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19 comments on Green Buildings, Green Queens? Green LA?
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IMO, the best move you can make is to properly orient your house or building to take advantage of sunlight - passive solar design, passivhaus, etc. But this almost never happens in commercial construction. Business owners orient their glass to the street and the streets are not laid out with passive solar in mind.
Around 1988, a friend showed me one service station in Cheshire CT that was built into a berm and faced away from the main road. You had to drive in and down to the back of the site to pump gas. I wish I could say it was successful, but it seemed to change owners a lot and the last time I visited Cheshire it wasn't even a service station. Even with signage the store was almost invisible among the usual street-facing gas stations. People are used to seeing if there are pumps open, if the lights are on, etc. as they drive by.
You have more flexibility with a house, but most spec house builders orient large windows to the street for curb appeal, not for consideration of solar gain.
I have the land paid for and some money for a structure.
I like the concept of http://tierraconcretehomes.com/ and it is the most efficient according to the NREL - http://www.nrel.gov/buildings/
But I feel a similar building cold be accomplished with a steel frame and foam insulation on the outside.
Or possibly "cement sip's"
My concern with superinsulation is that it can trap moisture within the walls, and gases inside the house. Some builders solve this with electrically-powered mechanical ventilation, but given what I see elsewhere in the world, I would prefer some sort of ventilation that doesn't rely on the power grid.
The need for mechanical ventilation is very climate and operation dependent.
Relative humidity is so low in Colorado that moisture build-up inside houses is very rarely a problem, not so in the Northeast and Northwest.
The first step for indoor air quality is to avoid introducing contaminants (unvented gas stoves are terrible). Not installing new indoor petrochemical products (carpet, upholstery, cabinet finishes,etc.) does a lot for IAQ too. If the solar gain area is slightly oversized, rather than mechanical venting, simple convection venting by opening a high window on sunny days is quite practical.
I've also been in old houses in Baltimore that simply have a fan in the attic, and no air conditioning. They had high ceilings in each room. They were quite cool, and in a Baltimore July that is saying something!
I'm thinking a lot of these older strategies will be rediscovered.
http://r2000.chba.ca/
this has been tackled, the problem of ventilation. In fact, better to have it controlled in a highly insulated house, than the sort of uncontrolled that goes on now.
R2000 homes have been around for 25 years in Canada, and have a pretty good record. I'm not sure if there is an equivalent US standard.
AFAIK you can build one of these without requiring mechanical ventilation.
Not according to this:
http://r2000.chba.ca/What_is_R2000/R2000_standard.php
Oops, missed it. Mea culpa.
http://www.passivhaus.org.uk/
also uses a mechanical system.
If you wanted to do without a mechanical system at all, and you live in a hot-cold (but dry) climate (Rocky Mountains) then a very traditional building design might serve eg as with Moroccan houses.