Ashrae Journal - December 2008 - (Page 61) The big news at the time, which didn’t seem to resonate with the solar folks for obvious reasons, was that the active solar collectors that were bolted on the Saskatchewan Conservation House were a bust. They weren’t needed even when they actually worked. It was more gruesome for the passive solar folks. There wasn’t a bunch of thermal mass and lots of south-facing glass in the house—no Trombe Wall, no tubes of water in the living room, no phase-change salts, no dark ceramic tile floors. It was just a house with boring technology—lots of insulation, airtight construction, controlled ventilation and not a lot of windows. The good news for the architects was that it was ugly and looked weird—not architect weird, rather engineering weird—and as such could be ignored. Then, Gene Leger†† built the Leger House in Pepperell, Mass., in 1979. The Leger House wasn’t weird looking. It was normal looking. It looked just like your neighbor’s house. It required so little space heat that it didn’t need a furnace or a boiler. It featured double walls, airtight construction, controlled ventilation and not a lot of windows. It had the same amount of windows as everyone else’s house. So, there seems to be a pattern developing here: lots of insulation, airtight construction, controlled ventilation and not a lot of glass. We could be on to something here. Meanwhile, the Canadians weren’t resting on their laurels; they built 10 houses in 1980 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, that also didn’t look weird. The crazy Canucks took the lessons of Eyre, Besant, Dumont and Orr and applied them to a small subdivision. This lead to the development of Canada’s R-2000 Program and the construction of a couple thousand of extremely well insulated, airtight houses with controlled ventilation and not a lot of windows in the 1980s. And then…nothing happened. In Canada, the R-2000 program became a boutique program that was pretty much ignored by mainstream builders. In the United States, after the Leger House, pretty much nothing happened there either. We do have the Building America program, but we’re not building a lot of efficient houses. We say the houses are efficient, but they are not, when compared to the groundbreaking projects of the 1970s. So, here we are 25 years later. We all know what to do, but we can’t seem to do it. Use lots of insulation, airtight construction, controlled ventilation, and not a lot of glass. We now know what else to add to this 1970s list: use good glass whenever you use glass (it wasn’t available back in the day), use good appliances, use good lighting, and after you have done all of this use good equipment. The good equipment is now pretty small because you have done all that other stuff. Then, stop. With all that we now know, couldn’t we do something special? Like the old guys did? Couldn’t we build on the lessons learned from Canada’s R-2000 program and America’s Building America program and the stuff Eyre and Leger did? Well, architect Betsy Pettit did.‡‡ She designed the Westford House. In a sweet link to the past, it is located only a couple miles from Leger’s masterpiece. The Westford House is not weird looking. It is superinsulated. It is ultratight. It has controlled ventilation with heat recovery. It does not have lots of glass. It has good glass. It has good appliances. It has good lighting. And, it has good equipment, which is small.§§ Everything is off-the-shelf and can be built by anyone (see Page 62). What did the Westford House teach us? It provided a set of performance metrics that are matched with current materials and current understanding of building science. The core design is good for all climates. It is of single-wall construction with insulating sheathing. In more moderate climates just peel away some of the exterior insulation layers on the exterior walls and roof. All that changes is the thickness of the insulating sheathing. It won’t win any awards. It just works. It doesn’t need PV. If you want to make a statement, go right ahead. But, now I won’t bust your chops because you’ve earned the right to make the statement. Geothermal would work great where gas is not available. The trick is finding a small enough geothermal system. Harry Tschum, Les Blades and Frank Holtzclaw would be proud. References 1. Schick, W.L., R.A. Jones, W.S. Harris and S. Konzo. 1979. “Details and Engineering Analysis of the Illinois Lo-Cal House, Technical Note 14.” Urbana, Ill.: Building Research Council, School of Architecture, University of Illinois. 2. Besant, R.W., R.S. Dumont, G. Schoenau. 1978. “The Saskatchewan Conservation House: Some preliminary performance results.” Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference. Winnipeg, MB: Solar Energy Society of Canada. 3. Eyre, D., G. Jennings. 1979. Energy Efficient Housing—A Prairie Approach. Regina, SK: Office of Energy Conservation, Government of Saskatchewan. Joseph W. Lstiburek, Ph.D., P.Eng., is a principal of Building Science Corporation, in Somerville, Mass. Visit www. buildingscience.com. #The air-to-air heat exchanger was based on the design of a similar piece of equipment used in pig barns in Saskatchewan. It seems pigs generate heat and lots of moisture and that leads to condensation problems on the inside of pig barns in cold climates. Ventilation was a common (although expensive) means of controlling such condensation, which prompted the need for heat recovery. We could be on to something here. **According to my old friend Jim White, the phrase comes from a clever Swede by the name of Thomas Lindvall. ††What a character. An American original. A cross between James Cagney and Emeril Lagasse in the body of a building official. How many Chief Building Officials have you ever met that have designed and constructed a unique structure that changed the world? When I first met Gene in 1984 while living in Canada, I never imagined that I would end up with an office less than 10 miles from the Leger House. ‡‡In the interest of full disclosure, I must point out that I know Ms. Pettit rather well. She is the managing partner of Building Science Corporation, so she is my boss, and this clearly constitutes sucking up to her. Oh, we are also married to each other. §§Even the smallest we could get was not small enough; the smallest furnace was still twice a big as needed. The good news was that it could be wired to operate at half the capacity. December 2008 ASHRAE Journal 61 http://www.buildingscience.com http://www.buildingscience.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.