[HN Gopher] Zero energy ready homes are coming
___________________________________________________________________
Zero energy ready homes are coming
Author : ricardou
Score : 86 points
Date : 2023-03-07 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.energy.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.energy.gov)
| dabber21 wrote:
| Like a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house ?
| yourapostasy wrote:
| Passiv Haus (or loosely equivalently the US Passive House) is
| supposed to be a shorthand to express it takes less energy than
| conventionally required to achieve Net Zero. But not all Passiv
| Haus designs are necessarily Net Zero, and not all Net Zero
| designs necessarily use Passiv Haus to accomplish their rating.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Basically, but it looks like this certification is protected
| and carries benchmarks, similar to the Energy Star program.
| Syonyk wrote:
| No, because those actually work. But they're also tricky to
| operate properly.
|
| This seems more like "I want you to feel good about your
| purchase while you're still dependent on external energy
| inputs."
|
| If you can find details on what it actually requires, please,
| share, because I've spent the past 15 minutes snoofing around
| and I sure can't find it.
| ortusdux wrote:
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/DOE%20ZER.
| ..
| Syonyk wrote:
| Thanks. So gas water heaters are fine. Yay?
| ricardou wrote:
| I live on campus at Cornell Tech. The student residence hall[0]
| there is built following Passive House standards and it is
| actually surprising how good it works. My one complaint is the
| heating and cooling systems in every apartment unit are very
| heavily regulated, so at times the inside feel and temperature
| aren't ideal. It's a minor thing though.
|
| [0] https://thehouseatcornelltech.com/sustainability/
| al_be_back wrote:
| zero energy, zero home then.
| orcajerk wrote:
| [flagged]
| aclatuts wrote:
| People go broke if their utilities go up $100 a month. It's
| better if houses were built to not depend on volatile energy
| prices. Net zero homes basically move the monthly utility cost
| from an ongoing variable bill and basically prepays it into the
| mortgage which would have more predicable pricing. All that
| extra cost should also stay as value to the house.
| Syonyk wrote:
| They don't!
|
| They only hate _poor families_ who can 't afford a $500k+ home
| and His-and-Hers Matching Teslas.
| orangepurple wrote:
| If leadership is affiliated with whoever commissioned the
| Georgia Guidestones the plan is as follows:
|
| 1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance
| with nature.
|
| 2. Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.
|
| 3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
|
| 4. Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with
| tempered reason.
|
| 5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
|
| 6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes
| in a world court.
|
| 7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
|
| 8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
|
| 9. Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the
| infinite.
|
| 10. Be not a cancer on the Earth - Leave room for nature -
| Leave room for nature.
| rafark wrote:
| For people allergic to electricity.
| la64710 wrote:
| $5000 tax credit for a ZERH home that may cost $400k to build.
| Just from an incentive pov is it enough to swing the needle? Most
| probably I am glossing over something.
| ortusdux wrote:
| My take on this is that they are making the equivalent of an
| Energy Start certification for housing. In theory, having this
| cert should raise the value of the house. I view the $5k as a
| way to offset the cost of applying.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Yeah I'm laughing at this too. With land prices being what they
| are, this just means builders will make only luxury multi-
| million dollar homes with these codes in mind.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is a pet issue of mine, having lived in two off grid homes
| going back to the 80's.
|
| The barriers are not materials, technology, or labor, but purely
| regulatory.
|
| I could take my current home off permanently grid with solar
| today for less than 10k but to do so would be illegal.
|
| Permitted grid connected solar costs 5x that and disconnecting
| from the grid is not permitted.
| potmat wrote:
| > disconnecting from the grid is not permitted
|
| Wait, what? What happens if you just don't pay your bill?
|
| Edit: Or just disconnect internally, meaning you use no power.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| They are most likely referring to many/most counties require
| a grid connection for the home to be considered "habitable".
| Refusing and living in a un-habitable home can have all sorts
| of fun consequences up to and including the seizure of your
| own children by the state.
| mattnewton wrote:
| Not OP but in many municipalities the dwelling would be no
| longer up to code, and therefore illegal to inhabit
| dymk wrote:
| Illegal to sell perhaps, but where does that mean illegal
| to inhabit as well?
| wombat_trouble wrote:
| Every other home in the US isn't up to code. The code
| changes over time and governs all kinds of mundane things
| that you as a homeowner don't pay attention to (and
| shouldn't be forced to). Not being compliant doesn't make a
| home illegal to live in.
|
| This is different. Many municipalities specifically require
| all dwellings to have basic utilities (water, sewer,
| electricity, garbage service), even if you're not using
| them. Not having that will get you in trouble pretty
| quickly.
|
| Unincorporated areas are usually fair game.
| aclatuts wrote:
| Disconnecting from the grid is overly romanticized. What you
| get from paying the utilities is a team of people who will fix
| equipment issues due to failure or the environment. If your
| home battery system has issues, scheduling someone could take a
| day or more. Off grid electrical services isn't popular enough
| to be on call 24/7. And getting parts may get take even more
| time. Equipment failure could take your electricity out for
| days or weeks. Being fully off grind means over provisioning
| your electrical storage and production, adding to costs. You
| also would not be able to sell your excess electricity. Also,
| in terms of house value, I imagine more people value the peace
| of mind of a connected electrical grid over saving the small
| fixed monthly connection fee.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I totally agree that it is not for everybody, but I think
| there is a place for it and think there should be fewer
| barriers .
|
| I've seen a few people quoted more than 500K for PG&E to run
| power to their house. That can buy a lot of redundancy and
| peace of mind. Similarly, many cities have power outages
| longer than 24 hours on an annual basis in California. At
| this point most people in my neighborhood have gas generators
| for when the grid goes out.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> disconnecting from the grid is not permitted_
|
| In the context of the OP, which is a federal agency, whether or
| not you can build a house that is disconnected from the
| electrical grid is determined first by your local laws, and
| secondly by your state laws. You can certainly build houses in
| the US that aren't on the electrical grid, demonstrating that
| there's no federal prohibition against it.
| boringg wrote:
| To be fair - technology is lacking for people living in the
| city to be able to go off grid in a meaningful way.
|
| Disconnecting from the grid - that sounds like there's some
| kind of clause in the area that you live that essentially ties
| you to the utility. You must live in on the pacific coast or
| SW.
|
| EDIT: To all the responses - I'm talking off grid as in all
| functionality. Sure you can add solar / solar thermal etc
| though in many places it isn't cost effective and doesn't make
| a lot of sense in a city where the alternative is that those
| costs are defrayed across a large base that provides
| reliability and service. I don't have much love for utilities
| but they do provide a valuable service.
| orcajerk wrote:
| Things may be different now but some cities used to the
| condemn the house if it did not have electricity from a
| provider. It is a scam, considering most people did not have
| electricity even 100 years ago.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That's fair if you're talking about all utilities in the
| city. Sewer and water are the main problems in an urban
| environment. Rooftop solar on the other hand is dirt cheap
| and only slightly more complicated to install then plugging
| in a toaster.
| boringg wrote:
| Actually rooftop solar isn't dirt cheap where we are. And
| typically requires an electric service upgrade - you also
| need to make sure you aren't near the end of your roof life
| as you'll need to upgrade your roof as well.
|
| I'm all for it where it makes sense but it isn't a blanket
| statement.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I mean dirt cheap and absence of cumbersome regulations
| and requirements. For example, you can find panels as low
| as $0.07/kwh these days.
|
| My primary complaint is in agreement; solar is not cheap
| once you take them into account
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > for people living in the city to be able to go off grid in
| a meaningful way.
|
| Everyone has a use for hot water. You can always have off-
| grid solar heating an auxiliary tank to take the load off the
| primary water heater.
| boringg wrote:
| Having a hot water heater isn't the equivalent of going
| off-grid in a meaningful way.
|
| You are talking about incremental improvements.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I'm just curious: what happens if a home owner installs a bunch
| of solar panels and batteries, declares the property "off grid"
| (for electricity), then simply stops paying the local utility.
| I'm sure the local utility will stop service, which is what the
| home owner wants by going "off grid". But does it go beyond
| that? Will the local utility put a lien on the house? Will the
| local utility send any unpaid "fees" to collection? Does the
| local municipality condemn the property (or something similar)?
| Are there potential criminal charges?
| jedberg wrote:
| How would you get enough panels and all the support equipment
| for $10K if there were no regulations? I'm looking into it
| right now and I don't see a path to that.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _Permitted grid connected solar costs 5x that and
| disconnecting from the grid is not permitted._
|
| Why not treat them as independent problems - an off-grid solar
| system for most of your electricity, while also maintaining a
| nominal (/backup) grid connection? If your home is already
| connected to the grid, then I would think the ongoing cost
| would be minimal and could be viewed as just another tax.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Interesting. Is there a good consise page detailing the main
| differences between this and older standards? Stuff like cost and
| ease of maintenance comparisons?
| jabart wrote:
| Things switched from insulating the wall cavity to insulating
| the outside of the house. Engineers started to factor in the
| insulation value of a 2x6 compared to the insulation it was
| next to and the heat loss in cold climates. Same applies for
| hot climates. Now these homes are being wrapped in insulation
| on the outside with all joints sealed, then insulated on the
| inside and essentially pressure tested for air leaks. The
| houses can be "tight" enough that you have to have a system to
| cycle in fresh air in a way that it heats/cools it with the air
| that is leaving. You also need a makeup air vent for things
| like a stove hood.
|
| There is a new system that before drywall goes up, they
| pressurize the house and spray a caulk in the air that finds
| its way to all the pinhole leaks and seals them to further
| reduce air leaks during the building process.
| amluto wrote:
| > You have to have a system to cycle in fresh air in a way
| that it heats/cools it with the air that is leaving.
|
| This is quite nice regardless. Houses are unlikely to be so
| drafty that the air inside is always fresh, and a real
| ventilation system will deliver fresh, filtered air all the
| time.
|
| > You also need a makeup air vent for things like a stove
| hood.
|
| You need this anyway, at least in CA, if your hood exceeds
| 400cfm, and it's probably a good idea regardless. Sadly, high
| end hoods seem to mostly have way too much airflow, and
| decent makeup air systems are rare and complex.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > Things switched from insulating the wall cavity to
| insulating the outside of the house.
|
| Oh good they finally figured that out. Cause that's where you
| want the stuff. And insulating a bunch cavities is labor
| intensive.
| amluto wrote:
| I'm not at all convinced that exterior insulation would
| have lower labor cost. You have to competently install
| sheets of rigid insulation, and then you need to
| competently install siding over it.
|
| Insulating cavities needs some skilled labor if you use
| mineral wool, but a skilled installer goes _fast_. Or you
| can use some kind of blown in product, which takes very
| little labor. (I have never seen competently installed
| fiberglass batts. I'm not sure they really exist.)
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Insulting cavities _well_ is immensely labor intensive
| and unfortunately is still required in homes with
| exterior insulation so you 're kind of getting the worst
| of both worlds. Exterior insulation is an absolute breeze
| in comparison though, there are tons of product on the
| market that integrate the sheathing and insulation into a
| single unit so it installs just like any other exterior
| sheathing would.
| amluto wrote:
| I watched a crew install a blown fiberglass product: they
| stapled fabric over the walls, poked holes in it, and
| stuck a hose in each hole so a machine in their truck
| could flow fiberglass into the cavity. It went very
| quickly and fully filled the cavities.
|
| John Mansville Spider Plus looks like another interesting
| product -- blown fiberglass that is just sticky enough
| that it can supposedly be applied to walls and even
| ceilings without anything to contain it.
| TrueSlacker0 wrote:
| How will I get to experience opening up a wall in the house I
| have lived in for a decade to find McDonalds trash stuck in
| the wall instead of insulation?
| ortusdux wrote:
| Heat exchangers are a big one, but they are not yet that
| common in the US. They are used to pre-heat the makeup air.
| I'm looking into one atm as part of a HVAC upgrade as
| currently running a bath fan with all the windows closed will
| draw air down the chimney.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I understand you can just check the pressure during a blower
| test to see if there are leaks, but how do they actually
| identify where the leaks are? Go around all over the house
| with a smoke gun?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Largely yes. You don't need to survey every inch though
| since leaks aren't present in the middle of walls, but
| typically at complex areas (around windows, roof
| penetrations, can lights, outlets, rim joists, etc) so a
| little smoke quickly IDs those issue areas. Another way way
| to find leaks is to run the blower door tests on a day
| where there's a large temperature differential (ideally
| when it's very cold outside). You can use a thermal camera
| before the test and then after you depressurize the house
| for a 10 or 15 minutes - the leaky areas are perfectly
| obvious on the thermal since the cold outdoor air is
| washing over the walls near the leaks. Taking the
| before/during thermal videos on a walkthrough lets you
| compare the side-by-side later on and ID which spots need
| attention.
| Syonyk wrote:
| If there's a good thermal difference between interior
| temperature and exterior temperature, a thermal imager will
| help catch an awful lot of the leaks.
| jws wrote:
| There are tax credits to the builder to offset some of the
| increased up front cost, $2000 + $500 for some systems, and 22%
| on PV systems. It looks like the homeowner can get a $5000 tax
| credit for 10 years.
|
| The goal is to transition to housing which can be powered by
| renewables. To that end there are requirements for the thermal
| integrity of the envelope and windows, there must be electric
| run for HVAC heat pumps, hot water heat pumps, and at least one
| EV parking space. Lighting must be modern high efficiency
| stuff. Ductwork must be inside the thermal envelope. There are
| indoor air quality standards to meet.
| Syonyk wrote:
| https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/zero-energy-ready-home...
| seems to be the main landing page, and it's a bit handwaving...
|
| > _A DOE Zero Energy Ready Home is a high-performance home that
| is so energy efficient that a renewable energy system could
| offset most or all the home 's annual energy use._
|
| "Most or all" and "annual energy use" allow for some massive
| wiggle room. Annual energy use by who? A family with a couple
| teenage girls is going to likely use a lot more hot water than
| a family with a three year old boy.
|
| I can't find any actual concrete details on it, annoyingly. So
| I have to agree that it's more of a feel-good listing until
| proven otherwise.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I was really interested in the insulation part and building
| design. The only thing I could find was that it has to be
| energy star, which is only 10% better insulation than code.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| ACH2.0 in most of the upper part of the country is pretty
| aggressive. The 2015 ICC isn't a slouch either -- say
| you're in Chicagoland building a new home, this would
| mandate R49 in the attic, R20 in the walls (or R13 in the
| bays + R5 exterior), R15 on basement walls, R30 in the
| floors.
|
| It could of course be much more aggressive, and likely will
| be eventually, but if you had a ACH2 house with those
| insulation values, minimum U-0.3 windows, >0.94 efficient
| gas furnace / high quality heat pumps, it would be a _very_
| efficient house.
|
| Table R402.1.2 here:
| https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IECC2015/chapter-4-re-
| resi...
| itake wrote:
| I'm also curious if there is a path to upgrade existing homes
| to this standard or do you have to demolish and rebuild (which
| is not legal in many cities).
| amateuring wrote:
| no, it's just a feel good PR campaign
| smolder wrote:
| To get really high R value on insulation, often that means a
| 2x6 or 2x8 framed outer wall to allow for the additional
| thickness needed by the insulation. Double pane windows are
| well-surpassed by those with many panes and carefully designed
| frames with low thermal bridging. Aside from more insulation
| you need great air sealing, across every joint and in every
| window and door frame. Older construction had no explicit
| ventilation, just a lot of leaking such that the house
| "breathed". On modern, efficient homes, the air seal is very
| tight for efficiency reasons, so you _need_ an ERV /HRV system
| to exhange air for you to keep the air healthy, while
| minimizing energy loss for that airflow. Insulating materials
| used inside the roof and sheathing are typically closed cell
| foam or rockwool, or in Europe they sometimes use a wood fiber
| based insulation. There are lots of caulks and adhesive tapes
| for getting a good air seal, and there's also a technique where
| one pumps the house frame full of a vapor that reacts across
| pressure drops and plugs any holes it flows through.
|
| Last, well insulated homes can get cheap heating and cooling
| from modestly sized heat pumps which are very efficient. One
| zero energy home I saw has heat exchangers on the roof to
| capture energy from the sun for warm water as well,
| supplemented by heat pumps powered by photovoltaics.
| gregwebs wrote:
| What about the existing housing stock? There's a lot of energy
| upgrades that pay off well over a couple decades, but not when
| you move an average of every 7 years and the new homeowners don't
| know how or care to value your upgrades.
|
| I think the government could create regulation to fix the
| incentives here. Something like allowing enhanced energy
| efficiency to be paid over time by creating a lien on the house
| that a new homeowner has to continue to make payments towards.
| paiute wrote:
| Those dehumidifiers make these places uninhabitable for me.
| Constant low humidity is really unhealthy. Without them these
| ultra insulated homes have major vapor and mold issues. Being
| highly insulated is good but at a point it's just silly. I'd
| rather see efforts to insulate old trailers, manufactured homes,
| etc. Rich people experimenting with zero energy homes don't need
| a credit.
| olau wrote:
| I agree on low humidity being bad, but your remark on
| insulation does not seem correct. I'm only familiar with cold
| climates, so perhaps I'm overlooking something, but mold needs
| moisture to grow, so it will appear where water condenses out
| of warm air on a cold surface. You can typically see this in
| windows.
|
| So you need to prevent cold surfaces. The best way to do that
| is improving the insulation. The reason you can see water drops
| in the windows is precisely because they are inadequately
| insulated (e.g. only double paned).
|
| Now, it's true that if you make an airtight home, then you need
| some kind of air exchange. And if it's really cold outside,
| then even if it's wet, once that air is warmed up, it ends up
| at a low relative humidity. In that case you need a humidifier.
| I guess depending on the outside air, you'd probably need both
| to stay in a comfortable range.
| paiute wrote:
| It's not super intuitive at first, but its cold climates were
| this is actually a big issue. Water vapor "wants" to equalize
| from a more humid to less humid environment. So when it's
| cold out - the humidity can drop rather low. Then you take a
| shower and create water vapor - which flows into the walls,
| through the insulation, and condenses against the colder
| exterior. Open a wall in any stick frame house in the rocky
| mountain region and mildew will be present. I am building a
| highly insulated house in a cold climate area and have
| blasted all the wood with copious amount of a silver based
| coating to inhibit mold growth.
| paiute wrote:
| This installation chart is a pretty useful starting place,
| regrettably local codes often require you to do the wrong
| thing https://www.certainteed.com/insulation/resources/do-
| i-need-v...
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| We have a highly insulated home with a heat recovery air
| exchanger.
| swalling wrote:
| The location of the home (Fairhope, Alabama) is in a humid
| subtropical climate where the average humidity is above 70%
| year round. I couldn't find any data but seems possible that
| the net average interior humidity is not actually that low?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Aren't larger, opulent home designs far more difficult to make
| energy efficient?
| Syonyk wrote:
| Generally, yes. They tend to have a lot of corners (for their
| "architectural features" checklist), and those are really hard
| to insulate well.
|
| They also tend to be purchased by people who don't care in the
| slightest about energy efficiency, because if you can buy a
| $10M home, the difference between $500/mo or $1500/mo in energy
| costs doesn't matter to you.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| Competing element though is they probably have more land to
| put solar on, so if they don't find it to be aesthetically
| incompatible, they could probably push through those energy
| losses.
| ahoy wrote:
| Yeah, this strikes me similarly to the all-electric Hummer SUV.
| What on earth are we doing here.
| paganel wrote:
| Crazy how the Americans try to create "zero energy homes"
| (whatever that means) using basically wood structures. Wood is a
| very, very bad heat insulator.
|
| The best proven heat insulator when it comes to building a home
| is earth itself, that's why for hundreds to thousands of years
| dug-out huts have been the norm on several continents, for
| different cultures/civilisations. Granted, you cannot build a
| macmansion-like house using only earth+some wood.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Almost half of Americans live in an earthquake zone. Wood is a
| hell of a lot safer than masonry in such conditions.
| eej71 wrote:
| Not pictured, the homes that won't be built because the
| regulatory regime has either outlawed them or priced them out of
| profitable existence.
| ovi256 wrote:
| What is stopping homeowners from building these better homes
| today ?
| xyst wrote:
| Money
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Knowledge/Risk is probably a lot more impactful.
|
| Builders themselves are slow to adopt new technology vs. do
| what they've always done. Part of that is because it's hard
| to learn news things. Part of it is because new things have
| lots of unknown and builders shoulder that risk.
| xyst wrote:
| I just see this as another subsidy for single family housing
| developments.
|
| The home may be "zero energy ready" or whatever greenwashing term
| they want to use. But the fact is they are spending that energy
| in driving from the sticks (in some cases >20 miles away) and
| back, driving from their home to the grocery store and back,
| driving to areas of interest (ie, parks, restaurants, doctors
| appointments).
|
| All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new
| electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure. This is all very
| expensive to build and maintain, and the cities and
| municipalities are left to foot the bill.
|
| American housing is a Ponzi scheme and this only helps perpetuate
| it. We need to reverse this trend with significant investments in
| public transportation and other alternative forms of
| transportation which can scale to meet the needs of the future.
| We need to build vertically and re-claim back the resources
| allocated for car centric design (ie, highways, parking lots,
| parking garages, roads, street parking) and re-allocate it for
| more housing, businesses, and public transportation. Entities
| that can generate new income for the municipality and city.
|
| In parallel, can work to preserve our existing natural green
| spaces and hopefully over time expand those green spaces which
| give us breathable air, drinkable water, protection from natural
| elements (ie, floods or long periods of torrential rain), and
| help keep viruses and other bad elements out of human
| populations.
| taude wrote:
| We already have solutions in place being implemented in the
| next 10 - 15 years for electric cars and car-based carbon
| emissions. So carbon based commuting is going to get fixed.
|
| People in the U.S. won't be living in dystopian China-style 40
| floor housing anytime soon, in ways that is sounds like you're
| hoping for with dense city living.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new
| electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure. This is all very
| expensive to build and maintain, and the cities and
| municipalities are left to foot the bill.
|
| That's not generally how this works. There aren't necessarily
| highways and new paved roads going to rural properties.
| Electrical service isn't only downtown in cities but for miles
| outside of them or from solar, propane, or any one of the many
| other technologies.
|
| As everyone who has built a property outside of some service
| area knows, the homeowner is the one who pays to drop the lines
| or service to the properety. Water almost always comes from a
| well on the property, and sewage tanks are how the sewage are
| handled.
|
| Later, if Frank & Martha's property gets annexed into the city,
| they will pay taxes and will be just as entitled to city
| services as others. They already pay county, state and other
| taxes, which means they are entitled to whatever their taxes
| pay for.
|
| _" In general, rural areas in the United States have higher
| homeownership rates than urban areas. Compared with urban
| areas, where the homeownership rate was 59.8 percent, rural
| areas had a homeownership rate of 81.1 percent."_ [1]
|
| [1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-
| samplings/2016/...
| xputer wrote:
| Replace "rural" with "suburban" and their points all hold
| true. Suburban developments in the US are often in food
| deserts. There's usually nothing within walking distance and
| if there is it is prohibitively dangerous and unpleasant to
| walk there.
|
| Add to that minimum lot sizes, setback laws, exclusionary
| zoning and minimum parking requirements and it's no wonder
| that young people cannot buy a home these days.
| jjav wrote:
| > Suburban developments in the US are often in food
| deserts. There's usually nothing within walking distance
| and if there is it is prohibitively dangerous and
| unpleasant to walk there.
|
| Is there data to back this up, particularly the "usually"
| part?
|
| Having nearly always lived in suburban areas (a few times
| rural), food shopping is nearly always within an easy walk.
| I'm sure there are some cases where this might not be so,
| but I doubt it's the norm. For rural areas, sure.
| IncRnd wrote:
| They certainly don't seem to be talking about suburban
| homes.
|
| > But the fact is they are spending that energy in driving
| from the sticks (in some cases >20 miles away) and back,
| driving from their home to the grocery store and back,
| driving to areas of interest (ie, parks, restaurants,
| doctors appointments).
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Many of your points are valid for many suburbs but also not
| for many others. Talking generally like this is weird, I've
| lived in about 6 different suburbs my whole life and
| _nothing_ you listed was true for any of them.
|
| I'm not a fan of suburbs but I'm tired of people holding up
| the _worst possible examples_ and saying "SEE, SUBURBS
| SUCK!"
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > This is all very expensive to build and maintain, and the
| cities and municipalities are left to foot the bill.
|
| Look, I hate Single Family Housing as much as anyone - but
| roads are BY FAR the most expensive part of infrastructure you
| mentioned - and those are financed by gasoline taxes.
|
| If the people in the sticks are buying a lot of gas, they're
| paying a lot more taxes for the roads, too.
|
| It'd be nice if property taxes were slightly higher in suburban
| areas to make up for the higher costs - but it really wouldn't
| need to be _that_ much higher. Houses usually cost more than
| condos - so you 're paying more property tax already by having
| a more expensive home...
|
| Sure, there's exceptions like condos in Manhattan and near the
| beach and ski resorts, etc...
| verall wrote:
| According to some quick googling, about 26% of roads are
| financed by gasoline tax, another 11% from tolls, and the
| rest from federal and state general funds:
|
| https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-
| initiative...
| askvictor wrote:
| > roads are BY FAR the most expensive part of infrastructure
| you mentioned - and those are financed by gasoline taxes.
|
| Do you have any sources for that? I'm in Australia, where
| fuel costs about twice what it does in the US. A decent
| portion of that is taxes/duties, but road spending is taken
| from consolidated revenue, and fuel taxes ultimately
| contribute a minority of the spending on roads. So unless the
| cost of fuel production is massively lower in the US,
| something doesn't add up.
| loeg wrote:
| GP is likely talking about US federal gas taxes -> Highway
| Trust Fund -> Federal highway spending.
|
| Notably, though, the HTF spends more than it earns in gas
| tax revenue; the shortfall comes from the general fund. And
| also Federal highway spending does not cover all highway
| spending; the rest comes from the states[1][3]. Federal
| highway spending also does not cover local roads at all.
|
| [1]: https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/images/full-
| reports/...
|
| [2]: (Above image from
| https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57138 )
|
| [3]: https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/
| bobthepanda wrote:
| They are not wholly funded by gas taxes. At best, federal
| roads are half-funded by gas taxes, and local roads are not
| at all.
| loeg wrote:
| > roads are BY FAR the most expensive part of infrastructure
| you mentioned - and those are financed by gasoline taxes.
|
| This is a common misunderstanding of how roads are funded.
| Roads are not solely funded by gas taxes and are
| predominantly paid for by funds raised from sources other
| than gas taxes.
| hahaxdxd123 wrote:
| > Look, I hate Single Family Housing as much as anyone - but
| roads are BY FAR the most expensive part of infrastructure
| you mentioned - and those are financed by gasoline taxes.
|
| I don't think that's true. Gasoline taxes aren't high enough
| to pay for roads.
|
| https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/
|
| It seems as of 2015, 50% of road related costs came out of
| general taxes. And as gas taxes have remained fairly
| constant, while roads have become more expensive to repair as
| they get worse, I can only think that number has gone up
| since then.
| [deleted]
| xputer wrote:
| Roads are absolutely not financed by gasoline taxes. They are
| massively subsidized by the federal government. Watch some
| videos about Strong Towns to learn about the problems that is
| causing in regions that are not experiencing constant growth.
|
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6OGLN.
| ..
| bitwize wrote:
| Indeed. Time to break out the omnitool Hackernews favors for
| solving very large scale problems: government regulation.
| Nationalize zoning laws, ban home ownership, and herd the
| population into bughive arcologies in major cities, where
| they'll be fed vegan or insect-protein-fortified food brought
| by Amazon delivery drones.
|
| If Hackernews believed in god, surely this would be their idea
| of heaven.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new
| electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure._
|
| If you're 20 miles outside a town, you almost certainly have
| electrical service, but are on a well and septic system. City
| water and sewer doesn't make sense at those sort of densities.
| You also probably have the land to easily put a nice ground
| mount PV array in, and grow a good bit of your own food, should
| you care to.
| themitigating wrote:
| I don't think this is the case for suburbs, at least for
| water. Septic tanks are used I think
| Syonyk wrote:
| Suburbs aren't generally described as the "sticks." That
| would be exurbs or lower.
|
| A typical suburban subdivision will have city water and
| sewage, though depending on the details, you might have a
| couple community wells and individual septic fields (or a
| link to city sewage).
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Not to interrupt a good rant, but the program includes
| duplexes, townhomes, multifamily projects, and mixed use
| buildings with residential less than 6 stories. It's a sensible
| plan that was passed by sensible people who actually do have
| climate goals in mind.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2022-10/DOE%20ZER...
| danans wrote:
| > All of this is dependent on highways and new roads, new
| electrical, water, and sewage infrastructure.
|
| What if this was done this brownfield development in areas with
| existing infrastructure? New development doesn't need to be
| coupled with sprawl. There is a significant amount of
| multifamily development that looks exactly like that. The IRA
| also included large incentives for the retrofit of the existing
| housing stock.
| xthrown1 wrote:
| >What if this was done this brownfield development in areas
| with existing infrastructure?
|
| Infrastructure only lasts 30 years. We should be sunsetting
| suburbs, not expanding them.
| Dig1t wrote:
| What does this mean exactly? Like we should be forcing
| people to move into big cities? What about all the people
| that don't want to live that kind of lifestyle?
| xthrown1 wrote:
| Let them pay the $20,000 in rates they will without
| subsidies from the inner core.
|
| The free market will sort it out in short order.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| People are going to build new homes outside of dense urban
| cores and suburbs either way; may as well build them 'green'.
| We need to be more flexible and realistic with our
| environmentalism--people just aren't going to give up meat,
| cars, or houses overnight so we need to allow progress where we
| can actually get it.
| louwrentius wrote:
| > American housing is a Ponzi scheme and this only helps
| perpetuate it. We need to reverse this trend with significant
| investments in public transportation and other alternative
| forms of transportation which can scale to meet the needs of
| the future.
|
| Thank you. This is what notjustbikes and climate town agitate
| against in their youtube channels.
| [deleted]
| swatcoder wrote:
| It's not precedented, wise, or even realistic to expect all of
| civilization to live in cities surrounded by unspoiled
| wilderness.
|
| Highly efficient low density housing has a place. So does high
| density housing.
|
| Everything you say about improving urban development practices
| is valid, but doesn't mean that efforts to improve
| suburban/exurband/rural development are problematic. They're
| all inextricably part of the future and they all have their own
| development needs.
| kibwen wrote:
| OP links to https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/zero-energy-
| ready-home... , which explains that its definition of a Zero
| Energy Ready Home is "a high-performance home that is so energy
| efficient that a renewable energy system could offset most or all
| the home's annual energy use".
| fwlr wrote:
| So it seems in practice the main way you achieve this
| certification is to dramatically cut heating losses by using a
| lot of insulation and make the house essentially air-tight.
| Obviously you can't have an air-tight house for very long, you
| need fresh air. So you have explicit vents for incoming and
| outgoing air, and you run the incoming air (which is fresh, but
| not the temperature you want) through a heat exchanger with the
| outgoing air (which is stale, but is at the temperature you
| want). This recovers most of the heat you put into your inside
| air, so you need very little heating to maintain the desired
| temperature.
|
| This is actually a really good thing, I think. The minimum
| airflow rating these houses have to meet is of course going to be
| suboptimal, but the hard part of airproofing is already done and
| it's easy for the homeowner to simply beef up the heat exchanger
| and air pump to get ideal airflow. The homeowner can also install
| an air quality filter on the airpump and now their entire house
| has filtered air. Great way to get that PM2.5 level down to where
| it should be!
| ahoy wrote:
| This is good, in the way that filtered cigarretes are better than
| unfiltered.
|
| As long we we keep building & being forced to live in low
| density, single-family houses, we'll keep consuming the huge
| physical and energy resources necessary to sustain them.
|
| I'm not saying we have to turn every neighborhood into manhattan,
| far from it. But this is similar to the gas -> electric car
| change. Yeah, it's a marginal improvement on what we're doing
| now, but its so far away from the kind of changes we need to make
| that it's almost dispiriting to see it presented as some kind of
| remarkable progress.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Who is forcing you to live in a SFH? Do we need to go confront
| them?
| awb wrote:
| Tough acronym to say, and spell apparently
|
| > ... Zero Energy Ready Homes (ZERH) their standard offering. To
| this point, our ZEHR program ...
|
| Sometimes acronyms get too cute, but there's value to something
| that can easily be said in conversation or in one's head while
| writing
| Syonyk wrote:
| When you've confused "per kWh cost" with "energy to the house
| delivery costs," this sort of stuff sounds good on paper, but it
| doesn't fundamentally solve the problem that in the winter, homes
| use a lot more energy than they can generate, and in the
| spring/fall, they will generate a lot more energy than they need.
|
| I've got a large ground mount solar install I put in a few years
| ago (15.9kW nameplate, though mostly east-west facing panels so a
| bit less annual production than you'd expect, just more "sunup to
| sundown" production), and it's been a chilly winter, so with an
| air source heat pump and keeping the house fairly cool, I'm still
| net +4MWh from the grid in the last 4 months.
|
| Meanwhile, when it warms up a bit more, I'm generating 10x what
| the house uses during spring/fall mornings (10+ kW production on
| a sub-1kW house draw for long periods of the day). It's not a big
| deal with only a few people on the grid, but if every house were
| doing this, it would be a very big problem for grid stability.
|
| I've also got experience with the off-grid lifestyle, as my
| office is 100% off-grid/standalone, and I don't pretend that
| system is cheap. Just neat. And even with 5kW of solar hung for a
| ~100 sq ft shed, I still need propane or a generator in the
| winter every now and then to keep things sane in here.
| turtlebits wrote:
| Energy efficiency is always good, and I'm glad the government
| is incentivizing it.
|
| A passive house can have 10% the energy cost/use of a regular
| "code" house. Even off grid, this can immensely help in the
| size of your battery required.
| londons_explore wrote:
| This isn't a problem as long as your grid does dynamic minute
| by minute pricing.
|
| When the price of power drops to zero in the spring/fall, you
| can be sure there will be plenty of people lapping it up to
| smelt aluminium, make glass, make steel, make cement, liquify
| air, make hydrogen, etc.
|
| When the price of power is high in the winter, companies will
| swoop in with gas turbines, power cables from other places, and
| extra insulation to keep houses warm with lower energy costs.
| Entrepreneurs will see this coming, and will be there ready to
| provide power or power-saving measures to those who did not
| prepare.
|
| As long as the market can set a price, the market will solve
| each problem. The people to lose out will be customers who
| don't adapt to keep their costs down - for example those who
| heat their 1960's uninsulated home with electric baseboard
| heaters.
|
| There are already plenty of seasonal industries - like tourism.
| Power hungry industries will become seasonal or migratory too.
| eppp wrote:
| I have been toying with the idea of buying used panels in bulk
| and doing the same, but the payoff just isnt there at the
| current battery price. What kind of frame did you install to
| mount the panels? I have tons of room for ground mount and
| would love to do it diy as soon as the costs line up.
| Syonyk wrote:
| My system is grid tie, because the local plans review process
| and I didn't see eye-to-eye on batteries. I have a solar
| power trailer for backup power.
|
| https://www.sevarg.net/tag/solar2020/ documents the build. My
| frames are timber, though a neighbor built a very similar
| system with metal frames and 72 cell panels, and got his
| costs down quite a bit further - he's around $1/W installed,
| mine was somewhat higher at about $1.50/W (more expensive
| panels and a good bit more expensive frame setup).
|
| If you can weld, and find used pipe to build your frames
| with, you should be able to do sub-$1/W for a DIY install.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| No welding is needed, you can use metal clamps to hold the
| pipes together. I have my panels on metal structure with no
| welding, I used bolts for joins.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Yes, but the clamps I've found designed for that sort of
| use are quite expensive, and add a substantial margin to
| the project cost - and they're not needed if you can weld
| it up, or have someone else weld it up.
|
| As I understand NEC from talking to various people and
| reading quite a bit of it myself, someone else can do the
| frames for a homeowner installed solar project, but
| "rails and up" has to either be the homeowner or a
| licensed electrician, because the rails are typically
| considered part of the grounding system and therefore
| electrical work.
|
| In any case, costs doing it yourself are far, far lower
| than paying someone else to do it. And ground mount is an
| awful lot nicer to work with than roof mount.
| loeg wrote:
| What do you use pipes for?
| jrs235 wrote:
| What if instead of batteries you hooked up a boiler to heat
| water or a deep chest freezer to cool water and then used
| heat exchangers to heat or cool overnight when solar doesn't
| work? I'm assuming no one does this because batteries are
| likely cheaper than this type of setup.
| Syonyk wrote:
| You're welcome to do that, and it's something some off grid
| systems use, but the energy storage in that sort of thing
| is fairly poor. Go do the math on it, but you'll find a 55
| gallon drum of water, from "room temperature" to "really
| darn hot" holds 15-20kWh of energy. It's useful, but not a
| staggeringly large amount for a typical house, that can
| easily use more than that on a single day's heating.
|
| Thermal mass storage requires a _lot_ of mass to do
| anything useful, or the ability to run exceedingly high
| temperatures. Or a phase change. Molten salt storage can
| store a lot of energy, but you 're at "very hazardously
| hot" temperatures with "stuff that's mind-bogglingly
| corrosive when hazardously hot." It's not the sort of thing
| most people would want to mess with at home. Myself
| included, and my tolerance for experimentation is pretty
| darn high.
| Someone wrote:
| > It's useful, but not a staggeringly large amount for a
| typical house, that can easily use more than that on a
| single day's heating.
|
| This article isn't talking about typical houses of today.
| The typical future house should be a lot better
| insulated.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Sounds like you need a geothermal ground loop.
| Syonyk wrote:
| I live on what can be reasonably approximated as a "pile of
| rocks." It's fairly thin dirt on top of a lot of basalt. I've
| considered it, but the cost to install such a unit is quite
| staggering, before I buy a backhoe to install it.
|
| I'll consider one of those if I have to replace my unit at
| some point, but I'm far more interested in adding simple
| solar thermal collectors to directly add energy from the sun
| on the partly cloudy or clear days we have, vs ripping up
| half an acre of rock to put the loops in, or figuring out
| where I can punch another well for heat exchange.
| ajross wrote:
| > it doesn't fundamentally solve the problem that [...]
|
| Is that the "fundamental" problem being solved, though? Or is
| it just an externality that needs to be addressed? It seems
| like the "fundamental" problem here is trying to maximize
| deployment of renewable generation, and that construction like
| this is a great step in that direction. (Not the least of which
| because it pushes the investment required onto consumers
| willing to bear the costs, and "generates jobs" in the process.
| Siting a new wind farm is a ton more complicated, and let's not
| even talk about the difficulty of installing a scratch-built
| reactor.)
|
| I mean, it's true, that at the end of the day home energy
| generation is just PV solar, and PV solar doesn't behave like
| gas plants and that needs to be addressed at the grid level.
| But that's not an argument against PV solar, it's just an
| engineering problem.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _But that 's not an argument against PV solar..._
|
| It can certainly be an argument against residential rooftop
| solar.
|
| In general, "industrial solar" (ground mount, high voltage
| strings, single axis trackers) is sub-$1/W installed.
| Residential rooftop solar is still $2.50-$4/W depending on
| where you are, because it has quite a few additional
| requirements (per-panel rapid shutdown in NEC 2017, various
| other requirements on the panel and interconnects that add
| cost), and, _often,_ poor siting from partial shading reasons
| (chimneys, vent stacks, trees, other bits of roof, etc).
|
| I don't mind making homes more suited to solar (oversize the
| main busbar with a "solar ready" panel, route conduit up to
| the roof, require all vent stacks be on the north side of the
| roof), but it's a rather uncontrolled solution that's of
| limited "actually solving the problem" use. Low levels of
| penetration are easy to deal with, higher levels start to get
| really hard, when you've got whole subdivisions shifting from
| "lots of production" to "lots of consumption" as clouds go
| over.
|
| Or, we get used to less reliable, more intermittent energy
| again, and a lot of the problems go away. Just, that
| generates other problems.
|
| The power grid is a lot more fragile than most people assume.
| ajross wrote:
| > Low levels of penetration are easy to deal with, higher
| levels start to get really hard
|
| Well, yeah. So pick the low hanging fruit and sell it to
| the FAANG hippies. I still fail to see the problem here. No
| one is promoting rooftop solar as a one-stop-shop trip to
| renewable utopia, just as a effective and immediately
| deployable generation mechanism in a regulatory environment
| not well-suited to agile and rapid solutions of any kind.
|
| If we get to the point where the hippies are buying up all
| the panels and the grid solutions can't get them cheap
| enough, that's the time to start complaining. Not now.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Once use cases like yours become more common (e.g. 4MWh
| surplus), industries will adjust and buy surplus power from
| homeowners like you, and the nation as a whole will spend less
| time and effort on maintaining the grid and power plants that
| generate electricity.
|
| We will be able to run power-hungry industries (e.g. steel-
| aluminum/smelting) for very little cost.
|
| > And even with 5kW of solar hung for a ~100 sq ft shed, I
| still need propane or a generator in the winter every now and
| then to keep things sane in here.
|
| What about a large thermal mass wood/pellet stove? There's
| plenty of wood waste floating around that could heat a small
| house/shed in the couple of winter months when the solar panels
| don't do the job.
| jonfw wrote:
| If we expect industry to take up the excess, than either 1.
| that industry will only operate according to the weather or
| 2. We'll still need some variable power generation that can
| be switched on when wind or solar isn't producing enough
| Symbiote wrote:
| A few industrial users can weather changes in supply, with
| notice of the expected price in advance.
|
| The aluminium smelter can heat to x+250deg, let things cool
| to xdeg while people cook their evening meal, then heat up
| again afterwards.
|
| A large supermarket chain can set their refrigerators to
| 5deg, but by allowing the range to move between 3deg and
| 7deg can save significant power. (One of the big British
| supermarkets already does this.)
| Syonyk wrote:
| Wrong way. The house has pulled an extra 4MWh from the grid
| during the winter months (and pushes more than that back
| during the rest of the year). I'm past net zero on an annual
| basis, but that doesn't mean that even a large array is able
| to cover my energy needs in the winter few months.
|
| I'm grandfathered into an arrangement where I pay my $5/mo
| and get unlimited net metering, but it's not remotely
| reasonable to pretend that I'm not heavily using the grid
| overnight, in the winter, etc.
| eppp wrote:
| You still have to maintain the grid for others to buy it and
| to balance it. The maintenance costs of the grid are going no
| where but up. More usage, more right of way, more towers,
| more wire, more labor.
| notShabu wrote:
| A GPT blurb about what goes into a zero energy ready home:
|
| >
|
| There are several core technologies and products that go into
| creating a Zero Energy Ready Home. These include:
|
| Advanced insulation materials: These materials are used to reduce
| heat loss and gain through walls, roofs, and floors. Examples of
| advanced insulation materials include spray foam insulation,
| rigid foam insulation, and blown-in cellulose insulation.
|
| High-performance windows: These windows are designed to minimize
| heat loss and gain and to improve comfort and natural lighting.
| They typically have low-e coatings, multiple panes, and insulated
| frames.
|
| Efficient heating, cooling, and ventilation systems: These
| systems use advanced technologies to reduce energy consumption
| and provide a comfortable indoor environment. Examples include
| geothermal heat pumps, air-source heat pumps, and energy recovery
| ventilation systems.
|
| Solar panels: These panels are used to generate renewable energy
| and can be installed on the roof or integrated into the building
| envelope. They can provide enough energy to power the home and
| even send excess energy back to the grid.
|
| Energy-efficient appliances and lighting: These products use less
| energy than conventional models and can help further reduce
| energy consumption in the home.
|
| Building automation systems: These systems allow homeowners to
| control and monitor energy use and other home systems remotely,
| which can help optimize energy efficiency and comfort.
|
| Producers of these products include a variety of companies, from
| large multinational corporations to smaller regional
| manufacturers. Some examples of companies that produce products
| for Zero Energy Ready Homes include Owens Corning and Johns
| Manville for insulation, Andersen and Marvin for windows, Carrier
| and Lennox for HVAC systems, SunPower and Tesla for solar panels,
| and Nest and Ecobee for smart thermostats. There are many other
| companies and products available, and choosing the right ones
| depends on factors such as climate, building design, and budget.
|
| >
| Syonyk wrote:
| Congratulations, you've found something to describe, in a dull
| and useless way, the concept of energy efficiency in a home.
| Blown-in cellulose is "advanced," huh?
|
| It doesn't answer any of the specific questions about what's
| specifically different in a Zero Energy Ready Home from
| something Energy Star rated, and it's filled with weasel words
| and vague handwaving statements.
|
| I could nitpick the response further against the actual PDF
| linked elsewhere in the thread, but there's no particular
| point.
| milliams wrote:
| "Zero-energy ready homes" or "Zero energy-ready homes"?
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| There are some good ideas here that I hope take off like
| ventilating dehumidifiers. So much of what we perceive as
| discomfort in our homes comes down to the humidity rising and
| stale air.
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