IntelEfficient

Each day, as the sun rises and travels across the sky, an immense amount of energy is lavished on our planet.  An oft-cited statistic is that more solar energy falls on the earth in one hour than what is used by the entire population in a year.  In fact, most (almost half) of this energy is stored in the ground as heat.  This time of year, it doesn’t feel like there’s much warmth to spare, but you can certainly capture it and use it to heat your home.

If you’re building a home, your builder or architect could design it to take advantage of passive solar heating.  With this concept, the building is oriented so that the southern façade has lots of windows and a wide roof overhang.  In the summertime, when the sun is high in the sky, the overhang shades the windows like an awning to keep the building cool.  When the sun is lower in the sky in the winter, the sun’s rays shine freely through the windows to warm the floor.  A concrete floor with tile is an ideal surface to store the heat well into the evening.  The concrete floor can also use radiant heat as a quiet mainstay heating source. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the early 80’s, I wrote a term paper on integrated control systems for the home.  At the time, this was leading edge technology that promised the ability to program thermostats, security, lights and appliances, and control these devices remotely.  Since then, much of this has become an affordable reality.

Programmable thermostats are about as common as mobile phones these days.  There’s no sense heating and cooling your home to be comfortable when you’re not there, so if you have a reasonably predictable schedule, get one of these.  Laclede Gas will even pay about half the cost with their $25 rebate.  You can even set it to drop the temperature a few degrees while you’re under the covers at night, and have the house warmed up by the time your alarm goes off. Read the rest of this entry »

What if every single act of design and construction made the world a better place?  That’s the fundamental question posed by the International Living Building Institute, which created a new building standard that seeks to promote true sustainability in the world’s built environment.

When the leaders of Washington University’s Tyson Research Center in Eureka started planning to expand their facility, they wanted a new building that was “over the top green.”  John Chase, director of the facility, found out about the Living Building Challenge, and decided that this was the certification they wanted to pursue.

The Living Building Challenge uses a flower to symbolize sustainable structures, where the building becomes an extension of the environment in which it is placed.  The LBC calls for each building to produce all of its own energy from renewable resources, and capture and treat all of its own water and waste.  This involves efficiency and conservation, but the standard also includes beauty in the building design.  The ILBI uses the petals of a flower to represent the primary facets of sustainable building, including site selection, water, energy, health, materials, equity, and beauty.  This standard is more stringent that LEED certification (the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard), with mandatory requirements that form an “all or nothing” certification.

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I remember as a child the commercial about a popular glass-cleaner encouraging the viewer to “bring all the sun in.”  There is an energizing feeling to have bright, natural daylight pouring into a room.  While dark, quiet spaces may have their place, a well-lit room is an inviting space to work and play.

Studies in the early part of the twentieth century showed that increasing light levels in factories had a positive effect on production, and industrial engineers looked for ways to capitalize on this idea.  As electricity became an increasingly insignificant cost of production, buildings were designed to replace natural light and ventilation with artificial light and air-conditioning.  Over time, we learned that natural light plays a key role in the body’s biological rhythms, immune system and brain chemistry.  Numerous studies have shown that daylight has a positive effect on health, productivity, learning, and general well-being in schools, offices and retail spaces.  So it’s only logical that these same benefits would be experienced at home, too.

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The feeling of fresh, warm water on your face in the morning shower is soothing, refreshing and invigorating.  The feeling of sunshine on your shoulders is equally therapeutic – in modest doses of course.  Imagine combining these two to naturally warm water with sunshine, and you have a match made in heaven.

 We’ve actually been doing this for years – at least in the summer and in warmer climates.  Some of the earliest versions of solar water heaters were simply metal tanks sitting out in the sun in the southwestern United States.  The Climax brand solar water heater was first marketed in California in 1890.  By the 1950’s, half of the homes built in south Florida had a solar water heating system.  But when the utilities started promoting cheap energy, the systems were no longer cost-effective.

These original systems were only practical in the warmer climates, because the thermo-siphon systems can’t survive a hard freeze.  So, rather than heating the water directly, a separate heat transfer fluid (typically glycol) is used to capture the warmth from the sun and circulate that through a heat exchanger in the hot water storage tank.  This closed-loop system is the most common way of heating water with solar energy.

Solar water heating systems used to be practical but not pretty.  In earlier models, both the tanks and collector panels were mounted on a south-facing roof.  These systems tended to be clunky and visually unappealing.  As the closed-loop systems became more common, insulated storage tanks were installed indoors.  The most efficient collector panel is made of evacuated tubes, which have a vacuum seal and virtually no heat loss.  These work better in colder climates and on overcast days, and are well suited for commercial or heavy-duty applications. Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah Heyman and her family have always been conservative when it comes to consumption.  They are far from the ordinary family: Sarah rides her bike to work, and since they live near bus and MetroLink stops, they often use mass transit to get around.  As a result, they have made a critical choice to live with a single car, which they use whenever necessary or convenient.  “I’ve been doing this kind of thing my whole life – it’s a great way to live!” says Sarah.

When their water heater began to fail last year, Sarah and her husband Michael wanted to explore alternatives to the traditional hot water tank.  They considered a tankless option, which only heats water on demand so you don’t have to maintain a body of heated water that you may or may not need.  They also looked at heating their water with solar energy, because these systems typically reduce the energy needed to heat water by 50 to 80 percent.  While it’s often difficult to accurately determine how much money is spent heating water, in the average home typically 20% of the total energy consumed is used to heat water.  Read the rest of this entry »

A thermographic image shows cool winter air coming in an outlet on an exterior wall

Did you know that in the average home, about half of the energy consumed is wasted?  There are a number of contributors to this phenomenon, including inefficient lighting & appliances and bad habits, but the main culprit is the shell of your home.  Your biggest energy expense it heating and cooling your home, so the more you can do to minimize heat transfer, the less work your furnace and air conditioner have to do.

Many homebuilders are now much more aware of the importance of creating a tight building envelope, and some homes are so tight that they need a ventilation system to bring in fresh air.  But if you’re in an older home, you probably have the equivalent of a two- or three-foot square window open, bringing heat inside in the summer and letting it out in the winter.  This hole is the sum total of all of the poor seals around doors, windows, pipes, ductwork and electrical outlets.  There are a variety of ways to seal these leaks, including caulk, weatherstripping and expanding foam.  This is an important first step in tightening up your home. Read the rest of this entry »

When Gary Pawelko and his partner Diana Figueroa built their home in Wentzville, they carefully considered the many options available, doing their best to imagine this new space and how things would fit together.  Unfortunately, they didn’t realize until the home was finished that the kitchen, where they spent a large portion of their time, was always dark and required artificial lighting.  They spent a year and a half regretting the missed opportunity to include skylights in the original design, and finally concluded that this add-on project would be necessary to open up the space to provide the natural light they were yearning for.  

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Phillip's new LED bulb may be the new standard in light bulbs

 The traditional incandescent light bulb has long been a symbol for an idea, as in “when the light goes on.”  Since Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879, this technology has become the dominant standard for electric lighting.  The filaments in the bulbs are heated to incandescence by an electric current, which is why the bulbs are very hot to touch.  This lighting technology is actually very inefficient, as only 10 percent of the electricity is converted to light, and 90 percent of the energy is waste heat. 

Fluorescent lighting uses electricity to excite mercury vapor, which produces ultraviolet light that causes a phosphor to fluoresce.  The long, tube-shaped fluorescent lights have long been the dominant lighting standard in the workplace because they use much less energy than incandescent lights.  Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) have become a popular alternative to incandescent lights in traditional fixtures.  Like their tubular cousins, CFLs use only a quarter of the energy that an incandescent light uses while producing the same amount of light (which is measured in lumens.)  The curly CFL has become an iconic representation of the “green” movement, but must be disposed of carefully because of the mercury that is contained inside the bulb. Read the rest of this entry »