EC Houses

Heat and the Earth Charter-house

By John Taylor; 2007 September 20, 13 Izzat, 164 BE

Library due dates are the bane of my life. In August I was in the middle of George Monbiot's revolutionary discussion of possible solutions to the climate crisis, called "Heat, How to Stop the Planet from Burning," when I had to take it back. Only yesterday did I remember to pick up another copy of the book from the Dunnville branch of the Haldimand Public Library and continue where I had left off, at Chapter Four, "Leaky Homes." This is a very important chapter for me, since so much of my thought over the past several years has concentrated on how to improve our housing mess.

Like me, Monbiot's search for a better dwelling began in his attempts to redeem his own home. Like me, he soon threw up his hands in despair at the futility of even trying. It costs thousands to undo what could have cost the original builder pennies to do, if they had done it right in the first place. Unlike me, however, Monbiot points to a quick and easy solution: better regulation and enforcement. His chapter makes a convincing case that all it would take to assure efficient housing would be to make up rules and follow them.

As it is, governments are in an ideological quagmire; according to the New York Times this week, the toy and other industries in the States are coming to the government, hat in hand, begging for rules and regulations, and they are being turned away. The housing industry is among the worst victims of our leaders' internalized renunciation of what God put them there to do. As Monbiot points out, it is often cheaper to build a house right in the beginning than to mess up the job. But it is the same old story, rank corruption. What is most amazing and unbelievable is that if proper building standards were adopted we would no longer have to pay heating bills! People are paying hundreds of dollars a month, summer and winter, unnecessarily, just because our leaders ignore an established solution to heating bills, the German Passivhaus standard. This is his explanation of how this works, as set out on his blog:

"In Germany there are now some 4000 homes built to the Passivhaus standard. A Passivhaus is a house without radiators, fan heaters, stoves, air conditioners or any other kind of heating or cooling device. The only heat it requires is produced by sunlight coming through the windows and by the bodies of the people who live there. A study of over 100 passive homes showed they had a mean indoor temperature of 21.4 degrees during the bitter German winter. That’s 2.4 degrees warmer than the average British home. All that distinguishes them from other houses is that they are built properly. They are airtight (the air which enters the house comes through a heat exchange system) and have no thermal bridges -material which can conduct heat from the inside of the house to the outside. The windows are matched carefully to the volume of the house. Because they have no active heating systems, they are not much more expensive to build than ordinary houses. A development of 20 homes in Freiburg, with a measured energy saving of 79%, cost just 7% more than a typical building of the same kind." (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/05/30/the-inspectors-who-look-the-other-way/)

Monbiot is becoming so well known in England that airline industry bigwigs (the main objects of his tirades) are actively talking about "isolating the Monbiots of the world." What right does he have to interrupt the corruption process, anyway? It is unfortunate that this fellow is not known over here. As it is, every month when I get my extra-exorbitant hydro bill (because we heat with electric as well) I will think about George Monbiot with bitterness in my heart. Here is his specific housing goal proposal for England, as set out on his blog,

"Introduce a new set of building regulations, with three objectives. A. Imposing strict energy efficiency requirements on all major refurbishments (costing #3000 or more). Timescale: comes into force by June 2007. B. Obliging landlords to bring their houses up to high energy efficiency standards before they can rent them out. Timescale: to cover all new rentals from January 2008. C. Ensuring that all new homes in the UK are built to the German passivhaus standard (which requires no heating system). Timescale: comes into force by 2012." (Monbiot, "Here's the Plan," October 31, 2006 http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/10/31/heres-the-plan/)

Could it be that the solution to our garbage can-like houses could be as simple as setting a new standard? Why have I been proposing all these years my idea of a much more radical design, which I called mound housing? (my latest name is Earth Charterhouses) As he points out, it would be possible, even easy, for government, if it followed the example of industry at the start of World War II in converting American auto to munitions factories in a matter of months, to fast track this and other obvious and necessary environmental measures, and have cheap, efficient housing in a short time. And the houses would look the same as they do now, as the detailed Wiki article on Passivhaus construction points out. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house) Somewhat discombobulated, I jumped to a link in the Wiki article to a yet more radical housing standard, "zero-energy building." The Wiki report on this starts off saying,

"A zero energy building (ZEB) or net zero energy building is a general term applied to a building with a net energy consumption of zero over a typical year. This can be measured in different ways (relating to cost, energy, or carbon emissions) and, irrespective of the definition used, different views are taken on the relative importance of energy generation and energy conservation to achieve energy balance." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_energy_building)

This sounds closer to my earth charter-house idea. But wait, it turns out that there is a yet more radical standard, the Energy-plus-house. This goal is so untried that I can reproduce the entire Wiki article on it in the following short paragraph.

"An energy-plus-house produces more energy from renewable energy sources, on average over the course of a year, than it imports from external sources. This is achieved using some combination micro-generation technology and low-energy building techniques such as passive solar building design, insulation and careful site selection and placement. It may involve a sort of post-modern minimalism that uses a minimum of modern conveniences, all of which have low-energy requirements. However many energy-plus houses are near indistinguishable from a traditional home, since they simply use the most energy-efficient solutions (i.e. appliances, fixtures, etc) throughout the house."

Clearly, an earth charter-house would have to be up to the energy-plus standard, and go beyond such bare minimums. The earth charter-house would be designed to transcend mere energy accounting to bring social and creative power to a plus standard as well.

It would also integrate transportation into its design.

But even here, Monbiot has a simpler, easier, less revolutionary solution. In a December 2006 blog entry called "Life Coaching" (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/12/05/life-coaching/) he discusses a very simple idea to level the playing field between intercity buses and their competitors, cars. Simply relocate bus terminals outside city limits, onto the main highways. That way, travelers would bypass traffic snarls in every town they pass, and suddenly the underdog of transport would become a viable contender. It would, in many cases, be quicker, easier, more pleasant and cheaper to take a bus than a car. Now, buses have only one advantage, reduced guilt for destroying the planet. This idea is so simple that I am kicking myself that I did not think of it myself.