Celebration at Midori Haus: Millionth Square Meter of Passive House

February 1, 2015

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Bjorn Kierluf presenting Millionth Square Meter of Passive House Award – photo by Claire Darling

Date: February 20, 2015

Time: 3:00 pm
Place: Midori Haus
Special Guests: Bjorn Kierulf, Andrew Michler, Mayor Don Lane, Leslie Villegas (Senator Bill Monning’s staff)

In December 2014 Midori Haus received the official certificate for Passive House Certification from Passivhaus Institut in Germany, marking the milestone of millionth square meter of Passive House around the world. See the international press release here.

What Is Passive House?

Passive House is a performance-based energy standard in construction. Results from buildings constructed using the Passive House approach show 80% ~ 90% less energy is used to keep it comfortable. This voluntary standard is internationally recognized and applies to all types of buildings, not just single family homes.

Why Is this Significant?

It’s a glimpse into the future of housing. Midori Haus demonstrates that a 93-year old house can have extraordinary energy performance (80% reduction in energy compared to pre-remodel, without applying solar electric panels) and still retain the charm of the original Craftsman architecture. Energy bills from PGE show that significant reduction of home energy use is possible for all seasons of the year. Occupants enjoy comfortable temperature and good indoor air quality for the life of the building. Building owners can do this today by following the Passive House Standard, which has over 20 year track record for reducing energy usage in a buildings.

In his inaugural speech on January 5, 2015, California Governor, Jerry Brown unveiled ambitious energy goals:

“…we are well on our way to meeting our AB 32 goal of reducing carbon pollution and limiting the emissions of heat-trapping gases to 431 million tons by 2020. But now, it is time to establish our next set of objectives for 2030 and beyond.Toward that end, I propose three ambitious goals to be accomplished within the next 15 years:Increase from one-third to 50 percent our electricity derived from renewable sources;Reduce today’s petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent;Double the efficiency of existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner.”

Midori Haus shows that Passive House Standard easily lead the path towards the Governor’s goal of doubling the efficiency of existing buildings.

About Midori Haus

Originally built in 1922, the 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom single story house was remodeled in 2012 to the Passive House Standard. The house retained the original foundation, floor, framing, porch, built-in furniture, as well as the interior trims and accents. Utility bills from PG&E showed that the energy consumption did indeed drop by 80%.

Midori Haus – photo by Kurt Hurley

Design and Passive House Services: Graham Irwin, Essential Habitat
Construction: Taylor Darling, Santa Cruz Green Builders

Please refer to the following post for details on energy and water.
Energy Usage: How Much Energy Did We Use In Our First Year?
Water Usage: Water Efficiency Features

Contact: [email protected]

Don Lane, Mayor of City of Santa Cruz, shares his observation of Midori Haus transformation – photo by Bronwyn Barry

Leslie Villegas from Senator Bill Monning’s office presenting Certificate of Recognition from California Senate
– photo by Bronwyn Barry

Taylor Darling, General Contractor, and Graham Irwin, Architect and Passive House Consultant – photo by Claire Darling

Midori Haus Team: Taylor Darling, Graham Irwin, Tom Nedelsky, Pat Splitt, Chie Kawahara, Kurt Hurley
– photo by Bronwyn Barry

Keeping Cool During Heat Wave

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May 21, 2014

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We continue to be very happy with our Passive House.

Last week we had a bit of heat wave here. It was unusual for Santa Cruz to have 3 consecutive days of temperatures in the mid to high nineties. The chart below show the daily high and low temperatures (in Fahrenheit) in our area. The Weather Cat weather station is located just 2 miles away from Midori Haus and is in a similar residential area so it provides good representative historical weather data for us.

What was really unusual about the heat wave last week was that Santa Cruz was about 10 degrees warmer than San Jose. Normally it’s the opposite. Have a look at this map below. Even if Santa Cruz is south of San Jose the cool ocean temperature keeps the area mild and comfortable. So I was surprised on Thursday last week when we drove back from Berkeley to see the temperature sensor on my car showing 96 degrees in Santa Cruz when it was only 85 degrees in San Jose.

When we got home and stepped into the house it felt comfortable. And we have no air conditioning. Because of the super insulation and air tightness of the house the temperature inside the house stayed in the mid seventies during the entire time. Here is an example of the temperature reading inside the house showing 23-28 degrees cooler than the outside.

Plotting the periodic temperature readings on this graph you’ll notice that the internal temperature stays in a narrow band while the external temperature swings wildly.

While passive house dramatically retards the heat transfer from the outside to inside (during summer) and from the inside to the outside (during winter) it does take a little bit of conscious action by the homeowner to optimize the comfort. Let me show you what I mean.

First is shading. Our deck that extends to the back yard faces south. This is great in the winter because the 2 rooms facing south receive lots of good solar heat gain when it’s cold and the sun angle is low. During the summer we want to keep the sun out. So on Wednesday evening Kurt took out the canvas shade cloth and installed them over the arbor. Originally we had intended to grow some plants to provide natural shading, perhaps grapes or kiwi. But we chose not to go down that path because the shade cloth provides us with more flexibility. After the first summer we decided to keep these shade cloth as a permanent seasonal solution rather than rely on plants because it’s easier to maintain. Here’s a picture of that.

Another part of the shading is inside the house. We have these roller shades installed over the windows. The ones on the south side of the house are all made of light-blocking thicker material we got from Advanced Blind & Shades, and they are manufactured locally.

Then there is the setting on the heat recovery ventilator (HRV). To minimize bringing in excess heat during the heat wave we set the control on the Zehnder ComfoAir 350 HRV to “A” during the day to reduce the ventilation flow down to 23.5 cfm from the normal 95 cfm at “2” setting.

The Zehnder ComfoAir 350, as with other heat recovery ventilators, has the ability to perform passive night time cooling in climates where hot daytime summer temperatures are followed by cool evening temperatures. These are climates in which one would normally open the windows at night.
Using the HRV “Summer Bypass Mode” allows all the benefit of night time cooling with the windows the added benefit of retaining the filtration of air introduced into the home interior. It allows for a cooling to a precise user selected set point and then resumes its temporarily defeated heat exchange function.

Finally, we open the windows and let the cool air in during early morning. As you’ve seen from the daily low temperature in from the Weather Cat table above it gets nice and cool overnight. Typically in the mid to high fifties even during the heat wave. This really helps to reset the internal temperature before the day heats up again.

By the way, this night or early morning cooling works because the ocean temperature is pretty constant and cool throughout the year. The table below is the average ocean water temperature from NOAA. You can see from the table that the water temperature just a mile away from our house is abut 56 degrees Fahrenheit, plus or minus 3 degrees. Once the sun goes down the cool ocean water cools the air so the overnight temperature is consistently cool. That’s why homes in Santa Cruz don’t have air conditioning.

Because we don’t have air conditioning we don’t use extra electricity during hot weather. Our electricity usage continues to stay pretty low during the heat wave of May 13-15, 2014. Below is the screen shot from PG&E, our local utility, showing our electricity usage for the current month.

We are happy to be comfortable in our Passive House that uses very little energy.

How Much Energy Did We Use In Our First Year?

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March 17, 2014

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About one year ago I cut off 30-inches of my hair
and donated the half-pound of hair to Locks of Love, an
organization that makes wigs for children. I’ve done this a few times
before and it makes me feel good. In the past friends would often ask me,
“How’s your house project coming along?” and at times it seemed to go
on forever. So at one point I started telling everyone, “You’ll know
when it’s done because I’ll cut off my hair and donate them. If you see
me with short hair that means the house is done!” So I was quite
happy when I had this photo taken because it meant the house was done and I
didn’t need the extra insulation to keep me warm.

Now that we’ve been living in Midori Haus for one
year it’s time we share our energy data for the first year of occupancy.
You might recall from my previous post where we compared our energy
data for the first 8 months in Midori Haus with the energy data from the
slightly smaller condo we used to live in. We were pleased with the
comparison of spring-summer data where our total energy use at Midori Haus
proved to be much lower than the smaller condo. Now that we have the
energy data for the winter season it’s even better. Let me show you some
graphs.

If you are a PG&E customer, the above graphs
will be familiar to you. You can log into your account at pge.com and
select the “My Usage” tab to track, compare, and monitor your energy
usage. They do a nice job of comparing your energy usage with similar
homes in the area. Similar homes in the context of Midori Haus is 100
homes with similar square footage (1560 in our case) within half-mile radius
that are heated by natural gas. At Midori Haus we let the sun do the
warming most of the time but when the sun is not shining the gas boiler
provides make-up heat for the hot water tank and the hot water warms the house.
Since there is not a category for “mostly sun-heated house” we
technically fall into the category of “heated by natural gas.”

In this past year (March 1, 2013 through February
28, 2014) we used a lot less energy than similar homes. The total energy
use at Midori Haus was 4,334 kWh
compared to 19,596 kWh for similar homes. Our Midori Haus used 2,869 kWh
of electricity and a scant 50 therms (this is equivalent to 1,465 kWh) of
natural gas while similar homes used 5,118 kWh of electricity and 494 therms
(this is equivalent to 14,478 kWh) of natural gas. To put it in another
way, Midori Haus used only 22% of the total energy used by similar homes in the
past year.

By the way, we were comfortable inside and we do
not have PV (solar electric) to offset our electricity usage. We plan to
do so in the future but it was important for us to start from the most
efficient house before we put in PV.

This next graph is very validating. We’re
fortunate to have copies of the energy bills from the prior owner of the house.
The seller was friendly and ordered PG&E to send copies of the past
energy bill to us for the years 200 and 2006. Back then there were 3 elderly
occupants in the house and they used gas furnace to heat the house and perhaps some electric space heating too. Their energy bill from March
2005 through February 2006 is a good basis of comparison with our first year of
post-retrofit occupancy at Midori Haus because many things about the house is
the same: same square footage, same foundation, mostly same framing, same
floor, same roof, and we kept the original built-in-furniture (dining room
buffet) in place. So the reduction in energy use that you see below represents
the performance of the house before (without any insulation or air sealing) and
after (super-insulation, extreme airtightness, minimizing thermal bridges, heat
recovery ventilator, low energy lighting, and low energy appliances).

The prior occupant used 21,928 kWh of energy in one
year. Midori Haus used 4,334 kWh of energy in one year. That is
80% reduction in energy use for the same house! And Midori Haus stays
in a comfortable temperature range year round with good indoor air quality.
Passive House works!

Digging further into gas usage I wanted to see if
there is a correlation between rain and gas usage. So I overlaid the our
daily natural gas usage with rainfall. It’s a bit challenging to see the
details but you’ll notice that the when there is rain (blue column) the natural
gas (red column) follows close by. This confirms that gas boiler turns on
if the sun is not shining. The little blips of gas you see in the summer
months represents outdoor barbecue use. We have natural gas plumbed to
the barbecue on the deck.

The source of rain data is from a local weather
station that I found on the weather underground site. The Weather Cat station
is located just 2 miles away from Midori Haus so it’s a good representative of
the outdoor condition for the past year. Below is a graph of the daily
high and low temperature. What you will see below is that there is always
about 10-30 degrees Fahrenheit temperature difference between the daily high
and daily low. Because of this diurnal swing in the temperature we don’t
need to have air conditioning during the summer because the house will cool off
at night if we simply open the windows for an hour or so.

I now present to you a simple conclusion: Passive house works. Up until now we’ve been telling everyone, “Once we have a house built to Passivhaus standard we will use 80% less
energy than similar homes.” Now we can actually show the data where
we have used 80% less energy than similar homes. Don’t you want your home to be
passive house too? :)