The Joys of Energy Performance
There has been a lot of discussion regarding alternative fuels and their integration into single family housing. You've seen solar panels at home shows and in magazines. You may have even seen windmills or wind generators popping up in places. Do not misunderstand, I think these are awesome technologies. How cool will it be to be able to have your home generate more energy that it uses! We could even look to a day when home energy generation rivals home gardening. Just think, one day you could be monitoring your solar garden while you water your blueberries... That will be pretty neat.
What I hope to impart is how important it is to get ready for the future. For those of you old enough to remember the flying cars in "Back to the Future," you'll recall that Doc got a hover conversion done on the Delorian. What we don't have yet is an easy "energy conversion" for our homes.
Let's see if I can explain the boring science in an interesting way that makes some sense....
New Ways for Energy Production
In many ways, air performs like a liquid. It flows through holes, transfers energy (especially heat), and creates turbulence when it moves. Your house is really a big air container, and for our purposes, we'll think of it as a large purse.
Not many women I know want to carry a purse full of water. It would do horrible things to the contents, and it would render all personal hygeine products completely useless, but for our example a purse works pretty good. There is certainly a performance aspect to a purse. It generally has to perform a task, which is to hold stuff, but very few purses are purchased because they are really good stuff holders. How many purses are marketed because of their great potential to carry your goldfish with you?
No, purses are picked more for other reasons. It may be the cool pockets, the way it is organized inside, its style, its color, the manufacturer, and the degree that the purse will increase one's status. Some purses are large, others are small. This too is as much about fashion as it is about function. I don't see many large carpet bag purses in the dance clubs. They don't go well with club wear.
Now imagine that in the future there are flying cars for public use that run on water. Anyone can walk up, pick a car and fly off, but you have to bring your own fuel with you. Everyone would have to carry water with them in case they wanted to go somewhere. Your Gucci purse would need to hold water. How well do you think it would perform? What about the large canvas bag. It will hold water, but not for very long. The looser the weave of the fabric, the faster the water will pour out.
I'm certain that someone would make a fortune on plastic zip lock bags that could be used as a water bladder for your favorite purse, but that's not a very elegant solution. Who wants to carry around plastic bags in their purse? Eventually, someone would realize that the best solution would be a new purse that holds water and looks good. Those would sell for a premium until other designers started to copy their ideas. Sometime later someone might start a conversion service. They might take your favorite purse and convert it with a hidden liner and special water proof pockets which keep the water away from the things it might damage. These conversions would be expensive, but the costs would go down as new methods and technologies are developed to help convert "vintage" purses. Just like Doc's Delorian, eventually, there might be an easy "conversion" as a way to utilize this new technology.
Right now we have technologies to produce energy at a residential scale, and the costs of these technologies are going down. Soon enough we'll be able to include energy generation in our homes at reasonably and affordable rates. How well our existing homes can hold this energy is another question.
New homes can be designed and constructed to be very energy efficient. Modifying an existing home to achieve a similar level of performance is more difficult and can be terribly expensive, but there are some very sound strategies you might consider.
First, make your purse hold water better. For your house that would mean improving the exterior envelope by increasing the wall and attic insulation values, decreasing infiltration rates, employing reflective surfaces on the roof, and maximizing the performance of your windows and doors. Remember, that these efforts should be thought of as a total system rather than single elements. Think of the purse holding water. Taping up one side will help that part hold water better, but the rest of the purse will still leak.
Second, look at your consumption. If you spend more money than you keep in your wallet, it won't matter how big it is. The same is true with energy production. If you use more than you can make, the investment of a very expensive solar system may never pay itself back. Look for key areas of use, decrease plug loads, replace failing appliances with higher efficient models, change to energy saving light fixtures, unplug (or switch) televisions and appliances when not being used. You may be surprised at how much energy you can save and still not affect your convenience.
Thirdly, look for deeper energy savings in the replacement of key equipment. Furnaces, water heaters, and air conditioners represent a significant amount of the total energy used in this country. After you have found ways to use less by improving your purse, you may consider looking at employing more efficient equipment. The amount of energy saved in converting from an 80% efficient furnace to a 95% furnace could be enough to pay for the change in five years.
Your Grandmother surely taught you the old saying that "a penny saved is a penny earned." This is especially true of energy. Saving energy saves you money, plus it puts you in a really good position for when you are able to grow energy in your garden. You'll be in a better place to be able to take advantage of that future "hover conversion." Planning for the future will help you live better now.
The best part of Tron: Legacy
You may have seen the recent Tron movie. I enjoyed it. The plot and graphics were decent, Daft Punk did a good job with the sound track, and the 3D was quite good. I liked the light cycles in the original Tron, and the ones in this version were no less compelling. Sam, the protagonist in the movie rode a Ducati and that's cool too, but the best part of the movie was Sam's apartment.
Perhaps you remember Sam riding his Ducati back from his quick stint in jail. He rode into an industrial type building, parked his bike next to the couch, and then let the glazed garage door close behind him. Do you happen to recall the building or what it was made of?
Sam's cool bachelor pad was made out of shipping containers. They were stacked like Lincoln Logs. The central living area was created by two containers on the ends, two across the top, and garage doors on each end. Sam didn't even paint his containers. He left them in their true industrial state.
First of all, I have to say that parking your motorcycle in your living room is totally cool. Perhaps not a safe or practical idea since most gasoline engines smell and even though contained in a rated storage gas tank, gasoline is very flammable. Regardless, parking your motorcycle next to the couch is very cool.
Building houses out of storage containers is even more cool. Container architecture is really exciting. The dimensions are narrow and low for standard construction, but the repurposing of used containers to housing is quintessentially green, structurally compelling, and fun. The containers stack like Lego blocks. They can be welded together, allow for long cantilevers, and are inherently structural given their primary purpose.
We had the opportunity to do a container house design. The challenges are insulation, wiring, and integration of mechanical systems. But despite these challenges, the simplicity of construction and the modularization inherent in the container allow for compelling architecture. In many ways, container construction is the fulfillment of the modernist architecture ideals. Containers are massed produced, exist all over the world, and represent the most efficient use of materials for their intended use.
Containers are cool. Container houses are really cool.
Take a moment and do a Google images search on "container houses." What is being done in container building is amazing. Who would have thought that the future of construction would be the re-purposing of industrial waste? Who knows, maybe in twenty more years we'll be parking our electric light cycles inside our container houses next to our recycled content couches...... That would be SUPER cool!
