We are now into the heating season.  Last night the outside temperature dropped into the mid-teens and the ground source heat pumps had to run to keep the interior of the house at 69F.  One part of me doesn’t want to hear the heating system running at all, another part of me likes the fact that when they are running, we are making “free” hot water. 

I woke up this morning to find 50 gallons of 90F water in the desuperheater tank.  Since the kids didn’t take baths last night, we also have some left over solar heated hot water from yesterday.  We started the day with 130 gallons of 90F water, and nothing but sun in the forecast.

As I am sitting here typing, it is 25F outside, and the wind is blowing 20 miles per hour with gusts into the 45 mph range (so says the National Weather Service).  The heat pumps last ran at 9:20 AM this morning, yet it is 71F throughout the entire interior of the house.  Even with the cold temperature and the windy conditions, sunlight coming through the South facing windows is enough to completely heat the house beyond our thermostat set point (set at 69F).  The house is warm, we are making hot (or at least very warm) water, and the dogs are enjoying the warm sunlight too!

Do you know what else I find intriguing about this house?  It is energy efficient on its own.  I was recently looking back on The Hathaway House case study and noticed that they heavily used thermostat setbacks in order to keep their energy use low.  They lived with 62 degree interior temperatures in the winter, and 78 in the summer.  We are cognizant, but not overly careful…  Our thermostat was set to 69F in the summer and it is set there now, in the winter.  While we encourage the kids to use the mud room, the convenience of the front door often wins out.  Also, our five dogs have no idea how to use the mud room.  They are in and out the front door several times per day regardless of the outside temperatures.  Our kids are like everyone else’s; they leave unused lights on too.  Despite this, I am quite happy with the performance of the house.  It is quite comfortable without having to sacrifice.

Perhaps it is just me, but I feel the need to prove the efficiency of this house in order to convince others to do the same for their family.  I am presently speaking with a few companies that make energy monitoring equipment.  It is my hope that one of them might see an opportunity in “partnering” with me to monitor this house.  With luck, I can present live energy usage data to anyone interested.  With the data provided by this equipment, anyone could easily compare their house to this one.

I strongly encourage anyone building a house, especially if you are already considering modular construction, to go through the extra expense / trouble of building with SIPs.  I can tell you from firsthand experience - You will be very glad you did!

Talk to you soon,
Ed
Mr. Green Dreams