THE HAYFIELD HOUSE

A Homeowner's Quest for Sustainable Building

Category: Insulation

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Air source heat pumps / Design / Heating / Insulation / Lessons Learned / Performance Metrics / Sustainable Building

It’s Important to Measure the Performance of Your Net-zero House. — I’m glad I did.

Measuring the performance (“EUI”) of your zero net-energy house is important. There is a saying, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure”. Without measuring, you don’t know how energy efficient your house is. Fortunately, I measured and found out my house wasn’t performing as expected. What did I measure? What did I find? And how did I fix the problem? The standard metric to measure the performance of a net-zero house is to calculate the energy-use intensity (“EUI”). As a refresher as to what EUI is and how to measure it, click here. Ideally, the EUI for a zero net-energy should be below15, and definitely below 20. The EUI for THE HAYFIELD HOUSE is about 15, but I wish it was even lower.– I’ll explain...

Blower Door Test

Design / Insulation / Lessons Learned / Performance Metrics / Sustainable Building / ZNE Homes Examples

What’s the Secret Recipe to get to Zero Net-Energy

A SECRET RECIPE TO GET TO NET-ZERO??? One of the reasons why many homebuilders shy away from building a zero net-energy home is that it sounds so complicated.  The various experts don’t help with their barrage of technical advice on building design, insulation strategies, computer modeling, inspections, auditing, testing, etc.  Furthermore, a discussion of incremental costs is frequently lacking. — Instead, homeowners just want someone to tell them in simple terms how to get to net-zero, and what it will cost. What’s the secret recipe?  The best recipe that I’ve currently found is provided in the book The New Net Zero, by William Maclay and Maclay Architects.  Their recipe is based on experience, so I expect it works quite well in the Northern New England...