magazine and Green Building Advisor

Posted on November 11, 2016November 11, 2016 by kent

Our house was recently featured over at Western Living Magazine, a Canadian-based modern architecture and interior design magazine. They interviewed our designer, Crystal Bueckert, and included a few quotes from me as well. The write-up is excellent and I’m happy to see how good the house shows.

The article shows a number of photos that I haven’t even posted here yet! I hope you enjoy the little tour.

Check it out here:

Inside a Beautiful, Eco-friendly Saskatchewan Farmhouse

On the flip-side of modern design, as some of you already likely know, our house was also a featured green house blog over at the excellent Green Building Advisor website. This website is not about trendy design/architecture, but is about building excellent, high quality and, primarily, energy efficient homes. If you are planning to build a green home, this website is a must resource. I was honoured to be asked to be a contributor to the website for the past year. Most the articles I wrote were already featured on this blog, but the comments section for each entry offers a wealth of valuable information from some of the top green builders, designers and architects in North America. It was a very humbling opportunity for me. It was a 16-part series that I hope offers valuable information to others who are venturing down the road of green building.

Recently, I came across a very interesting article written on Green Building Advisor in which a respected green building designer modelled our house comparing it to a German-biult Passive House. The implications of this and the discussion points are fascinating to read and there are nearly 50 comments on it that offer further wonderful insights: A Lesson From the Kranichstein Passive House

As for my articles on Green Building Advisor:

Once you go black…

Posted on September 1, 2016 by kent

We’d really hummed and hawed about what to do about the basement parging for most the winder and early spring. Although our plan had been to do the house all black initially.

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But last year we’d hesitated. And I’m not entirely sure why. We couldn’t run the wood siding all the way to the ground, like the rendering shows, because of the 8” of foam on the exterior basement walls without some seriously extensive strapping. Alas we had the stucco guys parge the basement foundation and then leave it while we contemplated our options: leave it or go all black.

While taking photos for the post about the concrete retaining wall, Darcie, my wife, said, “The house doesn’t look right. It looks like it’s floating. It’s weird.” She proceeded to spend the next several days playing with Photoshop, filling the gray parging with black and analyzing it from multiple angles. After a week of scrutinizing the Photoshopped images, she said, “Look. We should do this.” Pointing to an all black house.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned is that once my wife has made up her mind, it’s best not to disagree. It is only futile afterall. “Yes honey,” I replied (these two words are the most important for a husband to know, by the way).

So I called the stucco guys and asked them to come back. It ended up taking a number of weeks for them to finally show up (typical). But only a couple hours for them to transform the house.

I gotta say, I don’t know why I’d hesitated, because once your go black… well, you know the rest.

Musings on Passive House Standards and the Costs of New Home Construction, Part 3

Posted on April 2, 2016April 2, 2016 by kent

If you have not yet read my posts (rants) in Part 1 and Part 2, maybe check those out first.

Have you heard of the Pareto Rule before? It’s more commonly known as the 80/20 Rule. It says that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

I think that Passive House (PH) follows this rule to a T. It has certainly been our experience in building an extremely energy efficient home and following the principles of PH. I believe that 80% of the benefits of PH come from about 20% of the cost and effort (from Part 1 of these posts, I noted that our financial cost was about 8% more than a standard house construction). Whereas to get that last 20% to the hit the PH certified requirements, you’re going to have to spend 80% more… At least this was my assumption.

Still being the curious person I am and because I kept getting asked about it… I just had to know. How close does our house come to the PH standard?

The only way to find out would be to either track the house over the next year or to have someone run the house through the Passive House Planning Package software (PHPP) to predict our values.

As you may recall, we were never pursing PH certification, right from the beginning we were told the cost-effectiveness (80/20 rule) was just not there. Maybe if there was some incentive or rebate for going full-out, one could justify it. We were also told that there was no need to use the PHPP as it was too expensive. This latter statement however is simply not correct.

I decided to ask around and see who could put our house through the PHPP for us. Or at least get a price quote for it. Maybe it would be too costly and so I wouldn’t bother if it was. After a few emails, I was eventually referred to a very well-respected PH consultant out of Alberta – Stuart Fix at ReNu Building Science. I sent my email explaining that we’d already built the house and so really can’t change anything now, but due to curiosity I was wondering if he could run the house through the software. No problem he said. The price we were given was entirely reasonable and was actually less than what we had paid to run the house through the inferior HOT2000 software prior to building. Crap!

After a couple weeks we received the results, not surprisingly: we weren’t a Passive House. But the results on the various aspects of the house were very interesting and lead to some interesting points of discussion.

Based the three criteria for PH certification, recall:

Space Heat Demand: max. 15 kWh/m2a OR Heating load max. 10 W/m2
Pressurization Test Result @ 50 Pa: max. 0.6 ACH
Total Primary Energy Demand: max. 120 kWh/m2a

Our results were as follows:

Space Heat Demand: 37 kWh/m2a
Heating load: 22 kWh/m2a
Pressurization test result (assumed 0.6 ACH, prior to testing)
Total Primary Energy Demand: 116 kWh/m2a

So, you can see that the only criteria we met was the Total Primary Energy Demand. The blower door test we did later came back at 0.72 ACH (we’d run the software assuming 0.6 ACH as a target). As a result of the actual pressurization value, this would correspondingly increase the other values, but, for argument’s sake, let’s simply say that the Total Primary Energy Demand we either met, or were very close to meeting, while for the Heat Demand and Heat Load, we were WAY above the German PH maximum values.

I won’t reiterate why this makes sense given the climatic and heating requirement differences of the Canadian prairies versus Germany (see Part 2). But I had to ask the PH consultant:

“If we were still in the planning stages of the house, what would be your recommendations to try and reduce these two values (Space heating demand and heating load)? Not that we would change anything at this point, but I’d be curious as to how we would have gotten those values lower – and if it would have been at all possible with our type of house and in our climate to feasibly meet the PH requirements as stated?”

The ways to reduce the heating load & demand are as follows:

More insulation (you already have great R-values)

Lower airtightness (dropping from 0.6 to 0.3 has quite an impact, but you’re already doing tremendously well)

Add more south glazing, reduce all other glazing. (You already have a great balance of glazing)

Build a larger home (!?!?… small homes are the hardest to make meet an intensity based target, as they have the largest surface area to volume ratio. Meaning that a larger building squeezes more floor area into slightly more exterior envelope area, reducing heat loss per unit of floor area. The Germans do this to motivate one to build multi-family dwellings… but the result in North America has been a lot of larger single family homes getting certified).

Your home is a great example of why you don’t see certified Passive House buildings taking off in Canada. It’s damn near impossible to design a compliant home, without either blowing the bank or ending up with a solar oven. I’ve designed many compliant buildings, and 99% of them end up backing off on insulation and glazing to be around where your home is. You’ll note that local Net Zero Energy homes have similar envelope performance to your home; it’s most cost effective from that baseline to invest in solar PV generation than to add more insulation.

Under the section of the report on Energy Balance Heating, I asked, “I was surprised by the amount of heat loss through the walls as well as the windows – is that due to the size/number of south windows? Or does that relate to the number of windows on the east/west and north sides more so? How could we have changed that to reduce the heat loss?”

Ideally, if the insulation in all areas of the building cost the same, you’d want to balance the R-values so that the heat loss intensity rate is the same through all envelope elements. Your exterior above grade wall has the highest relative rate of heat loss, so that’d be the place to add more insulation first if you want to improve performance. If you want to optimize R-value ratios this way, it’s smartest to add in the cost/ft2 of each insulation type, then you can maximise your return on investment. For example, adding 1″ of cellulose in the attic is much cheaper than an inch of foam outside of a wall.

The glazing of course has the highest rate of heat loss, but that’s just because you max out at around R10, where your opaque assemblies are R50+.

Your North, East, and West windows are NET losers of heat, while the South windows offer a net gain. This is as expected, and is really the basis of Passive Solar design, that a South window can actually HEAT a building throughout the heating season, with the right recipe. If you wanted to optimize the glazing further, you can add more South glazing while removing glazing on the other elevations (North being the biggest drag on efficiency), which will continually reduce the annual heating demand (how much energy is consumed to heat). This is a Red Flag area though, following this path of more South glazing will eventually cause overheating throughout the year. Prediction of overheating / discomfort is an area where the PHPP is very poor, and I’ve been burned in the past on some projects where we pushed the Passive solar too far in an attempt to reach certification. I now use IES<VE> as a energy modelling tool because of its ability to accurately predict overheating.

“Did you have any thoughts or considerations you would have given us had we run these numbers off the bat with the house planning? “

I’d honestly say you’ve done a great job on your home. It’s pretty much impossible to meet the PHI Passive House criteria for a small single family home in Saskatchewan, without significant and typically unjustifiably cost. The PHIUS criteria is based on a more climate-specific analysis, which attempts to stop investment in conservation at the point a little bit beyond where renewable generation is more feasible. Meaning it’s more realistic to meet the PHIUS+ targets, though we’re not seeing much uptake in the Prairies.

All of this was very interesting and at the same time reassuring to me. Like many others, I had put a lot of credence on the PH standards as the be all and end all (even still despite reading and appreciating the issues I’ve previously discussed). It was good to hear that the assumptions we’d made were in the end in line with the reality of trying to build a PH in Saskatchewan.

Even still there was one last thing that I just had to know… it kept coming up again and again. It was one of those pesky assumptions we kept getting asked about. And one of my recently reposted blogs on Green Building Advisor brought it back to my mind again… German windows.

It is regarded that the German (or Polish and Lithuanian) Passive House certified windows are the creme de la creme of windows. They are attractive, heavy, thick (6″ wide!), and expensive. But if you want to reach Passive House standards, you gotta have ’em! (Or at least that’s what they say).

I felt a little bit guilty asking for quotes on windows that we were never going to buy, but my curiosity just couldn’t be helped. I wanted to know how expensive PH-certified windows would have been for our place. We’d heard outrageous prices of up to $80,000 for some homes.

We tendered a couple of quotes and received a reply from Optiwin of Lithuania. The salesperson was exceptionally thorough and I was really impressed with his communication (which made me feel more guilty). After a couple of weeks I received the pricing back. I was actually surprised that the cost of the PH windows was only $17,000 CDN more than the windows we purchased from Duxton Windows. Although they would have been certainly way outside our budget anyway – they weren’t 400% more than the price we paid by any means (just a measly 75% more). Nonetheless, I really had to pause again and wonder, why? What would make these windows $17,000 better than the fibreglass, triple pane windows we got? The U-factors and solar heat gain coefficients were not that big a difference. Maybe the the locking mechanisms of the windows could get you a bit lower on your airtightness – but $17,000? How long would it take you to save on heating bills to justify that “investment”?

All this being said, I’m happy to have answered my lingering questions and to confirm some of my assumptions. The bottomline, of course, though is that you want to be able to sit back and be happy with what is around you. To know that you did the best you could in building a sustainable home for the future.

I can’t complain.

Musings on Passive House Standards and the Costs of New Home Construction, Part 2

Posted on March 17, 2016 by kent

If you have not read Part 1 yet, please go back and read it first.

In mid-November of 2015, just prior to us moving into the house, we were asked to be apart of the Passive House Days tour (a world-wide weekend of awareness of Passive House and energy efficient building). Well, not “officially” – we were asked to be apart of the tour by the event organizer in Saskatchewan who is the Passive House (PH) consultant on what should become the first certified PH in the Saskatchewan. Even though we did not build a PH, we did follow their standards as closely as I could justify, but from the beginning we were not pursuing certification.

Although all of the visitors on the PH Days Tour were very interested in our house, our process, and why we did the things we did, one question we got a lot was, “If you were following the PH standards why not go all the way for certification?”

First, let’s back-up a little bit. Indeed the principles of a PH are second to none. From Passipedia: “Passivhaus is a building standard that is truly energy efficient, comfortable and affordable at the same time.” So simple. Brilliant even. I wanted to build a PH. Who wouldn’t?

Strangely, if you visit Canadian Passive House Institute (CanPHI) website there are total of 5 projects that have received Canadian PH certification. If you look up the PH Project Database there are a grand total of 23 houses in all of Canada that have received certification.

Why the discrepancy you may ask? Why so few certified projects?

This is a bit complicated and took me awhile to figure out. But here are the basics as I understand it: the Passivhaus standards were developed in Germany for German buildings in the German climate (obviously). However, when other builders in other countries tried to build a “Passivhaus” in say the USA, England, or Canada, they realized something profound: Hey… wait a second… I don’t live in Germany!

Maybe trying to build to German PH certified standards in Minnesota or Saskatchewan is going to be really difficult? Maybe impossible? Or maybe possible but really expensive? Or maybe possible but a really uncomfortable building to actually live in?

Still PH institute satellites started to spring up in most countries around the world. Slowly, Passive Houses, built to the German requirements, started to be built in other countries with the first certified Canadian building being built in 2009. The uptake, however, was certainly not rapid nor widespread. Why? Was it not as the PH Institute of Germany said that these buildings are “truly energy efficient, comfortable and affordable”? Or is it just that we are too cheap and/or lazy and/or complacent to meet those strict German requirements elsewhere?

It seems like this is something that these PH satellites were struggling with as discussed here, here and here.

A few years ago though, some people started to say, this is silly – why are we following German standards and requirements for our buildings when we don’t actually live in Germany?

The German PH standards are as follows:

Space Heat Demand: max. 15 kWh/m2a OR Heating load max. 10 W/m2
Pressurization Test Result @ 50 Pa: max. 0.6 ACH
Total Primary Energy Demand: max. 120 kWh/m2a

Simple enough right? Hit these numbers using the PH planning software and your building can be certified as a PH. Where’s the problem?

The Pressurization Test for 0.6 ACH is strict, but not impossible. There had been many houses built to this level of airtightness before PH came around. Rob Dumont’s own home in Saskatoon in 1992 tested at an awe-inspiring 0.47 ACH.

Jumping to the third requirement, the Total Primary Energy Demand of 120 kWh/m2a ensures essentially that you are not wasting energy or are at least using it wisely. It forces you to use energy efficient lighting, appliances and mechanical systems. I don’t think anyone can argue with that as being important to green building.

The real problem though, in my opinion, is the Space Heating Demand of 15 kWh/m2a or heat load of 10 W/m2. These numbers dictate the maximum space heating allowed for each square meter of a building. Remember – this is based on a German climate.

In Germany the number of heating degree days (HDD) is around 3100 compared to over 10,000 HDD in Saskatoon. So that means there is over three times as much heating requirement in Saskatoon as compared to Germany. Besides that, who really cares what your heating demand is? With the maximum energy demand of 120 kWh/m2a already stated, what difference does it make whether you use 50% of that to heat your house or 10% in terms of your overall efficiency? This is my real beef with PH and the one that most others working towards PH in countries that have climates other than a German one tend to struggle with too.

Recently the PH Institute in the USA (PHIUS) split off (or was banished – depending on what you read) from it’s affiliation with the German PHI. This allowed them to develop their own standards and specific requirements for climate zones in the USA (Minneapolis also has different heating needs compared to Miami) and also to use North American calculation values instead of European. As a result it is now ~~easier~~ – ok, let’s say, attainable – to hit the PH targets for your Minneapolis house using a Minneapolis climate to calculate your requirements. Now that makes sense to me.

Sadly, the Canadian PH Institute has been resistant to following their American counterparts and has continued to align itself with the German requirements. Thus making it darn near practically impossible to meet the PH standard and become certified by the Canadian PH Institute.

There is a small loop-hole of sorts though, a Canadian house can pursue certification via the PHIUS, which is somewhat closer to our climate in the northern States. Although the conversion is not exact, the Space Heating Demand requirement for the northern USA is about 30 kWh/m2a (or double that of the German standard maximum). That’s better, but still the maximum heating degree days in Saskatoon are more than any other place in continental USA. Nonetheless, there have been a few of PHs in Canada that have used the US system to become certified (ok, like maybe 10 or 12).

I told you this was complicated…

Anyway, let’s try to bring this full circle, back to my original question of why don’t we just build all new houses in Canada to the PH standard?

I hope that I have presented the argument that it may not be realistic to build a certified PH in Canada and follow the original edicts of the German Passivhaus Institute of “energy efficient, comfortable and affordable.”

From Part 1 of this post, you may be able to see that there is a HUGE chasm between how most new homes in Canada are currently built as a result of our pathetic building code allowing inefficient homes to perpetuate, and the extremely difficult PH standards currently set in Canada.

Unfortunately, I think the CanPHI has done itself a disservice in not distancing itself from the German PH Institute. By not developing it’s own Canadian climate specific standards for the unique climate zones of our country, which maybe (just maybe) one day could be adopted on a large nation-wide scale.

Until such a time that the CanPHI recognizes this and modifies their requirements appropriately and regionally, I doubt that PH will ever gain much more than a very small handful of faithful followers willing to spend, at all costs, to meet an arbitrary set of values developed on the other side of the world.

That being said, I do KNOW that you CAN in fact build a house in Canada that IS energy efficient, comfortable and affordable.

But it isn’t a Passive House.

Because that’s what we’ve done.

house-snow

Musings on Passive House Standards and the Costs of New Home Construction, Part 1

Posted on February 24, 2016March 5, 2016 by kent

A friend of mine sent me this article for Tree Hugger yesterday about an Irish county that made the Passive House standard for all new home construction. This is a pretty big deal. The question then came up – why doesn’t Canada (or the USA) adopt such strict and stringent standards to their new home construction? Certainly the Paris Climate Conference of 2015 has finally made it official what everyone and their dog already knew: the world is overheating and we need to do something about it before we all die. Building better homes could make a massive difference in our world’s energy use. It is well-known that a certified Passive House uses 80-90% less energy than a standard house.

The problem, as usual though, in making such rigorous standards mandatory is a combination of bureaucracy, status quo, and resistance to change. In this post and my next, I will make the argument that I believe there is a skewed perspective on both sides of this battle in Canada.

Did you know that the minimum standard for wall construction in Saskatchewan (a province that has frigid winters of -40° temperatures for long stretches and over 10,000 heating degree days per year) is a 2×6 wall with batt insulation? The effective R-value of this wall is only R17.5 due to thermal bridging (as the wood studs bridge between the inside and outside of the wall). This standard must be out of date, you say? In fact, this was recently upgraded to this absurdly pathetic level in 2012 (it was only a 2×4 wall before that). Shameful.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, most homes in Saskatchewan feature R12 in basement walls and only R40 in the attic. There is no requirement for insulation under the slab of the house. Also, the building code requires only double-pane windows – such insufficient windows account for a massive amount of heat loss of up to 50% (these are usually vinyl framed windows, though sometimes wood or aluminum). And placement of these crappy windows can lead to further issues with heat loss due to inadequate southern exposure and large windows on the north side of house. Furthermore, air leakage rates in most new homes is about 2.0 ACH@50pascals (which is actually one of the lowest values tested in Canada). (Source: Energy Standards by Ken Cooper)

I assume that you can get the picture that our homes are generally very inefficient (don’t think that this is specific to Saskatchewan – this is relatively consistent across North America).

Although we did not build a Passive House, we followed the principles of this as closely as we could financially justify (which is the rub, more on this in my next post). For a quick comparison, our house has R56 walls, R80 attic, R32 basement walls and under-slab. Our latest air tightness test was 0.72 ACH@50pascals (and with some extra tightening we’re hoping to get this to 0.65 or less at the next test). We used triple-pane fibreglass windows. The design of the house maximized heat gain through the south windows and minimized heat loss through the windows on the east, west and north sides. Passive shading with our roof overhangs prevents overheating in the summer. The positioning of the house is directly south (a luxury we have living on an acreage). We also installed PV panels to offset our meagre energy use, which are becoming more and more affordable.

Now, a lot of people wonder and ask (I know I did prior to building), that it must cost substantially more money to build a house to this level of efficiency?

The simple truth is that it does not have to.

The general consensus is that a new custom home in Canada, excluding the cost of purchasing land, is between $200 and $300 per square foot to build (a contractor spec “cookie cutter” home built to the minimum standard with minimal features and cheap finishing can be $175/sq.ft or less). Indeed this is large range – for a 1500sq.ft home you could either spend $300,000 or $450,000. But for argument’s sake, let’s say $250/sq.ft is a realistic cost of a new custom home (we will also assume that most people would not build to the bare minimum construction standard of a spec house and see the benefit of adding triple pane windows and a 2″ layer of EPS foam on the outside of their 2×6 wall).

OK so where are the extra costs?

I would say that the design planning and orientation of the house will be the single biggest factor in determining your initial and long-term costs in a high performance, energy efficient house. It does not cost anymore to build a house with your windows facing north instead of facing south. Positioning the long side of your house to east does not cost anymore than facing it south. Designing correct overhangs for shading does not cost anymore than designing insufficient overhangs. Designing outcroppings, bay windows, and cantilevers does not cost anymore to design than a rectangle or a square-shaped building. Placing operable windows appropriately for cross-ventilation does not cost anything extra either. But all of these decisions and factors can have huge ramifications on the cost of construction and/or long-term costs of operation. We had several team meetings during our design process (including a Passive House certified designer, contractor, and LEED engineers) to decide on which systems would be best suited to be optimally energy efficient, be comfortable to live in, and also to make sure everyone, including sub-contractors were on the same page. This extra consulting time accounted for 2.5% of our overall cost.

In terms of actual construction costs, we built a double 2×4 stud wall that is 16″ wide. The cost of materials for this wall system versus the cost of 2x6s and the 2″ of EPS foam is almost negligible. Framing labour costs were slightly more though as each exterior wall was built twice (accounting for an additional 2% of the overall budget). Remember though our design is simple, a rectangle, meaning four walls – no bays or outcroppings. We also invested 20% more in purchasing fibreglass framed triple-pane windows versus the usual vinyl or wood triple-pane windows (accounting for an additional 1.75% of the overall budget). Insulation costs slightly more but pays for itself in short order when compared to long-term operation costs (the upfront cost is an additional 2% of the overall budget). Airtightness of the house did not cost us anymore than the standard vapour barrier (although it does require some attention to detail by the tradespeople) with the exception that we needed to install a heat-recovery ventilator which cost $1200 (0.3% of the budget).

But there are also some possible cost savings to consider. One can get away with a smaller mechanical heating system due to the lower heat load required in a super-insulated and airtight house. For us, our mechanical system cost about the same as a standard house due to us deciding to install in-floor heating and a wood burning stove. Although you certainly could get away with baseboard heaters or a very small forced air furnace combined with a heat coil on your HRV if you so chose (for us we wanted the in-floor heat and a wood stove – you can read about our reasons for this here and here). Most new houses also have air conditioners installed. We do not (cross-ventilation, insulation and proper shading is all that is needed).

The bottom line is that it cost us about 8% more to build a house that is in the range of 75-80% more efficient then a standard new custom home.

After these extra costs are accounted for the rest of construction costs are basically the same as any other house – how much do you want to spend to finish the house is based on your taste and how much you want to invest in your bathroom fixtures, lighting, hardwood flooring, custom cabinets (vs. Ikea), appliances and so on. Also, how much sweat equity do you want to do yourself? All of this will have a big impact on your end costs (consider, painting our house took 5 full days, but saved us about $6,000+. Installing the tile in the bathrooms and kitchen ourselves took 10+ full days, but saved us another $8,000).

Ok, so you’re probably thinking, how much did this damn house actually cost you? Tell me already! Although I haven’t done our final-final tally yet, it is in the range of $280/sq.ft. But this also includes the cost of our 6.2 kW solar PV system, our septic system, and the cost of trades to travel the 30 minutes to our house each day. Removing these factors, to build the same house in an urban area, you could easily do it for $250/sq.ft.

Say… that’s pretty much the same as what we said a typical new house would cost, right?

So why the heck isn’t everyone doing this??

Well, it goes back to the fact that there is an unfounded assumption that building an energy efficient house costs a lot more (I think we’ve shown that it simply does not have to). It also does not help that energy costs from non-renewables such as coal-fired electricity and natural gas are very cheap still (even so, those extra 8% in building costs for us should be paid back in less than 12 years in monthly energy bill savings). And the public outcry for action is not yet greater than the apathy of maintaining the status quo on the part of our government, the building industry, and those contractors who have been making a tidy profit on their suburban sprawl spec houses.

Part two to come…

Observations, expectations, and regrets

Posted on February 20, 2016February 20, 2016 by kent

As I’ve written about building our house over the past 18 months or so, I’ve commented several times that the decisions we were making in energy performance and efficiency of the house were all theoretical. Certainly, we based our decisions and assumptions on solid foundations of research, well-established protocols, software design and modelling, and the recommendations of others who have built high performance buildings or through websites and blogs of others. But STILL. I couldn’t be sure how the house would actually function. How efficient would it be? Would we overheat? How much solar power would be generate? What are our power bills going to be? How comfortable will we be? Oh and of course, do we have any regrets? These were all questions on move-in day that we had yet to answer.

Here are some observations from the first three months of living in the house.

We have had an unseasonably mild winter this year including several days of above freezing temperatures in January and February, which generally are our coldest months of the years. In fact, the past 5 days have been between +1°C (34°F) and +6°C (43°F). Normally the ice from the river is not breaking up until mid- to late March, but just yesterday it’s already opened up (#globalwarming).

But even so, we have had a few of our more typical extremely cold days too (we couldn’t get off this easy of course). In December we had a couple days of -40°C (-40°F) or colder. One of these days was a bright and sunny Saturday, the news here reported that it was the highest day of power usage across the province for the year. Our dogs were lying in the sun panting and the temperature on the thermostat read 24°C (76°F) – without the boiler running – purely from passive solar heating. I had to laugh. We even had to crack a window for awhile so we didn’t overheat.

warmday

Even though that day was great to see how well things performed under extreme conditions (very cold day + lots of sun = no active heating required. Awesome) I was a bit worried that we might overheat on milder winter days with lots of sun. But, for whatever reason, this really hasn’t been the case. Within a few days of that extreme cold snap, we were back above freezing temperatures with lots of sunlight. I think a couple days it did creep up to +26°C (+78°F) on the thermostat due to passive heating, but with our well-planned operable window placements, we could simply open a window or two and cool things down if needed. It seems bizarre to me that I’d need to open a window in the middle of winter, but it really does not bother me to do it. But it also makes me very happy (and relieved) that we really thought out well how to get good cross-breeze ventilation throughout the house (although we thought this would be for summer passive cooling not the winter too!). If we didn’t have this I might be cursing myself due to overheating issues.

All this being said, of course, on cold and cloudy days, the boiler and in-floor heat runs. We have it set to keep the indoor temperature at 20°C (70°F). We played around a bit with what setting to keep it at – going as high as 72°F (comfortable all the time, but easier to overheat with passive heating, also running the wood stove would make it too warm) and as low as 68°F (too cold in the morning, even with a sweater on, and needed to be running the wood stove morning and evening). We both wear a sweater in the house in the morning – cheaper to put a sweater on then to pay for more power. If it is really cold out then I light a fire in the wood burning stove, which is a nice luxury to have. When we tried setting a lower temperature in the house, I was needing to light a fire every morning, which was a hassle and not something I was overly motivated to do every day.

I’ve started tracking our solar generation through our 6.2 KW ground mount PV system with the plan to monitor this for the year. This time of year makes for the least amount of solar generation due to the short days, more cloud cover, lower height of the sun in the sky, and SNOW. I’d not really considered it before but snow and ice covering the PV panels is crazy frustrating. I guess I assumed the snow would just fall of it. Not so. The first couple of times this happened I shouted out in horror – we had a bright sunny day, but due to a snowfall in the nighttime our panels were 100% covered! I grabbed a ladder climbing up to clean the panels with a broom – an arduous task with the wind blowing and -20°C (-4°F) temperatures. There must be a solution to this I thought, but after reading several websites, it seems like the only solution is a long broom handle or to wait for the sun to melt it off. This was so aggravating – seeing our energy generation oppurtunities being squandered. Aside from a 16′ long broom handle, I’ve not yet found a good solution to this problem (and perhaps there is no solution).

I’ve also started tracking our energy use, but this has been more difficult as we have an outdoor chicken coop with a heat lamp and a water heater that is on 24/7. These suck energy like crazy. I’m sure these three chickens are costing us a fortune right now (they better start laying golden eggs) – in fact, I think heating their little 24sq.ft coop is more expensive then heating our 1240sq.ft. house. So for this year we will see what the total energy use. But for next year, we have a second transformer located next at our shop (and not connected to the PV panels), so I will try to run the chicken coop power from there, which will give us a more accurate reading of the house’s energy use for 2017. (I also need to build a passive house chicken coop now).

I guess the last thing that everyone seems to ask – which is interesting as it is one of the first things they ask after, “So you’re all settled into the house?” … “Any regrets?” or “Anything you would change?” To be perfectly honest, my answer is, “No. Nothing.”

We really love the house. We love the design. We love the style. We love it’s performance. We love the comfort.

We spent a lot of time planning, designing, and researching the house. We did not compromise and we followed the adage to: “Do it right the first time.”

I have no regrets.

passivhaus